CHAPTER VI

SUBLIME CHAOS

=Acquisitiveness.=—­In fancy, at least, we may attain a position over and far above the city of London and from this vantage-place, with the aid of strong glasses, watch a panorama that is both entrancing and bewildering.  The scene bewilders not alone by its scope, but still more by its complexity.  The scene is a shifting one, too, never the same in two successive minutes.  Here is Trafalgar Square, with its noble monument and the guardian lions, reminding us of Nelson in what is accounted one of the most heroic naval engagements recorded in history.  As we look, we reconstitute the scene, far away, in which he was conspicuous, and reread in our books his stirring appeal to his men.  Thence we glance up Regent Street and see it thronged with equipages that betoken wealth and luxury.  Richly dressed people in great numbers are moving to and fro and giving color to the picture.  A shabby garb cannot be made to fit into this picture.  When it appears, there is discord in the general harmony.  All this motion must have motives behind it somewhere; but we can only conjecture the motives.  We have only surface indications to guide us in our quest for these.  But we are reasonably certain that these people are animated by the instinct of acquisition.  They seem to want to get things, and so come where things are to be had.

=Desires for things intangible.=—­There are miles of vehicles of many kinds wending their tortuous, sinuous ways in and out along streets that radiate hither and thither.  They stay their progress for a moment and people emerge at Robinson’s, at Selfridge’s, at Liberty’s.  Each of these is the Mecca of a thousand desires, and faces beam with pleasure when they reappear.  Some desire has evidently been gratified.  Others alight at the National Gallery and enter its doors.  When they come forth it is obvious that something happened to them inside that building.  The lines of care on their faces are not so evident, and their step is more elastic and buoyant.  Their desires did not have tangible things as their objectives as in the case of the people who entered the shops for merchandise, but their faces shine with a new light and, therefore, their quest must have been successful.  As we look, we realize that desires for intangible things may be as acute as for tangible ones, and that the gratification of these desires produces equal satisfaction.

=Westminster Abbey.=—­Not far away other throngs are invading Westminster Abbey.  In those historic and hallowed precincts they are communing with the Past, the Present, and the Future.  All about them is the sacred dust of those who once wrought effectively in affairs of state and in the realm of letters.  History and literature have their shrine there, and these people are worshipers at that shrine.  All about them are reminders of the Past, while the worshipers before the Cross direct their thoughts