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THE GOVERNMENT IN THE PANTItY. A MONG ou...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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What London" Is Coming To. No Man, Being...
eengers , and above these the Grand . Central Chimney-pot Railway , running on firni platforms built over the roofs , and crossing from street to street on tubular bridges . This aerial railway will be in commumcation with the subterranean railway which burrows under every street except those devoted to the Pickford van' and fourwheeled waggon , tunnels which have in 1880 so lightened the street traffic and rendered the roads clear and pleasant for quick , convenient , and safe travelling . And to still further increase the attractions of London in 1880 , ovr dreaming friend sees , or
" thinks he sees , " a railway moving round its whole circumference ¦ wi th radiating spokes from the circular iron-felloe to a great central station , somewhere in the heart of London . In this new city a man of business would be as a spider in his web ready to run in an instant down a ladder to any portion of its circumference . But need we follow him through his dream , watching the pleasure balloons floating gaily through smokeless air from Islington to Hyde Park or from Peckham to Putney , the great Thames silver again and teeming with fish , or coal exchanged for some purer and su l er fuel ; so that once more grapes ripen in Gower Street and Drury
"Lane boasts its gardens . But seriously , London is becoming oiie of the most uncomfortable of cities . It wants more bridges , wider streets , more diffusion of traffic ; at present the city is in extreme danger of apoplexy , and we expect every day to hear of a stoppage in Gheapside , leading to the death of soine foiirteen stockbrokers , on their way- home to dinner . It is true that people live more out of town than they used , and that late at night the City is a howling wilderness , peopled only by errant clerks , cats ; and old laundresses ; but their daily migration onlyrenders the streets twice a day more hopelessly blocked than ever . Increased population , and a deluge torrent of fifteen hundred Omnibuses and ten thousand cabs tear up and down , and render the uproar and confusion more intolerable ; and it must be remembered that if the railways carry away nig-lrtly many thousand men of business , they daily bring into London to replace them as many thousand men from the country . " . . '' -
.. , Twenty years after the Restoration , Albemarle-street and Bondstreet we ; e timidly begun . Now the brick glacier creeps on rapidly towards Fulham , and between London and Glapha ' m there can scarcely be said to be a break of country , except for an instant on the left-hand side of the road at Kennington-comnion . Where Chartists" once met ; and theological open-air disputants wrangle * how great public gardens assume almost the grandeur of a royal park , were the bushes less like liair-brushes . On all sides London , like Tin immense over-boiled pudding burst out at its edges ; Holloway , 6 outhwark ,. Whitechapel , Kensington , everywhere the creeping inundation of brick and mortar spreads ; where . will windmill buzz
it stop PA hundred years ago and there was a - ing round in Rathbone-place , an avenue of elms rose where the Middlesex Hospital now stands , and . Oxford Street was a deep country quagmire road between hedges , much infested by high-\ ys \ ymen , though it did lead ominously to Tyburn and the triple tree . Only a hundred years ago London houBes were first numbered , and only about a hundred and fifty since streets were first lighted at night . It is not more than two hundred years or so since . Ceomwepl thought it necessary to try and pass ah Act to restrain " the new buildings in and about London ; " yet Here we are , in l $ 60 , growingfaster than ever , with all the rapidity , in fact , of the Bean-stalk in the fairy story . The growing cannot : be helped , and must not be interfered with ; the dirt , and noise , and confusion , and impediment must and oujrht—and how P Mainly by bridges . A philanthropist
of our acquaintance declares that if he liad a great sum td bestow on London , he would spend it in buying Waterloo and Southwark bridges , and throwing , them both open on the same hour and day with much waving of flags and firing of commemorative cannon . Nor would the flags and cannon be evidences of unworthy vanity for a great city . We are now actually reduced to three bridges—Westminster , London , and Blackfriars—Southwark and Waterloo beingbarred up by tolls , which are , to nine out of ten , prohibitory . So we slmll drone on , till London Bridge resembles nothing more than Napoleon ' s unfortunate passage of the Beresina . , The storv of the ffrowth of London is more like a fairy story than
a sober topographical reality . It is almost impossible to fancy Marylebone all gardens and ' fields as late as 1776 , and boys flying lutes in the meadows round the British Museum less than a century qgo . It is . easier to believe that Edwai'd VI , wrote his Latin exercises in Bridewell , that the DuUre of Gloucester dwelt near Paul ' s Wharf , or that the . Strand , in Elizabeth ' s time , was one long chain of nobles' palaces , than such old-world stories ; yet those legends are as true as that Lincoln ' s Inn Fields was once fashionable , that Prince Rupert lived in Firiabury , and their lordships Buckingham and ShafteHbury not far off . Who enn foretel the changes ot such a wondrous city P The Thames once boasted its " fat ealmon ; its shores may one d « y , instead of wuyeliouses , boast of fitir terraces the day be the
and waving- avenuea . London , now largest , may owe fairest of cities , though close packed , nnd its soil worth hundreds the square foot ; for it still 1 ms larpe and central plots of ground available . for ventilating- squares , railway stations , or great public buildings . Thore areSaffron Hill and HungerfovdJVlttiket , and the CoIoBweum , all vacant , and at present uselesp ; at Tqkeuhouse Yard they nlrertdy spealj : of a terminus , nnd ftt Hungerfovd Bndge of another , that is to cross the water and connect central Mmcton with the Pimlioo and London Bridge ^ Railways , The , underground ¦ . railway ( not very healthful or inviting for pleasure tripa ) m begun ; a railway following the street froni Islington to the E < hr \ vare Boad and Paddinffton would he accessible from all parts of London , and would feed the Great Western . Let vrhat will be done , tins w
certain , that some means of traversing and bisecting this enormous , incoherent , and straggling city must be devised . At present , you come from the country sixty miles in less time than you take to get from Sfcoreditch station to Brompton . Why should we be doomed to have annoyances increase as last ; as our wealth and population lttf * l * PflSC t ' . ¦ . ¦ . Juvenal ' s sketch of the miseries of walking in old Rome and Gay ' s delineation of the annoyances of old London , are nothing compared with our present sufferings in Holborn , Cheapside , the Strand , or the more crowded streets ; we no longer , certainly , have benedictions from the upper windows , as in old Edinburgh , the filthiest and most cozy of cities ; no longer bands of brutal MohoclfS punch you full of holes , or slit your nose ; no longer bucks think ifc chivalrous to knock down old men ; no longer have we masked highwaymen in Oxford Street , or cut-throats bullying in every tavern r
, But still no wonder that people who can help it never venture into the city , and talk in affected ignorance as if Finsbury was a dangerous part of Kamschatka , since street walking has become so vexatious , so slow , so dangerous , and so intolerable . In no other city of the world are the streets such a scene of helpless entanglement with trucks , Hansoms , waggons , carts , vansi carriages ; all squeezing and crushing in a defile too narrow for a third of them , grinding and tearing through liquid mud that is scattered like alms right or left on all the foot-passengers j sealing up this one ' s lips * asterisking that one ' s coat , and rendering the crossing a street at certain hours a matter of ten ' minutes' delay , and that too at an hour when seconds are worth silver , and minutes worth gold . And do the foot-pavements afford room for healthy brisk walking ;
room to walk two abreast with friends ? No ; _ they are loaded with a dense mass of humanity , close as herrings in a barrel . B , t > ws of stolid men with heraldic boards behind them and in front ; insensible files of policemen ; shop boys running errands , street porters , beggars with starlings on sticks , and with buzzing toys , fifes , and butterflies leaping out of boxes , with little copper kettles and tin whistles , and performing mice , dpgselleTs , sweepers , shoeblacks with their blacking slung behind them , milliners with show boxes ; men carrying copper pipes , or planks , or iron-hooping , tinkers waving their fire-pots , stockbrokers pushing for the train . to
butcher boys with their obtrusive trays , dangerous eyes ; sweeps who get more room than a " king would if / he were to go on his knees for it . Draymen in quilted suits , lowering beer casks down gaping cellars , fruit women , swells carrying umbrellas as if they thought they were rifles , hasty men with small carpet bags , servants gom # for beer , shopmen taking in goods—such are a few , very few of the obstructions that fill our streets sjnd impede while they constitute our traffic . If our population and traffic increase , some of these passengers must find put a means of reaching their destination under the ground or up in the air , or some day we shall have a jam with tremendous loss of life in some popular city thoronghfare .
A golden moment , as we all know , was let slip after the Jbire of London , when Ween ' s great rectangular plan , of street building was laid on one side . Had that great design been carried , out , we should have been able from the Golden Gallery of Saint Paul's to have now looked down on a city rich as old Babylon and beautiful as old Rome , and not on a confused mob struggling and fighting through a crowded nest of narrow streets and' curty alleys , where every sense is annoyed—a Gordian knot ot devious ways \ yllich wants some Macadam GasAH to cut through and through , with some of those wide undeviating sword-thrust roads which of old went forth from Koire straight and unbroken to her most distant provinces .
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¦•'¦ . . ' ¦ ' . ¦ j _ ' ¦ ; ' ¦ . . . ¦ . 182 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Feb . 25 , I 860 .
The Government In The Pantity. A Mong Ou...
THE GOVERNMENT IN THE PANTItY . A MONG our patriotic legislators are some who would not only make the Government paternal , but maternal , and evoiv go beyond that , and add to it a touch of those wejl-lcnown functionaries , "S ' airey . " and " Betsy Prigg . " These gentlemen seem to think we can dp nothing by . ourselves or for ourselves , and we should not be surprised if one of them 1 soon brings in a bill to compel each parish to provide inspectors to see how wo put our boots oi ) , lest we should sprain our ancles and twist our toes . We are-led to these conclusions by the appearance of a " bill , proposed by Messrs . ScHQjMWiEiD , Wise , and Vrti-iflRS , " for preventing the adulteration of articles of food and / drink . " We have no Jove for adulterators , nor for rogues of any other kmd . We have Christian charity enough to loye t )» e honest interests of society , and hate all rascals , from the big Joint Stock Company sort , which gets into Parliament and figures in company with pious contractors at the Premier ' s balls , down to the little urchin who diddles his
" pal" at chuck-farthing in the street ; nor have we a word to sny in favour of the knaves who forg-e trnde marks , make axes that won't chop , knives that won't cut , nnd dofrnud tboae grandmothers , wives , nnd daughters of England , to whom Mrs , Ejxis hns given such excellent advice , whenever they purchase ft reel of cotton or a skein of silk . We don't like " death in the pot , " ns revealed by old Aocum , nov the host of minor evils which Dr . Hassan 8 microacope has presented to public view . It is not pleasant to exohanee those shining 1 particles upon which Heb Majesty ' s omgy
is impressed ' , for pepper , composed of sawdust , nutmega that nave booh boiled for the felonious abstraction of their aromatic virtues , nor for the publicans' ponderous humoofcity , in the vulgar oallea " heavy wot' *—in which water , tx-eacle , copperas , nnd cooulua mmous conspire to make a nauseous and unwholesome moss . Wo mourn over the " infancy of England , " whose little lives have a sad
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 25, 1860, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25021860/page/10/
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