Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. LONDON DURING MY PUPILAGE. In giving a description of the great metropolis previously to my call, I shall confine myself as nearly as possible to the results of my own observation, and the impressions springing from it. Its surface and extent were very different from those which now present themselves to the view: bricks and mortar, marching in all directions, have eaten up many a green field and pleasant lane; and palaces now cover what were unhealthy swamps or the noisome dwellings of the poorest classes. It is not, however, the changes only that meet the eye which have to be recorded. Science, literature, thought, have made prodigious strides, and many speculations are now openly discussed upon subjects which it would then have been thought impiety even to allude to. Steam, a sleeping giant, has been forced to work, and panting and puffing has brought people together, adding to their pleasures and enlarging their minds; and, wonder of wonders, more wonderful than any tale of magic, electricity has conquered space, and seems now to be pursuing a career to which there is no apparent limit. Some crimes have assumed larger proportions, and the present has been an age of daring and gigantic fraud. And yet in those days there existed men worthy of any period in a great nation. The battle of Waterloo was fought in the year 1815, and the greatest general since the time of Marlborough was placed by the enthusiastic voice of the nation upon a pedestal from which in that capacity he has never been displaced, although as a statesman he was unpopular, and persecuted by a thoughtless mob. Walter Scott had only recently published one of the most charming of his works, ' Guy Mannering,' which will for all ages delight young and old. Byron and Shelley had startled sober ...