The Post-Office officials ascertained that there was built in one year alone, as long ago as 1864, no fewer than 9,000 new houses. Though, by comparison with the houses of Edinburgh and some other parts of the kingdom, many of these are small structures, with but two rooms, often communicating, on a floor, a visitor to London will find no difficulty in seeing acres of substantial residences around him as he strolls along through the wide, quiet squares of Bloomsbury, the stuccoed and more aristocratic quarters of Belgravia and South Kensington, or by the old family mansions of the nobility and gentry in, say, Cavendish, Grosvenor, or Portman Squares, and the large and more modern houses of many of our wealthy citizens in Tyburnia and Westburnia, farther westward of the Marble Arch. But of this more anon. We have often heard foreigners laughingly remark of sundry London houses—apropos of the deep, open, sunk areas, bordered by iron railings, of many of them—that they illustrate, in some sense, our English reserve, and love of carrying out our island proverb—viz., that “every Englishman’s house is his castle,”—in its entirety, by each man barricading himself off from his neighbours advances by a fortified _fosse_! Without particular reference to municipal distinctions, London may (to convey a general idea to strangers) be divided into four principal portions—the _City_, which is the centre of corporate influence, and where the greatest part of the business is conducted; the _East End_, in which are the docks, and various commercial arrangements for shipping; the _West End_, in which are the palaces of the Queen and Royal family, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the residences of most of the nobility and gentry; and the _Southwark and Lambeth_ division, lying on the south side of the Thames, containing many manufacturing establishments, but few public buildings of interest. Besides these, the northern suburbs, which include the once detached villages of Hampstead, Highgate, Stoke Newington, Islington, Kingsland, Hackney, Hornsey, Holloway, &c., and consist chiefly of private dwellings for the mercantile and middle classes, may be considered a peculiar and distinct division. It is, however, nowhere possible to say (except when separated by the river) exactly where any one division begins or ends; throughout the vast compass of the city and suburbs, there is a blending of one division with that contiguous to it. The outskirts, on all sides, comprise long rows or groups of villas, some detached or semi-detached, with small lawns or gardens. The poet Cowper, in his _Task_, more than a hundred years ago, appreciatively spoke of “The villas with which London stands begirt, Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads.” We wonder what he would think now of the many houses of this kind which extend, in some directions, so far out of town, that there seems to be no getting beyond them into the country.