LONDON.

"A crowd is not company; its faces are but a gallery of pictures. The Latin adage truly saith, Magna civitas, magna solitudo, a great city is a great solitude.”— LORD BACON.

"I have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit. I have seen it, and am still astonished,-for ever will there remain fixed indelibly on my memory the stone forest of houses, amid which flows the rushing stream of faces of living men with all their varied passions, and all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger, and of hatred,-I mean London."-HEINRICH HEINE.

"A great many of you have been to London, and yet you know nothing about it. I have spent six months there every year for forty years, and yet I know nothing about it. I do not believe that there is a man in it who is fairly acquainted with all the parts and districts of that vast city."-RIGHT HON, JOHN BRIGHT, in Speech at Rochdale, Nov. 16, 1881.

ACCORDING to Herschel, the great astronomer, London is the

centre of the terrestrial globe; we know it to be the centre of commerce, of wealth, of intellectual and moral life. As "all roads led to Rome," when she was mistress of the world, so now every thinker and worker, every artist, every inventor, seems to turn to London, and to find his best home or market here, where the multitudinous transactions of mankind are concentrated and carried on. In this vast metropolis there are to be seen individuals, families, tribes of pretty nearly every race on the habitable globe, of almost every tongue and dialect, of every colour and complexion, of every faith, religion, persuasion, and opinion-howsoever eccentric. We can assert of London, more truly than Gibbon could claim for pagan Rome, that she is the centre of religious toleration, the common temple of the world. The freedom of our city is bestowed on all the gods of mankind, and without preference for race or creed we adopt virtue and merit, whether in ourselves or strangers. Each of our millions of denizens is fulfilling, or supposed to be fulfilling, some duty or errand, following some calling, or learning to follow it. The idlers, who, whether from predilection or obligation, take no share in the work of London, have their marked characteristics, the beggars theirs, and the thieves also. Of the thousands who

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rise in the morning knowing not how they are going to earn a breakfast, nor where they shall lay their heads at night, it may be said that a large proportion would certainly starve anywhere but in this amazing metropolis, where the crumbs which fall from so many hundreds of thousands of tables are picked up by those who are on the alert to watch for them, and who thus gain a living by the habits, foibles, vices, fortunes and misfortunes of their neighbours.

The history of the world can show us no such city as London. For better for worse, it is unparalleled. Its statistics are all upon such a gigantic scale that if they were related of some remote and foreign place we should stand amazed at the revelation of them. Even figures can scarcely convey to the mind the full meaning of London facts, until they are aided by comparison or contrast. As, for instance, in the matter of population. This enormous collection of human beings was reported by the Registrar-General, at the census of 1881, as amounting, within the Metropolitan area, to 3,814,571; and within the 15-mile radius to 4,500,000, a large proportion of the total 25,968,286 then returned for England and Wales. Every sixth man in this realm is a Londoner. If we take the population statistics of other great cities we shall find that the greatest of them contains about half the above number, and the others are far behind.

Every year the increase continues-London adds annually to her population 45,000 persons. In 1981 the population will probably be 7 millions; in 2181 it will exceed 9 millions. In London there have been reckoned more Roman Catholics than in Rome, more Jews than in all Palestine, more Scotchmen than in Aberdeen, more Welshmen than in Cardiff, more Irishmen than in Belfast. Nearly eight hundred thousand persons, and over seventy thousand vehicles, daily enter and leave the comparatively small area (632 acres) of the City of London proper, where every inch of ground is ardently contended for, and where recently (in Lombard Street) a special plot of land fetched a price equal to two millions an acre. Within a radius of 6 or 7 miles of Charing Cross 260 miles of Railway are in operation; and reckoning double lines but not including sidings, there are at least 750 miles of railway in the metropolis,-enough singly to reach to Thurso. The London Custom House Dues equal those of all the other ports in the kingdom. The total rateable annual value of the parishes and districts comprised within the Metropolitan area doubled itself in the twenty years ending 1878. It had reached in 1882 £28,362,439. In the ten years ending Dec. 1882 there were 165,954 houses added to the metropolis, now estimated to contain 700,000 houses and to cover within the area pro

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tected by the metropolitan police no less than 700 square miles. Its streets, placed end to end, would extend to nearly 3000 miles; its 1500 churches and chapels would not hold a tithe of the inhabitants, who Occupy those 700,000 dwelling-houses. Their refreshment is provided for by 7500 public-houses and 1700 coffee-houses; they consume annually 2 million quarters of wheat, 800,000 oxen, 4 million of sheep, calves, and pigs, 9 million head of poultry and game, and 130,629 tons of fish, the fish supply alone has been estimated recently as equivalent in food to the driving into the metropolis 10,000 oxen. Their drinking is upon the same vast scale: 180 million quarts of malt liquor, 31 million quarts of wine, 18 million quarts of spirits. Innumerable gas-lamps * light London, at a cost of 3 millions annually, and 11 million tons of coal are needed annually for warmth, for cookery, &c. The daily water supply is 150 millions of gallons; 69 derived from the Thames, 59 from the New River and the Lea. The omnibus and cab traffic of London is upon the same scale. The number of passengers carried by the London General Omnibus Company (who own the greater number, but by no means all the omnibuses) was last half-year about 27 millions. This Company possess 580 omnibuses, each earning on an average over £18 per week, at an average fare of 21d. each passenger (see page 244). The Tramway cars number about 700. The Cabmen of London are upwards of thirteen thousand, and earn between 3 and 4 millions per annum. The two Underground Railways carry annually 136 millions of people. To protect the millions of human beings and their untold millions of property, London employs a comparatively small number of guards. The Metropolitan Police, at the end of last year, numbered only 13,849, costing about £1,184,000 per annum. To these must be added the City Police of 902 men, costing about £105,000 per annum, The Police Commissioners' Report mentions that there were 124 adults and 12 children lost and missing in 1882, of whose fate nothing had been learnt; but these were but the remnants of a total of 12,878 lost children, and 3961 adults, all the others having been found. There were street accidents to 3532 persons, of whom 272 were killed and the others injured. The vice and crime of London are, unfortunately, in proportion to its size and wealth; the crime generally amounts to one-third of all the crime in the kingdom. Our places of Amusement are numerous and varied, including about 45 Theatres and over 400 Music-halls, Concert-rooms, Harmonic Meetings, nightly entertaining 302,000 persons. Since 1856, when the Metropolitan Board of Works was first established, the Board has raised, and spent, above 35 millions sterling,-its expenditure for 1882 was over five millions; while the Corporation of London, with an annual income of

*London was first lighted in 1684 by oil-lamps; Pall Mall was illuminated in1809; gas was generally used in 1814, and Dec. 13, 1878. the Thames Embankment was first lighted by electricity. The quantity of coal brought into London by sea, at different periods, varies from 75,000 to 111,000 tons weekly, according to the season.

over £800,000, has contributed also immense sums for the same purpose, out of receipts which, in its latest report, reached £1,429,667. The Metropolitan School Board has had, of course, an enormous work to do, and it spends above a million a year. The results of all this expenditure are gradually developing themselves. The abodes of vice and crime and disease are being cleansed or rebuilt; the inconvenient, narrow and crooked thoroughfares, choked with an ever-increasing traffic, enlarged; and new streets are being opened up in all directions. The thoroughfares, now paved with stone, wood, or asphalte, presented a very different aspect to our forefathers', who had to walk on pebbles. Evelyn in 1643 found Paris "paved with a kind of freestone of near a foot square, which rendered it more easy to walk on than over pebbles in London.'

If we desire to trace the history of this microcosm (it is not merely a dozen cities rolled into one), we shall have to go back to before the Roman era. There was a town here before the Romans came, which the Britons knew as Caer-Ludd, or the City of Lud. The present name is derived from the Latin Londinium, mentioned by Tacitus as "a city not indeed dignified by the title of a colony, but frequented by a large number of merchants, and by many ships entering its port." The Romans built the old City Walls and Forts, and fixed the position of the City Gates. They made Watling Street, the great highway from south to north; they reared fine buildings, and brought the civilization of the world to London; but when they retired, after nearly five hundred years' occupation, they seem to have left behind them no adequate impression upon the people. The Anglo-Saxons were but barbarians, compared with the Roman invaders, and they destroyed, or left to decay, the structures which were the legacy of Rome. William the Conqueror brought with him the arts and sciences which the Normans had acquired in the South of Europe, and from his time began a new era of improvement. He built the White Tower, and granted a Charter to the Corporation of the City of London, which secured and enlarged old privileges, afterwards still further strengthened by the Great Charter. The City of London proper, i.e., the ancient portion governed by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, consists of vast warehouses, offices, banks and counting-houses, with all their belongings; also of hundreds of churches and similar buildings, once well filled but now almost deserted, for the busy citizens no longer reside at their places of business, but in suburban dwellings, where rents are cheaper and the air more pure. The City Companies, once powerful trade guilds, have been forced to resign their ancient monopolies, and are but gradually finding a way by the establishment of Technical Schools to perform some of the duties with respect to the encouragement of manufactures, which was the purpose of their institution. At the time of the Civil War, each citizen belonged to his Company, and

each Company contributed its quota to the Trainbands, consisting of many thousands of disciplined men, well able to hold their own upon a battle-field,— -as witness the stand they made at Newbury against the fierce Rupert, when their valour decided the fortunes of the day. The same Trainbands guarded the Parliament after the attempt of Charles I. to arrest the five members-all of whom took refuge in the City-in Coleman Street. In due time the City troop of volunteer horse, amongst whom, "gallantly mounted and richly accoutred," rode brave Daniel De Foe, escorted William and Mary as guard of honour at their first visit to the Guildhall. It was chiefly by the support, upon which he could always rely from the City that William Pitt maintained his successful patriotic efforts for the national honour, and his noble but unavailing protests against the policy which led to the American War of Independence.

It is impossible for us here to trace even in outline the position which London has most worthily filled in the annals of this great nation; it must suffice to say that in all the history of England, our noble City is to be seen not only occupying the most prominent place, but generally leading public opinion, and exercising her great influence for the benefit of the whole kingdom. London has ever appeared foremost of the champions of liberty and progress, and in every good work among the suffering populations of the world. Let her immense and numerous charities witness for her both at home and abroad. But that we must not overweight these pages with statistics, it would be a useful task to furnish a summary of the Religious, the Educational, and the Sanitary labours of London; to tell of her pauperism, and her sickness, by the side of her wealth and her improving healthiness; but this is beyond our present function. We may note, however, that, politically, London is far less powerful than her numbers entitle her to be. The City of London used to send four Members to Parliament; the City of Westminster, only two Members; the Metropolitan Boroughs, viz., Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets (parishes round the Tower of London), Hackney, Chelsea, Southwark, Lambeth, and Greenwich, two Members each. Under the New Redistribution Bill, the Metropolis is represented by 61 Members: City of London, 2; Lambeth, 4; Marylebone, 2; Finsbury, 3; Hackney, 3; Tower Hamlets, 7; Chelsea, 1; Greenwich, 1; Bethnal Green, 2; Islington, 4; Kensington, 2; Paddington, 2; St, George's, Hanover Square, 1; Shoreditch, 2; Strand, 1; Clapham, 1; Camberwell, 3; Deptford, 1; Fulham, 1; Gravesend, 1; St. Pancras, 4; Woolwich, 1; Southwark, 3; Westminster, 1; Battersea, 1; Wandsworth, 1; Hammersmith, 1; Lewisham, 1; Croydon, 1; Hampstead, 1; West Ham, 2.

The Corporation of London consists of the Lord Mayor* (elected

*The prefix "Lord" was first added in 1354 by Edward III.