"But," he went on, "to bear yourself rightly in a crowd you must
study how one crowd differs from another, and how in one city you may
have that great orderly movement of life (whether of business or of
pleasure) which is the surrounding joy of princes in their palaces,
and an insensate mob, which is the most brutal and vilest aspect of
man. For as in a thronged street you may learn the high meaning of
citizenship, so in a mob you may unlearn all that makes a man
dignified. Yet even the mob you should study in a capital, as
Shakespeare did in his 'Julius Caesar' and 'Coriolanus;' for only so
can you know it in its quiddity. I conjure you, child, to get your
sense of men from their capital cities."
He had something to tell of almost every great house we passed.
He seemed--he that had saluted no one as we crossed the Mall, saluted
of none--to walk this quarter of London with a proprietary tread; and
by and by, coming to the river, he waved an arm and broke into
panegyric.
"Other capitals have had their turn, and others will overtake and
outstrip her; but where is one in these times to compare with London?
Where in Europe will you see streets so well ordered, squares so
spacious, houses so comfortable, yet elegant, as in this mile east
and south of Hyde Park? Where such solid, self-respecting wealth as
in our City? Where such merchant-princes and adventurers as your
Whittingtons and Greshams? Where half its commerce? and where a
commerce touched with one tithe of its imagination? Where such a
river, for trade as for pageants? On what other shore two buildings
side by side so famous, the one for just laws, civil security,
liberty with obedience, the other for heroic virtues resumed, with
their propagating dust, into the faith which sowed all and, having
reaped, renews?"
In the Abbey--where my Uncle Gervase was forced to withdraw behind a
pillar and rub Billy Priske's neck, which by this time had a crick in
it--my father's voice, as he moved from tomb to tomb, deepened to a
regal solemnity.
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