By these extensions London proper, by which we mean the _City_, has gradually assumed, if we may so speak, the conditions of an existence like that of a kernel in a thickly surrounding and ever-growing mass. By the census of 1861, the population of the _City_ was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034—or _twenty-five times_ as great as the former! It may here be remarked, that the population of the _City_ is becoming smaller every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people _live_ in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the _whole_ metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of time. If we follow the Registrar-General, London, as defined by him, extends north and south between Norwood and Hampstead, and east and west between Hammersmith and Woolwich. Its area is stated as 122 square miles. From the census returns of 1861, we find that its population then was 2,803,921 souls. It was, in 1871, 3,251,804. The real _city_ population was 74,732. The growth of London to its present enormous size may readily be accounted for, when we reflect that for ages it has been the capital of England, and the seat of her court and legislature; that since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has become a centre for those two countries; and that, being the resort of the nobility, landed gentry, and other families of opulence, it has drawn a vast increase of population to minister to the tastes and wants of those classes; while its fine natural position, lying as it does on the banks of a great navigable river, some sixty miles from the sea, and its generally salubrious site and soil—the greater part of London is built on gravel, or on a species of clay resting on sand—alike plead in its favour. At one time London, like ancient Babylon, might fairly have been called a brick-built city. It is so, of course, still, in some sense. But we are greatly improving: within the last few years a large number of stucco-fronted houses, of ornamental character, have been erected; and quite recently, many wholly of stone, apart altogether from the more important public buildings, which of course are of stone. Of distinct houses, there are now the prodigious number of 500,000, having, on an average, about 7.8 dwellers to a house. For our own part we are somewhat sceptical as to this average. But we quote it as given by a professedly good authority.