The 29th of September is the day set apart for the election of the new Lord Mayor, when the liverymen meet in the hall, and the crier reads a list of the names of the aldermen who have served as sheriffs; this being a kind of city test, that those who are rich enough to serve as sheriffs have more than half climbed into the civic chair; and only such as have filled that high office are eligible for the mayoralty. The person named is generally elected, and it is seldom that a poll takes place; but if the party elected refuses the office, he is fined one thousand pounds. When elected, he must be presented to the Lord Chancellor, and approved of by the crown; after this, a few more presentations, together with the usual oaths, and he is a "made man." Although the Lord Mayor of London may to many seem to "repose upon a bed of roses," yet there are thorns in this much-coveted couch, and heavy duties ever arousing him from his comfortable slumber. He does not always sit in state with his mace-bearer before him, and his toast-master behind, drinking bumpers of champaigne, and emptying china bowls of turtle-soup, but has as much business to go through as the most plodding clerk that is compelled to labour for his daily bread. He generally sits every week-day for three or four hours in the justice-room of the Mansion-House; presides over the sittings of the Court of Aldermen, where they do all but talk each other to death. He is a judge of the Central Criminal Court, and of the Sessions at Guildhall; holds eight courts a year as Conservator of the Thames; besides being a justice of the peace for Southwark, a trustee of St. Paul's, and a governor both of Greenwich Hospital and King's College. As to the number of affidavits and other documents he has to sign for the colonies, and of foreigners, "bearded like the pard," he has to receive, entertain, and do "the amiable" to, we can just conceive that all the figures in a _Ready Reckoner_ placed in a row would convey as clear an idea as we have of the "star-dust," in the unfathomed nebulæ, which has yet to be balanced in our planetary ledgers. We have heard that the letters he receives average 200 a day; and supposing only the tenth part of them to be from ladies, and not answered! what abuse he gets privately, publicly, and by post, gratis, must, as old Pepys says, "please him mightily." Though shorn of its ancient grandeur by blocked-up windows and a flat unsightly roof, there is still something very striking in the noble dimensions of the hall, which is 152 feet long, 50 wide, and 55 feet high. But it is in the crypt where we see the true architecture of the building uninjured, where the clustered pillars throw out their reedy ramifications to support the roof with all that wild grace which our early architects so well understood when they copied the forest-avenues. "Those leafy temples, solemn, tall, and grand, Pillar'd with oaks, and roof'd by Heaven's own hand."