The next great work that the Corporation has to take in hand is the widening of the Poultry, infinitely more important, and more absolutely required, in the opinion of all people who frequent the City, than the widening of Newgate Street, upon which the Corporation is now engaged. The expense, of course, will be enormous, but it must be met—somehow: land to be paid for by the square _inch_; splendid constructions to come down; historic Bucklersbury to disappear; even the Mansion House will stop the way, and His Lordship will have to find residence either at the rear of Guildhall, as was suggested some short time ago, or elsewhere. Metropolitan fellow residents, metropolitan suburbanists, and inhabitants who dwell to the extent of six miles outside the Post-Master General’s twelve mile postal circle, you may all rest assured that the granite pillars you see at the eighteen mile distance post from London, on railway and roadway, on river bank and canal tow-path—the columns of Luxor of the Corporation—with inscriptions on them destined, in remote future times, to represent the hieroglyphics of ancient Anglia—will remain and be found among the few signs then extant, of the by-gone civilisation which the prophesied New Zealander is to make his musings upon. Of the London coal tax as of the river:— “Rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.”[117] The tax exists _ex necessitate rerum_, and must continue notwithstanding fervescence frequent—always at boiling point—in Parochial Parliaments, with echoes occasional in that of St. Stephens. By means of the Viaduct, as already said, the two summits of the valley will be connected together almost on the level. The roadway will be 80 feet wide. Commencing at the western end of Newgate Street, it will be carried in a straight line to Farringdon Street, occupying the whole of the space which recently formed Skinner Street, as well as the sites of several of the houses on that thoroughfare. It will include also a portion of the church of St. Sepulchre, the dismal bell of which tolls “the knell of parting day” to those miserable beings upon whom the law enacts terrible and life-destroying vengeance. From Farringdon Street the Viaduct is carried by a gentle curve to Hatton Garden, occupying the present roadway and the sites of the houses which formerly stood on the southern side of Holborn Hill. It will also occupy part of the churchyard of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. At the entrance to St. Sepulchre’s Church a street from Farringdon Road will join the Viaduct on its northern side, and it is at this point that whatever little gradient there is on the Viaduct may be said to commence. From there to Farringdon Street it will be 1 in 153, or at the rate of 34 feet in the mile; from Farringdon Street to Hatton Garden, 1 in 143, or at the rate of 35 feet in the mile. For all purposes of traffic the Viaduct may therefore be said to be level.