WALKS THROUGH LONDON.

LONDON,

It

MONDON, in its most extensive sense, including Westminster and the Borough of Southwark, is one of the largest and most opulent cities in the world: it is about seven miles in length, three miles in breadth, and more than twenty miles in circumference. stretches itself along the river Thames, which, rising in Gloucestershire, is here not quite a quarter of a mile in breadth, falling into the German Ocean at the mouth of the Medway, about forty miles below the city.

There are five bridges-London, Blackfriars, Westminster, the Strand or Waterloo, and Vauxhall; and another, viz. Southwark Bridge, is in a state of great forwardness.

London contains eight thousand streets, lanes, &c and five hundred places of divine worship: one cathedral, St. Paul's, rears its swelling dome with peculiar magnificence, and is seen from every part of the adjacent country one abbey, that of Westminster, where the ashes of kings and heroes, of sages and legislators, philosophers and poets, rest together, and where the sculptured marble perpetuates their memory on a mass of ornamental grandeur, not to be equalled in any metropolis in the world.

Besides churches, chapels, and meeting-houses for all denominations, here are six Jewish Synagogues, and between four and five thousand public schools, including inns of court, colleges, &c. besides hospitals and dispensaries, and places of entertainment out of number, the population being generally reckoned at about

B

a million of souls! London also contains two hundred inns, four hundred taverns, five hundred coffee-houses, twelve hundred hackney-coaches and chariots, and one hundred and thirty thousand dwelling-houses.

The access to every part of this vast metropolis is both safe and pleasant, owing to the regularity of the pavement, which is no where so carefully preserved as in London, and to the improved manner in which the whole is lighted. If an ambassador from the Continent imagined on seeing the old lamps that the streets were illuminated by way of compliment to his appearance among them—what a contrast is now formed by the general introduction of gas lights! increasing the conveniences, and diminishing the danger of darkness to the visitors and to the inhabitants.

It may justly be added, that, owing to the vigilance and disinterested exertions of Matthew Wood, Esq. the present Lord Mayor, the City is entirely cleared of common prostitutes; and the different officers, with the watchmen, compelled to do their duty in such a manner, that, according to an official report, "thieves now appear to be afraid of entering the city."

With these facilities, and with this sketch of the grand outline of the Metropolis, we shall now endeavour to go into some details, by proceeding from the centre and diverging towards the circumference, in such a manner as pleasure and interest will be most likely to suggest.