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 of meeting with something illustrative of city life. The 7th route, not yet noticed, we will now follow, as it proceeds towards the West End. The great central thoroughfare of Cheapside, which is closely lined with the shops of silversmiths and other wealthy tradesmen, is one of the oldest and most famous streets in the city—intimately associated with the municipal glories of London for centuries past. Many of the houses in Cheapside and Cornhill have lately been rebuilt on a scale of much grandeur. Some small plots of ground in this vicinity have been sold at the rate of nearly _one million sterling_ per acre! On each side of Cheapside, narrow streets diverge into the dense mass behind—Ironmonger Lane, King Street, Milk Street, and Wood Street, on the north; and among others, Queen Street, Bread Street, where Milton was born, and where stood the famous Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and Raleigh, Ben Jonson and his young friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin-dramatists, loved to meet, to enjoy “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” to say nothing of a few flagons of good Canary wine, Bow Lane, and Old ’Change, on the south. The greater part of these back streets, with the lanes adjoining, are occupied by the offices or warehouses of wholesale dealers in cloth, silk, hosiery, lace, &c., and are resorted to by London and country shopkeepers for supplies. Across the north end of King Street stands the Guildhall; and a little west, the City of London School and Goldsmiths’ Hall. At the western end of Cheapside is a statue of the late Sir Robert Peel, by Behnes. Northward of this point, in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, are the buildings of the Post