of the respective Railway Companies, and extending them to some central point in the heart of the Metropolis. All these schemes were laid down in this one map; and they furnish a veritable exemplar of engineering run mad. Every sort of impossible combination is there projected; and land is appropriated which would have cost 100,000l. an acre. It may be regretted, however, that these visionary plans have left no result; for it is clear that the growth of the thoroughfares of London has not kept pace with its area and population. The leading streets of the city are inconveniently encumbered with traffic; and it is to be hoped that at no distant period means will be found to establish some channels of railway communication within the circumference of London. It is of incalculable importance to the health and well-being of the metropolitan population to afford to all classes facilities of ingress and egress from the scene of their daily employment; and this appears to be the only feasible mode of setting bounds to the extension of the Metropolis. The growth of the Map of London has never been so strikingly displayed as by the results of the Ordnance Survey. In the midst of the unfortunate diversity of the scales of the several Ordnance maps, it is difficult to understand how much has been completed on the inch scale, on the six-inch scale, on the twelve-inch scale, or on the five-feet scale, in various parts of the United Kingdom; but independent of all these, there have been surveys of the Metropolis on other scales. One was undertaken in conformity with the Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Will. 4. c. 96.), to regulate parochial assessments by fixing a more equitable apportionment of poor-rates among the different parishes; and to carry out its provisions, the Poor Law Commissioners were empowered to order new surveys and valuations to be made. As a part of this system, the Metropolis, stretched out to its widest limits, but not including the city of London, was surveyed and mapped on the large scale of one inch to three chains, or twenty-six inches and twothirds to a mile. At a later date, when the health of towns began to attract public attention, and when the importance of good drainage became understood, it was found that there did not exist a survey of London sufficiently comprehensive and exact to show the elevations and slopes of the ground required for the construction of sewers. The Government therefore determined, in 1848, to make a survey of London at the public expense for sanitary and other purposes; and the Ordnance surveyors were entrusted with the duty. Many readers will remember the little crow's nest perched on the top of the cross of St. Paul's eight years ago; this was the wooden house in which the surveyors conducted their labours: being visible from Primrose, Highgate, and other hills, and from numerous towers, steeples, roofs, parapets, terraces, and bridges, it afforded the means for taking the points of the larger triangles, the subdivision of which constituted the detailed labour of the survey. The survey extends to a distance of 8 miles from St. Paul's in every direction, or throughout a circle of 16 miles diameter, and thus covers an area of 200 square miles. Engraved on a scale of five feet to a mile, and placed edge to edge, this survey would require 900 sheets measuring three feet by two each, and the whole would constitute a monster circular Map of London 80 ft. in diameter. Of these sheets about 400 have been engraved and published, relating to the central or more thickly populated parishes; and there has been a further publication of the entire area in forty or fifty sheets, on a scale of twelve inches to a mile. Having thus glanced rapidly at the nature of the illustrations furnished by Maps, we may next explore the large fund of curious information relating to the growth of London which to be met with in the various Directories. The bare mention of a London Directory brings up the image of a volume over-burdened by its bulk-a Falstaff among books. Where or when this phenomenon of biblio-topographical enlargement is to end, no one can say. If London grows, so must the Directory grow; but by how much an octavo volume may exceed two thousand seven hundred pages without falling to pieces, let the bookbinders declare. Whether the ponderous tome must be broken up into two volumes; whether the number of its separate directories must be lessened; whether the paper must be thinner or more compressible; whether more type must be packed within the limits of a page-the compilers will surely be called upon to decide ere many more years have passed. Analogous as they may be in object, wholly or partially, the works of this character present a strange diversity of titles. Be the designation what it may, however- be it a Directory, a Calendar, an Annual, an Almanac, a Guide, a Key, or a Register the tabulated record of the inhabitants of London is full of instruction concerning the social and commercial growth of our immense Metropolis. It shows how the topographical limits of a city extend, when that city is unprovided with boundary walls. It shows by what gradual means outlying villages become included within the expanding metropolitan circle. It illustrates the embarrassment experienced in devising new names for new streets. It furnishes a test of the relative prevalence of family names or surnames. It affords evidence how minute becomes the division of employments as population thickens, rendering an avocation profitable which would be unneeded and unrewarded in a less densely populated city. It enables us to see, approximatively, what is the ratio in number between the richer and the working classes at a given time; between the Court' end and the City' end; between the professional and the non-professional classes; between the lawyers and their actual or possible clients, the clergy and their flocks, the doctors and their patients. It tells us whether the institutions of the Metropolis - educational, literary, scientific, musical, theatrical, provident, benevolent seem or not to advance in as rapid a ratio as the population. But more than this. A collection of London Directories, or Guides through this populous labyrinth, varied in kind and in date, would be a literary curiosity, a type of progress, a record of development, analogous to the yearly advancement of the great city itself. It would show, not only the extent to which houses and inhabitants have increased in number, but also the changes in the social and commercial arrangements of successive generations. At one period, a Court Directory seems to have been the great desideratum, and it was deemed more important to know who was Page of the Back Stairs than to know the number of butchers and bakers dwell ing in the Strand. The alphabetical lists of the Gentry were, until quite recent times, not merely kept separate from those of common people,' but even the streets inhabited by the two classes were scrupulously kept asunder-as though May Fair would be contaminated by alphabetical companionship with Fleet Street or Gray's Inn Lane. Trade Directories were of much later introduction than alphabetical lists of names; and the compilers of the Street Directories have felt the necessity, year after year, of deciding which among the suburban villages may claim a right of admission into the great world of London. A Directory is a most unreadable book, if followed page after page-but it is full of instruction when considered, not simply by itself, but in comparison with another Directory ten or fifty or a hundred years older. The material advances of a city are best appreciated by taking the initial and terminal years of a definite period, and comparing them one with another. Yet so far as London is concerned, it is very doubtful whether anything like a complete set of old Directories is in existence. Our great national library, at any rate, is extremely deficient in this class of books: it is far exceeded by the collection, imperfect though it be, possessed by the Incorporated Law Society. 6 Many of those who, in the daily prosecution of their business, consult the unwieldly and almost unmanageable London Directories, are little aware through how long a course of years such works, or Directories having much humbler pretensions, have been published. During the last century there were numerous small volumes which competed for this kind of public favour. The 'Polite Intelligencer,' Gentleman's Register,' 'British 'Imperial Kalendar,' Kent's Directory,' Holden's Triennial Directory,' Boyle's Court Guide,' Royal Kalendar,' London Kalendar,' Court and City Register,'-all were in existence in the last century, and many of them continued into the present. When we find that Kent's Directory' for 1796 was the 'sixty-fourth annual edition,' the work must have been in existence quite early in the reign of George II., a hundred and twenty years ago. What were the size and appearance of this very early London Directory, we know not; but, under date 1760, we have before us A Complete Guide to all persons who have any trade or concern with the City of London and parts 'adjacent ;'. - a very modest little shilling volume, containing an alphabet of names and an index of streets, but no designations of trades or professions are attached to the names. Dipping hither and thither in the pages, one meets with Samuel En'derby' and a few other names which link the past with the present, showing the vitality of some of our old commercial firms, to whom a century seems but a short span of years. There were Barclays and Broadwoods, Coxes and Greenwoods, Longmans and Hansards, Hobys and Birches, Fortnums and Gibletts, among the traders of London, in those days as in the present, and pursuing the same departments of commerce as their descendants now pursue. By the year 1780 this Complete Guide' had grown to the dignity of a two-shilling volume, by the addition of a Conveyance Guide,' showing how the Waggons and machines' and coaches managed the transit and transport of those days. 6 This Some of the early volumes of Holden's Triennial Directory' are curious, inasmuch as they indicate the courtier-like tendencies of the age, the reverence for all the minutiae of Court life. Directory appears to have commenced about the year 1796, and to have been published every third year for a considerable period. The issue for 1809-10-11, in two volumes of seven or eight hundred pages each, appeared at the enormous price of five guineas; the general alphabet of names included all the villages within ten miles of London; and the second volume gave the names of the chief inhabitants of 104 provincial towns. This Triennial Directory was continued until about the year 1823, when it sank before its younger rivals, which had adopted the system of annual publication. The Commercial Directories have undergone a more remarkable process of enlargement than those red books and blue books intended to record the topography of fashionable life. But the Directory which most instructively illustrates the growth of London during the last half century, is the Post Office Directory. No other has increased so significantly in bulk or in price. Commencing in the year 1800, as a humble duodecimo of three hundred pages, published at three or four shillings, it had no Street Directory, or Trades Directory, or Court Directory: neither a Law Directory nor an Ecclesiastical Directory; it gave simply a list of about twelve thousand commercial names, with a little information concerning public establishments and postal arrangements. By the year 1810, the names had increased to sixteen thousand, but neither the price nor the character of the volume had materially changed. Another decade, bringing the work down to 1820, exhibited certain symptoms of change-the pages had increased to six hundred, the names to twenty thousand, the Conveyance Guide had swelled out to some importance, and the price had risen to five shillings. The past seems almost like a dream, when dipping into this Conveyance Guide, we find an announcement that the Paddington coach leaves the Blue 'Posts, Holborn, three times a day!' Another ten years, and the Directory presents itself slightly, but only slightly, increased in bulk, price, and comprehensiveness. The work assumed a wholly new form in 1840, when the size was increased to large octavo, the price was increased to about ten shillings, and the arrangement was distributed into six main Directories-Commercial, Law, Trades, Parliamentary, Conveyance, and Banking. From that year to the present, a continuous process of development' has manifested itself: the bulk has developed from a thousand to twenty-seven hundred pages; the price has developed from ten shillings to thirty or thirty-six; the separate Directories have developed from six to eleven; and each Directory has grown by the growing of the list of names recorded in it. Not among the least remarkable of the characteristics of usefulness given to this vast work, is the parti-coloured index on the edges of the leaves. Although the history of surnames may not receive much illustration from a Commercial Directory, the relative numbers |