narrowly the face of a new acquaintance. Let the reader, therefore, open the Clue Map at the end of this volume, while I describe to him its main divisions and characteristic features.

The City of London proper is that space which anciently lay within the walls and liberties, having for its base the N. bank of the river Thames, with its W. line extending to Middle Temple-lane, where, crossing Fleet-street at Temple Bar (the only City barrier remaining), and Holborn at Southampton-buildings, it afterwards skirts Smithfield, Barbican, and Finsbury-circus on the N., crossing the end of Bishopsgate-street Without; and then, pursuing its way southward down Petticoat-lane, across the end of Aldgate-street, and along the Minories, it finally reaches the Thames at the Tower. This portion of Modern London sends four Members to Parliament, possesses a corporation, the oldest, richest, and most powerful municipal body in the world, and is divided into 108 parishes, of which 97 are called “Without, and 11 "Within," the walls. The population of the City in 1851 was 127,869, and the number of its inhabited houses 14,580.

The City of Westminster (now swallowed up in London) possesses no municipality, and though far more populous than "the City," containing 24,755 inhabited houses, and in 1851, 241,611 inhabitants, sends only two members to Parliament. Its E. line coincides with the W. line of the City of London. From its Tottenham-court end to its suburban extent at Kensington Gardens, it is bounded to the N. by Oxford-street; and on its far W. side, crossing the centre of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, it reaches the Thames at Chelsea Hospital.

The five Boroughs, viz., Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, and Lambeth, return each two members to the House of Commons. The first three lie north of the Thames, the last two south of the Thames.

§ 5. The social and fashionable divisions of London differ materially from the municipal and parliamentary divisions. Thus, the social centre of Modern London is Temple Bar;

the commercial centre the Bank of England; and the cab centre Charing Cross. That part of London which radiates from Hyde Park Corner includes the mansions of many of the nobility, the leading Club-houses, many well-inhabited streets, the most fashionable square in London (Grosvenorsquare), and two new districts, called in fashionable circles Tyburnia and Belgravia.

Tyburnia, or the northern wing, is that vast city, in point of size, which the increasing wealth and population of London has caused to be erected, between 1839 and 1850, on the green fields and nursery gardens of the See of London's Estate at Paddington. Built at one time, and nearly on one principle, it assumes in consequence a regularity of appearance contrasting strangely with the older portions of Modern London. Fine squares, connected by spacious streets, and houses of great altitude, give a certain air of nobility to the district. The sameness, however, caused by endless repetitions of " Compo" decorations, distresses the eye, and puzzles the resident in London nearly as much as it does the stranger. Tyburnia is principally inhabited by professional men, the great City merchants, and by those who are undergoing the transitional state between commerce and fashion. Its boundaries may be said to be the Edgeware-road on the E., Bayswater on the W., Maida-hill on the N., and Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on the S.

Belgravia, or the southern wing of the West End, a creation of the last twenty-five years, '26-52, is built on land belonging to the Marquis of Westminster, bounded by Grosvenorplace on the E., Sloane-street on the W., Knightsbridge on the N., and by Ebury-street on the S. E. This space includes Belgrave and Eaton-squares, whose houses, palatial in character and size, denote the high social position of their occupants. Regularity and largeness of proportion are the leading characteristics of this fashionable neighbourhood.

Contiguous to Belgravia lie Brompton and Chelsea. Brompton, lying low, and the air being moist and warm, is the resort of consumptive persons-it is the Torquay, in

in London.] §§ 5, 6. TYBURNIA.—BELGRAVIA.—THE CITY. Xiii

short, of the Metropolis. The once rural Chelsea is crowded with poor. Close to Belgravia on its south-eastern side lies Westminster proper, like the beggar at the rich man's gate. Private liberality has lately attempted to cure the plague spot by the erection of three new churches, and the formation of a spacious street (Victoria-street) through its very centre. Malaria and disease prevail in Westminster proper, the drains lying beneath the level of the Thames at high water.

To the N.E. of Tyburnia lies the Regent's Park district, extending from the north side of Oxford-street to Camden Town and Somers Town, and including Marylebone proper (with its 375,000 inhabitants), and the still well-inhabited Portman, Manchester, and Cavendish-squares. Here, with a few solitary exceptions, dwells Middle Class London. From this neighbourhood, fashion, in its westward course, is fading fast. Still further E. we come to the Bloomsbury and Bedford-square district, with its well-built houses and squares, erected between 1790 and 1810, and, till the great removal towards the west in 1828, a much better frequented neighbourhood than it is in 1854. This portion of the Metropolis is chiefly occupied by lawyers and merchants; its noble mansions no longer holding, as formerly (between 1796 and 1825), the rank and fashion of the Town. Somewhat E. (and in the same Bloomsbury and Bedford-square district) we recognise the architecture of the era of Anne, in the capacious dwellings of Great Ormond-street and Queen-square, now given up for the most part to lodging-house keepers; and, still stepping eastward, are traces of the continuation from Great Queen-street, Lincoln's-Inn-fields, of that westward march which fashion has taken within the last 150 years.

S. of Regent's Park proper is the Covent Garden and Strand district; with the exception of streets running at right angles from it to the Thames, principally occupied by shops and lodging-houses, and west of it is the Leicester-square neighbourhood, chiefly inhabited by foreigners.

§ 6. The principal streets in the City of London (New Cannon-street excepted) are built in the style that prevailed

between 1666 and 1800; dingy brick, except where recent Compo has covered its age, predominating everywhere. The streets for the most part are narrow and inconvenient, as is observable in all walled cities where space was precious; of picturesqueness there is none (unless we consider the interiors of many of the palaces of the old merchant princes, now converted into counting-houses and chambers); and, with the exception of the modernised portions, of convenience or of beauty there is just as little. Wren, under whose direction the City was rebuilt after the Great Fire in 1666, originally intended to have laid out the streets in a regular manner: the principal thoroughfares radiating from St. Paul's with a width of not less than 70 feet. But economy carried the day against his magnificent design, and the City arose as we now see it. To the antiquary it presents few features of interest, to the architect only the churches built by Wren and his pupils, and one or two more modern public buildings.

"The City" is, par excellence, the head-quarters of the trade and commerce of the country. Here everything is brought to a focus, and every interest has its representative. In Lincoln's Inn and the Temple the lawyers find all the quiet and retirement so congenial to their pursuits. In the great thoroughfares retail trade is triumphant. In the narrow, dim lanes, which scarce afford room for carriages to pass each other, the wholesale Manchester warehouses are congregated. In Thames-street and its immediate vicinity, commerce is represented by its Custom House, its Corn Exchange, its Coal Exchange, and its great wharfs. The fish and foreign fruit trades dwell also in this thronged thoroughfare. In Lombard-street the money power is enthroned. In Houndsditch the Jews most do congregate. In Paternoster-row and its neighbourhood booksellers are located. St. Paul's forms the religious element of this strange compound of interests. The Exchange and the Bank, placed side by side, might be likened to the two ventricles of the great City heart; and grouped around from first floor to garret in almost every house, are the offices of the Brokers who form the medium of circulation of the world's wealth. Yet this spot, teeming by day with its hundreds of thousands,

its streets gorged by carriages, cabs, and carts, presents at night, and still more so on a Sunday, the spectacle of a deserted city. The banks closed, and the post gone,—the railway carriage, the omnibus, and the steam-boat, carry the clerks to the outskirts, and the merchants and principals to their villas and mansions at Clapham, Hackney, or the West End.

That space without the limits of the City proper which includes the N. bank of the river Thames as far as Blackwall, is occupied by docks, wharfs, and warehouses, and inhabited by slop-sellers, crimps, and sailors. Everything here has reference to maritime affairs. N. of this district lies Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, through which the Eastern Counties Railway reveals to the traveller the crowded dwellings of the silk-weavers, readily distinguishable by the large garret windows, through which their hand-looms may be seen at work. The once rural Islington, to the N., is mostly inhabited by the middle classes, and those immediately beneath them in the social scale. It lies high, and is considered one of the healthiest portions of the metropolis. The densely peopled district of Clerkenwell (west of Islington and north-east of Lincoln's-Inn-fields) is inhabited by some of the best paid and best informed artisans in London.

If we cross to the Surrey side of the Thames, we come to the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, the former, including Bermondsey, the great seat of the tanning trade; the latter principally occupied by manufactories. Shadwell and Rotherhithe are the head quarters of sailors, and are but meanly built and inhabited—indeed the whole of the right bank of the Thames at London is much inferior in wealth and importance to that portion lying on the left or Middlesex shore; and to "the West End" it is a "terra incognita."

§ 7. To enable the visitor to find his way from point to point, his best plan will be to study the Clue Map at the end of this volume, and fix in his mind the direction of the great thoroughfares. These generally run from E. to W., and from N. to S. The great E. and W. lines of streets are those which lead from either side of Hyde Park to the Bank, and then fork off again, and terminate in the remote