warehouses, 18 sheds, 17 vaults, and 6 quays, with three entrances from the Thames, viz., Hermitage, 40 feet in width; Wapping, 40 feet; and Shadwell, 45 feet. The Western Dock comprises 20 acres; the Eastern, 7 acres; and the Wapping Basin, 3 acres. The entire structure cost 4,000,000%. of money. The wall alone cost 65,000l. The walled-in range of dock possesses water-room for 302 sail of vessels, exclusive of lighters; warehouse-room for 220,000 tons of goods; and vault-room for 60,000 pipes of wine. The tobacco warehouse alone covers 5 acres. The number of ships entered in the six months ending May 31st, 1849, was 704, measuring upwards of 195,000 tons. Six weeks are allowed for unloading, beyond which period the charge of a farthing per ton is made for the first two weeks, and a halfpenny per ton afterwards. The business of the Docks is managed by a Court of Directors, who sit at the London Dock House, in New Bank-buildings. The capital of the shareholders is 4,000,000l. As many as 3000 labourers have been employed in these docks in one day. "The Tobacco Warehouses are rented by Government at 14,000l. a year. They will contain about 24,000 hogsheads, averaging 1200 lb. each, and equal to 30,000 tons of general merchandise. Passages and alleys, each several hundred feet long, are bordered on both sides by close and compact ranges of hogsheads, with here and there a small space for the counting-house of the officers of customs, under whose inspection all the arrangements are conducted. Near the north-east corner of the warehouses is a door inscribed 'To the Kiln,' where damaged tobacco is burnt, the long chimney which carries off the smoke being jocularly called 'The Queen's Pipe.'"-Knight's London, iii. 76.

This is the great depot for the stock of wines belonging to the Wine Merchants of London. Port is principally kept in pipes; sherry in hogsheads. On the 30th of June, 1849, the Dock contained 14,783 pipes of port; 13,107 hogsheads of sherry; 64 pipes of French wine; 796 pipes of Cape wine; 7607 cases of wine, containing 19,140 dozen; 10,113 hogsheads of brandy; and 3642 pipes of rum. The total of port was 14,783 pipes, 4460 hogsheads, and 3161 quarter casks.

"As you enter the dock, the sight of the forest of masts in the distance, and the tall chimneys vomiting clouds of black smoke, and the manycoloured flags flying in the air, has a most peculiar effect; while the sheds, with the monster wheels arching through the roofs, look like the paddle-boxes of huge steamers. Along the quay, you see now men with their faces blue with indigo, and now gaugers with their long brasstipped rule dripping with spirit from the cask they have been probing; then will come a group of flaxen-haired sailors, chattering German; and next a black sailor, with a cotton handkerchief twisted turban-like around his head. Presently a blue-smocked butcher, with fresh meat and a bunch of cabbages in the tray on his shoulder, and shortly afterwards a mate with green parroquets in a wooden cage. Here you will see, sitting on a bench, a sorrowful-looking woman, with new bright cooking

tins at her feet, telling you she is an emigrant preparing for her voyage. As you pass along this quay the air is pungent with tobacco; at that it overpowers you with the fumes of rum. Then you are nearly sickened with the stench of hides and huge bins of horns, and shortly afterwards the atmosphere is fragrant with coffee and spice. Nearly everywhere you meet stacks of cork, or else yellow bins of sulphur or lead-coloured copper ore. As you enter this warehouse, the flooring is sticky, as if it had been newly tarred, with the sugar that has leaked through the casks, and as you descend into the dark vaults you see long lines of lights hanging from the black arches, and lamps flitting about midway. Here you sniff the fumes of the wine, and there the peculiar fungous smell of dry-rot. Then the jumble of sounds as you pass along the dock blends in anything but sweet concord. The sailors are singing boisterous nigger songs from the Yankee ship just entering, the cooper is hammering at the casks on the quay; the chains of the cranes, loosed of their weight, rattle as they fly up again; the ropes splash in the water; some captain shouts his orders through his hands; a goat bleats from some ship in the basin; and empty casks roll along the stones with a hollow drumlike sound. Here the heavy-laden ships are down far below the quay, and you descend to them by ladders, whilst in another basin they are high up out of the water, so that their green copper sheathing is almost level with the eye of the passenger, while above his head a long line of bowsprits stretch far over the quay, and from them hang spars and planks as a gangway to each ship. This immense establishment is worked by from one to three thousand hands, according as the business is either brisk' or 'slack.'"-Henry Mayhew, Labour and the Poor, in the Morning Chronicle for Oct. 1849.

Mode of Admission.-The basins and shipping are open to the public; but to inspect the vaults and warehouses an order must be obtained from the Secretary at the London Dock House in New Bank-buildings; ladies are not admitted after 1 p.m.

COMMERCIAL DOCKS. Five ample and commodious docks on the south side of the river, the property of the Commercial Dock Company, with an entrance from the Thames, between Randall's-rents and Dog-and-Duck-stairs, nearly opposite King's-Arms-stairs in the Isle of Dogs. They were opened in 1807, and consist principally of the old Greenland Docks for Greenland ships, enlarged and provided with warehouses for bonding foreign corn. They comprise 49 acres, 40 of which are water; and are principally used by vessels engaged in the Baltic and East Country commerce and importation of timber. Office of the Company, No. 106, Fenchurch-street. The removal of the mud deposited in the Docks by the steam navigation of the Thames, costs the Company, on an average, about 1000l. a year. The office of the company is at 106, Fenchurch-street.

CORN EXCHANGE, MARK LANE, CITY, projected and opened 1747, enlarged and partly rebuilt in 1827, and reopened, June 24th, 1828. The market days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the hours of business are from

10 to 3; Monday is the principal day. Wheat is paid for in bills at one month, and all other descriptions of corn and grain in bills at two months. The Kentish "hoymen" (distinguished by their sailors' jackets) have stands free of expense, and pay less for rentage and dues than others.

COAL EXCHANGE, in LoWER THAMES STREET, nearly opposite Billingsgate, established pursuant to 47 Geo. III., cap. 68. The first stone of the present building (J. B. Bunning, architect) was laid Dec. 14th, 1847, and the building opened by Prince Albert, in person, Oct. 30th, 1849. In making the foundations a Roman hypocaust was laid open, perhaps the most interesting of the many Roman remains discovered in London. It has been arched over, and is still visible. The interior decorations of the Exchange are by F. Sang, and are both appropriate and instructive, representing the various species of ferns, palms, and other plants found fossilised amid strata of the coal formation; the principal collieries and mouths of the shafts; portraits of men who have rendered service to the trade; colliers' tackle, implements, &c. The floor is laid in the form of the mariner's compass, and consists of upwards of 40,000 pieces of wood. The black oak portions were taken from the bed of the Tyne, and the mulberry wood introduced as the blade of the dagger in the City shield was taken from a tree said to have been planted by Peter the Great when working in this country as a shipwright. 20,000 seamen are employed in the carrying department alone of the London Coal Trade.

LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY STATION, EUSTON SQUARE, one of the finest railway stations in London, will be found to repay a visit. The depot of the Company at Euston-square is of enormous and increasing magnitude. The total length of the line in which the Company is interested, directly or indirectly, is 1141 miles, and the total amount expended up to October, 1848 (when the great financial statement of the Company was made), was 22,835,1201. The great Hall at Euston-square station (opened May, 1849), was built from the designs of P. C. Hardwick, son of Philip Hardwick, R.A., and the building is said to have cost 150,000l. The bas-reliefs of London, Liverpool, Manchester, &c., are by John Thomas, the sculptor of the statues and bosses at the New Houses of Parliament.

The LONDON BRIDGE STATION is the property of two Companies, and is a more wonderful sight, from the complication of its rails, than any other station in London or indeed elsewhere. The station at King's Cross, in the New-road,

of the GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY, opened in 1852, will repay a visit; as will that of the GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, now (1856) nearly completed.

Some further notion of the extent of private enterprise in this country may be obtained from the establishment of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood, the large army agents in Craig'scourt, Charing-cross. They employ about 48 clerks for Regimental agency alone, and these are maintained at an annual cost of 12,500l. Of the 35,000l. a year, or thereabouts, paid by the Government for Army agency, something like 23,000l. a year is paid to the firm of Cox and Greenwood.

IX.-MARKETS.

METROPOLITAN CATTLE MARKET (between Islington and Camden Town)-the modern Smithfield-the livestock and meat market of London-erected 1854-5, after a long parliamentary struggle with the Corporation of London, and publicly opened by Prince Albert, 13th June, 1855. Architect, Mr. Bunning. The market occupies 30 acres, and is said to have cost at least 300,000l.

Salesmen estimate the weight of cattle by the eye, and, from constant practice, are seldom out more than a few pounds. The sales are always for cash. No paper is passed, but when the bargain is struck, the buyer and seller shake hands and close the sale. Several millions are annually paid away in this manner. The average weekly sale of beasts is about 3000; and of sheep about 30,000, increased in the Christmas week to about 5000 beasts, and 50,000 sheep. The late Smithfield market was an open area, in the form of an irregular polygon, containing five acres and three quarters, surrounded by bone-houses, catgut manufactories, publichouses, and knackers' yards. The name would seem to have been originally Smoothfield, "campus planus." Monday was set apart for fat cattle and sheep; Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for hay and straw; Friday, cattle and sheep and milch cows, and at 2 o'clock for scrubhorses and asses.

"Falstaff. Where's Bardolph?

"Page. He's gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse. "Falstaff. I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the Stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived."-Shakespeare, 2nd Part of Henry IV., Act i., sc. 2. All sales took place by commission; the City receiving a toll upon every beast exposed to sale of 1d. per head, and of sheep at 2d. per score, and for every pen 1s. The total produce to the Corporation was from 5000l. to 6000l. a-year.

"Different statements have from time to time been put forth respecting the consumption of the principal products brought to London; but, with the exception of coal, and one or two other articles, there are no means by which to arrive at anything like a correct conclusion. Allowing for the carcases imported by steam and otherwise, the annual consumption of butcher's meat may, however, be at present (1851) estimated at about 240,000 bullocks, 1,700,000 sheep, 28,000 calves, and 35,000 pigs, exclusive of vast quantities of bacon and ham."-Mc Culloch's London in 1850-1851, p. 55.

Smithfield is famous in History for its jousts, tournaments, executions, and burnings, and in the present day for its market, the great cattle market of the largest city in the world. Here Wallace and the gentle Mortimer were executed. Here, on Saturday the 15th of June, 1381, Sir William Walworth slew Wat Tyler; the King standing towards the east near St. Bartholomew's Priory, and the Commons towards the west in form of battle. The stake, at which so many of the Marian martyrs died, was fixed immediately opposite the church of St. Bartholomew the Great. Here too, from September 3rd to 6th, was held the far-famed Bartholomew Fair, once one of the leading fairs in England, but for a century and more (until its abolition in 1851) only a nuisance.

an

BILLINGSGATE, the great fish-market of London (of red brick, with stone dressings,) lies a little below London Bridge on the left bank of the Thames (Mr. Bunning, architect). This celebrated space was appointed by Queen Elizabeth": open place for the landing and bringing in of any fish, corn, salt, stores, victuals, and fruit (grocery ware excepted), and to be a place of carrying forth of the same, or the like, and for no other merchandizes." In the reign of William III., it was made on aud after May 10th, 1699, "a free and open market for all sorts of fish." It is now regulated pursuant to 9 & 10 Vict. c. 346.

"How this gate took that name, or of what antiquity the same is, I must leave uncertain, as not having read any ancient record thereof, more than that Geffrey Monmouth writeth, that Belin, a king of the Britons, about four hundred years before Christ's Nativity, built this gate, and named it Belin's gate, after his own calling; and that when he was dead, his body being burnt, the ashes in a vessel of brass were set upon a high pinnacle of stone over the same gate. It seemeth to me not to be so ancient, but rather to have taken that name of some later owner of the place, happily named Beling or Biling, as Somer's key, Smart's key, Frost wharf, and others thereby, took their names of their owners."-Stow, p. 17.

The coarse language of the place has long been famous :"There stript, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground; His blunted arms by sophistry are borne,

And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn."

Pope, The Dunciad, B. iv.