OF TILE CITY. There is no point of vantage in London where the whole city may he seen even on the clearest day. The view from the top of the Fire Monument, in the centre of the city, still reveals the roofs of numberless houses on the horizon. London has grown not like most great cities around a centre, but is the out come of the merging together of many towns and villages. These rations centres differed from one another, and gave much of their distinctive personality to the districts in the great city which they occupy. Thus London is an assem blage of urban districts, each differing from the other and having its distinctive appearance and history. Warehouses are the predominant feature in one region; banks or factories, palaces, villas, or tenement-houses each give a distinct individuality to other districts. The impres sion which the city as a whole makes upon the visitor is not entirely favorable. The streets are narrow and the more densely peopled districts in particular lack sun and air. It is a giant among cities, but in beautiful, attractive aspects it is far inferior to ninny others. It has many
fine buildings, hut in its larger features it is positively ugly when compared with Paris, for example—which, particularly under the regime of Napoleon 111., waxed not only in size and im portance, but also in its resthetic aspects. Love for the practical and useful predominated over love for the beautiful in the making of London. The prevailing cloud, mist, and fog in the atmos phere of England. due to the neighboring seas. are intensified in this enormous aggregation of houses and inhabitants; and the exclusive use of bituminous coal both for domestic and industrial purposes fills the air with smoke which smirches the house walls and gives the whole city a dingy aspect. The greatest development of the city from the small original nucleus near the Tower has been to the north and west, the Surrey or southern side of the Thames embracing only about one-third of the present Metropolitan Dis trict.