CBSE..READING COMPREHENSION

 1. On the banks of the Thames it is a tremendous chapter of accidents -the London-lover has to confess to the existence of miles upon miles of the dreariest, stodgiest commonness. Thousands of acres are covered by low black houses, of the cheapest construction, without ornament, without grace, without character or even identity. In fact there are many, even in the best quarters, in all the region of Mayfair and Belgravia, of so paltry and inconvenient and above all of so diminutive a type, that you wonder what peculiarly limited domestic need they were constructed to meet.

2. The great misfortune of London, to the eye (it is true that this remark applies much less to the City), is the want of elevation. There is no architectural impression without a certain degree of height, and the London street-vista has none of that sort of pride. All the same, if there be not the intention, there is at least the accident, of style, which, if one looks at it in a friendly way, appears to proceed from three sources.

3. One of these is simply the general greatness, and the manner in which that makes a difference for the better in any particular spot, so that though you may often perceive yourself to be in a shabby corner it never occurs to you that this is the end of it. Another is the atmosphere, with its magnificent mystifications, which flatters and superfuses, makes everything brown, rich, dim, vague, magnifies distances and minimizes details, confirm the inference of vastness by suggesting that, as the great city makes everything, it makes its own system of weather and its own optical laws.

4. The last is the congregation of the parks, which constitute an ornament not elsewhere to be matched and give the place a superiority that none of its uglinesses overcome. They spread themselves with such a luxury of space in the centre of the town that they form a part of the impression of any walk, of almost any view, and, with an audacity altogether their own, make a pastoral landscape under the smoky sky.

5. There is no mood of the rich London climate that is not becoming to them - I have seen them look delightfully romantic, like parks in novels, in the wettest winter - and there is scarcely a mood of the appreciative resident to which they have not something to say. The high things of London, which here and there peep over them, only make the spaces vaster by reminding you that you are after all not in Kent or Yorkshire; and these things, whatever they be, rows of ‘eligible’ dwellings, towers of churches, domes of institutions, take such an effective gray-blue tint that a clever watercolorist would seem to have put them in for pictorial reasons.

6. The view from the bridge over the Serpentine has an extraordinary nobleness, and it has often seemed to me that the Londoner twitted with his low standard may point to it with every confidence. In all the town-scenery of Europe, there can be few things so fine; the only reproach it is open to is that it begs the question by seeming - in spite of its being the pride of five million people - not to belong to a town at all.

7. The towers of Notre Dame, as they rise, in Paris, from the island that divides the Seine, present themselves no more impressively than those of Westminster as you see them looking doubly far beyond the shining stretch of Hyde Park water. Equally admirable is the large, river-like manner in which the Serpentine opens away between its wooded shores.

8. Just after you have crossed the bridge you enjoy on your left, through the gate of Kensington Gardens, an altogether enchanting vista - a footpath over the grass, which loses itself beneath the scattered oaks and elms exactly as if the place were a 'chase.' There

could be nothing less like London in general than this particular

morsel, and yet it takes London, of all cities, to give you such an

impression of the country.

Adapted from an essay by Henry James

1. What does the author mean by, ‘ a tremendous chapter of accidents’?

2. Which two sources does the author mention as being instrumental in

giving London its style?

3. What is the great misfortune of London to the eye?

4. Why does the author refer to the parks in London as an ornament?

5. How does the author describe the view from the bridge over the

Serpentine? 

answers

1) i existence of miles upon miles of the dreariest, stodgiest commonness

ii Thousands of acres are covered by low black houses, of the cheapest

construction, without ornament, without grace, without

character or even identity.

2) i. general greatness

ii. atmosphere

iii congregation of parks (any 2

3 the want of elevation. There is no architectural impression without a

certain degree of height

4. i They spread themselves with such a luxury of space in the centre of the

town that they form a part of the impression of any walk, of almost any

view, and, with an audacity altogether their own, make a pastoral landscape

under the smoky sky.

iiThere is no mood of the rich London climate that is not becoming to them

5. ) i. has an extraordinary nobleness,

ii In all the town-scenery of Europe there can be few things so fine; it seems

not to belong to a town at all