bankments and crash through the town itself, boring straight ways into the heart of it with a fine contempt for natural obstacles.[1] If we could see the underlying fineness of these things, the fineness that shall be on the surface when these embankments are as venerable as to-day the wall of Hadrian, it might make our world more inspiring. There are deep cuttings, coming into London where brick walls, fifty feet high, are black, sombre, and austere. You are in a kind of underworld, savagely impressive enough. The square fronts of houses peep down on you as you run beneath; constant footbridges overhead give to the thin light of day a constant shudder and quiver. We, who are not made for strong impressions, are ourselves inclined to shudder.
Or one may grow bewildered to the point of losing
- ↑ Canals have something of this quality, and in them it is of older date. Brindley carried the Bridgewater canal over a river by means of an iron bridge in the days when men still wore tie wigs and dress swords. I do not touch on this kind of road into London because it is no longer a very usual one. At one time it was common enough. I remember to have read an account in verse, by a starving and permanently obscure eighteenth-century poet, of a voyage he made from London to Nottingham and back with his entire family, a wife and six children. He was seeking a patron, but finding none he printed this pamphlet and hawked it through the streets. I am familiar enough with several canals. When I was a boy I pesuaded a bargee to take me through the tunnel that goes under the Edgware Road and reappears near Regent's Park. The darkness, the plash of waters, the faint stars of light at either end, combined to make a deep impression on me. The bargee and his mate pushed themselves and the barge along by pressing their bare feet against the walls of the tunnel.
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