to stay; and once a motor coal-waggon, like a sort of amateur freight-train, thundered across; but not even these could break the spell that held that ring of enchanted loiterers, from which presently the pennies fell like rain—­the eternal spell—­still operating, I was glad to see, under the protection of the only human police in the world—­of the strolling player in London town.  Just before the players turned to seek fresh squares and alleys new, I noticed on the edge of the crowd what seemed, in the gathering twilight, to be a group of uplifted spears.  Spears or halberds, were they?  It was a little company of the ancient brotherhood of lamp-lighters, seduced, like the rest of us, from the strict pursuance of duty by the vagabond music.

To me this thought is full of reassurance, whatever be the murmurs of change:  London has still her sweeps, her strolling minstrels, and her lamp-lighters.

Of course, I missed at once the old busses, yet there are far more horses left than I had dared to hope, and the hansom is far from extinct.  In fact, there seems to be some promise of its renaissance, and even yet, in the words of the ancient bard, despite the competition of taxis—­

Like dragon-flies,
The hansoms hover
With jewelled eyes,
To catch the lover.

Further,—­the quietude of the Temple remains undisturbed, the lawns of Gray’s Inn are green as of old, the Elizabethanism of Staple Inn is unchanged, about the cornices of the British Museum the pigeons still flutter and coo, and the old clocks chime sweetly as of old from their mysterious stations aloft somewhere in the morning and the evening sky.

Changes, of course, there are.  It is easier to telephone in London today than it was ten years ago—­almost as easy as in some little provincial town in Connecticut.  Various minor human conveniences have been improved.  The electric lighting is better.  Some of the elevators—­I mean the “lifts”—­almost remind one of New York.  The problem of “rapid transit” has been simplified.  All which things, however, have nothing to do with national characteristics, but are now the common property of the civilized, or rather, I should say, the commercialized, world, and are probably to be found no less in full swing in Timbuctoo.  No one—­save, maybe, the citizens of some small imitative nation—­confounds these things with change, or calls them “progress.”  The soul of a great old nation adopts all such contrivances as in the past it has adopted new weapons, or new modes of conveyance.  Only a Hottentot or a Cook’s Tourist can consider such superficial developments as evidences of “change.”

There are, of course, some new theatres—­though I have heard of no new great actor or actress.  The old “favourites” still seem to dominate the play-bills, as they did ten years ago.  There is Mr. Hammerstein’s Opera House in the Kingsway.  I looked upon it with pathos.  Yet, surely, it is a monument not so much of changing London as of that London which sees no necessity of change.