On a fine bright day of May or early June, and days of May or early June are often as bright in London as anywhere, the Park is probably the greatest display of wealth and of the pride of wealth in the world.  The contrast with the slums of the East End, no doubt, is striking, and we can not wonder if the soul of the East End is sometimes filled with bitterness at the sight.  A social Jeremiah might be moved to holy wrath by the glittering scene.  The seer, however, might be reminded that not all the owners of those carriages are the children of idleness, living by the sweat of another man’s brow; many of them are professional men or chiefs of industry, working as hard with their brains as any mechanic works with his hands, and indispensable ministers of the highest civilization.  The number and splendor of the equipages are thought to have been somewhat diminished of late by the reduction of rents.

The architecture of the West End of London is for the most part drearily monotonous; its forms have too plainly been determined by the builder, not by the artist, tho since the restoration of art, varieties of style have been introduced, and individual beauty has been more cultivated.  It is the boundless expanse of opulence, street after street, square after square, that most impresses the beholder, and makes him wonder from what miraculous horn of plenty such a tide of riches can have been poured.

A beautiful city London can not be called.  In beauty it is no match for Paris.  The smoke, which not only blackens but corrodes, is fatal to the architecture as well as to the atmosphere.  Moreover, the fine buildings, which if brought together would form a magnificent assemblage, are scattered over the immense city, and some of them are ruined by their surroundings.  There is a fine group at Westminster, and the view from the steps under the Duke of York’s column across St. James’s Park is beautiful.  But even at Westminster meanness jostles splendor, and the picture is marred by Mr. Hankey’s huge tower of Babel rising near.  London has had no edile like Haussmann.

The Embankment on the one side of the Thames is noble in itself, but you look across from it at the hideous and dirty wharves of Southwark.  Nothing is more charming than a fine water street; and this water street might be very fine were it not marred by the projection of a huge railway shed.  The new Courts of Law, a magnificent, tho it is said inconvenient, pile, instead of being placed on the Embankment or in some large open space, are choked up and lost in rookeries.  London, we must repeat, has had no edile.  Perhaps the finest view is that from a steamboat on the river, embracing the Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the Temple, with St. Paul’s rising above the whole.

Westminster abbey [Footnote:  From “The Sketch Book.”  Published by G.P.  Putnam’s Sons.]

BY WASHINGTON IRVING