One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
winds brawnily larcenous; and London, smoking royally to
the open skies, builds images of a dusty epic fray for possession
of the portly dames. There is immensity, swinging motion,
collision, dusky richness of colouring, to the sight; and
to the mind idea. London presents it. If we can allow ourselves
a moment for not inquireing scrupulously (you will
do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe kitchen hour), here is
a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the works of
man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned
barrel-organ in a street has drawn us to recollections of the
Opera or Italy, another harshly crashes, and the postman
knocks at doors, and perchance a costermonger cries his mash
of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn. For the pinched
are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths, the
forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City
inspires none human to Bardic eulogy while we let those
discords be. An embittered Muse of Reason prompts her victims
to the composition of the adulatory Essay and of the
Leading Article, that she may satiate an angry irony ‘upon
those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of
praise she does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a
striking picture is accorded, and no more. For this London,
this England, Europe, world, but especially this London, is
rather a thing for hospital operations than for poetic rhapsody;
in aspect, too, streaked scarlet and pock-pitted under
the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a Titanic work of longtolerated
pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely discomforted
in body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour,
will impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism
of diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low down
beneath material accumulations that it is inexpressive, powerless
to drive the ponderous bulk to such excisings, purgeings,
purifyings as might—as may, we will suppose, render it acceptable,
for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of Reason;
ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of Song.
But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen
upon London, the Rajah remarks:
Monogamic Societies present
A decent visage and a hideous rear.
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