LONDON. 



169 



to the beginning of the eighteenth centur}' Paris equalled it in population, and had 

 no doubt surpassed it at various preceding epochs. But no sooner had England 

 gained a footing in India, which gave London a fresh source of wealth through its 

 commerce with the East, than the city on the Thames rapidly and definitely 

 passed ahead of its rival on the Seine. Its population of scarcely over half 

 a million souls in the beginning of the eighteenth century rose to nearly a million 

 in the course of the succeeding hundred years, and has quadrupled since. The 

 average normal increase, which during the preceding decade annually amoimted 

 to 45,000 souls, exceeds at present 60,000. This increase is the same as if a village 

 of 170 inhabitants sprang daily from the ground, to be added to the existing 



Fig. 89. — The Growth of London. 

 Scale 1 : 178,500. 





i^-: 



2 Miles. 



agglomeration of buildings and human beings. On an average a new house is 

 built every hour of the day or night, and added to the 500,000 existing houses 

 of the metropolis.* The absorption of the country by the great city proceeds with 

 the inexorability of a natural phenomenon. The " ocean of bricks and mortar " 

 expands without cessation, like the surface of a lake which has broken its embank- 

 ments. And whilst London increases in extent, seudins: forth shoots in all 

 directions like certain trees, the villages around it gradually grow into towns, until 

 they are swallowed up by the overflowing metropolis. Three hundred years ago 



* In 1878 17,127 new houses were tuilt within the district of the Metropolitan Police, and 352 

 streets, with a total length of 55 miles, were opened to the public. 



119 



