TJ4 ENGLISH SAGA

undulations striking and strange reflections. It might be said
this was the heavy and smoky air of a large hothouse. Nothing
is natural here, everything is transformed, artificially wrought
from the toil of man, up to the light and the air. But the hugeness
of the conglomeration and of the human creation hinders us from
thinking about this deformity and this artifice; for want of pure
and healthy beauty, the swarming and grandiose life remains; the
shimmering of embrowned waves, the scattering of the light
imprisoned in vapour, the soft whitish or pink tints which cover
these vastnesses, diffuse a sort of grace over the prodigious city,
having the effect of a smile upon the face of a shaggy and
blackened Cyclop."1

For over this vast city, in size, wealth and power the greatest
communal achievement of man's sojourn on the planet, had
fallen a perpetual pall. The classical pillars and ornaments of
the churches and larger buildings were half hidden under soot:
the naked Achilles in the park, tribute to the Iron Duke, was
almost black. Even the dripping trees and foliage were grimy.
It was like Homer's Hell—the land of the Cimmerians. "The vast
space which in the South stretches between the earth and sky
cannot be discovered . . . there is no air; there is nothing but
liquid fog."2

For in the urban England that was taking the place of the
rustic England of the past, a people who still loved virtue, free-
dom and justice and wished in their hearts to be generous and
chivalrous, were unconsciously sacrificing everything in the last
resort to the making of wealth. Over every city tall chimneys
cast a pall of smoke between earth and sky: the Thames ran
no longer blue and sparkling but rayless under the grimy bridges.
The summer's trip to Greenwich—-joy of so many generations of
Londoners—was.no longer a thing of delight; the trees on the Isle
of Dogs had begun to give way to ugly factories and mean houses,
and the yachts and pleasure boats -to belching steamers and
strings of coal barges. Even the time-honoured ministerial
Whitebait Dinner was soon to be abandoned: men had less
leisure than before for the graces and amenities of civilised life.
For with the chance of growing rich, there were more im-
portant things.

The complete absorption of the English urban middle classes in
this single pursuit was both impressive and rather terrifying. The

Woks m %ngloRd> W. *j\fcfcj on England, 10.