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The wishing-cap papers. Now first collected
The wishingcap papers Now first collected Author:Leigh Hunt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. III. . PICCADILLY AND THE WEST END. Lo I stately streets; lo ! squares that court the breeze. —Thomson. IF I had health, and my friends were all comfo... more »rtable, and the world as happy as it might be, and I could transport everybody where I pleased as well as myself, and books were as plentiful as blackberries, and a thousand other things (as somebody said) were a thousand other things, the pleasure I should take in writing these papers would be inconceivable. As it is, it is no mean consolation. The house I generally write in being large, I contrive to dismiss certain little scholars I have into a distant play-room, and get an hour to -myself after breakfast, uninterrupted : — the sound of a wood fire is crackling in my ears; — and with a fresh pen and a fair sheet of paper, I begin. But I am fancying myself in Italy : and forget I am in London, at the West End of the town. By the West End of the town, I understand Piccadilly, the squares, and their neighborhood, as far as the Regent's Park. The other parks ought to be included : but I must treat of them another time.The West End is a very agreeable portion of the world to me for three reasons : — Imprimis, because I have lived there; secondly, because it is the next part of the town to Hampstead, my other place of abode; and thirdly, because it contains the fairest portion of God's creatures under the sun. If the two first reasons are thought egotistical, they will be found to resemble most others given by people for their preference of places. The only difference between them and me is, that I tell what I feel. As to the third reason, it is not only what no Englishman will dispute, but no Frenchman or Italian that has seen English women. But of this, more hereafter. In Ella's letter to Southey, Leigh Hunt's "li...« less