mated under Egbert, the first king of all England— London rose into importance as its capital. It was enclosed by walls, defended by strong bastions, and prepared for defence against Northern and other marauders. About this period the Thames extended over the low lands as far as Battle Bridge, passing between Holborn-Hill and Snow-Hill. Another part of it ran through, where now stands Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Walbrook and Dowgate, over which were wooden bridges.

From the earliest times, London has suffered greatly both by fire and pestilence. In 760–765, and 793, it was nearly destroyed by fire. In 1563, twenty thousand persons were carried off by the plague; in 1610, forty thousand, and in 1665, no less than eighty thousand persons fell victims to this visitation. Immediately after, occurred (in 1666) the Great Fire of London, destroying nearly three-fourths of the city, and property to the amount of ten millions sterling.

London has also at times suffered from insurrections and commotions within its walls; in the reign of Richard II., by Wat. Tyler; in the reign of Henry VI., by Jack Cade, and in that of Charles I. between him and the Parliament, etc. It was also, in 1703, visited by a storm, which blew down two thousand chimneys, stripped the

lead off several churches, killed thirty or forty persons, sank four hundred vessels in the Thames, and caused a loss £2,000,000.

Three hundred years ago, London was neither paved nor lighted, excepting a few lanterns suspended, as in some parts of Paris, across the road. East Smithfield was open to Tower Hill, Moorfields was open to the small village of Huxton, and Finsbury fields were covered with wind-mills. St. Giles's was in the fields, and the Strand had gardens on each side. Convent-Garden was really the garden of a Convent. Westminster was a very small town; Southwark only a few streets, (dull, dirty, and cheerless,) and Lambeth a little village near the Thames. Still in those days, England could muster a large army, and had afforded considerable assistance to the different sovereigns of Europe. And this was London of the olden time.

The improvements of London began in the reign of George II.-Squares were made, streets formed, churches erected, Westminster Bridge built, the houses on London bridge pulled down, and most of the city gates removed.

Assuming the area of London to be nineteen square miles, it yields a population to each mile of very nearly 130,000 human creatures, performing within that narrow limit, all the operations of

life and death, mixed up in a fearful melée of passion and interest, luxury and starvation, hard work and indolence; besides an infinity of occupations, useful, ornamental and mischievous. In the more densely populated regions, the average is doubled. A quarter of a million of souls subsisting within the limits of a square mile, is a spectacle that cannot be rendered intelligible by written description. The magnitude of its wretchedness baffles us. Individual cases of extreme suffering move our sympathies, but as their number is increased, the distinctness of misery diminishes in its influence.

People of rank and fashion in former times occupied the side of the river Thames, the Strand, Drury Lane, and the neighborhood of Convent Garden, which were then unenclosed fields; and in that neighborhood was built, by Inigo Jones, a church in the pure Tuscan style, at that period the only one in England. Merchants resided between Temple-bar and the Exchange. Desperadoes, broken-down spendthrifts, and criminals of all grades, resided in the Whitefriars; in Lewkner's Lane lived many profligate characters. Books were then, as now, sold in Paternoster Row, and in Little Britain,-not far from it; divinity and classic books, on the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard; law, history, and plays, about Tem

ple-bar; French books in the Strand. The celebrated jester to Queen Elizabeth, Dick Tarleton, kept a tavern in the Row, which was much frequented by the wits of the day.

Since these days, London has passed through many mutations; it has more than quadrupled its size, and has not yet stopped growing.' The centralizing tendency of the fashionable world is still westward-Belgrave Square and the vicinity of Hyde Park. Of the City proper we need not speak, it remains in statu quo; as also does the veritable Cockney, who, ignored by his patrician neighbor, is wholly innocent of any participation in the busy movements beyond his own plebeian circle, while his dormant ideas and plodding feet, possibly never pass beyond the limits of Templebar.

The vast labyrinth of London streets is enough to baffle the best topographer. Thousands who live at the one extremity, know nothing of those residing at the other-as if they were antipodes. No man does, or can know London in all its details. What does the fashionable fop, at the West End, know of the plebeian of the city, or the degraded dwellers in the vicinity of Wapping, Seven Dials, or Rotherhithe -or the thousand obscure and densely crowded courts and alleys,

east of the India House? How many in St. John's Wood could find their way on the other side of the Thames? What memory would be found equal to the remembrance of all the names, affluents, bearings and geographical positions of its 20,000 streets! It is the study of a life-time.

Till within the last few years, London presented comparatively but slender claims to architectural elegance. Of its public buildings there were but few that exhibited any great taste, while the mansions of the nobility, and the religious edifices of the city might also be classed under the same category. With the exception of St. Paul's, the Abbey at Westminster, and Somerset House, most of the splendid structures that now cluster so thickly its numerous streets, and adumbrate the vast opulence of this mighty emporium of commerce and wealth, have been erected during the last thirty years. Within forty years, four or five splendid new bridges have spanned the waters of the Thames. This has been owing to the long interval of peace, which has induced more fostering care and cultivation of art and love of refinement. Although much was accomplished in this regard, during the reigns of George IV. and his immediate successor, yet under the auspices of the reigning Monarch-the most universally beloved of all England's sovereigns-London