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been indicated to show that London comprises | procreation and accumulation-have formed the within itself elements of decomposition, or more basis and creative orgasm of their grandeur and correctly of distribution and tendency to form new elevation; to which may be added the auxiliary centres of combination, that may perpetuate its im-adjunct of the long peace, riveted on nations by perial supremacy for an unassignable period of time. the victory of Waterloo. Leaving, however, the dim future, let us resume the palpable present, by considering the great interests that have almost imperceptibly grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the metropolis.

All interests, however, have not grown with the growth of London. Churches and chapels have multiplied; infant schools, national schools, and schools of the British and Foreign Society, have largely increased; but there has been no marked increase of great charitable, collegiate, or sanatory foundations. Still, the revenues of the Charterhouse, Christ's Hospital, St. Paul's School, Westminster School, and other old endowments, are

the objects for which they were intended have not been pari passu multiplied, and what new channels have been found for the dissipation of the surplus incomes accruing, would doubtless open curious avenues for exploration, did time or space permit. The order of clubs too must be passed; indeed, the species or class of interests to which they per

too recent and palpable an insertion in the me-
tropolitan polypus to require exposition.
So we
hasten to a new topic.

Of these, that which is the most patent to observance, and most frequently dwelt upon, is the enormous increase in the ground-rental of the capital, which, within a century, has expanded into gorgeous affluence the patrician fam-known to have enormously augmented; and why ilies of Cadogan, Portman, Grosvenor, Fox, and Northampton; and East of Temple Bar has enabled those lords of the soil the City Companies, as trustees of the poor, to riot in sumptuous banquets all the year round. Not dwelling on these familiar facts, we may remark that there are chattel interests that have swollen with the great "wen" into as prodigious development as the real-tain is not easy to define; and, besides, they are ity. Of this order are the banking firms; though some of these, as Child's, Fuller's, and others, are not of fungous or local growth-they struck their roots early, and with other houses have been fed The sage Lord Burleigh, much perplexed, shook by provincial and colonial progress, as well as that his wise head, and wondered how London, with which is metropolitan. But the big brewers are its gathering of some 100,000 people, could be strictly native-have drawn their nutriment from "lodged and fed." That ditch, however, has the soil, and are to the "manner born." Every been cleared, and the great difficulty now is, less new street, square, court, or alley, is as certain to in feeding even twenty times the population of the create new demands for butts of Barclay and Be- Elizabethan age, than in having them thoroughly van, Meux and Co., Whitbread and Co., or Han- cleaned and aired. But, in the unlooked-for vicisbury and Co., as of batches of loaves from the situde, it is singular to remark how material bakers', or joints from the butchers'. The book-causes, unaided by human thought and contrivance, sellers form a progressive and ancient fraternity; have operated to our deliverance. It would natof a "Thomas Longman, stationer," a predeces-urally have been anticipated, a hundred and fifty sor in the great house of the name, we read that he was fined for not serving the office of sheriff, above a century past. Intimately connected with type is the newspaper interest, which is closely identified with metropolitan demonstrations. the provinces has been working a similar and almost contemporaneous, though not so potent, an impetus. The Mercury of Leeds, and other old country journals, are the natural adjuncts of the expanding wealth and population of their respective localities. But the great Times is the most impressive fact; allowing for the shrewd ability and untiring vigilance with which it has been conducted for half a century, still its prosperousness may be ascribed, in even a greater degree, to the multiplication of metropolitan people and buildings; for it may be safely affirmed, that not a tenpound or a twenty-pound house is erected that does not bring a customer, or at least a fraction of a customer, to Printing House Square. Indeed, the remark applies to all the magnate interests enumerated, from those of bankers, brewers, and bakers, to booksellers and littérateurs; their rise has been And the end is not yet come; there must be spontaneous, and less of their own shaping of means further evictions, and further local improvements, to ends than of natural causes, as vessels rise by to meet growing wants. That which seems most the swell of the tidal flood. Material impulses-urgently to press, is the disposal, living and dead,

In

or two hundred years past, that the city—that is, the limited compartment within the ancient walls— would by this time have become the greatest concentration of pestilent venom, squalor, and populousness, imaginable. How opposite the actual result!-as superb and salubrious, more open, and less densely peopled, than any part of the metropolis! How could anybody have foreseen that the population would be fewer now than at the commencement of the last century, and that narrow, filthy streets, courts, and alleys, would be replaced by spacious areas, offices, Manchester warehouses, and noble public edifices? Yet so it is. In 1700, the city of London within the walls contained 139,000 inhabitants; in 1750, 87,000; in 1801. 78,000; in 1821, 58,400; in 1841, 54,626. So that the citizens have been undergoing a gradual displacement or extrusion outwards from the centre towards the circumference, to make way for mercantile and shipping conveniences, for dock-houses, clearing. houses, electric-telegraph houses, and other needs of commerce, science, and riches.

[graphic]

RUSSIAN BEAR. I won't go home till morning,
I won't go home till morning,

I won't go home till morn-i-n-g,
Till KOSSUTH does appear.

"May the Evening's Diversion

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed]

RUSSIAN BEAR. Oh, confound that Sublime Porte! what a headache it's given me!

bear the Morning's Reflection !”

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