Estada

“ In the Old Town, where the population of a village or a fashionable square is constantly crammed into the six or seven storeys of one house, room-to-room visitation, for it is nothing else, affords a visitor in one morning a glimpse of a state of things without a parallel. ”

“ The East must be slightly lighting up there; the mist lies over the town; the steps of an early walker resound within the old walls. Over the hundred-towered city the well-known outline of the castle is visible. And the East is growing lighter, lighter. ”

“ They who by the grace of God and the stupidity of man owned and ordered these human cattle of the darkest ages, had their homes within this new, strong town-wall; in fat monasteries, secluded behind garden and vineyard; in grim citadels, whose central keep and lesser towers and staircase turrets, stables and outer structures, were grouped about a great court, that swarmed with men-at-arms, grooms, and hangers-on. ”

“ It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin. Nothing is left to us of the old Provins but the fragrance of our historical glory and that of our roses,—and a sub-prefecture! ”

“ When we reached the town, my heart sank; a church with handsome dome and modern tower, a planted plaza with central fountain, buildings, of two stories with gaudy fronts and portales, surrounding three sides of the square, augured better for comfort while we were in the place, than for work on Totonacs. We rode up to the municipio, where we found the presidente, a rather stylish young fellow, who was interested in our work and helpful. The town controls fourteen thousand persons, and its name is derived from that of a large ahuacate, the Aztec name of which is pahuatl. ”

“ Among those who had heard of the meeting and had responded to the invitation were twenty or thirty men out of work who had strolled past the Settlement that afternoon, read the notice of the meeting, and had come in out of curiosity and to escape the chill east wind. It was a bitter night and the saloons were full. But in that whole district of over thirty thousand souls, with the exception of the saloons, there was not a door open except the clean, pure Christian door of the Settlement. Where would a man without a home or without work or without friends naturally go unless to the saloon? ”

“ Most of the features we have thus noticed, together with a portion of the adjacent shore of the bay, are exhibited in our prefixed illustration; and to the older citizens of our metropolis, as well as to many others of our countrymen, they must, we think, awaken many stirring recollections of the striking changes in the appearance of the scenery in many districts adjacent to the city, as well as in the character of the citizens themselves, which have taken place within the present century. ”

“ THE STADE, FOLKESTONE.
For the spiritual benefit of the fisher-folk and others of the old town, there is planted, by the Stade, a "St. Peter's Mission," established there by well-meaning but stupid folk who look down, actually and figuratively, from the modern town upon this spot, and appear to think it a sink of iniquity. But iniquities are not always, or solely, resident in sinks; they have been found, shameless and flourishing, in high places. There are those among the fisher population who take the creature comforts—the coals and the blankets—of the mission, and pocket the implied affront ”

“ Except on Sundays and holidays, when the station is to the village what the fashionable promenade is to the town, the people who loaf on the platform are by no means the pick of the population, being merely those who have nothing else to do. ”

“ They should be taught to see in the town common or village green a survival of that primitive institution of land-community upon which town and state are based. They should be taught the meaning of town and family names; how the word 'town' means, primarily, a place hedged in for the purposes of defence; how the picket-fences around home and house-lot are but a survival of the primitive town idea; how home, hamlet, and town live on together in a name like Hampton, or Home-town. They should investigate the most ordinary thing for these are often the most archaic. ”

“ Near by, a village, small wooden houses sheltered by fig-trees, a little shady café where of an evening the men smoke a solemn hubble-bubble and discuss events in the measured sentences of a conversation which begins about nothing in particular and ends in the same district. ”

“ I looked where his nod indicated, and saw a town as dark and seemingly as old as the rock out of which it grew, climbing a conical hill, to dominate all the wide, white reaches above which it stood, like an armoured sentinel on a watch-tower. ”

“ Who could have believed that such a custom could have survived in the days of telegraph and telephone, and in a city of, say, thirty thousand inhabitants?
The old streets and highways about the town were indescribably attractive, and beyond in the country, the shaded ways beneath large trees offered charming vistas, and shelter from the sun. ”

“ The old inhabitants, reinforced by the new military and ecclesiastical populations, found the northern half of the city too strait for them, and a new walled town sprang up at the foot of the hill, and soon stretched out a long, narrow suburb southward, along the high-road, defended by parallel dykes. ”

“ There is nothing more remarkable in a great city than the facility with which any due attraction will gather together strange and unlooked-for elements of the population. Let but a few yards of ice appear, and straightway an army of “roughs” spring out of the earth, and here they were without any notice in full force at our fair,—“a perfect disgrace to the neighbourhood,” as the whole Grove declared. ”

“ As we gradually gained terrace after terrace of the spur, the pictures opening immediately beneath us in the ravines on the right—up which the suburbs straggle in tasteful dwellings and blooming gardens; in the broad and bright valley of Engenho Velho beyond, thickly sprinkled with the country residences of the wealthy, and adorned by the imperial palace; in the city itself—the upper bay and its islands; the Organ Mountains and whole panorama, are beyond the powers of description. ”

“ Though a new town on the north, and another on the south, were rising into existence, the mass of the citizens dwelt yet within the steep, narrow closes and wynds of the ancient city, from which many made vows they would never remove. ”

“ The other parts of the yard are filled with the hostile factions, and from the windows of the council-house and other high places we find the fair and tender sex looking down on the scene of the great contest, where (without the assistance of either steel or flint) the finest sparks of enthusiasm are struck from the eyes of noblemen; where the magistrates of the county are created, as the world was, out of Chaos; where the faces of so many assessors not only burn, but actually sweat for their principles ”

“ Here during daylight, or part of it, they are moving about, far up on high or down near the teeming surface, in and out of the numerous subdivisions termed offices, until finally they call the game off for the day, go down in the express elevator, out upon the narrow little streets, and turn north toward the upper part of the island. And each, like a homing pigeon, finds his own division or subdivision in a long, solid block of divisions called homes, in the part of town where run the many rows of even, similar streets. ”

“ The traveller who has asked at the bookshop of a provincial town for a local history or even for a local guide is as well able to realize the distance which parts us from France, Italy, or Germany, as is the student who inquires for a detailed account of how civic life or any one of its characteristic institutions grew up among us. A certain number of town histories do indeed exist, but they by no means always deal necessarily or even mainly with the life of the borough itself. ”

“ Part of the populous ancient settlement on the hill still exists in a single street outside of the palace, now inhabited by a more respectable population than that riffraff of silk-weavers, vagabonds, potters, smugglers, and broken-down soldiers who flourished there half a century since. ”

“ Settlements are not exclusively of the city, but the stress of life is sternest in the cities, and most of the experiments have been made there. They are oases in the desert of the buildings and pavements of brick, with their grime and monotony, and if the people of the desert will camp for an hour and drink of the spring, those who have planted the oasis will be well pleased. ”

“ It had grown from a minute hamlet into what we used to call an 'urban district.' In that old world in which there was neither freedom nor direction, the land was divided up into patches of all sorts and sizes and owned by people who did what they liked with it, subject to a few vexatious and unhelpful restrictions. ”

“ The streets are narrow, and the houses lofty, as is the case in almost all places which are or have been fortified; and the population appears to be dense. But our stay in it was too brief to permit our making any minute inquiries into their mode of employing themselves, though we could perceive, from the clumsy buildings which here and there over-hung the river, that there was some sort of a manufactory in the town. ”

“ Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. ”

“ And for the more surety of the country, the king hath commanded that in great towns being walled, the gates shall be closed from the sun-setting until the sun-rising; and that no man do lodge in suburbs, nor the edges of the town, except in the day-time, nor yet in the day-time, unless his host will answer for him ”

“ One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns—the marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. ”

“ As the population increased in the town, streets of houses sprang up, some large, some small, built in rows and crescents and terraces, in which all the houses were alike; and very dull and drab and mean-looking many of them have become. ”

“ Even the great plate-glass windows lined within and without by comfortable chairs commanding, as they did, the principal public square or park and all the fascinating forces of so vigorous and young a town, were such as would naturally be occupied by the bloods and sports of the village, the traveling salesmen, and the idling big-wigs of political and other realms. ”

“ A small portion of the population of the town had returned to it since the cessation of hostilities with the Castle, but its appearance was still melancholy and desolate; very few of the houses of the more wealthy inhabitants being as yet occupied. ”

“ At nearly every station there is a village; and if you want to study the habits of the people, you can do so very well by walking from one station to the next in the morning, and then strolling about the village and neighboring regions in the afternoon. ”

“ The city is picturesque, each house having, as in Spain, an open court-yard, though the streets of unburnt-brick are so narrow as to be frequently blocked up by one laden camel, or to prevent two horsemen riding abreast. Thus the great chiefs and nobles have always footmen running in front to prepare or clear the way for them. ”

“ The spot on which the sacred edifice stood commanded a view of the village market-place, which, from its occupying the only level ground half a mile square, was surrounded by all the low dwellings of the artizans, and was often the place of public meeting, when any point was discussed requiring the suffrages of all the male population. ”

“ Every habitation possessing, if not its garden, at least its one tall tree, beneath whose boughs the family congregate during the warm hours, the appearance of an Eastern city, as you look down upon it from any neighbouring height, is entirely devoid of that monotony which renders the roofs and chimneys of an European town so utterly uninteresting. ”

“ Small gatherings of houses and cots appear as oases in the moorland and forest, more or less frequent according to the early or late settlement of the district, and its freedom from, or exposure to, the ravages of war and the punishment of rebellion. These oases, townships or vills if of some extent, hamlets if of but a few houses, gather round one or more mansions of superior size and importance, the Manor houses, or abodes of the Lords of the respective Manors. Round each township stretch the great ploughed fields, usually three in number, open and uninclosed. ”

“ Each district of France, however, has its own special objects, all interesting and instructive, and all claiming your careful study, though the central district bears most directly upon ourselves, excepting only Normandy, with its Romanesque identical with our own, and its host of charming village churches, which remind one so much of those of England. ”