THE CITY AND THE CITIZENS.

THE entire civil government of the City of London, within the walls and liberties, is vested, by successive charters of English sovereigns, in one Corporation, or body of citizens; confirmed for the last time by a charter passed in the 23rd of George II. As then settled, the corporation consists of the Lord Mayor, 26 aldermen (including the Lord Mayor), 2 sheriffs for London and Middlesex conjointly, the common councilmen of the several wards, and the livery; assisted by a recorder, chamberlain, common serjeant, comptroller, Remembrancer, town-clerk, &c.

The City is divided into Wards bearing the same relation to the City that the Hundred anciently did to the Shire. The Wards are 26 in number, each represented by an alderman, and divided into precincts, each of which returns one common councilman. The common councilmen and Ward officers are elected annually, and the meetings of the aldermen and common council are called Wardmotes.

The senior alderman represents Bridge-Ward without, and is popularly known as "the father of the City." The aldermen are chosen by such householders as are freemen and pay an annual rent of 107.; each alderman is elected for life. The civic offices are chiefly filled by second-class citizens in point of station - the principal bankers and merchants uniformly declining to fill them, and paying, at times, heavy fines to be exempt from serving.

The City arms are the sword of St. Paul and the cross of St. George. The City was commonly called Cockaigne. The name Cockney-a spoilt or effeminate boy-one cockered and spoilt is generally applied to people born within the sound of the bells of the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. Hugh Bigod, a rebellious baron of Henry III.'s reign, is said to have exclaimed

"If I were in my Castell of Bungeie

Vpon the water of Wauenie,

I wold not set a button by the King of Cockneie."

When a female Cockney was informed that barley did not grow, but that it was spun by housewives in the country"I knew as much," said the Cockney, "for one may see the threads hanging out at the ends thereof." Minsheu, who compiled a valuable dictionary of the English language in the reign of James I., has a still older and odder mistake.

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Cockney," he says, "is applied only to one born within the sound of Bow bells, i.e. within the City of London, which term came first out of this tale, that a citizen's son riding with his father out of London into the country, and being a novice, and merely ignorant how corn or cattle increased, asked, when he heard a horse neigh, 'what the horse did?' his father answered, 'the horse doth neigh;' riding farther he heard a cock crow, and said, 'doth the cock neigh too?' and therefore, Cockney by inversion thus, incock q. incoctus, i.e., raw or unripe in countrymen's affairs."

MANSION HOUSE, the residence of the Lord Mayor during his term of office, was built 1739-41, from the designs of George Dance, the City surveyor. Lord Burlington sent a design by Palladio, which was rejected by the City on the inquiry of a Common Councilman: "Who was Palladio?-was he a Freeman of the city, and was he not a Roman Catholic?" It is said to have cost 71,000l., and was formerly disfigured by an upper story, familiarly known, east of Temple Bar, as "The Mare's (Mayor's) Nest." The principal room is the Egyptian Hall, and was so called, because in its original construction it exactly corresponded with the Egyptian Hall described by Vitruvius. With the exception of this Hall the rooms are somewhat poor; and the decorations and furniture throughout, some of a century, and others of sixty years since. In the Egyptian Hall, on every Easter Monday, the Lord Mayor gives a great private banquet and ball. The Lord Mayor of London is chosen annually, every 29th of September, from the aldermen below the chair, who have served the office of sheriff, and is installed in office every 9th of November, when "The Show" or procession between London and Westminster takes place. This, though somewhat pared of its former pomp, is a sight worth seeing. The procession ascends the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster Bridge, and returns the same way. The carriage in which the Lord Mayor rides to and from Blackfriars Bridge, and on all state occasions throughout his mayoralty, is a large lumbering carved and gilt coach, painted and designed by Cipriani, in 1757. Its original cost was 1065l. 38.; and it is said, that an expenditure of upwards of 1007. is every year incurred to keep it in repair. Here sits the chief magistrate in his red cloak, and collar of SS., with his chaplain, and his sword and mace-bearers. The sword-bearer carries the sword in the pearl scabbard, presented to the corporation by Queen Elizabeth upon opening the Royal Exchange, and the mace-bearer the great gold mace given to the

City by Charles I. He is sworn in at Westminster, in the morning of the 9th of November, before one of the Barons of the Exchequer, and then returns to preside at the great mayoralty dinner in Guildhall, at which some of her Majesty's ministers are invariably present. The annual salary of the Lord Mayor is 8000l.; and the annual income of the corporation of London, about 156,000l., arising from

The Lord Mayor generally spends more than his income, but how the Corporation money is spent is not very well known. The administration of justice at the Central Criminal Court in the Old Bailey costs about 12,1827. a-year; the City Police, about 10,1187. a-year; Newgate, about 92231. a-year; the House of Correction, about 76027. a-year; the Debtors' Prison, about 4955l. a-year; and the expenses of the Conservancy of the Thames and Medway (of which the Lord Mayor is Conservator), about 31177. a-year. The Lord Mayor, as the chief magistrate of the City, has the right of precedence in the City before all the Royal Family; a right disputed in St. Paul's Cathedral by George IV., when Prince of Wales, but maintained by Sir James Shaw, the Lord Mayor, and confirmed at the same time by King George III. At the Sovereign's death he takes his seat at the Privy Council, and signs before any other subject. The entire City is placed in his custody, and it is usual on state occasions to close Temple Bar at the approach of the Sovereign, not in order to exclude her, but in order to admit her in form.

The GUILDHALL of the City of London is at the foot of KING STREET, CHEAPSIDE, in the ward of Cheap, and was first built in 1411 (12th of Henry IV.), prior to which time the Courts were held in Aldermanbury. Of the original building there is nothing left but the stone and mortar of the walls; two mutilated windows, one at each end; a crypt, about half of the length of the present Hall, and a roof concealed by a flat ceiling. The front towards King-street was seriously injured in the Great Fire, and the present mongrel substitute erected in 1789, from the designs of the younger Dance, The sculpture in the Hall is of a very ordinary

character. Observe.-Pyramidical monument to the great Lord Chatham, by the elder Bacon; the inscription by Edmund Burke. Monument to William Pitt, by Bubb; the inscription by George Canning. Monument to Nelson, by Smith; the inscription by R. B. Sheridan. Monument to Lord Mayor Beckford (the father of the author of Vathek), cut by Moore; the inscription upon it is his own speech spoken, or said to have been spoken, to King George III., at a period of great excitement. The statues of Edward VI., Queen Elizabeth, and Charles I., at the upper or E. end of the Hall came from the old chapel called Guildhall Chapel, pulled down in 1822. In the Common Council Chamber, abutting from the Hall, observe.-A standing statue of George III. (Chantrey's first statue); fine bust, by the same artist, of Granville Sharp; bust of Lord Nelson, by the Honourable Mrs. Damer; The Siege of Gibraltar, by J. S. Copley, R.A. (father of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst); Death of Wat Tyler, by James Northcote, R.A.; whole-length of Queen Anne, by Closterman; Portraits of the Judges (Sir Matthew Hale and others) who sat at Clifford's Inn after the Great Fire, and arranged all the differences between landlord and tenant during the great business of rebuilding, by Michael Wright. The two giants in the Hall-part of the pageant of a Lord Mayor's Day-are known as Gog and Magog, though antiquaries differ about their proper appellation, some calling them Colbrand and Brandamore, others Corineus and Gogmagog. They were carved by Richard Saunders, and set up in the Hall in 1708. A public dinner is given in this Hall, every 9th of November, by the new Lord Mayor for the coming year. The Hall on this occasion is divided into two distinct but not equal portions. The upper end or dais is called the Hustings (from an old Court of that name); the lower the Body of the Hall. Majesty's ministers and the great Law officers of the Crown invariably attend this dinner. At the upper end or dais the courses are all hot; at the lower end only the turtle. The scene is well worth seeing-the loving-cup and the barons of beef carrying the mind back to medieval times and manners. The following is the Bill of Fare :

250 Tureens of Real Turtle, con

taining 5 pints each.

200 Bottles of Sherbet.

6 Dishes of Fish.

30 Entrées.

4 Boiled Turkeys and Oysters.

60 Roast Pullets.

60 Dishes of Fowls.

46 Ditto of Capons.

Her

In a room abutting from the Hall is the "Guildhall or City of London Library," containing a large collection of early printed plays and pageants, &c., connected with the City; antiquities, &c., discovered in making the excavations for the New Royal Exchange; and in an appropriate case, Shakspeare's own signature, attached to a deed of conveyance, for which the Corporation of London gave, at a public sale, the sum of 1471. In the crypt is a large red granite bowl, thus described in the Corporation journals of 1802 :-

"Major Cookson, commanding the Royal Artillery in Egypt, presents his respectful compliments to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the city of London, and begs to acquaint them that he has taken the liberty to ship on board the Anacreon transport, Allan Massingham master, a large antique Egyptian red granite bowl, and which Major Cookson requests the Lord Mayor and Corporation will do him the honour to accept as a testimony of his respect and a memorial of the British achievements in Egypt.-Alexandria, Sept. 1, 1802."

TEMPLE BAR. A gateway of Portland stone, separating the Strand from Fleet-street, and the City from the shire; built by Wren (1670). On the E. side, in niches, are statues of Queen Elizabeth and James I., and on the W. side, those of Charles I. and Charles II., all by John Bushnell (d. 1701.) The gates are invariably closed by the City authorities whenever the sovereign has occasion to enter the City, and are closed at no other time. The visit of the sovereign is, indeed, a rare occurrence-confined to a thanksgiving in St. Paul's for some important victory, or the opening of a public building like the New Royal Exchange. A herald sounds a trumpet before the gate-another herald knocks--a parley