pages on, and therefore, for the present, we will take

A FIRST GLANCE AT THE CITY.

London is too vast a place to be traversed in the limited time which strangers usually have at their disposal.  Nevertheless, we may rapidly survey the main lines of route from east to west, with some of the branching offshoots.  All the more important buildings, and places of public interest, will be found specially described under the headings to which they properly belong.

The most striking view in the interior of the city is at the open central space whence Threadneedle Street, Cornhill, Lombard Street, King William Street, Walbrook, Cheapside, and Princes Street, radiate in seven different directions.  (See illustration.)  While the corner of the Bank of England abuts on this space on the north, it is flanked on the south by the Mansion House, and on the east by the Royal Exchange.  It would be a curious speculation to inquire how much money has been spent in constructions and reconstructions in and around this spot during half a century.  The sum must be stupendous.  Before new London Bridge was opened, the present King William Street did not exist; to construct it, houses by the score, perhaps by the hundred, had to be pulled down.  Many years earlier, when the Bank of England was rebuilt, and a few years later, when the Royal Exchange was rebuilt, vast destructions of property took place, to make room for structures larger than those which had previously existed for the same purposes.  For some distance up all the radii of which we have spoken, the arteries which lead from this heart of the commercial world, a similar process has been going on to a greater or less extent.  Banking-houses, insurance-offices, and commercial buildings, have been built or rebuilt at an immense cost, the outlay depending rather on the rapidly increasing value of the ground than on the actual charge for building.  If this particular portion of the city, this busy centre of wealth, should ever be invaded by such railway schemes as 1864, 1865, and 1866 produced, it is difficult to imagine what amounts would have to be paid for the purchase and removal of property.  Time was when a hundred thousand pounds per mile was a frightful sum for railways; but railway directors (in London at least) do not now look aghast at a million sterling per mile—as witness the South-Eastern and the Chatham and Dover Companies, concerning which we shall have to say more in a future page.

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The seven radii of which we have spoken may be thus briefly described, as a preliminary guide to visitors: 1.  Leaving this wonderfully-busy centre by the north, with the Poultry on one hand and the Bank of England on the other, we pass in front of many fine new commercial buildings in Princes and Moorgate Streets; indeed, there is not an old house here, for both are entirely modern streets, penetrating through what used to be a close mass of small streets and alleys.  Other fine banking and commercial buildings may be seen stretching along either side in Lothbury and Gresham Streets.  Farther towards the north, a visitor would reach the Finsbury Square region, beyond which the establishments are of less important character.  2. If, instead of leaving this centre by the north, he turns north-east, he will pass through Threadneedle Street between the Bank and the Royal Exchange; next will be found the Stock Exchange, on the left hand; then the Sun Fire Office, and the Bank of London (formerly the Hall of Commerce); on the opposite side the City Bank, Merchant Taylor’s School, and the building that was once the South Sea House; beyond these is the great centre for foreign merchants in Broad Street, Winchester Street, Austin Friars, and the vicinity.  3. If, again, the route be selected due east, there will come into view the famous Cornhill, with its Royal Exchange, its well-stored shops, and its alleys on either side crowded with merchants, brokers, bankers, coffee-houses, and chop-houses; beyond this, Bishopsgate Street branches out on the left, and Gracechurch Street on the right, both full of memorials of commercial London; and farther east still, Leadenhall Street, with new buildings on the site of the late East India House, leads to the Jews’ Quarter around Aldgate and Houndsditch—a strange region, which few visitors to London think of exploring.  “Petticoat Lane,” perhaps one of the most extraordinary marts for old clothes, &c., is on the left of Aldgate High Street.  It is well worth a visit by connoisseurs of queer life and character, who are able to take care of themselves, and remember to leave their valuables at home.  4. The fourth route from the great city centre leads through Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street—the one the head-quarters of the great banking firms of London; the other exhibiting many commercial buildings of late erection: while Mincing Lane and Mark Lane are the head-quarters for many branches of the foreign, colonial, and corn trades.  5. The fifth route takes the visitor through King William Street to the Monument, Fish Street Hill, Billingsgate, the Corn Exchange, the Custom House, the Thames Subway, the Tower, the Docks, the Thames Tunnel, London Bridge, and a host of interesting places, the proper examination of which would require something more than merely a brief visit to London.  Opposite this quarter, on the Surrey side of the river, are numerous shipping wharfs, warehouses, porter breweries, and granaries.  The fire that occurred at Cotton’s wharf and depôt and other wharfs near Tooley Street, in June, 1861, illustrated the vast scale on which merchandise is collected in the warehouses and wharfs hereabout. [18]  Of the dense mass of streets lying away from the river, and eastward of the city proper, comprising Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, &c., little need be said here; the population is immense, but, excepting the Bethnal Green Museum and Victoria Park, there are few objects interesting; nevertheless the observers of social life in its humbler phases would find much to learn here.  6. The southern route from the great city centre takes the visitor, by the side of the Mansion House, through the new thoroughfare, Queen Victoria Street—referred to at a previous page—to the river-side.

It will therefore be useful for a stranger to bear in mind, that the best centre of observation in the city is the open spot between the Bank, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange; where more omnibuses assemble than at any other spot in the world; and whence he can ramble in any one of seven different directions, sure