The Diamond Ship by Max Pemberton

_Once More in London._

I am not one of those who touch the posts by Temple Bar with that rare delight which betrays the true-blue Londoner. Foreign scenes are ever a safer tonic to me than any fret and striving of our own cities; and gladly as I turn to London sometimes, it is rarely that I do not quit her shadows with a greater pleasure. Perhaps I am conscious of a subtle change creeping upon her, and destroying much of her charm. To me she seems as the great growing child which has lost its strength in the act. Vast beyond all belief, her energies are perceptibly weakening. She is no longer an example to the provinces; they do not imitate her fashions, and are ready to scoff at her pretensions. The old London of the gloomy theatres, the narrow, dirty streets, the London of Simpson's and Evans', and the decent supper rooms, was a thousand times more romantic a city in my eyes than this County Council Babylon, with its raucous prophets and its perpetual cant of moralities. Let the blame be on my head which dares to think such treason. I am lonely in wide streets, and the gospel of modernity depresses me.