But when one notices the condition of the streets the wonder at the loads that are drawn ceases. They are as smooth as glass. The stone pavements are evenly laid and absolutely without ruts. The wooden pavement, answering to the Nicholson, which has invariably been a failure in America, is a success here, and for a very simple reason. The contractors are compelled to do their work honestly. There is no shoddy in the pavements of London. They are all as sound as the Bank of England. They don't lay down some pine boards in the mud, and then stand rotten blocks on end upon them, as we do in America, but there is a solid foundation of broken stone and such matter laid down first, and this is filled with sand, and then the blocks, all good timber, are placed upon that in a proper way, the whole resulting in a road-bed as solid as stone itself, and smooth and noiseless, making a roadway over which any load can be drawn without injury to either beast or vehicle, and one which will be good long after the makers are dust. The vehicles are made so strong as they are, not for fear of the roads, but to hold the enormous weights that the roads make possible. [Sidenote: THE VICIOUS HORSE.] Sometime we of America will get to doing things in a permanent way. It will be, however, after all the present race of contractors are worth several millions each. I presume in the ancient days there were rings in London. If so I can understand the uses for the beheading blocks exhibited at the Tower. All the vehicles used in the city are massive and solid. You see none of the flimsy spider-web wheels and light airy bodies in carriages that we affect in America. The wheels of a cab to carry four people are quite three inches thick, and the bodies are correspondingly clumsy. Like their owners, they are very solid.