That, and a sense of a large tranquillity.
I could fill a book, I think, with a more or less imaginary account
of how I came to apprehend London, how first in one aspect and then in
another it grew in my mind. Each day my accumulating impressions were
added to and qualified and brought into relationship with new ones; they
fused inseparably with others that were purely personal and accidental.
I find myself with a certain comprehensive perception of London,
complete indeed, incurably indistinct in places and yet in some way a
whole that began with my first visit and is still being mellowed and
enriched.
London!
At first, no doubt, it was a chaos of streets and people and buildings
and reasonless going to and fro. I do not remember that I ever struggled
very steadily to understand it, or explored it with any but a personal
and adventurous intention. Yet in time there has grown up in me a kind
of theory of London; I do think I see lines of an ordered structure out
of which it has grown, detected a process that is something more than
a confusion of casual accidents though indeed it may be no more than a
process of disease.
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