Population- Municipal Divisions The River Thames and the Streets, ALPHABETICAL DESCRIPTION OF PLACES OF INTEREST, PUBLIC ILLUSTRATIONS. Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc. (Frontispiece), West End of Cheapside, St. Paul's, Paternoster Row, etc., Trafalgar Square, Bunyan's Tomb, Albert Memorial, Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Statue, etc., Blackfriar's Bridge, PAGE 19 20 23 24 20 31 37 38 42 44 Chelsea Suspension Bridge, Billingsgate, Custom House, and Coal Exchange, Greenwich Hospital, Painted Hall, Holborn Viaduct, Kew Gardens, Palm House, Lambeth Palace, from the River, London Stone,. Smithfield Meat Market, Exhibition Galleries, South Kensington, Palace of Justice, Parliament, Houses of, New Telegraph Office, General Post Office, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tomb of Nelson, " Thames Embankment, Landing Stage, Tower of London, Traitor's Gate, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church, Chapel of Henry VII., Windsor Castle, Round Tower, MAPS. 93 95 99 102 106 108 112 113 121 122 129 135 140 142 145 146 Clue Map of London, showing Principal Streets, Public Buildings, Parks, etc., Map of the Railway Stations around London,. Facing Title. 183 AN HETHER we consider London as the metropolis of a great and mighty empire, upon the dominions of whose sovereign the sun never sets, or as the home of more than three and a half millions of people, and the richest city in the world to boot, it must ever be a place which strangers wish to visit. In these days of railways and steamers, the toil and cost of reaching it are, comparatively speaking, small; and, such being the case, the number of visitors to London is ever on the increase. To these, on their arrival in this vast capital, we here, if they will accept us as their guides, beg to offer, ere going into more minute details, a GENERAL DESCRIPTION. Without cumbering our narrative with the fables of dim legendary lore, with regard to the origin of London-or LlynDyn, "the town on the lake," we may mention, that the Romans, after conquering its ancient British inhabitants about A.D. 61, finally rebuilt and walled it in about A.D. 301; from which time it became, in such excellent hands, a place of no little importance. Roman remains, such as fine tessellated pavements, bronzes, weapons, pottery, and coins, are occasionally turned up by the spade of our sturdy excavators while digging below the foundations of houses; and a few scanty fragments of the old Roman Wall, which was rather more than three miles round, are still to be seen. London, in the Anglo-Norman times though confined originally by the said wall, grew up a dense mass of brick and wooden houses, ill-arranged, unclean, close, and, for the most part, terribly insalubrious. Pestilence was the natural consequence. Up to the time of the great plague of 1664-5, which destroyed 68,596, some say 100,000 persons-there were, dating from the pestilence of 1348, no fewer than some nine visitations of widely-spreading epidemics in Old London. When, in 1666, the great fire, which burnt 13,200 houses, spread its ruins over 436 acres, and laid waste 400 streets, came to force the Cockneys to mend their ways somewhat, and open out their over-cramped habitations, some good was effected. But, unfortunately, during the rebuilding of the city, Sir Christopher Wren's plans for laying its streets out on a more regular plan, were poorly attended to: hence the still incongruous condition of older London when compared, in many instances, with the results of modern architecture, with reference to air, light, and sanitary arrangements. On account of the rubbish left by the fire and other casualties, the City stands from twelve to sixteen feet higher than it did in the early part of its history—the road ways of Roman London, for example, being found on, or even below, the level of the cellars of the present houses. From being a city hemmed within a wall, London expanded in all directions, and thus gradually formed a connection with various clusters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of bridges it has also absorbed Southwark and Bermondsey, Lambeth and Vauxhall, on the south side of the Thames, besides many hamlets and villages further south. If we follow the Registrar-General, London, as defined by him, extends north and south between Norwood and Hampstead, and west and east between Hammersmith and Woolwich. The area of this, the greatest city in the world, is stated as 122 square miles, or a square of a little more than 11 miles to the side; so that the density of population is 29,322 people to a square mile, GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 11 and the proximity of the population is 11'04 yards; that is to say, the people are at a mean distance of a little over 11 yards from each other. Its population approaches the aggregate number of inhabitants of twenty-two other large towns of the United Kingdom: it nearly equals the aggregate population of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna; or, with the suburbs, it equals that of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. The jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor extends over a square mile of territory, on which 74,897 inhabitants slept on the census night of 1871. At the same date the population of the entire metropolis (including the City, as above) was found to be 3,266,987; or, including the inhabitants of the suburbs, the enormous number of four millions and a half. It may here be remarked, that the population of the City is becoming smaller every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. By the census of 1861, the city population was 112,247; while, including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034—or twenty-five times as great as the former ! The growth of London to its present enormous size may readily be accounted for, when we reflect that for ages it has been the capital of England, and the seat of her court and legislature; that since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has become a centre for those two countries; and that, being the resort of the nobility, landed gentry, and other families of opulence, it has drawn a vast increase of population to minister to the tastes and wants of those classes; while its fine natural position, lying as it does on the banks of a great navigable river, some sixty miles from the sea, and its generally salubrious site and soil-the greater part of London is built on gravel, or on a species of clay resting on sand—alike plead in its favour. At one time London, like ancient Babylon, might fairly have been called a brick-built city. It is so, of course, still, in some But we are greatly improving: within the last few years a large number of stucco-fronted houses, of ornamental character, have been erected; and quite recently, many wholly of stone, sense. |