assailed the eye in the wide perspective of domes and towers and spires, how the very voice of London, sonorous and confused, like the noise of a great battlefield, thrilled the spirit, and I felt again that old and poignant charm of cities, that quickening of the imagination which lies in mere multitude, that perpetual seduction of the senses begotten by the revelation of so much effort and magnificence.  There was an indescribable vivacity in this moving crowd, a contagious animation in the air; and, if truth be told, I found the air fresher and the sky less grey than I had fancied, for a south-west wind, soft as velvet and wet with sea-salt, blew through street and square, and the sky was full of sunshine and of racing clouds.  I could not wonder at the love of cities; it seemed a passion inherent in modern man, fed and brought to its maturity by centuries of communal existence.  And so the thought grew, that the temper of enduring antagonism to cities was a temper more and more impossible to modern man, who has long since left behind the realities of elemental life, the rude simplicities of patriarchal modes of existence.  The City is with us, and it has come to stay.  London grows vaster year by year, and there is no sign of arrest in its prodigious life.  Is it then a dream quite impossible and vain, that cities may be so administered as to develop the best life of men, and not to stint it?

I believe that it is possible, and, most of all, by the expansion of the city area.  There was a reason why men should be closely packed together in mediaeval times, when cities had their defensive walls against invaders, but those conditions have long since passed away.  Entire security of life makes for the dispersal of population, and in a city like London, which has not been exposed to the perils of invasion for more than two centuries, there is no reason why people should be confined in narrow areas, From all that we can learn of the most ancient cities of the world, such as Nineveh and Babylon, we know that they covered enormous areas, although at no time were they secure from the capricious tragedies of war.  Nineveh appears to have been a group of cities, united by a common government; cities of gardens and parks, so that the country flowed into the streets; cities in which the great temples, and palaces, and public buildings were not confined to any one quarter, but were scattered through the entire area of the city, giving an equal dignity to its every part.  Let us apply the analogy to London.  Let us suppose a reconstructed London, devised upon the broad principle of ample space and air according to population; of congregated and contiguous cities under a common government; of public buildings of utility and beauty equally distributed; and it is easy to imagine a London that should combine all the charm of the country with the advantages of the metropolis.  The splendid streets, which are the main arteries of traffic, would remain,