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1829. | Affairs in General. 405 
If Lord Lowther have actually resigned, we shall regret his loss, as a 
public officer. The Strand was a nuisance; and we might well be 
alive to the taunts of foreigners at our suffering the chief transit of the 
capital, the very highway of London, to remain for centuries the same 
dirty, dilapidated, narrow passage. If two cabriolets came in different 
directions, nothing but good driving could keep them from a crash ; a 
pair of coaches could scarcely escape without carrying off a wheel of 
each other ; a waggon reigned royally over the whole passage ; and if 
a van, presuming on its lightness, attempted to slip by, its only choice 
was into the windows of which side it was to discharge its cargo; a 
dozen gazers at a print-shop swelled the population to such a plethora, 
that there was no passing without a battle, or the loss of one’s pocket- 
book ; and the halt of a ballad-singer was a stoppage of the whole pedes- 
trian intercourse of the west and east for the time. But better things 
are at hand ; workmen have been employed for the last week or two in 
pulling down the old houses in the Strand which, in consequence of 
being too near the road, had impeded for a length of time the carriage- 
way, and, in fact, foot-path of that place, and, although not perceived 
by the public, in erecting the new buildings in lieu of the others. A 
day or two since, the labourers having cleared away all the rubbish 
occasioned by taking down the three houses that were nearest to Exeter 
‘Change, the passers by were (as well they might be) astonished to see 
one house at the distance of five or six yards‘ from. the old pavement 
completed and occupied, and’ another nearly half finished. The im- 
provement, which will undoubtedly be finished soon, is decidedly one of 
the most useful that has been lately effected, and the Strand will shortly 
present a very pretty appearance, especially when the long-talked of 
King’s College is erected, and the square built near the National Repo- 
sitory at Charing-cross. It is said that the conductors of the works are 
only waiting now for the pulling down of Exeter Change to advance 
more rapidly. The conception of those improvements is, we will admit, 
not due to Lord Lowther, but the execution is: and in this world of 
matter-of-fact, we consider the execution of a public work to be quite 
as good as the conception, and more useful too. We hope that he, or 
some successor inspired by his activity, will proceed up the Strand and 
utterly knock down that perilous receptacle of filth, pestilence, rags, and 
Israelites, lying between the New Church and St. Clements. Let the 
same mallet which knocks down Exeter "Change and sends its Jews- 
and wild beasts to seek whom they may devour elsewhere ; knock down 
the Lions’ Inn colony, and let the tribes of Dan begin their peregrina- 
tion to the east, by removing beyond Temple Bar. 
The Irish papers are just now especially indignant at three’things ; at 
O’Connel’s not daring to take the seat which he pledged his soul and 
body that he would take in “less than no time,” according to his own 
brilliant chronology—with his Grace of Wellington for saying, that the 
object of his bill was to curb, break in, and finally break down popery ; 
oS insult which is not by any means the less, for their not believing that 
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he means any such thing—and with the Marquis of Anglesea, for his 
not running, scymetar in hand, all the way from Holyhead to Downing 
Street, and scalping the Duke at his desk, like a chevalier, as he is. 
We are no warriors, and will not lend ourselves to this thirst of car- 
