But, then, around
Mile End lie Stepney, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, the Cambridge Road,
the Commercial Road, Bow, Stratford, Shadwell, Limehouse, Wapping, and
St. George's-in-the-East. Without doubt the real centre, the [Greek:
omphalos] of dreariness, is situated somewhere in the Mile End Road,
and it is to be hoped that the Palace may be placed upon the very
centre itself.
Let me say a few words as to what this Palace may and may not do. In
the first place, it can do nothing, absolutely nothing, to relieve the
great starvation and misery which lies all about London, but more
especially at the East-end. People who are out of work and starving do
not want amusement, not even of the highest kind; still less do they
want University extension. Therefore, as regards the Palace, let us
forget for a while the miserable condition of the very poor who live
in East London; we are concerned only with the well fed, those who are
in steady work, the respectable artisans and _petits commis_, the
artists in the hundred little industries which are carried on in the
East-end; those, in fact, who have already acquired some power of
enjoyment because they are separated by a sensible distance from their
hand-to-mouth brothers and sisters, and are pretty certain to-day that
they will have enough to eat to-morrow.
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