374 Scientific Intelligence. — Miscellaneous. 



which period the population would, by his computation, have ar- 

 rived at exactly 5,359,000. Nay, more, were it not for this stop, 

 he shows that the increase would double in forty years, with a slight 

 accelerating increment, as he gives the amount of human beings in 

 the city for 1840 at 10,718,880! The identical year 1800, the 

 commencement of a truly important century, found London still en- 

 larging, brick-fields and scaffolding were invading all its outskirts : 

 but the inhabitants, who had increased in a reasonably rapid ratio, 

 numbered only 830,000." 



It might here be objected, that the two plans are rather topo- 

 graphical than otherwise ; but such a consideration does not at all 

 invalidate the conclusions resulting from their examination. The 

 local and limited compass embraced by topography, bears to the 

 wide generalities of geography, the same interest and import as that 

 which biography carries to the nationalities of history. He who is 

 acquainted with the multitudinous details of the British metropolis, 

 cannot therefore study the exhibition before him but with surprise. 

 On the east, he will perceive that the Tower stands separated from 

 London, and Finsbury and Spitalfields exhibit nothing but trees and 

 hedge-rows ; while on the west of Temple Bar the villages of Charing 

 Cross, St Giles, and other scattered hamlets are segregated, and West- 

 minster is a distinct city. The intervening north bank of the river 

 Thames, or the Strand, has a line of seats and gardens of the nobility ; 

 a fact traceable in the names still remaining:. At the date of this old 

 map, London contained about 145,000 inhabitants ; and was then, 

 as now, the very focus in which the royal, the legislative, the scien- 

 tific, and the trading interests of the nation were concentrated ; being, 

 as Camden said, " the epitome of all Britain, as much above the 

 rest as the cypress is above the little sprig." In the narrative of 

 the visit of the Duke de Nayera to the Court of Henry VIII., in 

 1543, London is described as one of the largest cities in Christen- 

 dom, " its extent being near a league." The Thames was then 

 the highway of the metropolis, and its single bridge a very wonder : 

 ** Never," says the Duke''s secretary, admiring its beauty, *' never 

 did I see a river so thickly covered with swans as this.'' Paulus 

 Jobius said, that these birds in groups greeted the arriving fleets ; 

 and one of Cardinal Pole's suite described the view of the river 

 above bridge, as a vast mass of silver, from the abundance of swans 

 as far as the eye could reach. How has commerce altered this ? 



The second of the presents mentioned is from Mr Wyld, being his 

 latest map of London and its environs, with a novel and important 

 addition of the levels taken by order of the Commissioners of sewers. 

 Wonderful is the difference. We now see a very world of dwellings 

 ©f 30 miles in circuit, with a population of 2,200,000 in the city and 

 its incorporated suburbs, and their food — wheat, flesh meat, fish, 

 vegetables, fruit, milk, wine and malt liquors — costs a million of 

 money weekly ; and to this must be added tlie constant circulation 



