The change began with the landing on the Thames, or the Seine, of a few thousand men in armour from the Tiber, led by the greatest genius known to history, who introduced the language, law, institutions, and discipline of the greatest City recorded in history. In old times some of the most famous cities in the world were not so large as one London parish, and not nearly so populous.
Entire states, which for centuries filled the page of the main history of mankind, did not cover so much ground, or contain so many inhabitants, as do London and Paris to-day. The men of Athens, who passed their lives in the midst of the noblest creations of art, at the broken fragments of which we gaze in wonder and awe, men who heard the most sublime tragedies, and took part in the most imposing ceremonies ever devised by man, had food, garments, and lodging so rough and plain that we should hardly think it fit for a prison. On the other hand, they had as much leisure, were as daintily fastidious in their tastes, and regarded themselves as much lords of creation, as if they were all officers in the Guards.
In the Middle Age
In the Middle Ages, the men who passed their lives in these gorgeous cathedrals, of which we only see the colourless shell to-day, and in that fantastic and chivalrous art-life, of which we only catch glimpses in some old corner of Verona, Nuremberg, or Florence, lived in streets and houses so fetid, cramped, poisonous, and gloomy, under conditions so dangerous to life and limb, so full of discomfort, that many a prisoner would prefer his warm cell in Pentonville city tour istanbul.
And we, who have railways, telephones, and newspapers, who make everything by machinery, except beauty and happiness — we who cannot drink a glass of water, or teach children to read and write without an army of inspectors, Acts of Parliament, and amateur Professors of Social Science, to show us how to do it—we who, in a man's lifetime, cover with new bricks a whole province, in area bigger than the Attica of Pericles, or the Roman State of Coriolanus: — we lead, in some of our huge manufacturing cities, lives so dull and mechanical that Pericles or Coriolanus would have preferred exile.
Out of a vast range of cities, old and new, it would be instructive to compare four types: the Ancient city of Greece and Italy — the Mediaeval city of Catholic and Feudal times — the Modern city of England, France, and America — and then the Ideal city, as we can conceive it to be, in the future. Each age has its strong side, and its weak side. It would be impossible to bring back any obsolete type of society: but things may be learned from some of them. And, where we have horrible evils of our own to conquer, it may be just as well to reflect on a very different type of life, under other conceptions of nature and of man.
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