Imatges de pàgina
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PREFACE.

THE cities of Great Britain are exercising an influence upon the whole country which, being already great, is likewise annually increasing. By their augmenting trade and commerce they attract the surplus population of the counties who are unable to find employment in their native fields, and by the rewards which they offer to industry and talent draw to themselves the keenest intellects of the kingdom. Thus peopled they have become the seats of literature, the magazines of art, the fortresses of liberty, the schools of political science, and the busy hives of the most skilful artisans in the world.

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Among them the metropolis has the undisputed pre-eminence. Statesmen and nobles, profound lawyers, and shrewd merchants, giants of literature and science, and the able editors of powerful journals, in perpetual intercourse and collision sharpen each other's minds and form the nation's creed in politics, in commerce, and in taste. Hence issues a flood of knowledge over the land; and hither from every corner of the country do numbers flock either to form for themselves a metropolitan home, or to transact the business which connects this city with every country and city of the empire, so that its influence is felt from the shore of Caithness to the Land's End. Nay, it is felt through the whole world. Thousands of foreigners reside here for business or pleasure. Italians and Poles, whose liberty has been beaten down and trampled in the dust in their own lands, here breathe the air of freedom; Germans and French are prosecuting among us their gainful trades; Spaniards

are driven here by their intestine dissensions, or come to study the principles of our constitution; and even the Brahmins and Parsees of India, Egyptians, Greeks, and Syrians gather to this centre of civilization to seek the knowledge which they may employ for their own purposes, or impart to their countrymen at home.

Imagine that this vast city were under the dominant influence of the Gospel, containing a moral and religious population, in which temperance and purity, justice and benevolence were cherished by the absolute subjection of the people to the Word of God, and their diligent use of the means of grace, its talent, learning, and wealth would all be consecrated to the highest purposes; and those who should visit it from the country or from foreign lands, would exclaim as they felt its moral and religious influence upon their spirits, "this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

But its real condition little answers to

this picture. For its wealth and industry, its knowledge and refinement, we may well exult in it; its palaces surpass those of Babylon and Rome; the masts of its merchantmen in the river form a forest scarcely less dense and extensive than those which Cæsar found on the banks of the same river, when he attacked our naked and painted ancestors with his legions. In morals likewise and religious knowledge, it may bear a comparison with any of the capitals of Europe, and the stranger who sees on the Sabbath its closed shops, its quiet streets, and its decent throngs crowding to its various places of worship, might think it to be a city of church-goers.

But frightful features may lie hid under a glittering veil. Could all the ungodliness and vice of London be gathered into one distinct and separate district, where gin shops and theatres, gambling houses, tea gardens and gaols, should preside over dreary streets filled with infidels and profligates of

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