As to climate, there is not much to choose at this time of year.  In London, for six weeks, we never saw the sun for coal-smoke and fog.  In Paris we have not been blessed with its cheering rays above three or four days in the same length of time, and are, beside, tormented with an oily and tenacious mud beneath the feet, which makes it almost impossible to walk.  This year, indeed, is an uncommonly severe one at Paris; but then, if they have their share of dark, cold days, it must be admitted that they do all they can to enliven them.

But to dwell first on London,—­London, in itself a world.  We arrived at a time which the well-bred Englishman considers as no time at all,—­quite out of “the season,” when Parliament is in session, and London thronged with the equipages of her aristocracy, her titled wealthy nobles.  I was listened to with a smile of contempt when I declared that the stock shows of London would yield me amusement and employment more than sufficient for the time I had to stay.  But I found that, with my way of viewing things, it would be to me an inexhaustible studio, and that, if life were only long enough, I would live there for years obscure in some corner, from which I could issue forth day by day to watch unobserved the vast stream of life, or to decipher the hieroglyphics which ages have been inscribing on the walls of this vast palace (I may not call it a temple), which human effort has reared for means, not yet used efficaciously, of human culture.

And though I wish to return to London in “the season,” when that city is an adequate representative of the state of things in England, I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly, which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay.

It is impossible, however, to take a near view of the treasures created by English genius, accumulated by English industry, without a prayer, daily more fervent, that the needful changes in the condition of this people may be effected by peaceful revolution, which shall destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness, which now prevents their being used, for the benefit of all.  May their present possessors look to it in time!  A few already are earnest in a good spirit.  For myself, much as I pitied the poor, abandoned, hopeless wretches that swarm in the roads and streets of England, I pity far more the English noble, with this difficult problem before him, and such need of a speedy solution.  Sad is his life, if a conscientious man; sadder still, if not.  Poverty in England has terrors of which I never dreamed at home.  I felt that it would be terrible to be poor there, but far more so to be the possessor of that for which so many thousands are perishing.  And the middle class, too, cannot here enjoy that serenity which the sages have described as naturally their peculiar blessing.  Too close, too dark throng the evils they cannot obviate, the sorrows they cannot relieve.  To a man of good heart, each day must bring purgatory which he knows not how to bear, yet to which he fears to become insensible.