If I had a long future before me, I should like above all things to study London with a dark lantern, so to speak, myself in deepest shadow and all I wanted to see in clearest light.  Then I should want time, time, time.  For it is a sad fact that sight-seeing as commonly done is one of the most wearying things in the world, and takes the life out of any but the sturdiest or the most elastic natures more efficiently than would a reasonable amount of daily exercise on a treadmill.  In my younger days I used to find that a visit to the gallery of the Louvre was followed by more fatigue and exhaustion than the same amount of time spent in walking the wards of a hospital.

Another grand sight there was, not to be overlooked, namely, the Colonial Exhibition.  The popularity of this immense show was very great, and we found ourselves, A——­ and I, in the midst of a vast throng, made up of respectable and comfortable looking people.  It was not strange that the multitude flocked to this exhibition.  There was a jungle, with its (stuffed) monsters,—­tigers, serpents, elephants; there were carvings which may well have cost a life apiece, and stuffs which none but an empress or a millionairess would dare to look at.  All the arts of the East were there in their perfection, and some of the artificers were at their work.  We had to content ourselves with a mere look at all these wonders.  It was a pity; instead of going to these fine shows tired, sleepy, wanting repose more than anything else, we should have come to them fresh, in good condition, and had many days at our disposal.  I learned more in a visit to the Japanese exhibition in Boston than I should have learned in half a dozen half-awake strolls through this multitudinous and most imposing collection of all

  “The gorgeous East with richest hand
  Showers on her kings,”

and all the masterpieces of its wonder-working artisans.

One of the last visits we paid before leaving London for a week in Paris was to the South Kensington Museum.  Think of the mockery of giving one hour to such a collection of works of art and wonders of all kinds!  Why should I consider it worth while to say that we went there at all?  All manner of objects succeeded each other in a long series of dissolving views, so to speak, nothing or next to nothing having a chance to leave its individual impress.  In the battle for life which took place in my memory, as it always does among the multitude of claimants for a permanent hold, I find that two objects came out survivors of the contest.  The first is the noble cast of the column of Trajan, vast in dimensions, crowded with history in its most striking and enduring form; a long array of figures representing in unquestioned realism the military aspect of a Roman army.  The second case of survival is thus described in the catalogue:  “An altar or shrine of a female saint, recently acquired from Padua, is also ascribed to the same sculptor [Donatello].  This very valuable