have a penchant for Jamaica rum, by extending their visit to the West India Dock, they can see the largest collection of rum-casks to be found in any bonded warehouse on the habitable globe. But it is not to these colossal establishments that we wish now to refer, interesting and important as they may be, but rather to the less pretentious and smaller warehouses, forming a group styled officially ‘Uptown Warehouses.’ No one passing along Crutched Friars—the very name suggests that strange blending of the past with modern commercial activity, which is observable in London as in other large centres of population—would from external signs surmise for a moment, that under his feet and around him there were acres of vaults containing tens of thousands of casks of port, sherry, and various descriptions of spirit. Yet such is the fact; and as a matter of detail, it may be stated that the stock of _port_ wine in one of these vaults comprises the finest brands imported into the metropolis. The firm of B—— is well known throughout the commercial world of London, and is believed to be upwards of a century old. The original founder, who sprang from a very humble stock, died worth, it is said, two million pounds sterling, amassed by the skilful and honourable conduct of a bonding business, which had grown from very modest conditions indeed, to rival the huge proportions of the docks themselves. In fact, the tendency of the last few years has been decidedly to withdraw the bonding trade from these formerly gigantic establishments, and to concentrate it in the Uptown Warehouses. The result of this has been to lower the shares of the Dock Companies to the minimum level compatible with commercial solvency; while, owing to the keen rivalry with the smaller and more progressive bonding warehouses elsewhere, the charges have been reduced to a point that would have surprised merchants of past days. One great reason for the modern change which we have noted, is unquestionably the superior accessibility of the Uptown Warehouses to the City proper, and their comparative nearness to the various railway termini. Time and distance, in these days of excessive speed, are prime factors, and must in the end assert themselves. Besides, it is evident to all thinking men that we have reached a crisis in the transport of merchandise, and that the railway is becoming daily more omnipotent.