( 600 ) 

 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



STATISTICS, &c. 

 The Great Metropolis. 2 vols. 8vo. Saunders and Ottley. 1836. 



THE volumes now before us are from the pen of Mr. Grant, author of " Ran- 

 dom Recollections of the Lords and Commons," a work which met with con- 

 siderable success, partly due to the novelty of the subject which it treated, 

 and the curiosity of the public with respect to those persons whose appear- 

 ance, character, and manner, were portrayed in these sketches, and partly, 

 no doubt, to the talent and vivacity with which they were written. The author 

 himself, in his present work, has made so free with the names of all the 

 parties connected with the daily and periodical press, that we feel no delicacy 

 in publishing his own, though he has not attached it to his volumes. 



"The Great Metropolis" is a book which will find numerous readers among 

 our country cousins, who eagerly catch at every scrap of information concern- 

 ing our vast capital, and it is well calculated to satisfy the cravings of their 

 appetite for metropolitan wonders. And even those parties who are well ac- 

 quainted with London and its vast machinery will derive much entertain- 

 ment from the lively descriptions of scenes and circumstances within the 

 sphere of their knowledge, which are contained in its pages. We are sur- 

 prised, however, to find a man who has lived so many years in London, and 

 who has had such excellent opportunities as Mr. Grant of acquiring that kind 

 of information of which his volumes are made up, should have fallen into so 

 many errors, on points where there is scarcely any excuse for making a mistake. 

 With such errors the first volume teems. The second is not quite so amenable 

 to criticism on this point, but is by no means guiltless of the same offence. 



We shall proceed to point out some of the most glaring instances we 

 have met with in the course of perusing them, at the sametime that we 

 give a brief analysis of its contents. The first chapter, which is exceed- 

 ingly short, confines itself to the statistics of London. Mr. Grant com- 

 putes the present population at two millions, finds fault with the want of 

 architectural beauty in the majority of the streets, and asserts, we think 

 without sufficient foundation, that not more than three or four per cent, of its 

 inhabitants "first drew their breath in London." No doubt it annually re- 

 ceives a great accession to its population from the rural districts, but Mr. 

 Grant's position is most absurdly exaggerated nay, he virtually contradicts 

 himself almost in the same page, for he calls London, and truly calls it, the 

 healthiest metropolis in the world, and states that the births exceed the deaths 

 by 2000 or 3000. If this be the case, what becomes of the natives ? Are 

 they all so obliging as to quit the great city, and give up all the advantages 

 to be derived from an early acquaintance and connexion with its inhabitants, 

 and the modes of arriving at wealth and distinction, or, in an humbler sphere, 

 of gaining a comfortable livelihood, with the prospect of future competence, 

 merely to make room for the gaping countrymen who crowd up to make their 

 fortunes in streets which many of them believe to be actually paved with gold ? 

 However, there is some foundation for that which Mr. Grant puts forward, 

 inasmuch as the rapid increase in the population is entirely attributable to the 

 numbers who flock in from all parts, though they certainly do not compose 

 the half, perhaps not more than the fourth part, of its residents. 



The second chapter is devoted to the theatres. We differ much from Mr. 

 Grant in his estimate of the theatrical propensities of the Londoners. It is a 

 notorious fact that the theatres of the present day are, with few exceptions, 

 either filled with orders, or, if we may be pardoned an Irishism, filled with 

 emptiness ; and he himself gives a mournful account of the heavy losses that 

 have been suffered of late years by the speculators in theatrical property; and 



