Although overhead telegraph wires are multiplying to an
alarming extent in London, their number is nothing to be compared to their
bewildering multitude in New York, where their presence is not only a
hinderance to the operations of the firemen, but a positive danger to their
lives. Finally--and this has already been partly dealt with in speaking of
the comparative density of population of the two cities--a look at the map
of London will show us how the River Thames and the numerous parks,
squares, private grounds, wide streets, as well as the railways running
into London, all act as effectual barriers to the extension of fires.

The recent great conflagrations in the city vividly illustrate to Londoners
what fire could do if their metropolis were built on the New York plan. The
City, however, as we have remarked, is an exceptional part of London, and,
taking the British metropolis as it is, with its hundreds of square miles
of suburbs, and contrasting its condition with that of New York, we are led
to adopt the opinion that London, with its excellent fire brigade, is safe
from a destructive conflagration. It was stated above, and it is repeated
here, that the fire brigade of New York is unsurpassed for promptness,
skill, and heroic intrepidity, but their task, by contrast, is a heavy one
in a city like New York, with its numerous wooden buildings, wooden or
asphalt roofs, buildings from four to ten stories high, with long unbraced
walls, weakened by many large windows, containing more than ten times the
timber an average London house does, and that very inflammable, owing to
the dry and hot American climate. But this is not all. In New York we find
the five and six story tenement houses with two or three families on each
floor, each with their private ash barrel or box kept handy in their rooms,
all striving to keep warm during the severe winters of North America. We
also find narrow streets and high buildings, with nothing to arrest the
extension of a fire except a few small parks, not even projecting or
effectual fire-walls between the several buildings. And to all this must be
added the perfect freedom with which the city authorities of New York allow
in its most populous portions large stables, timber yards, carpenters'
shops, and the manufacture and storage of inflammable materials. Personal
liberty could not be carried to a more dangerous extent. We ought to be
thankful that in such matters individual freedom is som