1 cwt.; 50 boxes in April; from 80 to 100 in May; beginning of June from 200 to 300, and at the latter end of the month 500 boxes per day; which number gradually increases until it amounts during the end of July and the early part of August to 1000 boxes, and frequently more. The average price for the season is about 10d., and is occasionally as low as 5d. and 6d. it is lowest when the fish is in the greatest perfection. The quantity brought to Billingsgate in a year is probably more than 2500 tons. It is sent on commission to agents, who charge 5 per cent. and take the risk of bad debts. This business is in few hands, and those engaged in it are the most wealthy of all the dealers in fish.

Billingsgate Market is divided into avenues, lined with stalls, each of which is occupied by a fish salesman; and there are fish-porters, who form the means of communication between the vessels and the stalls. A visitor who wishes to see Billingsgate in all its life should rise betimes, and reach the market by five in the morning. At a few minutes before five the salesmen take their seats, each at his respective stall; but before this time the porters have all got their loads ready for instant transmission to the stalls; for there is a rapidity in the operations at Billingsgate not paralleled in any of the other markets. Fish is so precious when of fine quality, so worthless when stale, that fluctuations in its value may be almost measured by minutes; and as the west-end fishmongers are willing to pay a higher price for the privilege of first choice, both fishermen and salesmen are eager to have their fish displayed as early as possible. Hence, as impartiality is strictly enforced by the clerk of the market, each dealer is left to make the best of his time when the proper hour arrives. At the striking of the hour the porters, who have been standing in a row at the lower end of the market, with their laden fish-baskets on their heads, run forward, deposit their fish at the stalls of the respective salesmen to whom they are consigned, and run as nimbly back to bring fresh supplies. So uncertain is the supply at the hour of commencement, that there is no knowing what price the fish will command, until the salesmen have fairly displayed their stores and the dealers have assembled. The salesman names a price, high or low, according to his judgment of the relation between supply and demand at the moment. In most cases the dealer offers a lower price, and an actual purchase price soon establishes itself between them. Oysters are sold in a different way; the dealers go on board the oyster-boats, and there make their purchases. During the first hour the market is wholly in the hands of the higher class of fishmongers, those who select the best fish and pay the highest price; then come the fishmongers of humbler rank, and afterwards the street hawkers, who buy up everything that is left. Fish, unlike corn, cannot be kept back until the price rises it must go for whatever it will fetch; hence, towards the close of the market, hawkers can sometimes buy fish at remarkably low prices. The wholesale market is over at nine o'clock.

There are in addition a few miscellaneous branches of import, which, though small in reference to the general trade of London, would appear large almost anywhere else. The import of Potatoes, for instance, which is chiefly carried on along the Southwark shore, employs many coasting vessels, and numerous men as porters, &c. Hay and Straw are brought both up and down the river, and a great portion of the import is landed at the lower part of Hungerford Market; to this spot also are brought great quantities of Fresh Vegetables in small wherries, from the market-gardens higher up the river, but only for transit thence to Covent Garden Market.

The Custom House system has been already noticed in No. 6.
The Bridges and Docks will form the subject of our next papers.

XXII. THE BRIDGES.

In treating of the Bridges, although Hammersmith is now almost a part of London, and its elegant suspension bridge deserves a passing mention, we shall go no farther west than Chelsea, from which the ugly wooden bridge gives a passage to the semirural parish of Battersea with its marsh, now about to be converted into a park for the recreation of the inhabitants of the metropolis. Taking our departure in the steam-boat, we first perceive the preparations for the new bridge about to be constructed in order to afford a more convenient and direct passage to the new park, the first piles of which were driven early in January of the present year. We pass in our way many a place or building of literary or historical interest. There on our left, just beyond the pier, you see, in that handsome row of lofty aristocratical-looking houses facing the river, the building once occupied by the famous Don Saltero, and where you may still take a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and muse over all the old memories of the famous Museum of Curiosities. On the same side, within the walls of that ancient church with its brick tower, lie buried the mutilated remains of the great Chancellor More (a fine monument marks the spot); and it was there that, whilst Lord Chancellor, he was accustomed to put on a surplice, and sing in the choir with the other choristers. We look in vain for any traces of More's house; that house which Henry at one time so loved to visit, and where More introduced Holbein to his notice; that house at which Erasmus too was a frequent visitor whilst in England, and of which he speaks in such delightful terms. “With him” (More), he says, “you might imagine yourself in the academy of Plato. But I should do injustice to his house by comparing it to the academy of Plato, where numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were the subjects of discussion: it would be more just to call it a school and an exercise of the Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, although piety was their first care. No wrangling, no angry word, was heard in it; no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness." The great court of Chelsea Hospital here too extends its front to the water, with its porticoes and piazzas, reminding us of the poor orange girl, Nell Gwynn, who, according to the tradition, lived to influence a king's mind to the accomplishment of such a work; and where those trees, with their intensely-black foliage expanded horizontally on the air, attract the eye, is the botanical garden of the Apothecaries' Company; and the trees are cedars of Lebanon, grown, we believe, from slips of the original Syrian trees of Scripture, presented to Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the garden. On the other side of the river the white stones of the "marge," and the bright green of the sward of the embankment above, show what is to be the park. The steam-boat here stops for an instant nearly opposite a place famous in the annals of Cockney diversions, the Red House; from whence there is little to attract attention till we reach Vauxhall, except the large factories, and the modern houses recently built on what were the Neat-house vegetable gardens and where the old Pesthouses formerly stood.

This structure was at first called Regent Pidge, we presume from the circumstance

that the first stone was laid by Lord Dundas, as proxy for the Prince Regent (George IV.); but one chief advantage of the proposed structure having in all probability been the facility it would afford to the visitors of the famous gardens, the name of Vauxhall was eventually given to it. Vauxhall Bridge is of iron, and, it is said, the lightest structure of the kind in Europe. It has been supposed that we are the inventors of iron bridges, but the nation that lays claim to so many other wonders undoubtedly has the best right to this, as may be seen from a reference to Du Halde's work on China. Vauxhall, like Putney and Westminster, was opposed by the City— the event shows with what success. The work was carried on by a body of shareholders, who were to be repaid by tolls. The original proposer was a gentleman, the projector of tunnels, Mr. Ralph Dodd, who certainly seems to have had the misfortune of constantly witnessing other men reaping the honours he had sown. The managers of Vauxhall seem to have been particularly difficult to please. Not only Mr. Dodd, but Sir J. Bentham and Mr. Rennie were for a short time employed by them, whilst, after all, the design of the existing bridge belongs to Mr. James Walker. The work was commenced on the 9th of May, 1811, the weather that day being so bad that, although the coins, &c., were deposited by the Regent's proxy, the stone was left for the time uncovered. In September, 1813, Prince Charles, eldest son of the Duke of Brunswick (so soon after killed at Waterloo), laid the first stone of the abutments on the Surrey side. The entire work was finished in 1816, at an expense of about £300,000, and opened in the month of July. The iron superstructure with its nine arches is supported on rusticated stone piers. The arches are equal, each 78 feet in span; the roadway measures 36 feet across; and the entire length of the bridge is 809 feet. From the bridge roadway a staircase descends by one of the piers to a steam-boat landing-pier.

We are again on our way, and some of the passengers are wondering what that strange-looking building can be, with so many angular wings and small extinguishercapped towers or buttresses on the left: that is the Penitentiary, where Bentham had hoped to have seen his views on prison discipline carried out, but was thwarted by the personal influence of King George III., in opposition to his own ministry; and although the building was erected according to his designs, the plan pursued with regard to discipline was not Bentham's. As we pass the Horseferry, where, prior to the erection of the bridge we are fast approaching (Westminster), passengers were accustomed to cross, we are reminded of one proposal that has never yet been carried into effect-a proposal for another metropolitan bridge, to extend from the Horseferry to Lambeth stairs, beside the gateway of Lambeth Palace. It was to be called the Royal Clarence Bridge, and an Act was brought into Parliament. But there the matter seems to have stopped, and is likely to remain; so we must content ourselves, if we desire to cross the Thames here, with the same mode of conveyance which prevailed so far back as the seventh century; when, according to the old legend, St. Peter descended to perform himself the act of dedication to himself of the new church which Sebert, King of the East Saxons, had just built on the site of the ruins of a temple of Apollo, flung down by an earthquake. St. Peter, it appears, descended on the Surrey side, with a host of heavenly choristers, but, the night being stormy, had great difficulty in finding any one to carry him over. Edric, a fisherman, at length crossed with him in his wherry, beheld the illumination which streamed forth from the church windows, and then took the saint back to the Surrey shore; being rewarded on his way by a miraculous draught of salmon, and the promise that if he gave a tenth to the church, he should never want plenty of that fish. Such is the relation of the circumstances attending the earliest erection of a church on the site of the