luxury; it is the great market that determines the price of most articles of food at a given time; it is a general house of call for those who seek employment in a thousand different occupations; it is a reservoir of charity and benevolence, as displayed in the extraordinary number of hospitals, asylums, dispensaries, infirmaries, institutions, provident funds, and other means of alleviating human misery; and, lastly, it presents glowing but vague temptations to those who would wander away from the paternal fireside in the country to "seek their fortunes." To the Whittingtons of every age the visionary streets of London are still "paved with gold;" and by the side of an infinite amount of disappointment and wretchedness, London still holds out the great prizes and rewards of ambition, of industry, and of perseverance to the people of this empire. No wonder, such being the state of things, that London should be a centre of attraction to the rest of the kingdom, and that more immigrants than emigrants should yearly be numbered-using the word emigrants here to mean, not those who merely pass through London to obtain facilities for emigration, but regular inhabitants who finally determine to leave it. If we had barriers, walls, or octroi duties, this free immigration would undoubtedly be checked; but the absence of such impediments may be ranked among the causes of rapid increase in the population of the Metropolis.

Few persons have the slightest conception of the extraordinary number of country people residing in London. What if we were to say that, of all the men and women now living in the Metropolis, in all grades of society, more than half are country people— would this be generally believed? The Census Commissioners ascertained this to be unquestionably the fact in 1851; for, of 1,395,000 persons, aged twenty years and upwards, no more than 645,000 were born in London, the remaining 750,000 having been born

in the country or abroad, and having changed their residence to London at some period or other of their lives. Including children, and taking account of the increase of population between 1851 and 1856, there must at the present moment be more than one million inhabitants of London who were born either in the country or abroad—that is, one million inhabitants of London who are not Londoners by birth. It is curious to see how this enormous aggregate has been made up. Some counties appear to be remarkable for their tendency to send their folk up to London. Thus our metropolitan population comprises 28,000 Norfolk people, and about an equal number from Suffolk; Hampshire claims credit for 34,000; there are 25,000 acute Yorkshire folk; Somerset comes out in force with 32,000; and what is perhaps yet more remarkable, considering the distance of the county, we have no less than 37,000 Devonshire people among us; we might, perchance, have expected more than 30,000 from the whole of Scotland; but 110,000 from Ireland prove how enormous must have been the stream of human beings flowing eastward to the great centre. Every sixteenth adult, on an average, among the adults of London, was born in the Emerald Isle. Foreigners of all climes have sent us 30,000 residents, of whom 10,000 are German, and 7000 French. The children and young persons, i.e., those under twenty years of age, are, of course, in a much greater ratio born in the city which they now inhabit; yet even here we meet with the somewhat startling fact that there are 20,000 children and young persons in London who were born in Ireland, besides children and young persons born in London of Irish parents. It is impossible to avoid seeing that much of good or of evil, or of both combined, must result from this strong infusion of youthful Celtic blood in the masses of the Metropolis.

The population is so vast, that we are apt to lose

sight of items which, considered separately, would appear enormous. That there are 80,000 children born yearly in London-that there are 350,000 marriageable but unmarried women - that there are 50,000 persons always resident in poor-houses, prisons, and other establishments where they are daily fed out of national or public resources-that there are 1200 places of worship, in which, despite our vice and alleged Sabbath desecration, there are generally a million attendances at divine worship on a Sunday, including the services at different times of the day— that there are nearly 6000 schools, on the books of which are 600,000 scholars-all these striking facts have been ascertained by the Census Commissioners. We have taken no further liberties with their tables and returns, than to add a small ratio of increase for the five years elapsed since the census was taken. Numerous other curious items present themselves. Thus, although we are quarrelling with the health of the metropolis, there are, nevertheless, thirty inhabitants not less than 100 years old, let the excess above a hundred be what it may. There are 20,000 persons engaged in killing and selling animal food, a greater number in preparing and selling vegetable food, and nearer 30,000 in making and selling beverages. More than 30,000 tailors are plying the needle in London; while 40,000 boot and shoe-makers are fashioning and cobbling our leathern understandings. Nearly 25,000 professional men are supplying the daily and weekly quotas of divinity, law, and physic; and about an equal number of authors and printers furnish us with books and newspapers. The domestic servants in London, male and female, reach the almost incredible number of 200,000. The worthy ancient females of the Mrs. Gamp school, together with their co-labourers, the charwomen, washerwomen, and manglers, present a corps of 60,000 strong. There are more than 100,000 women and girls in the Metro

polis who earn a living-in most cases, it may be feared a scanty living-by the use of the needle. Nearly 30,000 clerks are always quill-driving in relation to some commercial matters or others.

Thus we

find that, so astounding is the amount of population, the persons engaged in any one of the above occupations would equal in number the entire inhabitants of a large town.

Mr. George Dodd, in his volume on the "Food of London," has presented us with a curious sketch of the means by which the commissariat of this enormous aggregation of human beings is carried on. It is the most striking vindication of the power of the laws of trade, left to their free operation and complete development, that this vast supply is perpetually sustained by the collective interests of the community, and that results are obtained by the mere cooperation of the trading classes which the foresight of the wisest statesman, the omnipotence of the legislature, and the thousand hands of the executive government, would utterly fail to ensure. Mr. Dodd's account of the process by which two millions and a half of human beings are fed is ingenious and amusing; but it is necessarily imperfect, for the data on which these computations are made have no certainty in them, and it is to be regretted that we do not possess more accurate statistical particulars of the consumption of food by the London community.

Where and when the growth of the Metropolis is to terminate, no one can yet form the faintest conjecture. There do not yet visibly appear any of the opposing forces which will check further extension. If any future Shrapnell should make another "Stradametrical Survey of London," it is impossible to anticipate how many thousand miles of street and lane would have to pass under his ken. In the extraordinary production under this title, some two hundred pages are crammed with about twenty columns each

of figures, denoting the distances from any one to any other of about five hundred separate points in the Metropolis: the book, a work of prodigious labour, was a virtual declaration of war against the cabmen: but it will also remain as a permanent record of the wonderful extent of London in these days. As to the opposing forces which might check further extension, where are they? We have fields in plenty beyond the present limits, to be passive recipients of blocks of houses, whenever man's interests shall prompt to farther building. We are talking of vast sewerage schemes which, if carried out, would be as adequate for a population of five millions, as our present system is for a population of half that amount. We are gradually completing arrangements for obtaining water above the tidal pollutions of the Thames, which, unless the Thames run dry, ought to render our water-supply better rather than worse in future years. We are closing all our pent-up and unwholesome graveyards, and establishing others in open districts. We are so improving our channels of coal-supply, by means of screw-colliers, collier-docks, and railway dépôts, that we can kindle any number of parlour-fires and kitchen-ranges, with less fear of monopoly than ever. We are making and maintaining several public parks at the national expense, which will remain open breathing-spots when London shall extend far beyond them. We have increased almost every variety of humanising institution in the Metropolis, within the last half-century, in a greater ratio than the population itself has increased; and there seems no reason why the same relatively greater increase should not be maintained in the remaining moiety of the century. In short, none of the elements of progression, so far as regard the number of inhabitants in the Metropolis, or the area of ground occupied by the streets and houses, yet encounter other elements of retrogression of equal force. The