FROM A DISTANCE
or until he finds, after how many disillusionments, that he may never in all probability find any place at all. The point is that, till then, he will not have any time to "look about him".
II.
But the last thing that, even then, he will get is any picture, any impression of London as a whole, any idea to carry about with him—of a city, in a plain, dominated by a great building, bounded by a horizon, brought into composition by mists, great shadows, great clouds or a bright and stippled foreground. It is trite enough to say that the dominant note of his first impression will be that of his own alone-ness. It is none the less the dominant note of London; because, unless he is actually alone he will pay no attention to London itself. He will talk with his companions of his or their own affairs; he will retain the personal note, shutting out the impersonal, stalling it off instinctively.
But our young Provincial being for his first time cast absolutely loose will get then his first impression of London—his first tap of the hammer. He will stand perhaps at a street corner, perhaps at his own doorstep, for a moment at a loss what to do, where to go, where to turn. He will not ever have been so alone. If he were intent upon getting a complete picture of London he might be—we might imagine him—setting out self-consciously, his eyes closed during the transit, to climb the heights of Hampstead, the top of
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