ANTIQUITY.

THERE is something peculiarly interesting in antiquity, independent of the interest that particular antiquities may derive from their own beauty, or even from historical association. It is Nature's factor, and represents the opposite poles of mutability and eternity.

A Roman encampment, though it be now but a green mound, and was formerly the seat of mutiny, and, in fact, little better than a den of thieves, is more poetical than a modern barrack, though tenanted by brave Britons, the veterans of Egypt, or the medalists of Waterloo. What more prosaic than a halfpenny of the last coinage? You can in no ways put a sentiment into it, unless you give it to a child to buy sugar-plums, or to a beggar, in defiance of the vagrant laws and the Mendicity Society. But let the grim visages and execrated names of Caligula or Nero be deciphered through the verdant veil of venerable verdigris, and it becomes precious as Queen Anne's farthings, or the crooked sixpence that heretofore served for lovers' tokens. The spirit of ages invests them like a glory-cloud.

Time is a mighty leveller; yea, oftentimes makes that most precious which originally was vilest. A manuscript of Bavius, preserved from the cinders of Herculaneum, or a copy of Zoilus, traced beneath the legend of some Grecian monk, would be prized by collectors far above Virgil or Aristotle.

What are the Pyramids? Huge piles of brick or stone, with square bases and triangular sides, reared by slaves for tyrants to moulder in, standing evidences of heartless pride and heart-withering debasement, ponderous burdens heaped on mother earth to defraud her of her due.

Such were they when they were new. It would have gone against one's conscience to have visited them. But it is quite otherwise now. They no longer belong to Cheops or Sesostris, Pharaohs or Ptolemies, Mamelukes or Turks, but to the imagination of mankind. It were worth a pilgrimage to see them, could seeing add any thing to their power. But they are so simple both in form and association, so easily, so clearly presentable to the mir d's eye, that it is doubtful whether much would be gained by viewing them with the bodily organs, beyond the satisfaction of saying and thinking that one had seen them. It were nothing to measure their basis, or take their altitude, somewhat tedious to pore over the hieroglyphics, not very much, except for a savant, to rummage the interior. But to conceive them, or, after all, it would be better to see them, standing on the same earth which has entombed so many thousand generations, pointing to the self-same sky, which heard the cry of the oppressed when they were building; to sink, as in a dream, "through the dark backward and abyss of time;" this is indeed sublime. There would be nothing sublime in covering the area of Lincoln's Inn Fields (said to be equal in square contents to the great pyramid) with a fac simile. It would be a piece of lumbering inutility. Parliament, with all its omnipotence, could not endow it with a grant of centuries. It might be voted the tomb of kings, but not the sepulchre of ages.

The Egyptians, of all nations, seem to have built and planned with the most exclusive regard to permanence. They designed to make antiquities. A dim bewildered instinct, a yearning after immortality, marked all their undertakings. They preferred an unconscious existence, in the form of hideous mummies, to utter dissolution; they feared that the bodiless spirit might lose its personal identity; and expected, or wished, after the expiration of the great cycle, to find all that they had left exactly as they left it, the same bodies, the same buildings, the same obelisks, pointing at the same stars. Strange faith! that the soul, after all varieties of untried being, would return to animate a mummy.

The Greeks built for beauty, the Romans for magnificence, the Orientals for barbaric splendour, (the Chinese, indeed, for fantastic finery,) the Gothic nations for the sublimity of religious effect, or martial strength; a Dutchman builds to please himself, a sensible Englishman for convenience, others of that nation, to show their wealth or their taste. But the Egyptan built in defiance of time, or rather propitiated that ruthless power, by erecting him altars whereon to inscribe his victories over all beside.

Should a modern architect succeed in rivalling the hallowed structures of our forefathers, (an event by no means probable), still his workmanship would savour of the times of yore, of other men than we, other manners than ours. We should feel the new stone and stuccowork, the freshness of youth upon the new wonder, some what painfully; and, in a fanciful mood, might marvel in what cavern of the earth it had been hidden so many centuries, by what mechanism it had been raised. It is seldom safe to imitate antiquities. An antiquity that is not ancient is a contradiction. It reminds us of something that it is not. The charm is gone. It is like the tragedy of "Hamlet" with the character of Hamlet omitted. In great works, it is well to keep close to the eternal, tó that which is never modern, and never can be antique. But it is impossible to exclude the spirit of our own age; and, therefore, to mimic that of another can only produce incongruity.

As there are some things which never become antique, by virtue of their permanent and catholic excellence, so others are excluded from that character by their worth lessness. The full-bottomed periwig, and the hooped petticoat, are out of fashion; and, should they be treasured in museums, or recorded in pictures, till Plato's great year is completed, they will only be out of fashion still. Some people assert, that there is no antiquity, like that of nature; but this is not true. Nature, indeed, has her antiquities; but they are not the sun, the moon, the stars, nor the everflowing ocean, nor the eternal hills. These are all exempt from time; they never were new; and they are no older now than when angels sang hallelujahs at their creation. Nature has her antiquities; for she has some productions which she has ceased to produce; but for her streams and her mountains, her fields and her flowers, I hope they will never be antiquated. An aged tree, especially if shivered by wind or lightning, is certainly a thing of other times. A rock rifted by an earthquake, a fragment fallen at some far-distant or forgotten period from a mountain side, a deep fissure seem ingly rent by some power greater than any which nature is now exerting, may fitly be called natural antiquities. So are the mammoth's bones. They tell tales of the planet's vigorous youth; they belong to an order of things different from the present.

HOUSEHOLD WALLS.

WE taik of "old familiar faces,"
And love them warmly and sincerely;
But there are old familiar places,

That cling to us almost as dearly.
Say, who among us, with a heart

Where feeling's holy sunshine fails,
Can bear, untouched, to turn and part
From even long-known household walls?
Walls, that have echoed to our pleasure,

Walls, that have hidden us in grief,
Been shaken by our dancing measure,
And garnished by our Christmas leaf.
The chairs, that we have drawn around
The twilight fire, with friends beside us,
When in that tiny world we found

The peace the larger world denied us.

The table, where our arm has leaned,

And held our brow in pensive thinking,

The cosey curtain, that has screened

When north-east draughts have found us shrinking; Oh! are there not some hearts, that ever A tint of love from these can borrow; And when they say "Good bye," can never, Take the last look without deep sorrow?, And how the spirit learns to talk

To some old tree, or whitethorn hedge, Or worship some poor garden walk,

As though 'twere bound by sacred pledge.

Oh! many a throbbing heart will yearn

To household wall, or old green lane, And many a farewell glance will turn,

Half dimmed, to peep just once again.

At some familiar noteless thing,

Which we have dwelt with, till it seems A feather in the gentle wing,

That nestles all our happiest dreams.

Oh! love, thou hast a noble throne

In bosoms where thy life-light falls,
So warm and wide, that they have sighed,
At leaving even household walls.

ELIZA COOK.

DIAMOND DUST.

A FEEBLE and delicate exterior is 'not unfrequently united with great force of intellect, and it would appear as if, occasionally, the energies of the one increase in strength as the powers of the other decline. Would Moscow have illumed the sky with her thousand fires had she been built of more durable material ?

Ir is better to accomplish perfectly a very small amount of work than to half-do ten times as much.

A LITTLE thing consoles us, because a little thing affects us.

WORK without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object, cannot live.

To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history.

DARKNESS and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living being.

WE slightly remember our frailties, and the sharpest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves.

LEARN properly to understand and to love life if thou wilt rightly understand and love eternity. A true Christian must already be happy here on earth; that is the problem of life which every one of us must endeavour with all our might to solve, that difficult problem whose solution so few have achieved, and which has cost the multitude so much conflict. Yet the more and the greater are the difficulties, the more honourable it is to carry off the victory. Man may be disappointed in his greatest hopes in life, without, on that account, becoming unhappy.

THE best actions we never recompence, and the worst are seldom chastised.

THOSE Who believe nothing often make others believe most; as the best actors in our theatres are those who retain the most perfect command over their feelings, voice, and countenance.

BEWARE of idleness, the listless idleness that lounges and reads without the severity of study, the active idleness for ever busy about matters neither very difficult nor very valuable.

ALL the men who have done things well in life have been remarkable for decision of character.

IN our conduct to animals less gifted than ourselves, let us not forget, that we are only the elder born of our mother's womb, and whatever may be the number of her children, they are all dear in the eye of our common parent.

The love of man is too often alloyed with baser metals.
THE love of woman is gold that is tried in the fire.
WE prefer obeying some to commanding others.
THE outside trappings which we assume when we go
into public are more frequently wanted at home than

abroad.

THE more a man has to do, the more he finds himself capable of doing, even beyond the direct task. MANKIND, in general, mistake difficulties for impossibilities. That is the difference between those who effect and those who do not.

ROMPING.-Never find fault with girls if they are decided romps; but be thoughtful that they have the health and spirits necessary for romping. Better be a romp, than have a narrow chest and flushed cheek.

Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by Jons OWEN CLARKE, (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, in the City of London. Saturday, July 7, 1949.

ELIZ

JOURNA

No. 11.]

IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON.

THE impression which the daily life of London makes upon the mind of the native-born citizen, is very faint compared with that experienced by the provincial visitor. To the Londoner, London is a fact daily familiar; the busy throng of its streets, the rush of life in its thoroughfares, the tremendous tide of human necessity which rolls throughout its vast extent from day to day, fail to arrest his attention, or to excite his sense of wonder. To a visitor from the quiet country, it presents itself in a very different aspect. London is to him a new world, unlike everything he has before seen, or even imagined. It at once fills his mind, and takes possession of his whole being.

There are country visitors to London who have told us, that they felt oppressed beyond description, by a sense of their own comparative insignificance in it, amidst a mass of human beings so immense; they were as if lost in the mighty crowd, a stray unit amidst two millions of strange people! On others, the effect is different; it produces an excitement of the liveliest kind. London! of which they have read and heard so much, from the days in which they sat around the old fireside at home far off in the country, when its wonders and greatness sounded to them as something infinitely more marvellous than anything they had ever read of, even in the "Arabian Nights," to the days when, pushing their way onwards in life, they have at length mastered its difficulties, gained a firm footing in their provincial sphere, and at last felt themselves free to indulge in a visit to the great world's metropolis;-and now at last, such visitor is in London, treading its thoroughfares, visiting its classic places, its galleries, its cathedrals, its legislature, and drinking in large draughts of pleasurable excitement at every step.

LONDON! how grand the very name sounds! The names of all other European cities, with the exception, perhaps, of Rome and Constantinople, give but little idea of their greatness and importance. Paris, Berlin, Vienna (or "Wien," as the Germans call it,) sound small and insignificant, compared with "LONDON!" The very word imports greatness-the name is worthy the capital of the world-the heart of empires-the centre of civilization.

It would be vain for any one to attempt to describe London. Its enormous vastness-its myriad population -its boundless wealth, its unparalleled power and grandeur, set description at defiance. It eludes the grasp of imagination-the mind is staggered at the very idea of it. Think of two millions of human beings concentrated round St. Paul's. Just fancy two millions of human hearts and souls jammed together in a space not larger than many a duke's park. But we must not under estimate the vast extent of London. Think of nine miles of houses

[PRICE 14d.

from east to west, and six miles of houses from north to south! But this can give one no adequate idea of the hundreds of thousands of houses in which those two millions of human beings live.

Ascend to the top of St. Paul's, as early in the morning as you choose, before the smoke has begun to dim the atmosphere overhanging the great city, and if you cast your eyes about you. lo! there are dense habitations in all directions-roofs, gables, chimney-tops, church spires, apparently without end; an interminable world of brick. Look down, and immediately beneath you are the densely built streets of "the City," wherein the wealth of the commercial world centres. Here is Cheapside, there Cornhill, Leadenhall Street, and Threadneedle Street, where inestimable wealth daily circulates; for there is the Bank, there the Exchange, there the East India House, and there the warehouses of the merchant princes of Britain. Cast your eyes eastward, and you look over Whitechapel, Commercial Road, the wretched district of Bethnal Green; and still eastward, inclining southward, you see Poplar, Limehouse, and the famous docks, towards which the wealth of the Indies is wafted; far in the east, at an immense distance, you catch a glimpse of the green fields of Essex, and what you take to be a streak of the German ocean, opposite the mouth of the Thames. Turn round-it is the same in whichever direction you look-to the west, over Buckingham Palace and the lofty towers of Westminster; still miles on miles of houses. Beneath you there is Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street, the Strand, and Piccadilly; and to the right, Holborn, Oxford Street, the Edgware Road,-shops, dwellings, offices, hovels, churches, gin-shops, in endless succession. To the north, over the vastly populous district of Finsbury, it is the same; and southward, across the Thames, looking towards Surrey and Kent, there are still miles on miles of human habitations.

London is unlike every other capital in the world. You can scarcely tell where it begins, and what is the line of demarcation that separates it from the country in any direction. Sail along the Thames, the silent highway of the metropolis, and for twenty miles you have city on either side of you. Run out towards the country-north or south, whichever you will-say five or ten miles, and you can scarcely say you are out of London. Villas, terraces, towns, villages, clumps of houses, lie spread in all directions-peopled by London citizens. But it is impossible to define or set bounds to London-to say where it begins, or where it ends. Its hugeness defies definition.

And when such is the bulk and expansion of this mighty London, how is it possible for any one to see it all, to know it all, to understand it all, out-growing as it daily does all possible means of seeing and knowing it? Londoners themselves, who spend their daily life in it, are often as much in the dark as to the public ongoings there, as denizens of the country are. The inhabitant of the East

End may be as much a stranger to the localities of the West End, as is the inhabitant of Wales or the Highlands. Their respective populations are unknown to each other; next-door neighbours may remain unacquainted even with each other's names for years. To most men, London may be an utter solitude, if they wish it. They may live there for half a century, unknowing and unknown. In the midst of millions they may be alone, far more than they can possibly be in the country village, where each man's life and concerns are made the business of everybody. Here there is an entire emancipation from tattlers and busy-bodies; but there is also a want of personal sympathy. The people are strangers to each other; each is intent upon his own business, knowing nothing, and caring little about what his neighbour is doing. Jostling each other in the streets, each man presses forward eagerly on his own errand; all seeming to have some special object of pursuit in their looks. What matters it that this man whom they have just passed is a country magnate come up to town? He is nothing to them a nobody, whatever he may be in his own province. There is, indeed, no such remedy for provincial vanity and self-importance as a visit to London.

One of the most striking sights of London, at least to a visitor, who has not become quite familiarized with the daily life of the metropolis, is the streets leading towards the City, the streams of human beings that throng past-pouring on and on-never resting for a moment-crushing, and pressing, and panting onwardmultitudes this way, that way, and every way; and this, not for an hour together, but from morn till night, at all times and seasons. The grand centre towards which the immense current rolls, in the earlier part of the day, is the City; in the evening, the current is principally from it. The City is the centre of the business operations of London, and in the morning, crowds upon crowds, from all directions, pour their tide of life towards St. Paul's from every point of the compass. Busses are plying at an early hour-all converging towards "the Bank," the great monetary heart of London, and the various places of business in the City. As they proceed, the thoroughfares become more and more crowded; and for miles together, this mass of human beings presses on, thickening as you approach the City, where the busses disgorge their contents, the foot-passengers throng into the shops, offices, and warehouses, and London is in the full heyday of life and vigour.

All day long are the streets of London in a move-in a swarm. Here let us stand for a moment, and look down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street. There, as far as the eye can see, down towards Temple Bar, you have before you an interminable throng of coaches, cabs, carriages, omnibuses, carts, drays, broughams, buggies, waggons, gigs, vans, shop-carts, barouches, coal-waggons, trucks, placard caravans, donkey-carts, and all possible descriptions of vehicles, blocking up the road sometimes for an hour together, so as to render crossing the street next to an impossibility. It is the same in all the streets leading to the Bank. Your first wonder is, where can all those people come from? the next, where can they all be going to? One would think they must at length all pass by, and leave the streets quiet. But no! on come new streams of life-whirling and eddying; more busses, caravans, cabs, and waggons. There is no end of the din, bustle, and tumult. Only towards midnight do the streets become comparatively quiet, and only for an hour or two in the early morning do they seem hushed in sleep.

Let us mix with the crowd thronging Ludgate Hill, and stroll westward towards the Court end of the town. Passing along Fleet Street, we observe the office of the great Punch, and then we meet with the Dispatch office; and further on, mostly in the Strand, the offices of the Morning Chronicle, the Sun, the Globe, the Economist, the John Bull, the Weekly Chronicle, and many others.

Pass

Pur

We have already passed the entrance to the Temple, where lawyers eat their way to the bar; and Temple Bar, which offers no slight impediment to the thoroughfare of passengers and vehicles. We pass by St. Clement's Danes Church, and reach the front of Somerset House; enter the courts and look around-it is a fine solemn-looking pile of building, now chiefly devoted to the purposes of Government Commissions and public education. out by King's College; and, again proceeding westward along the Strand, you discern numerous other newspaper offices. In and about Wellington Street, you find the local habitation of most of the leading literary papersthe Athenæum, Spectator, and Examiner. In this street, on the right, you observe the portico of the Lyceum, the most beautifully decorated little theatre in London, where Charles Matthews, and the ever-enduring Madame Vestris, charm nightly audiences. The same street conducts you to the Royal Italian Operahouse, in Covent Garden, where you find the most complete operatic company and orchestra probably to be found in the whole world. In the same neighbourhood is Drury Lane, where the fourth foreign operatic company in London has lately commenced a series of performances. suing our rout along the Strand, we pass the Adelphi Theatre, where Wright and Paul Bedford draw nightly peals of laughter; Exeter Hall, where most of the religious assemblies are held; and also where the magnificent oratorios of Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn are performed to enormous audiences. Then emerging from the Strand, we reach Charing Cross. Here we are in Trafalgar Square; on one side the National Gallery, constructed in the pepper-box style of architecture; in front are the fountains, made famous by Punch; and also Nelson's monument, the hero which surmounts it having a rope and anchor so arranged about his extremities, as very much to resemble a tail. To the right, the road leads us to the Haymarket, to the Queen's Theatre, where Jenny Lind has lately closed her triumphant operatic career; and further on, into Pall Mall, Regent Street, St. James's, and Piccadilly. But let us rather turn to the left, and go down by Whitehall. Here, every step is full of interest. To the right, we pass the Admiralty, the Horse Guards, the Treasury, in which the principal offices of the Government are situated, and where the machinery is managed which holds this mighty empire in order. Pass through the Horse Guards' porch, and you are at once in the quiet park of St. James's, the most beautiful of the Parks of London. But rather return with us, and go along Whitehall. There, opposite the Horse Guards, is the famous Banqueting Hall, erected by Inigo Jones. Pass into the Privy Gardens behind, and you have pointed out to you the window from which Charles the First stepped forth to his execution. With a very questionable taste, the statue of his son, James the Second, a bigot and an imbecile, has been erected, his finger pointing to the spot whereon the scaffold was erected on which his father was beheaded. Nearly opposite the Banqueting Hall is. Sir Robert Peel's private mansion-a quiet green retreat, shaded by trees, and almost rural in appearance, though so close to one of the great thoroughfares of London. You emerge at the other side, pass down Downing Street, and enter Parliament Street, at the further end of which stand Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of the Legislature.

The associations connected with this neighbourhood are of the most deeply interesting character to every person who has read the history of his country, or takes note of the important political events of modern times. There, on the one hand, frown the dark and stupendous walls of Westminster Abbey; and here, on the other, is St. Stephen's Chapel, and the venerable pile of Westminster Hall, behind which slowly rise up the new Houses of Parliament. Along these streets have trod all the great men of British history-Saxon, Norman, Anglo-Norman, and modern British. Here have passed, in the dim pro