There is no fear of my forgetting the misery and crime underlying London's splendour. I never invite Mrs. Dangle's admiration to the flashing lights of Piccadilly but she sharply reminds me of the pitiful sights which they illuminate. The ever-fresh and ever-wonderful magic of the Embankment's circle as seen by night from Adelphi Terrace does not efface the remembrance of Hood's "Bridge of Sighs," nor of Charles Mackay's "Waterloo Bridge."
In she plunged boldly, no matter how coldly the rough river ran:-- Over the brink of it, picture it, think of it, dissolute Man! Lave in it, drink of it, then, if you can!
I have seen our painted sisters standing for hire under the flaring gas-lamps. I have seen ghastly wrecks of humankind slinking by the blazing shop fronts as if ashamed of their hungry faces; and others, bloated out of womanly grace, tottering from gin-palace doors into side-dens that make one pale and sick to glance into.
And the interminable battalions of foolish-faced men in foolish frock-coats and foolish tall hats, who suck their foolish sticks as they foolishly amble by!
What tragic and comic contrasts! What variety!
Faces black and copper faces; yellow faces, rosy faces, and martyrs' faces ghastly white; cruel crafty faces, false and leering faces--faces cynical, callous, and confident; faces crushed, abject, bloodless, and woebegone; satyrs' faces, gross, pampered, impudent, and sensual; sneering, arrogant, devilish faces; and shrinking faces full of prayer and meek entreaty; vulture faces--eager, greedy, ravenous; penguin faces--fat, smug, and foolish; faces of whipped curs, fawning spaniels, and treacherous hounds; wolves' faces and foxes' faces, and many hapless heads of puzzled sheep floating helpless down the current; faces of all tints and forms and characters; and not a few, thank Heaven! of faces strong and calm, of faces kind, modest, and intrepid! of faces blooming, healthy, pretty, and beautiful!
Gold and grime, purple and shame, squalor and splendour, contrasts and wonders without end. And all of it--all the flotsam and jetsam of these tumultuous streets--gallant hearts, heroes, criminals, millionaires, pretty girls, and wrecks--they are all charged, and overbrimming with interest, for, as Longfellow says, "these are the great themes of human thought; not green grass, and flowers, and moonshine."