Stirling, E: Descriptive Reading on London

Excerpt from A Descriptive Reading on London: Illustrated by Twelve Lantern Slides

The venerable city of London, the metropolis of all English speaking people, unquestionably stands unrivalled in the history of the world. Herschel spoke of it as the center of the terrestrial globe, which it really is in more senses than that in which he meant to imply; and the German poet, Heine, called the city the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit. When we con sider that within a fifteen-mile radius of St. James' Palace there live upwards of persons, a very faint idea is conveyed of what that fact means. It means among other things that London has within her narrow limits a population twice that of Paris, more people than in the whole of Scotland, more Roman Catholics than Rome itself, more Irishmen than Belfast, more Scotchmen than in Aberdeen, and more Jews than in all Palestine more people than in the whole State of Pennsylvania more than in all the New England States and the State of California put together. A number of people equal to the entire population of Brooklyn daily enter and leave the 632 acres of the City of London proper, and ten years ago ground sold at the rate ot ten millions of dollars an acre. Of this great city, however, we can only look at one or two of its most striking features.

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