12. A Squalid Village - Page 2

village. In one word, the point I am seeking to bring out here is that a
town, as a town, is handsome or otherwise, not in virtue of the works of
art or antiquity it contains, but in virtue of its ground-plan, its
architecture, its external and visible decorations and places--the
Louvre, the Boulevards, the Champs Elysées, the Place de l'Opéra.

Now London has no ground-plan. It has no street architecture. It has no
decorations, though it has many uglifications. It is frankly and simply
and ostentatiously hideous. And being wholly wanting in a system of any
sort--in organic parts, in idea, in views, in vistas--it is only a
village, and a painfully uninteresting one.

Most Englishmen see London before they see any other great town. They
become so familiarised with it that their sense of comparison is dulled
and blunted. I had the good fortune to have seen many other great towns
before I ever saw London: and I shall never forget my first sense of
surprise at its unmitigated ugliness.

Get on top of an omnibus--I don't say in Paris, from the Palais Royal to
the Arc de Triomphe, but in Brussels, from the Gare du Nord to the
Palais de Justice--and what do you see? From end to end one unbroken
succession of noble and open prospects. I'm not thinking now of the
Grande Place in the old town, with its magnificent collection of
mediæval buildings; the Great Fire effectively deprived us of our one
sole chance of such an element of beauty in modern London. I confine
myself on purpose to the parts of Brussels which are purely recent, and
might have been imitated at a distance in London, if there had been any
public spirit or any public body in England to imitate them. (But
unhappily there was neither.) Recall to mind as you read the strikingly
handsome street view that greets you as you emerge from the Northern
Station down the great central Boulevards to the Gare du Midi--all built
within our own memory. Then think of the prospects that gradually unfold
themselves as you rise on the hill; the fine vista north towards Sainte
Marie de Schaarbeck; the beautiful Rue Royale, bounded by that charming
Parc; the unequalled stretch of the Rue de la Régence, starting from the
Place Royale with Godfrey of Bouillon, and ending with the imposing mass
of the Palais de Justice. It is to me a matter for mingled surprise and
humiliation that so many Englishmen can look year after year at that
glorious street--perhaps the finest in the world--and yet never think to
themselves, "Mightn't we faintly imitate some small part of this in our
wealthy, ugly, uncompromising London?"

I always say to Americans who come to Europe: "When you go to England,
don't see our towns, but see our