crowd our streets every day, form blocks and stoppages at all our principal thoroughfares, and all but convince the stranger that finally London will find itself tied up in one eternal dead-lock, from which there will be no escape. Time and temper—two very valuable articles—are continually lost in these stoppages, and indeed it is very evident that something must be done to relieve them. Thanks to the security enjoyed by vested interests, it would be an almost hopeless task to widen the main thoroughfares sufficiently. In the widest streets these dead-locks occur; for instance, in Regent Street, in the height of the season. Nay, they would occur in Nevskoï Prospect, or the broadest streets of Paris or Pekin, if those cities had the population, the material wealth, and the eagerness for business, which mark London and the Londoners. Naturally enough, the concourse of vehicles has increased as the railway traffic has increased, and therefore it is but fair that a railway should be applied to abate the nuisance.
A penny-fare from Praed Street to the City will lessen the number of riders in the City omnibusses, and men of business proceeding from the centre of London to any part of England will pack their luggage in the Underground Railway car more safely and expeditiously than in a cab. At the same time, many of our luggage-vans themselves will be superseded, since the goods will be brought right into the midst of the City warehouses from the manufacturing districts, without passing all our public thoroughfares.
That it may interfere with some branches of industry is likely enough; but those branches are capable of being transferred to any other towns, where those who are employed in them will flourish all the more for being taken away from Cobbett’s “Huge Wen.”
DOGS OF ST. BERNARD.
