London, Ontario

“ That London is the great distributing centre of the world is shown by the fleets of the carrying trade of which the countless masts rise along her wharves and in her docks. She is also the bank of the world. ”

“ The Empire and the commercial relations of England draw representatives of trading communities or subject races from all parts of the globe, and the faces and costumes of the Hindoo, the Parsi, the Lascar, and the ubiquitous Chinaman, mingle in the motley crowd with the merchants of Europe and America. The streets of London are, in this respect, to the modern, what the great Place of Tyre must have been to the ancient world. But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on Carthage, Amsterdam on Venice, and [Pg 349] you will not make the equal, or anything near the equal, of London. ”

“ Trade, and commerce, and wealth, and population, were increasing by leaps and bounds; and like the rings which year by year are added to the trunk of a tree, so year by year, decade by decade, London—the metropolis—spread out, and grew, and grew. From something under one million of inhabitants in 1801, the population increased to nearly two and a half millions in 1851, partly by natural increase, due to the number of those who were born being greater than of those who died, partly by immigration from the country. ”

“ It must not be supposed that all the workers of London are crowded into the East End, but the tide is setting strongly in that direction. The poor quarters of the city proper are constantly being destroyed, and the main stream of the unhoused is toward the east. In the last twelve years, one district, “London over the Border,” as it is called, which lies well beyond Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Mile End, has increased 260,000, or over sixty per cent. The churches in this district, by the way, can seat but one in every thirty-seven of the added population. ”

“ London, the great metropolis, the capital of the Empire itself, constitutes, by the number of its inhabitants, so large a portion of the United Kingdom, that the health of its people is a very material factor in that of the kingdom. It has a population greater than either Scotland or Ireland, greater than any of our Colonies, except Canada and Australasia, greater than that of many foreign States— [2] “the greatest aggregate of human beings that has ever existed in the history of the world in the same area of space.” ”

“ It cannot be too often repeated that two causes made the strength of London: the unity of the City, so that its vast population moved as one man: and its wealth. The King thought of the subsidies—under the names of loans, grants, benevolences—which he could extort from the merchants. ”

“ What book has ever been written, nay, has ever attempted to be written, about the general architecture of London? The largest city in the world,—the metropolis of many cities in one city,—the aggregate of a hundred towns, each as big as Oxford, as Cambridge, as Winchester,—why should its stones be thus (p. 448) neglected? And, except for a sprinkling of traditional gibes, an annual dole of scornful references, what attention does the architecture of London receive from its inhabitants? or, indeed, from outsiders? Every one, on the contrary, considers himself at liberty to fling a stone at it. ”

“ The ever-growing suburbs of the great city, the West End, the fashionable quarter, Southern London across the river, with Lambeth and its memories of archbishops—all this, and much else that deserves an honoured place in the chronicles of the metropolis, we must perforce omit in our survey. Some of the stories are too modern to please the taste of those who revel in the past; and if the curious reader detects omissions, he may console himself by referring to some of the countless other books and guides which the attractions of London are ever forcing industrious scribes to produce. ”

“ NEWGATE. ROUND and within London lies a land chequered with lights and shadows, close city courts, and stifling suburban alleys, in which the sunshine only lingers for a few minutes during the day (where it seems imprisoned and in a hurry to escape above the dusky chimneys) ; and in this vast metropolis these scenes are contrasted with broad green, airy parks, and long lines of palace-like streets, which stretch westward and dip into the open and surrounding country. Its living crowds are ever in motion—now to witness a royal procession ”

“ So enigmatical is this metropolis of ours, that it would be equally true to state that 'London is rapidly increasing in population,' and that 'London is slowly decreasing in population.' The metropolis, as a whole, yearly increases its numbers; but the City, the original London, is less populous now than a century ago, on account of the streets having been widened, and many small dwelling-houses removed, to make way for large commercial establishments, the managers and clerks of which almost all sleep out of London. ”

“ In 1649 the Corporation of London founded a house called the London Workhouse, "for the entertainment of the greatest objects of commiseration, but likewise to receive a great number of the miserable and unhappy vagrant orphans known by the infamous name of 'blackguard,' the pest and shame of the City, pilfering and begging about the streets by day, and lying therein, almost naked, in all seasons of the year by night." In 1662 a charter of incorporation was granted, under the name of "The President (always the Lord Mayor) and Governors of the Poor of the City of London." ”

“ Up to nearly the end of the last century, these localities were for the most part, and for close on 350 years, confined to within a narrow area. With the rapid expansion of London north, east, south, and west, the 'trade' has not only expanded, but its representatives have sprung up in every district, whilst many of the older ones have forsaken the limits of the City, and pitched their tents in Greater London. For centuries bookselling and publishing flourished side by side in St. Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, and their immediate neighbourhoods. ”

“ The climate and soil of a country affect its history; treaties are often based on physical conditions, and trade routes determined by them; a nation's commerce and wealth depend largely on the character of its natural resources.
Some easy problems may be given to the senior classes to be answered by reference to physical conditions:
Why are London, New York, Chicago, Montreal, and Halifax, such important centres? ”

“ London is a town still further west, on the Great Western Railway, it has a population of 12,000, of which 500 are coloured people. What I have said of them in Toronto and Hamilton, will apply to their brethren here. They are rapidly advancing in this place in general refinement and respectability, nearly all seem engaged in some sort of useful employment. This is the Missionary field of the Colonial Church and School Society. They have done and are still doing a great deal to promote the interest and elevation of this people. ”

“ Sitting on the banks of the Thames, a short railway journey from the narrowest portion of the channel and thus, of all the large towns, most near to the Continent, London is the most efficient mediatrix and exchanger of news between the Continent and England and the Continent and America. As capital of England, of a country which has always carried the mails of all the nations and parts of the world to all the nations and parts of the world, London is the great political, mercantile, and scientific storehouse of the world. No other periodical press can boast of such favourable circumstances ”

“ The city of London hath given an example which, I doubt not, will be followed by the whole kingdom. The noble spirit of the metropolis is the life-blood of the state, collected at the heart; from that point it circulates, with health and vigour, through every artery of the constitution.... The city of London have expressed their sentiments with freedom and firmness; they have spoken truth boldly; and in whatever light their remonstrance may be represented by courtiers, I defy the most subtle lawyer in this country to point out a single instance in which they have exceeded the truth. ”

“ Surely if there are these great and intolerable defects they ought to be remedied by the action of some genuine popular local authority. But we have got no genuine popular local authority....
“London, large as it is, is a natural unit—united by common features, united by common approximation, by common neighbourhood, by common dangers—depending upon common supplies, having common wants and common conveniences.
“... Unity of Government in the metropolis is the only method on which we can proceed for producing municipal reform.” ”

“ I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice that he lives on the most respectable street in the East End—a street that would be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the desert of East London. It is surrounded on every side by close-packed squalor and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but its own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the people that come and go. ”

“ But if, to the London of old time, the Parks were not necessary, to modern London, which has more than doubled its population and its area in the last century and a half, they are an unspeakable boon. ”

“ The greatest improvements have of course been made in Old London proper,—that part once within the walls, which, compared to the present London, is simply as original Boston is when compared to itself as a whole, and including the annexations. London is indeed vast in dimensions, and has a population of 3,266,987; but outside of Old London are the annexed places. This new territory is built principally of brick, and is in comparatively modern style. Land having been cheap, the streets are of good width ”

“ Of course it is too much to say that all the satisfaction of life in London comes from literally living there, for it is not a paradox that a great deal of it consists in getting away. It is almost easier to leave it than not to, and much of its richness and interest proceeds from its ramifications, the fact that all England is in a suburban relation to it. Such an affair it is in comparison to get away from Paris or to get into it. London melts by wide, ugly zones into the green country, and becomes pretty insidiously, inadvertently—without stopping to change. ”

“ THE GUILD HALLS OF LONDON. Perhaps there are no corporate bodies now existing in England which can trace their beginnings in a more unbroken line to the earliest recorded historical events of the country, and surely none which have exercised so great political and civic influence, as the famous trade-guilds of London. There now exist in that city about one hundred such associations, the twelve most prominent and influential of them being styled as the Twelve Great Livery Companies, and these associations exercise no slight share in the government of the world's metropolis. ”

“ With this signal triumph of the people, to which the city of London had contributed so much, the present work is brought to a close. No good end would be served by entering the domain of contemporary politics. Enough has been set out in these pages to convince the impartial reader that the city of London is no mean city; that it possesses a record equal, if not indeed superior, to that of any other city in the Universe, ancient or modern, and that its wealth and influence have ever been devoted to the cause of religious, social and political freedom. ”

“ In 1867, too, Parliament again dealt with the condition of the workers in Factories and Workshops. The legislation dealt with the kingdom as a whole, but inasmuch as London was so great a manufacturing city, it affected also the masses of the working population of the metropolis. ”

“ The city of London extends east and west from the Tower to Temple Bar, and north and south from Finsbury to the Thames, with a population of not more than 100,000, and is but a small part of the enormous metropolitan area now known as London, which is a circle of twelve miles radius in every direction from its centre at Charing Cross, with a population of more than 5,000,000. This vast area is an agglomeration of many parishes, manors, etc., and has no municipal government in common. ”

“ Whether we consider London as the metropolis of a great and mighty empire, upon the dominions of whose sovereign the sun never sets, or as the home of more than three millions of people, and the richest city in the world to boot, it must ever be a place which strangers wish to visit. In these days of railways and steamers, the toil and cost of reaching it are, comparatively speaking, small ”

“ The wealth of the world is wafted to London by the Thames, swelled by the tide; and navigable to merchant ships through a safe and deep channel, for sixty miles, from its mouth to the city; its banks are everywhere beautified with fine country seats, woods and farms....
The government of the city is lodged by ancient grant of the 124Kings of England in twenty-five aldermen, that is, seniors; these annually elect out of their own body a mayor and two sheriffs, who determine causes according to municipal laws. ”

“ So far we understand that London about the year 1750 was a city filled with dignified merchants all getting rich, and with a decorous, self-respecting population of retail traders, clerks, craftsmen, and servants of all kinds, a noisy but a well-behaved people. A church-going, sermon-loving, and orderly people. ”

“ I have named a few of our great Londoners; yet they, indeed, are but few among the vast galaxy of the bright particular stars who, even in our day, still enlighten with their spirit their former dwellings and surroundings. It is their human interest that so transfigures London stones ”