’I reached London,’ he says, ’towards the close of the day ... and at last, quite by chance, I found myself settled in an apartment in the house of the _Cruisinier Royal_ in Leicester Fields. This neighbourhood is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to foreigners.’ On the following day he walked down Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul’s, then crossed London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking through Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, ’a district full of mean houses and meaner taverns.’ The localities named have not greatly altered their character since then. In another place our traveller says: ’Even from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the river, as the parapets are ten feet high.... The reason given for all this is the inclination which the English, and the Londoners especially, have for suicide. It is true that above and below the town the banks are unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those who really wish to drown themselves; but the distance is great, and, besides, those who wish to leave the world in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes of the public. The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars] which is being built will be but of an ordinary height.’ Suicidal tendencies must indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently erected bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have particularly low parapets. Of the streets our author says: ’They are paved in such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk on them in safety, and they are always extremely dirty.... The finest streets ... would be impassable were it not that on each side ... footways are made from four to five feet wide, and for communication from one to the other across the street there are smaller footways elevated above the general surface of the roadway, and formed of large stones selected for the purpose.... In the finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement’s Church, I noticed, during the whole of my stay in London, that the middle of the street was constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches deep.... The walkers are bespattered from head to foot.... The natives, however, brave all these disagreeables, wrapped up in long blue coats, like dressing-gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough, red and frizzled.’ Well, we cannot find much fault with this description, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, and its inhabitants the most uncouth, repulsive set of ’guys’! Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a false prognostic: ’The shops of Oxford Street will disappear as the houses are sought after for private dwellings by the rich. Soon will the great city extend itself to Marylebone, which is not more than a quarter of a league distant. At present it is a village, principally of taverns, inhabited by French refugees.’