London Impressions: Etchings and Pictures in Photogravure

								

touch of soot for the touch of time. Nevertheless, the two dark colours
are quite unlike; time is browner, and has a depth in the tone, whereas
soot is greyer, and at its blackest has no depth. It gives a shallow
colour; and even those who love their sky streaked and tumbled into the
chaos of smoke should not be allowed to defend the aquarelle that
colours their buildings.
It is true that we no longer offer columns of the Doric order for
treatment by London water-colours; but all the Doric columns we already
have are left subject to this extraordinary substitute for the colouring
of a Laconic sun. We have discovered that terra-cotta and tiles resist the
work of the climate, and no doubt London at a glance presents a less
coal-blackened face than it once wore. But too much of the surface of
London is still the work of that dashing impressionist, the climate.

THE TREES

The high trees that stand stirring and thrilling in the squares in summer
do taste of darkness; night drives home a thousand shadows--thin and
subtle flocks--to fold within the iron railings and to shelter in corners
of the worn and unfragrant grass till morning. But the single trees that
have their roots under grey pavements, and that breathe in the little
accidental standing-places of the wayside, the railed-in corners left by
the chance-medley of London streets--these have the strange fate to be in
perpetual light. They never are washed in darkness; they never withdraw
into that state and condition of freedom, into that open hiding-place,
that untravelled liberty, that wild seclusion at home, that refuge without
flight, that secret unconcealed, that solitude unenclosed, that
manumission of captives, that opportunity of Penelope--darkness.
The leaves of the street-side tree flutter bright emerald green through
the whole night (out of town the discolouring night) of leafy summer. That
local colour is never quenched, as human blushes are quenched at night. It
rather takes a more conspicuous quality, under the closeness of the
electric light; it is sharply green. Whereas the day has its mists and
veils, and may at times darken a tree nearly black, by setting the sky
alight behind it, the night has none of these shadows. The light of night
is stationary and unchangeable, and there are some solitary trees here and
there that undergo the unshifting illumination at the closest quarters;
the light that knows no hours and makes no journey gleams near upon the
motion of the leaves and glosses their faces. It is beforehand with the
twilight, so that the dusk when it comes finds the place taken, and it
will not let the tree go until the light of day flows in fully, and dawn
is over.

The sharp green of the plane-tree is never covered, nor are the delicately
sprinkled spots of the poplar-leaves mingled and massed, in these solitary