MODERN LONDON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3262, 17 August 1881, Page 3

MODERN LONDON.

Poet Milton once, moved -within himself at sight of the metropolis in which he lived, exclaimed, 'Behold now, this vast city! . Had his lot been cast in these days, he might have said, • Behold now, this vast world !' We of London sometimes, as a province covered with houses, hut, indeed, the term is too narrow in meaning to be properly descriptive of the modern capital of England. The London of to-day is hardly more or lots than a world in itself. The very number q£ it* in.U&bitan.te when com*

pai'ed with the population of any otiiev town or city in tlio world demande Unit it should be called differently from them, while tho notion of provincial is utterly belied by tho heterogeneous character of the mass of persons congregated within its boundaries. If we are to call it a city, wo must call ifc the greatest city the world has ever seen. No existing city of Europe, Asia, Africa, or America approaches it in extent; and the largest cities of the ancient world are small by its side. Paris has a population of less than two millions ; Berlin uid New York little more than a million ; Vienna seven hundred thousand ; Bombay about six hundred and fifty thousand ; and Borne about three hundred thousand. The population of ancient Rome is said to have been one million and twenty thousand, and of Nineveh from eight to nine hundred, thousand. Compared with these the population of London, which numbers within its boundaries four millions five hundred and thirty-four thousand of inhabitants. We know how closly some of these four and a half millions are packed together, how in the poorer quarters whole families herd together like animals in the space of a few feet, and yet we know that within the fifteen miles radius of Charing Cross London covers nearly 700 square miles. The figures of the General Post Office tell us that it has an influence with all parts of the world, for ifc has a yearly delivery in its postal district of 295,803,300 letters. All countries under the sun contribute to its comfort and its wealth. Ships scour all seas bringing things useful, necessary, and ornamental to the port of London, and in the port there are every day not less than 1000 ships and 9000 sailors. Animate as well as inanimate freight is borne to London, and, to say nothing of the constant influx from Europe and America, there are from the countries -of the East alone some 10,000 Hindoos, Chinese, Africans and others east every year upon our streets. The population of London is beyond doubt the oddest and most strangely assorted of any place in Christendom. There are more Boman Catholics than in Borne, more Irish than in Belfast; more Scotsmen than in Aberdeen; more Welshmen than in Swansea j and more than three times as many Jews as in the whole of Palestine. There are more country-born persons in London than in the counties of Devon and Gloucester combined. Macaulay used to boast that he had walked through every street of the London of his day!; but, notwithstanding the recent enthusiasm for sensatioul pedestrianisrn, we fancy I there are few persons who would care to undertake the task of travelling on foot the 7000 miles of streets which make the LonI don of our time. It takes not one, but all the countries of the civilised world to find food for the four and a half million dwellers in London, There are consumed here on an average every day 128,000,000 gallons of water. JFrom the Smithfleld Market alone there issue every day, to be distributed east, west, north, and south throughout the metropolis, nearly five million pounds of meat, poultry, and provisions. This represents not more than half the entire consumption • and throtigh Billingsgate Market alone there pass on an average every year upwards of 100,000 tons of fish. We have just given the figures of the water supply; but, as Sir Wilfred Lawson knows, water is not by any means the only drink consumed in London. The business of the publican is a flourishing one ; and the current saying that a public house stands ut the corner of every-street in London seems not so very wide of the truth when supported by the well-authenticated statement that the beer shops and gin palaces of the metropolis would, if placed side by side, stretch from Charing Cross to Chicester a distance of 62 miles. The figures relating to poverty awaken little surprise, following those which tell of the preralance of the habits of drink ; and one is not astonished to learn that London contains as many paupers as would more than occupy every house in Brighton. From intemperance and pauperism it is an easy step to the regions of crime, and with 60 miles of public houses there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that more than 49,000 persons are annually committed by tho magistrates for drunkeness and disordely conduct, and that more than one-third of all the crime in the country is perperated in London.