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    THE GOVERNMENT IN T1IE PANTRY.

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    A MONG our patriotic legislators arc some womu noc oniy make the Government paternal , but maternal , and evon go beyond that , and add to it a touch of those well-known , funet 101 ) - arica , " Saivey " and > Betsy Prigg . " ' ^ ese gentlem en seem to tliirik we can do nothing- by ourselves or for ourselvos ^ nnd we should not be surprised if one of them soon brings in a bill to compel euch parish to' provide inspectors to see how we , put our boots on , lest we should sprain our ancles and twist our toes , . Wo the of bill sed

    arc led to these conclusions by appearance a " , " propo by Messrs . Sghqi / ej ? h ! I . d , Wise , and Viixiims , «• • for preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink . " We have i no love for * adulterators , nor for rogues of any other kind , Wti have Christian charity enough to love the honost interests of sociotv , and hato all rascals , from the big- Joint Stock Company sort , which gets into -Parliament and figures in company with pious contractors at the Premier ' s balls , down to the little urchin who diddles las ' . ' nal" at chuok-ftu'tliine ? in the street ; nor have wo a word to say

    in favour of the knaves who forge trade marks , make axes that won't chop , knives that won ' t cut , and defraud those grandmothers , wives , and daughters of England , to whom Mrs . Ei ^ is hns given such excellent advice , whenovor they purchase ft reel of cotton or a skoin of silk . Wo don't like " death in the . pot , " as rovoftled by old Aocum , nor the host of minor evils which Pr , Hassans mioroacopo has presented to public view , Jtt is not pleasant to exchange t ) ioso shining 1 particles upon Which Heu Majbstt a emery is impressed , for peimor composed of sawdust , nutmegs thub hftv . o viri

    boon boiled for the lulonious abstraction of their nvonmtio " ' nor for tho publicnne' ponderous humcotity , »« the . vu \ mr aauea " heavy wet "—in which water , trenole , copperas , nnd eooiilus iiicucus conspire to mako a nauseous and unwholesome moss . Wo mourn over the " infancy of England , " whose little lives lmvo a saa

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    eengers , and above these , the Grand Ceiltral Chimney-pot Railway , running on firm platforms built over the roofs , and crossing- from street to street on tubular bridges . This aerial railway will be in communication with the subterranean railway which burrows under every street except those devoted to the Piekfbrd van and fourwheeled waggon , tunnels whieh have in 1 SS 80 so lightened the street traffic and . rendered the roads clear and pleasant for quick , convenient , and safe travelling . And to still further increase the attractions of London in 1880 , our dreaming friend sees , or '' thinks he sees , " a railway moving round its whole -circumference with radiating spokes from the circular iron-felloe to a great central station , somewhere in the heart of London . In this new city a man of business would be as a spider in his web ready to run in an instant down a ladder to any portion of its circumference . But need we follow him through his dream , watching the pleasure balloons floating gaily through smokeless air from Islington to Hyde Park or from Peckham to Putney , the great Thames silver again and teeming- with fish , or coal exchanged for some purer and subtler fuel ; so that once more grapes ripen in Gower Street and Drury Lane boasts its gardens . But seriously , London is becoming one of the most uncomfortable of cities . It wants more bridges , wider streets , more diffusion of traffic ; at present the city is in extreme danger of apoplexy , and we expect every day to hear of a stoppage in Clieapside , leading to the death of some fourteen stockbrokers , on their way home-to dinner . It is true that people live more Out of town than they used , and that late at night the City is a howling wilderness , peopled only by errant clerks , cats , and old laundresses ; but their daily migration only renders the streets twice a day more hopelessly blocked than ever . Increased population , and a deluge torrent of fifteen hundred omnibuses and ten thousand cabs tear up and down , arid render the uproar arid confusion more intolerable ; and it must be remembered that if the railways carry away nightly niany thousand mem of business , they daily Wing into London to replace them as many thousand men from the country . J T » ' -J Twenty years after the Restoration , Albemarle-street and Bondstreet wei e timidly begun . Now the brick glacier creeps On rapidly towards Fulham , and between London and Clapham there can scarcely be said to be a break of country , except for an instant on the left-hand side of the road at Kennington-common . Where Chartists once met , and theological open-air disputants wrangle ^ now great public gardens assume almost the grandeur of a royal parkj were the bushes less like hair-brushes . On " all sides London , like an immense over-boiled pudding burst out at its edges ; HollowayvSouthwark , Whitechapelj Kensington , every where the creeping inundation of brick and mortar spreads- where will it stop ? A hundred years ago arid there was a windmill buzzing round in Rathbone-place , an avenue of elms rose where the Middlesex Hospital now stands , and Oxford Street was a deep country quagmire road between hedges , much infested by highway men , though it did lead ominously to Tyburn and the triple tree . Only a hundred years ago London houses were first numbered , and only about a hundred and fifty since streets were first lighted at night . It is not more than two hundred years or so sincei Ckomwelx thought it necessary to try arid pass an Act to restrain " the new buildings in and about London ; " yet here we are , iri 1860 > growing faster than ever , with all the rapidity , in fact , of the Bean-stalk in the fairy story . The growing cannot be helped , and must not be interfered with ; the dirt , arid noise , and confusion , and impediment nmst and ought—and how f Mainly by bridges . A , philanthropist of our acquaintance declares that if he had a great sum to bestow on London , he would spend it in buying Waterloo and Southwark bridges , and throwing them both open on the same hour arid day ¦ with much waving of flags arid firing of commemorative cannon . INbr would the flags and cannon be ' evidehces of uiiworthy Vanity for a great city . We nre n 0 ^ actually , reduced to three bridges—Westminster , London , and Blaekfriws—Southwark and Waterloo being barred up by tolls ,, which are , to nine out of ten ,. prohibitory . So we shall drone on , tJU London J 3 ridge resembles nothing more than Napoleon ' s unfortunate passage of the Beresinn . The story of the growth of London is more like « . fairy story than a sober topographical reality . It is almost impossible to fancy Marylebone aljt gardens and fields as Into as 1770 , and boys flying kites in the meadows round the British Museum less than a century ago . It is easier to believe that Edvyard VI . wrote his Latin exercises in Bridewell , that the Duke of Gloucester dwelt near Paul ' s Wharf , or that the Strand , in Elizabeth ' s time , was one long chain of nobles' palaces , than such old-world stories 3 yet those legends are as true as that Lincoln's Inn Fields was once fashionable , that Prince Rupert lived in JFinsbury , mud their lordships Buckingham and Sliaftosbury not far off . Who can foretel tho changes of such a wondrous city P The Thames once boasted its " fat salmon ; ' its shores may one day , instead of warehouses , bonet of fair terraces and waving avenues . London , now the largest , may one day be the fture&t of cities , though close packed , and its soil worth hundreds the equaro foot ; for it still has largo and central plots of ground available for ventilating squares , railway stations , or great public buildings . There are Saffron Hill and Hunger ford Market , and the ColosHoum , oil vacant ) , nnd « t present useless ; at Tokeimoiiso Yard they already speak of a terminus , and nt Huugerford Bridge ot nnbtlaoivthut is to cross the water and connect ccntial London with the Pimlico ond J ^ ondon Bridge Railways . Tho underground railway ( not very healthful or inviting for pleasure trips ) is begun ; a railway following the street from Islington to tlie Edgware Road and 'Puddington would bo nccessible from nil parts of London , nnd would feed the Great Western . Lob what will be done , this is

    certain , that some means of traversing and bisecting this enormous , incoherent , and straggling city m 11 st be devised . At present , you come from the country sixty miles in less time than you take to get froia Shored itch station to Brompton . Why should we be doomed to have annoyances increase as fast as our wealth and population increase ? ; , •* . ' Juvenal ' s sketch of the miseries of walking in old Rome and Gay ' s delineation of the annoyances of old London , are nothing compared with our pi'esent sufferings in Holborn , Cheapside , the Strand , or the more crowded streets ; we no longer , certainly , have benedictions from the upper windows , as in old Edinburg-hi the filthiest and most cozy of cities ; no longer bands of brutal Mohocks punch you full of holes , or slit your nose ; no longer bucks think it chivalrous to knock down old men ; no longer have we masked highwayman in Oxford Street , or cut-throats bullying in every tavern , . But still no wonder that people who can help it nerer venture into the city , and talk in affected ignorance as if Finsbury was a dangerous part of Kamschatka , since street walking has become so vexatious , so slow , so dangerous , arid so intolerable . In no other city of the world are the streets such a scene of helpless entanglement with trucks , Hansomsj waggons , carts , Vans , carriages ; all squeezing and crushing in a defile too narrow for a third of them , grinding- arid tearing- through liquid mud that is scattered like alms right or left on all the foot-passengers ; sealing up this one ' s lips , iasterisking that one ' s coat , and rendering the crossing- a street at certain hours a matter of ten minutes ? delay , and that too at an hour wlien seconds are worth silver , and minutes worth gold . And do the foot-pavements afford room for healthy brisk walking ; rooni to walk two abreast with friends ? No ; they are loaded with a dense mass of humanity , close as herrings in a barrel . Rows of stolid men with heraldic boards behind them and iri front ; insensible files of policemen ; shop boys running errands , street porters , beggars with starliiig-s on sticks , and with buzzing toys , fifes , and butterflies leaping out of boxes , with little copper kettles arid tin whistles , and performing mice ; , dogsellers , sweepers ,, shoeblacks with their blacking slung behind them , milliners with show boxes . ; n \ en carrying eopper pipes , or planks ^ or iron-hooping , thilwrs waving their fire-ppts , stockbrokers pushing for the train , butcher boys with their obtrusive trays * dangerous tojeyes ; sweeps who get more room than a king- would if he were to go on his knees for it . Draymen in quilted suits . ,, lowering beer casks down gaping cellars , fruit women , swells carrying umbrellas as if they tliought they were rifles , hasty men with small carpet bags , servants going ^ for beer , shopmen taking iri goods- —such are a few , very few of the obstructions that fill our streets arid impede while they constitute our traffic . If our population arid traffic increase , sOme of these passengers must find out a means of reaching their destination \ inder the ground or up in the air , or , soxne day we shall have a jam with tremendous loss of life in some popular city thoroughfare . A golden moment ; a . s ; we all know , was let slip after the Fire of London , when Weed's great rectangular plan of s treet building was laid on one side . Had that great design been carried out , we should have been able from the Golden Gallery of Saint Paul ' s to have now looked down on a city rich as old Babylon and beauiihil as old Rome , and not on a confused mob struggling and fighting through a crowded nest of narrow streets and dirty alleys , where every sense is annoyed—a Gordian knot of devious ways which wants sortie Macadam Cjesak to cut through a » id through , with some ot those wide undeviating sword-thrusb roads which pt old went forth from Rorr- e straight , and . unbroken-to her most distant pi'ovincea .

    Untitled Article

    J § 2 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Feb . 25 , 1860 .

    The Government In T1ie Pantry.

    THE GOVKENMENT IN T 1 IE PANTRY .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 25, 1860, page 182, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2335/page/10/