REST IN LONDON
that cotton spinning was established"; "It was then that, great depression having overtaken the agricultural districts, immense bodies of the rural populations moved into the great towns." The race of memoir writers began to discover the witty, the sensible, the profusely dressed, or the profligate Great Figures. Now those, too, are done with, since, as the background grows, the figure dwindles in proportion and loses its importance amongst the vaster crowds upon the canvas. We have no longer, as it were, pictures of Sir Thomas Gresham, M, burning in the presence of the King the King's I.O.U.s to a fabulous amount. Instead, in the historic picture of to-day, it is "the Sovereign" (who is now much less a human being than the representative of a political theory) "attending service at St. Paul's, met by the Lord Mayor" (whose name nine-tenths of London ignores), "the Sheriffs and the Corporation of the City of London". The City itself has no longer any visible bounds, walls, or demarcations; it is a postal district, "E.C.", an abstraction still playing at being an individuality. On our new chronicle-canvas the Lord Mayor is a tiny speck that Sir Thomas Gresham, M, of the older picture could swallow; the Sovereign is not much larger; the spectators make a large bulk, and the major part of the composition is filled up with London, the impersonal buildings, the columns, pilasters, the shop fronts, the advertisement posters—the cloud.
The man with an eye to the future may even wonder whether those heavy buildings—that cloud pressing so
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