NEW PICTURE OF LONDON; OR, A VIEW OF THE POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, MEDICAL, LITERARY, MUNICIPAL, PREFACE. THE unexampled success which has attended the "Picture of London" since the period of its first publication, has prompted the Editor to renewed exertions; and he respectfully submits the present edition to the public, with the hope that it may be regarded as a faithful and entertaining Picture of the existing state of the British Metropolis. The Editor has been anxious to justify and substantiate the title by which he has introduced this volume to the public. As it is called a "New Picture of London," he has been solicitous to present, in each succeeding edition, such a view of this distinguished Metropolis as may be calculated to convey an adequate notion of its ever-changing mien, as well as to delineate with scrupulous fidelity those severer characteristics which indicate the stamina of an empire's capital. The task he has undertaken is, it must be confessed, one of great magnitude; yet it is from a contemplation of the dignity of the subject that he has derived the necessary stimulus to exertion. If he has occasionally dilated on comparative trifles, it must be recollected that minute parts are of essential importance in a mighty whole: we pass by the isolated block as an abstract object, but gaze with awe at the solemn pyramid. Without pretending to the skill of a painter in arranging his materials with that refinement of composition so necessary to the ends of art, the Editor trusts that their proportionate magnitudes have been observed, their due stations assigned to them, and that no artifices of light or shade have been |