London Impressions: Etchings and Pictures in Photogravure

								

distinguish. But he who has ever really known the cloud will not make that
ignominious confusion. He knows the difference in storm, and so much more
the greater difference in sunshine; he will not call by the name of cloud
a thing that shows the dark shadow grimly enough, but never the light
sweetly, and is naturally incapable of white.
And yet the artificial climate of London is at its best when it is very
obvious, and when it has strong scenes of sunset or storm to deal with.
The time when it is insufferable is noonday or full afternoon on a
cloudless day in summer, when there is not wind enough to drift it,
helpless, out of town, and when it is not thick enough to keep the sun
away. It makes the sunshine ugly. No beauty, even artificial or obvious,
belongs to the smoke then, and it plays no antic pranks in mimicry of
cloud. It has no shadow and no menace; it has no opportunity for
stage-plays; it is disconcerted, and cannot make a penny theatre of its
London. Every one must know such days, of which the essence should have
been their purity, plain and splendid. By their light is the smoke seen to
be nothing in the world but a sorry smirch. The horizon is thickened with
it, and there it wreaks its chief 'effects,' but all near things are also
oppressed by it; the spirit of the sunshine is gone, and a blazing sun
upon miles of blue slate roofs and yellow houses, with the thin
uncleanness of smoke just showing in the blaze, is actually that
impossibility--sunshine without beauty.

After this, let us grant the smoke the tragi-comedy of its successes.
These are generally connected with Westminster; it finds matter fitted to
its manner in the surrounding architecture, and in the westward opening.
It suppresses a great deal that is not very presentable, on the
working side of the river, and it reveals what is Gothic on the other
bank. It has a trick of being ashamed of its origin, for it hustles the
long chimneys out of sight. It does really surprising things with the
beautiful dome of St. Paul's; the very formlessness of its presence seems
to give more value to that fine form. It has a way of showing the noble
tops of clouds while it loses their bases in vagueness, which is not
without beauty. You cannot see from what heavenly ranges of highlands
those summits tower, and if they stand into the sunshine their isolation
is the more remote and splendid. But even this is but a handy bit of
scene-shifting; it touches no more than the fancy.
There is another effect of the London climate, besides the effect of sky
scenery, and that is the local colour wherewith the characteristic smoke,
mingled with a little rain to make a general water-colour, has painted the
surfaces of the town in variants of black. The citizen who--unaware of
such things as the quarter of the wind--takes his umbrella for fear of the
thunderous look of a tremendous smoke-storm to leeward, is apt to take the