sense, once remarked, "London is to the politician merely a
seat of government, to the grazier a cattle market, to the merchant a
huge exchange, to the dramatic enthusiast a congeries of theatres, to
the man of pleasure an assemblage of taverns." If we follow one path
alone, we must neglect other roads equally important; let us, then,
consider the metropolis as a whole, for, as Johnson's friend well says,
"the intellectual man is struck with London as comprehending the whole
of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is
inexhaustible." In histories, in biographies, in scientific records, and
in chronicles of the past, however humble, let us gather materials for a
record of the great and the wise, the base and the noble, the odd and
the witty, who have inhabited London and left their names upon its
walls. Wherever the glimmer of the cross of St. Paul's can be seen we
shall wander from street to alley, from alley to street, noting almost
every event of interest that has taken place there since London was a
city.

Had it been our lot to write of London before the Great Fire, we should
have only had to visit 65,000 houses. If in Dr. Johnson's time, we might
have done like energetic Dr. Birch, and have perambulated the
twenty-mile circuit of London in six hours' hard walking; but who now
could put a girdle round the metropolis in less than double that time?
The houses now grow by streets at a time, and the nearly four million
inhabitants would take a lifetime to study. Addison probably knew
something of London when he called it "an aggregate of various nations,
distinguished from each other by their respective customs, manners, and
interests--the St. James's courtiers from the Cheapside citizens, the
Temple lawyers from the Smithfield drovers;" but what would the
_Spectator_ say now to the 168,701 domestic servants, the 23,517
tailors, the 18,321 carpenters, the 29,780 dressmakers, the 7,002
seamen, the 4,861 publicans, the 6,716 blacksmiths, &c., to which the
population returns of thirty years ago depose, whom he would have to
observe and visit before he could say he knew all the ways, oddities,
humours--the joys and sorrows, in fact--of this great centre of
civilisation?

The houses of old London are incrusted as thick with anecdotes, legends,
and traditions as an old ship is with barnacles. Strange stories about
strange men grow like moss in every crevice of the bricks. Let us, then,
roll together like