“The capital melting into the country”

Henry Mayhew, from an account of a railway journey to Clapham Common in The Great World of London (1856). As found in Of Street Piemen, no. 26 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

John Ruskin’s imagining of the earth as seen from the sky appeared in the second volume of The Stones of Venice (1853).

Also from this volume
“Mee-yow,” “Bow-wow-wow!” : “Positively like planks”