subsequently to their discharge after any conviction, should not be returned in the class of known thieves and depredators, has been adhered to.  The return of houses of bad character in the metropolis, exclusive of those of ill-fame and of those returned to Parliament under the Contagious Act, is 215, of which 66 are houses of receivers of stolen goods, showing a decrease of 22 in the year.  The total number of cases tried at the Central Criminal Court was 10,151.  From a classification of offences determined summarily we learn that there were 5,622 persons proceeded against in the City, of whom 1,093 were discharged, and the remainder convicted or otherwise dealt with.  There were 191 offences against the Adulteration of Food Act in the metropolitan police district, 7 in the City; 5,874 against the Elementary Education Act, none in the City; 1,234 cases of cruelty to animals in the metropolitan district, 823 in the City; 33,520 persons were drunk and disorderly in the metropolitan district, 431 in the City, being an increase over the numbers for the last year of about 1,000 in the first instance, and 35 in the second.

From the prison returns we gather that the total of commitments to Newgate for the year ended September 29th, 1877, was 1,394 males, and 218 females, being in the case of the males a reasonable decrease from the last year’s numbers; to Holloway, 1,896 males, 281 females, the latter returns including 841 males and 45 females to the civil side for debt.  Under the heading of expenses we have £127 19s. for new buildings, alterations, etc., in Newgate; and in Holloway, £199; ordinary repairs in Newgate came to £149 11s. 4d., rent, rates, taxes, etc., £121 7s.; Holloway repairs, £121 4s. 5d., rent and taxes, £74 2s. 11d., with various other charges, making a total of expenses at Newgate of £6,514 5s. 3d.; Holloway, £10,314 9s. 9d.  From the table of funds charged with prison expenses we learn that at Holloway the net profit of prisoners’ labour was £2,038 1s. 9d.  The county or liberty rates contributed £83 16s. 8d. to Newgate; the City rate was £5,632 1s. 3d., the latter rate was, in respect to Holloway, £6,239 5s.  The Treasury paid £347 0s. 9d., proportion of the charge for convicted prisoners at Newgate, £1,438 17s. 6d. for those at Holloway.

The charitable contributions of England are to-day in excess of what the whole revenue of the British Crown was under the Stuarts, only two hundred years ago; over £600,000 per annum is derived from all such sources by the medical charities of London alone; more than 1,200,000 persons, exclusive of paupers, are annually recipient of assistance from those medical charities.

In other ways also is London truly wonderful.  It seems as if the earth toiled and moiled to simply supply her wants.  Sail up the Baltic and ask whither those vessels laden with tallow and corn and flax are steering, and the answer is, The Thames.  Float down the Mediterranean, and the reply to the question would be still the same.  Ascend the grand rivers of the New World, and the destination of the stores of beef and cheese and wheat is still the same.  Canada supplies us with our deals; America with half our food; Australia with our wool; the Cape with our diamonds; the Brazils with coffee.  Havannah sends her choice cigars, China her teas, Japan her lacquered and ingenious ware, Italy her silks; and from the vineyards of France, or the green hills that border the Rhine and the Moselle, we are supposed to draw our supplies of sparkling wine.  Spain sends her sherry, Portugal her port.  For us the spicy breezes blow soft on Ceylon’s isle, the turtle fattens languidly under burning suns, the whale wallows in the trough of frozen seas, the elephant feeds in African jungles, and the ostrich darts as an arrow across the plain.  In the country village, in the busy mill, on sea or on land, it is the thought of London that fires the brain and fills the heart, and nerves the muscle and relieves the tedium of nightly or daily toil.  As Cowper writes:

         Where has commerce such a mart,
So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied,
As London—opulent, enlarged, and still
Increasing London?  Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth than she,
A more accomplished world’s chief glory now.

It is not our province to speculate as to the future.  There are men who tell us that Babylon is about to fall, and that it is time for the elect to be off.  It may be so.  Time, the destroyer, has seen many a noble city rise, and flourish, and pass away; but London, it must be admitted nevertheless, never more truly in any sense deserves the epitaph of “wonderful” than at the present time.

II.—THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

The Middlesex magistrates have shut up the Argyle Rooms.  Mr. Bignell, who has found it worth his while to invest £80,000 in the place, it is to be presumed, is much annoyed, and has, in some respects, reason to be so.  Year after year noble lords and Middlesex magistrates have visited the place, and have licensed it.  Indeed, it had become one of the institutions of the country—one of the places which Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom (for such men still exist, though they go by other names) would be sure to visit, and such as they and the women who were habitués will have to go elsewhere.  It is said a great public scandal is removed, but the real scandal yet remains.  It is a scandal that such a place ever flourished in the great metropolis of a land which professes Christianity—which pays clergymen and deans, and bishops and archbishops princely sums to extirpate that lust of the flesh and lust of the eye and pride of life, which found their lowest form of development in the Argyle Rooms.  It was a scandal that men of position, who have been born in English homes and nursed by English mothers, and been consecrated Christians in baptism, and have been trained at English public schools and universities, and worshipped in English churches and cathedrals, should have helped to make the Argyle a flourishing institution.  Mr. Bignell created no vice—he merely pandered to what was in existence.  It was men of wealth and fashion who made the Argyle what it was.  The Argyle closed, the vice remains the same, and it will avail little to make clean the outside of the whited sepulchre if within there be rottenness and dead men’s bones.  Be that as it may, there are few people who will regret the defeat of Mr. Bignell and the closing of the Argyle.  It was not an improving spectacle in an age that has sacrificed everything to worldly show, and that has come to regard brougham as the one thing needful—as the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace—as a charter of respectability to everyone who rides in it, whether purchased by the chastity of woman or the honour of man—to see painted and bedizened females, most of them

Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred,

driving up in broughams from St. John’s Wood or Chelsea or Belgravia, with their gallants, or “protectors,” to the well-known rendezvous, at a late hour, to leave a little