I am always finding out, a day or two after, that
I have been with somebody very remarkable, and did not know it at the
time.
After breakfast we found, on consulting our list, that we were to
lunch at Surrey parsonage.
Of all the cities I was ever in, London is the most absolutely
unmanageable, it takes so long to get any where; wherever you want to
go it seems to take you about two hours to get there. From the West
End down into the city is a distance that seems all but interminable.
London is now more than ten miles long. And yet this monster city is
stretching in all directions yearly, and where will be the end of it
nobody knows. Southey says, "I began to study the map of London,
though dismayed at its prodigious extent. The river is no assistance
to a stranger in finding his way; there is no street along its banks,
and no eminence from whence you can look around and take your
bearings."
You may take these reflections as passing through my mind while we
were driving through street after street, and going round corner after
corner, towards the parsonage.
Surrey Chapel and parsonage were the church and residence of the
celebrated Kowland Hill. At present the incumbent is the Rev.
