ed an extent of nearly forty-five thousand acres, and contained upward of three hundred thousand houses, occupied by about two million five hundred thousand souls; constituting not only the densest, but the busiest hive, the most wondrous workshop, and the richest bank in the world. The mere name of London awakens a thousand trains of varied reflection. It is the focus of modern civilizationthe great capital of the world. To the west, it is a city of palaces, adorned with parks, and ennobled with triumphal arches, grand statues, and stately monuments; to the east, it presents a labyrinth of narrow lanes, dingy counting-houses, and huge masses of warehouses, with doors and cranes ranged one above another, in towering succession. It is a vast bricken multitute a strange incongruous chaos of wealth and want, ambition and despairof the brightest charity and the darkest crime— where there are more houses and more houseless, ( more feasting and famishing, than upon any other spot on earth." Pampered luxury riots in prodigal excesses, and squalid poverty pines in pitiless penury and wretchedness. The opulent state of a coroneted aristocracy, and the wreck of the despised and depraved children of poverty and crime, are there to be seen in glaring and painful contrast. In a word, London presents an epitome not only

of the nation, but of the world. Within its precincts are to be found all classes and circles of life

-the intellectual, moral, and social, as well as the untutored and debased-each revolving in its several sphere. It is the grand theatre of life, in which all imaginable characters severally enact their parts. The merchant, eager in his pursuit of gain, the hireling, bending under the pressure of his toil, the devotees of science and literature, busily intent upon exploring the mysteries of nature and art; while the proud patrician, and the votaries of pleasure, with butterfly wing, flutter and dazzle amid their splendor and luxury.

Speaking of the entertainment the streets of the British Metropolis afforded him, Boswell remarks': "I have often amused myself with thinking how different a place London is, to different people. They whose narrow minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it only as the seat of government in its different departments; a grazier, as a vast market for cattle; a mercantile man, as a place where a prodigious deal of business is done upon 'Change; a dramatic enthusiast, as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments; a man of pleasure, as an assemblage of taverns, &c.; but the intellectual man is struck with it as com

prehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible."

London-opulent, enlarged, and still

Increasing London! Babylon of old,

Not more the glory of the world than she,
A more accomplished world's chief glory now.

Before, however, we commence our perigrinations, we are tempted to give a recent sketch from one of the London papers, of the city as it presents itself by night. "Those who have only seen London in the day-time, with its flood of life, rushing through its arteries to its restless heart, know it not in its grandest aspect. It is not in the noise and roar of the cataract of commerce pouring through its streets, nor in its forest of ships, nor in its vast docks and warehouses, that its true solemnity is to be seen. To behold it in its greatest sublimity, it must be contemplated by night, afar off from an eminence. The noblest prospect in the world, it has been well said, is London viewed from the suburbs on a clear winter's evening.

"The stars are shining in the heavens; but there is another firmament spread below, with its millions of bright lights glittering at our feet. Line after line sparkles, like the trails left by meteors, cutting and crossing one another, till they are lost in the haze of the distance. Over the whole there

hangs a lurid cloud, bright as if the monster city were in flames, and looking afar off like the sea by night, made phosphorescent by the million creatures dwelling within it. At night it is that the strange anomalies of London are best seen. Then, as the hum of life ceases, and shops darken, and the gaudy gin-palaces thrust forth their ragged, squalid crowds to pace the streets, London puts on its most solemn look of all. On the benches of the parks, in the niches of the bridges, and in the litter of the markets, are huddled together the homeless and the destitute. The only living things that haunt the streets, are the poor unfortunate beings, who stand shivering in their finery, waiting to catch the drunkard as he goes shouting homewards. Here on a door-step crouches some shoeless child, whose day's begging has not brought it enough to purchase even the two-penny bed that its young companions in beggary have gone to. There, where the stones are taken up and piled high in the road, and the gas streams from a tall pipe in the centre of the street in a flag of flame-there, round the red glowing coke fire, are grouped a ragged crowd, smoking or dozing through the night, beside it. Then, as the streets grow blue with the coming light, and the church spires and chimney tops stand out against the sky with a sharpness of out

line that is seen only in London before its million fires cover the town with their pall of smoke-then come sauntering forth the unwashed poor, some with greasy wallets on their backs, to hunt over each dirt heap, and eke out life by seeking refuse bones, or stray rags and pieces of old iron: others on their way to their work, gathered at the corner of the street round the breakfast-stall, and blowing saucers of steaming coffee drawn from tall tin cans, with the fire shining crimson through the holes beneath; whilst already the little slattern girl, with her basket slung before her, screams water-cresses through the sleeping streets. Yet who, to see the squalor and wretchedness of London by night, would believe that twenty-nine of the London bankers, have cleared as much as nine hundred and fifty-four million pounds sterling, in one year, the average being more than three millions of money daily-or that the loans of merely one house in the city throughout the year exceed thirty millions!"

Where London now stands, some sixteen or eighteen centuries back, stood an immense forest, extending from the Thames on one side, to Epping, and Hainault on the other.

As far back as one thousand years-at which period the several Saxons kingdoms were amalga