For the want of all which makes Paris nice and splendid we justly reproach the Corporation of London; for the existence of much of what makes London mean and squalid we justly reproach it too.
Bagehot contrasts the reproaches against the Corporation of London for its shortcomings and failures.
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At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
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