tier disclosing hatchways, faces studded with rustbrown cranes and chains, blocks and tackle, they look almost like colossal ships themselves.

Below the Tower they rise up on the north side also: you pass down a frowning avenue of wharves and warehouses. But always the benign sun-andsmoke clothes them with softness and harmony; it softens their vermilion advertisements to harmony with the tinted azure of the sky and the vague greybrown of the water. Brutal business built them, to ship and unship, and be as crass and crude as they would, but the smoke turns them into the semblance of sleepy monsters basking by the river they love. Presently the tall sky-line breaks and drops; let in between the monsters appears a terrace of tiny riverside houses, huddled together as in a miniature. There is a tiny tavern with a plank-built terrace rising on piles out of the water, a tiny shop all aslant, a tiny brown house with a pot-belly of a bowwindow. It all babbles of Jack and Poll, of crimps and tots of rum, and incredible yarns in the barparlour. Next, between the dusky wharves, an Italian church-tower soars up out of a nest of poor houses; the sun catches its white face and transfigures it. Then, the dearest sight of all-ships appearing out of the land, fore and main and mizzen, peak and truck, halliards and stays, and men like flies furling topgallant-sails above the roofs of London.

As we open the region of the docks we are in a great city of ships-big steamers basking lazily with their red bellies half out of water, frantic spluttering tugs, placid brown-sailed barges, reckless banging lighters -and behind all this, clumps and thickets and avenues of masts and spars and tackle stretching, stretching infinitely on every side. The houses have melted all away, and London is become a city of ships.

Only a moment; now comes a new transformation -a city of forges and engines and chimneys, industrial London. The precipitous wharves, the taper masts, are behind us now; on both banks the buildings crouch low to the water. The horizon recedes, and under the huge vault of cloud and smoke the river appears to widen with it. It is growing dark, too; a breeze whips up the stream. The gold drains out of the haze; the Thames seems to awake and smile less benignly as it runs with a strong purposeful tide; the air is thick and grim. On either side, in winding reaches behind you, low parallels opposite you, dwindling but endless perspectives before you, toil the industries of London. Varnish-works, colourworks, chain-works, chemical works, rope-works, bargebuilders, marmalade-factories-everything. Here is a mere open shed, there the gibbet-like skeleton of an iron ship a-building, there a tangled pile of rubbish with an old boat on the top, opposite a building with

serrated roof and squat chimney-stacks at the corners, like a burlesque of the keep of the Tower, in front a dropsied gasometer pointing the way to Woolwich. And everywhere tall chimneys-slim and stubby, plain and tricked, belching, belching black smoke to thicken the austere canopy overhead. All along the river the blackening banks exude noisome stenches, twinkle with scarlet pin-points of fire, rattle and clang with the beat of iron on iron. Dirt in your

nose and eyes, din in your ears, London closes down on you heavily, yet stirringly. Through this world of dirt, grim and unwearied, looms the greatness as well as the beauty of London.

"TAKE out the Baby and I'll follow with the Canary."

So spoke the Inventor, and we hurried downstairs to see the start. We found everybody bending tenderly over the two, putting the last touches to their smartness. The British engineer with a yachting cap over his fair hair, the French engineer in waxed moustache, monocle, and tall hat, the blue-chinned American, the wavy-haired cosmopolitan inventor, were doing all that love could suggest to fit the Baby and the Canary for their outing.

The objects of their affection, radiant with selfsatisfaction, stood spick and span amid a litter of bicycles, old wheels, bits of wire, oil-cans, and balks of timber. The Baby was a stout blackand-scarlet phaeton on big artillery wheels with shining brass axles. The Canary was canary-yellow in colour, but otherwise was more like a low dog

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cart. Each appeared to have a hand-brake on the driver's off side; in front, where the reins ought to be, was a lever with an india - rubber hooter attached; where the shafts ought to be there was nothing; between the hind wheels, under the carriages, hung a couple of queer-shaped metal boxes, whence wires ran mysteriously under the seats.

They opened the doors of the yard and disclosed a back street of inner-suburban London. A dingy row of two-storeyed cottages was on one side; on the other tall bleak factory walls, and building going on. The street between displayed the usual scenery-cobble-stones, a dustman's van, and boys. "'Ere's the motor-cars!" went up a shrill cry. With the words and the first cough of the hooter, doors opened all along the shabby houses, and heads came out of windows above the boxes of sickly geraniums. The local inhabitants have never ceased to wonder at the doings of the strange company of madmen in the factory-madmen from strange countries, one day boisterously happy, the next ready to hang themselves, working three days and nights on end to get out a new carriage, and then deliberately, furiously overworking it till it smashes, filling Camden Town with unknown stinks and sounds and flashes, all in the attempt to drive carriages without horses.

Huh, huh, coughs the Canary; the driver pulls