Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scans provided by Google Books,
https://books.google.com/books?id=OAQiAAAAMAAJ
(Public Library, Long Island City, N.Y.)
2. "This work was published many years ago anonymously, and receivedthe name of 'Delaware; or, The ruined family.'"--Introd.,p. [v], to London, 1848, ed.
Most cities are hateful; and, without any disposition to "babble aboutgreen fields," it must be owned that each is more or less detestable.Nevertheless, among them all, there is none to be compared, as awhole, to London--none which comprehends within itself, from variouscauses, so much of the sublime in every sort. Whether we consider itsgiant immensity of expanse--the wonderful intricacy of its internalstructure--the miraculous harmony of its discrepant parts--the grandamalgamation of its different orders, classes, states, pursuits,professions--the mighty aggregate of hopes, wishes, endeavors, joys,successes, fears, pangs, disappointments, crimes, and punishments,that it contains--its relative influence on the world at large--or thevehement pulse with which that "mighty heart" sends the flood ofcirculation through this beautiful land--we shall find that that mostwonderful microcosm well deserves the epithet _sublime_.
To view it rightly--if we wish to view it with the eye of aphilosopher--we should choose, perhaps, the hour which is chosen bythe most magnificent and extraordinary of modern poets, and gaze uponit when the sun is just beginning to pour his first red beams throughthe dim and loaded air, when that vast desert of brick and mortar,that interminable wilderness of spires and chimneys, looks more wideand endless, and solemn, than when the eye is distracted by myriads ofmites that creep about it in the risen day.
It may be asked, perhaps, who is there that ever saw it at that hour,except the red-armed housemaid washing the morning step, and lettingin the industrious thief, to steal the greatcoats from the hall; orthe dull muffin-man, who goes tinkling his early bell through themisty streets of the wintry morning? Granted, that neither ofthese--nor the sellers of early purl--nor the venders of saloop andcocoa--nor Covent Garden market-women--nor the late returners from the_finish_--nor he who starts up from the doorway, where he has passedthe wretched night, to recommence the day's career of crime, anddanger, and sorrow--can look upon the vast hive in which they dwellwith over-refined feelings; and, perhaps, to them may come homeunhappy Shelley's forcible line--
"Hell is a city very much likeLondon!"
The valetudinarian, too, who wakes with nervous punctuality toswallow down the morning draught, prescribed by courtly Henry'sbitter