"A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye could reach,
with here and there a sail just skipping in sight,
then lost amidst the forestry of masts;
a wilderness of steeples peeping on tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool’s head
and there is London Town."
Lord Byron
"I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me.
Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets;
and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?"
Charlotte Brontë
