3-101-370 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Macaulay's New Zealander contemplating the ruins of London, 1872. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was a British historian, writer and politician. In 1840 he wrote: 'And she [meaning the Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's'. From "London: a pilgrimage", with illustrations by Gustave Doré and text by Blanchard Jerrold, [London: Grant & Co., 1872] (pl. facing p.188). The artist and author spent days touring the city together, often accompanied by plain clothes policemen. Jerrold led his friend Doré through the "shadows and sunlight of the great world of London".