wrong place as he is timid where boldness would be prudence'France alone is more powerful than Russia and Austria put together,' France and England united are surely in a position to obtain from Austria the respect she receives from Russia. That respect will be shown by the nature of the terms she may consider due to the dignity of those powers. And, if the valour of the Turks has deprived us of the occasion to divide with them the glory of defeating their invader, we must at least not incur the disgrace of losing by friendly negotiations what our ally single-handed has effected by force of arms.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Report of the Commissioners appointed to make Inquiries relating to Smithfield Market, and the Markets in the City of London for the Sale of Meat. London. 1850. 2. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the existing State of the Corporation of the City of London, &c.; together with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. London, 1854.

3. London in 1850-51, from the Geographical Dictionary of of J. R. M'Culloch. London. 1851.

4. Market Gardening round London; giving in detail the various Methods adopted by Gardeners in growing for the London Markets. By James Cuthill. London. 1851.

5. Report of the Supply of Water to the Metropolis.

Board of Health. London. 1850.

General

6. London Labour and the London Poor. By Henry Mayhew. London. 1851.

7. The Census of Great Britain, 1851. Report and Summary Tables. London. 1852.

[F,

F, early on a summer morning before the smoke of countless fires had narrowed the horizon of the metropolis, a spectator were to ascend to the top of St. Paul's, and take his stand upon the balcony, that with gilded rail flashes like a fringe of fire upon the summit of the dome, he would see sleeping beneath his feet the greatest camp of men upon which the sun has ever risen. As far as he could distinguish by the morning light he would behold stretched before him the mighty map of the metropolis; and could he ascend still higher, he would note the stream of life overflowing the brim of hills which enclose the basin in which it stands.

In the space swept by his vision would lie the congregated habitations of two millions and a half of his species-but how vain are figures to convey an idea of so immense a multitude. If Norway, stretching from the Frozen Ocean down to the southern extremity of the North Sea, were to summon all its people to one vast conclave, they would number little more than half the souls within the London bills of mortality. Switzerland, in her thousand valleys,

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valleys, could not muster such an army; and even busy Holland, within her mast-thronged harbours, humming cities, and populous plains, could barely overmatch the close-packed millions within sound of the great bell at his feet. As the spectator gazed upon this extraordinary prospect, the first stir of the awakening city would gradually steal upon his ear. The rumbling of wheels, the clang of hammers, the clear call of the human voice, all deepening by degrees into a confused hum, would proclaim that the mighty city was once more rousing to the labour of the day, and the blue columns of smoke climbing up to heaven that the morning meal was at hand. At such a moment the thought would naturally arise in his mind,-In what manner is such an assemblage victualled? By what complicated wheels does all the machinery move by which two millions and a half of human beings sit down day by day to their meals as regularly and quietly as though they only formed a snug little party at Lovegrove's on a summer's afternoon? As thus he mused respecting the means by which the supply and demand of so vast a multitude is brought to agree, so that every one is enabled to procure exactly what he wants, at the exact time, without loss to himself or injury to the community, thin lines of steam, sharply marked for the moment, as they advanced one after another from the horizon and converged towards him, would indicate the arrival of the great commissariat trains, stored with produce from all parts of these isles and from the adjacent continent. Could his eye distinguish in addition the fine threads of that far-spreading web which makes London the most sensitive spot on the earth, he would be enabled to take in at a glance the two agents-steam and electricity-which keep the balance true between the wants and the supply of London.

If our spectator will now descend from his giddy height, and will accompany us among the busy haunts of men, we will attempt to point out to him whence those innumerable commodities, which he has seen pouring into the town, have been obtained, the chief marts to which they are consigned, and the manner in which they are distributed from house to house. Had London like Paris its octroi, the difficulty of our task would be limited to the mere display of official figures, but, thanks to a free policy, we have no such means of getting at strictly accurate estimates, and must therefore content ourselves with the results of patient inquiry among the foremost carriers-the railway companies-aided by such other information as we have been able to procure. For the sake of convenience, and of sequence, let us imagine that the principal daily meal is proceeding, and, according to the order of the courses, we will endeavour to trace

the

the various edibles to their source—the fish to its sea-the beast to its pasture-the wild animal to its lair-the game to its cover-and the fruit to its orchard; to point out how they are netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed to their ultimate destination-the great red lane of London humanity. Let us begin with fish, and that unrivalled fish-market which all the world is aware rears its head by London Bridge.

Those who remember old Billingsgate, with its tumbledown wharf, and dock half choked with corruption and oyster-shells—a dirty remnant of the days of Elizabeth-will enter with pleasure Mr. Bunning's new market. Through its Italian colonnade are seen the masts of the fishing smacks, and the brown wharves of the opposite side-a pleasing picture, which instantly fixes the artistic eye. The busy scene within the market, between the hours of five and seven in the morning, is one of the marvels of the metropolis. Billingsgate is the only wholesale fish-market in London, and it may therefore be imagined how great must be the business transacted within its walls. Of old nine-tenths of the supply came by way of the river, the little that came by land being conveyed from the coast, at great expense, in four-horse vans. Now the railways are day by day supplanting smacks, and in many cases steamers; for by means of its iron arms, London, whilst its millions slumber, grasps the produce of every sea that beats against our island coast, and ere they have uprisen it is drawn to a focus in this central mart. Thus every night in the season the hardy fishermen of Yarmouth catch a hundred tons (12,081 yearly), principally herring, which, by means of the Eastern Counties Railway, are next morning at Billingsgate. The South-Western Railway sends up annually, with the same speed, 4000 tons of mackerel and other fish, the gatherings of the south coast. The North-Western collects over night the 'catch' from Ireland, Scotland, and the north-east coast of England, and adds to the Thames-street mart 3578 tons, principally of salmon, whilst the Great Northern delivers to the early morning market, or sometimes later in the day, 3248 tons of like sea produce. The Great Western brings up the harvests of the Cornish and Devonshire coasts, chiefly mackerel and pilchards, to the amount of 1560 tons in the year; and the Brighton and South Coast conveys the incredible number of 15,000 bushels of oysters, besides 4000 tons of other fish. Nearly one-half in fact of the fish-supply of London, instead of following as of old the tedious route of the coast, is hurried in the dead of night across the length and breadth of the land to Billingsgate, and, before the large consumers in Tyburnia and Belgravia have left their beds, may be seen either lying on

the marble slabs of the fishmongers, or penetrating on the peripatetic barrow of the costermonger into the dismal lanes and alleys inhabited by London Labour and the London Poor.' These prodigious gleanings from what Goldsmith might well call the 'finny deep,' are conveyed from the termini in springvans, drawn by two and occasionally by four horses. Salmon comes in boxes, herrings in barrels, and all other kinds of fish in baskets. Sometimes as many as sixty of these vans will arrive in the narrow street leading to the market in the course of two or three hours, and the scene of confusion occasioned by their rushing among the fishmongers' carts and the costermongers' barrows, the latter often amounting to more than a thousand, is almost as great as that at Smithfield; for the fish, like the live-stock trade, has long outgrown its mart, and Billingsgate, as much as Smithfield, is choked for want of space. Let the visitor beware how he enters it in a good coat, for, as sure as he goes in in broad cloth, he will come out in scale armour. They are not polite at Billingsgate, as all the world knows, and by your leave' is only a preliminary to your hat being knocked off your head by a bushel of oysters or a basket of crabs. In the early part of the morning, the traffic is carried on in comparative quiet, for the regular fishmongers, who have the first of the market, conduct their business with little disturbance, but it would gladden the heart of a Dutch painter to see the piled produce of a dozen different seas glittering with silver and brilliant with colour. Gigantic salmon, fresh caught from the firths and bays of Scotland, or from the productive Irish seas, flounder about, as the boxes in which they have travelled disgorge them upon the board. Quantities of delicate red mullet, that have been hurried up by the Great Western, all the way from Cornwall, for the purpose of being furnished fresh to the fastidious palates at the West End; smelts brought by the Dutch boats, their delicate skins varying in hue like an opal as you pass; pyramids of lobsters, a moving mass of spiteful claws and restless feelers, savage at their late abduction from some Norwegian fiord; great heaps of pinky shrimps; turbots, that lately fattened upon the Doggerbank, with their white bellies bent as for some tremendous leap; and humbler plaice and dabs, from our own craft-all this bountiful accumulation forms a mingled scene of strange forms and vivid colours, that no one with an eye for the picturesque can contemplate without interest. Neither is the scene always one of still life, for it is no rare occurrence for the visitor to behold a yelling knot of men dragging with ropes through the excited crowd a royal sturgeon, nine feet in length. If the spectator now peeps down the large square opening into the