LONDON COMMUNITIES.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 547, 20 March 1876, Page 3

LONDON COMMUNITIES.

A correspondent of the Chicago InterOcean, says : —London is a curious aggrega tion of communities, each dwelling in a city of its own, and each striving to entrench itself behind an impenetrable wall of social prejudices. An experienced Londoner can tell with tolerable certainty to what caste a man belongs by knowing where he lives. It would be difficult to map out the exact boundaries of the rival camps, but Becky Sharp knows perfectly well the social status of Mrs Veneering when she discovers that the dwelling of the latter is in Bloomsbury, while the stock-broker who inhabits a villa at Norwood views his neighbour with suspicion who has lately removed from Hackney. The various districts are generally perfect cities in miniature, each with its business centre, from which radiate the dwelling portions of the neighbourhood. Nothing gives so striking an impression of the vast size of Loudon as when, after travelling in almost every direction from St Paul’s, and passing through street after street lined with dwel-ling-houses, without a store of any kind in sight, just as one might suppose himself on the verge of the country, to come suddenly upon the noise and bustle of a neighbourhood given up to business. There is nothing of a suburban aspect about the stores, which, to all appearances, might have been transported from the most central portion of the metropolis. Another mile of travel through streets bordered by pleasant gardens, and another nucleus is reached, and the experience is repeated until it seems as if the interminable city would never be left behind. The reason of this wide-spread distribution is that as London has outgrown its original boundaries it has gradually absorbed the outlying villages, and while nothing remains to mark their dividing lines, local requirements have promoted the growth of local trade, and the original village stores have multiplied until they have become thriving business settlements, isolated but complete.