Part One
February-May 1884
I behold London; a Human awful wonder of God!
--William Blake
"Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion"
Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement,
How chang'd from this fair City!
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Timbuctoo"
A great town is like a forest -- that is not the whole of it that you see above ground.
--Mr. Lowe, MP
address at the opening of the Metropolitan Railway