The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, wagons, playhouses; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very women of the town; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; . . . I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life.
Charles Lamb (1779-1834)
I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the City far better . . . The City is getting its living – the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused; but in the City you are deeply excited.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1856), Villette
Like the majority of London people, she occupied a house of which the rent absurdly exceeded the due proportion of her income, a pleasant foible turned to such good account by London landlords.
George Gissing (1857-1903)
London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. / Yet in its depths what treasures!
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Earth, yet it is governed with the same Ease, and with less Trouble to the Subject, than many petty Villages in other Parts of the World.
Robert Campbell (1769–1846)
