Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843

Their mirth had scarcely subsided, when the writer of the letter himself made his appearance. He had called early, for he had concluded, after much deliberation, that it was not consistent with the ardour and impetuosity of love, to wait till the formal hour of visiting, in order to receive the answer of Miss Danvers.

That answer the lady at once gave by presenting Captain Garland to him in the character of her husband. At the same time, she returned his epistle, and, explaining that circumstances had compelled the captain and herself to marry in a private and secret manner, apologized for the mistake into which the concealment of their engagement had led him.

"A mistake indeed—a mistake altogether!" exclaimed the baronet, catching at a straw as he fell—"a mistake into which this absurd fashion of envelopes has led us. The letter was never intended, madam, to be enclosed to you. It was designed for the hands"——

And he turned to Miss Sherwood, who, on her part, took the arm of Reginald with a significance of manner which proved to him that, for the present at least, his declaration of love might return into his own desk, there to receive still further emendations.

"No wonder, Sir Frederic," said Mr Sherwood, compassionating the baronet's situation—"no wonder your proposal is not wanted. These young ladies have taken their affairs into their own hands. It is Leap-Year. One of them, at least, (looking to his daughter,) has made good use of its privilege. The initiative, Sir Frederic, is taken from us."

The baronet had nothing left but to make his politest bow and retire.

"Reginald, my dear boy," continued the old gentleman, "give me your hand. Emily is right. I don't know how I should part with her. I will only make this bargain with you, Reginald—that you marry us both. You must not turn me out of doors."

Reginald returned the pressure of his hand, but he could say nothing. Mr Sherwood, however, saw his answer in eyes that were filling involuntarily with tears.

THE BATTLE OF THE BLOCKS

THE PAVING QUESTION

The subject of greatest metropolitan interest which has occurred for many years, is the introduction of wood paving. As the main battle has been fought in London, and nothing but a confused report of the great object in dispute may have penetrated beyond the sound of Bow bells, we think it will not be amiss to put on record, in the imperishable brass and marble of our pages, an account of the mighty struggle—of the doughty champions who couched the lance and drew the sword in the opposing ranks—and, finally, to what side victory seems to incline on this beautiful 1st of May in the year 1843.

Come, then, to our aid, oh ye heavenly Muses! who enabled Homer to sing in such persuasive words the fates of Troy and of its wooden horse; for surely a subject which is so deeply connected both with wood and horses, is not beneath your notice; but perhaps, as poetry is gone out of fashion at the present time, you will depute one of your humbler sisters, rejoicing in the name of Prose, to give us a few hints in the composition of our great history. The name of the first pavier, we fear, is unknown, unless we could identify him with Triptolemus, who was a great improver of Rhodes; but it is the fate of all the greatest benefactors of their kind to be neglected, and in time forgotten. The first regularly defined paths were probably footways—the first carriages broad-wheeled. No record remains of what materials were used for filling up the ruts; so it is likely, in those simple times when enclosure acts were unknown, that the cart was seldom taken in the same track. As houses were built, and something in the shape of streets began to be established, the access to them must have been more attended to. A mere smoothing of the inequalities of the surface over which the oxen had to be driven, that brought the grain home on the enormous plaustra of the husbandman, was the first idea of a street, whose very name is derived from stratum, levelled. As experience advanced, steps would be taken to prevent the softness of the road from interrupting the draught. A narrow rim of stone, just wide enough to sustain the wheel, would, in all probability, be the next improvement; and only when the gentle operations of the farm were exchanged for war, and the charger had to be hurried to the fight, with all the equipments necessary for an army, great roads were laid open, and covered with hard materials to sustain the wear and tear of men and animals. Roads were found to be no less necessary to retain a conquest than to make it; and the first true proof of the greatness of Rome was found in the long lines of military ways, by which she maintained her hold upon the provinces. You may depend on it, that no expense was spared in keeping the glorious street that led up her Triumphs to the Capitol in excellent repair. All the nations of the Orbis Antiquus ought to have trembled when they saw the beginning of the Appian road. It led to Britain and Persia, to Carthage and the White Sea. The Britons, however, in ancient days, seem to have been about the stupidest and least enterprising of all the savages hitherto discovered. After an intercourse of four hundred years with the most polished people in the world, they continued so miserably benighted, that they had not even acquired masonic knowledge enough to repair a wall. The rampart raised by their Roman protectors between them and the Picts and Scots, became in some places dilapidated. The unfortunate natives had no idea how to mend the breach, and had to send once more for their auxiliaries. If such their state in regard to masonry, we cannot suppose that their skill in road-making was very great; and yet we are told that, even on Cæsar's invasion, the Britons careered about in war-chariots, which implies both good roads and some mechanical skill; but we think it a little too much in historians to ask us to believe BOTH these views of the condition of our predecessors in the tight little island; for it is quite clear that a people who had arrived at the art of coach-making, could not be so very ignorant as not to know how to build a wall. If it were not for the letters of Cicero, we should not believe a syllable about the war-chariots that carried amazement into the hearts of the Romans, even in Kent or Surrey. But we here boldly declare, that if twenty Ciceros were to make their affidavits to the fact of a set of outer barbarians, like Galgacus and his troops, "sweeping their fiery lines on rattling wheels" up and down the Grampians—where, at a later period, a celebrated shepherd fed his flocks—we should not believe a word of their declaration. Tacitus, in the same manner, we should prosecute for perjury.

The Saxons were a superior race, and when the eightsome-reel of the heptarchy became the pas-seul of the kingdom of England, we doubt not that Watling Street was kept in passable condition, and that Alfred, amidst his other noble institutions, invented a highway rate. The fortresses and vassal towns of the barons, after the Conquest, must have covered the country with tolerable cross-roads; and even the petty wars of those steel-clad marauders must have had a good effect in opening new communications. For how could Sir Reginald Front-de-Bœuf, or Sir Hildebrand Bras-de-Fer, carry off the booty of their discomfited rival to their own granaries without loaded tumbrils, and roads fit to pass over?

Nor would it have been wise in rich abbots and fat monks to leave their monasteries and abbeys inaccessible to pious pilgrims, who came to admire thigh-bones of martyred virgins and skulls of beatified saints, and paid very handsomely for the exhibition. Finally, trade began, and paviers flourished. The first persons of that illustrious profession appear, from the sound of the name, to have been French, unless we take the derivation of a cockney friend of ours, who maintains that the origin of the word is not the French pavé, but the indigenous English pathway. However that may be, we are pretty sure that paving was known as one of the fine arts in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; for, not to mention the anecdote of Raleigh and his cloak—which could only happen where puddles formed the exception and not the rule—we read of Essex's horse stumbling on a paving-stone in his mad ride to his house in the Strand. We also prove, from Shakspeare's line—

"The very stones would rise in mutiny"—

the fact of stones forming the main body of the streets in his time; for it is absurd to suppose that he was so rigid an observer of the unities as to pay the slightest respect to the state of paving in the time of Julius Cæsar at Rome.

Gradually London took the lead in improving its ways. It was no longer necessary for the fair and young to be carried through the mud upon costly pillions, on the backs of high-stepping Flanders mares. Beauty rolled over the stones in four-wheeled carriages, and it did not need more than half-a-dozen running footmen—the stoutest that could be found—to put their shoulders occasionally to the wheel, and help the eight black horses to drag the ponderous vehicle through the heavier parts of the road. Science came to the aid of beauty in these distressing circumstances. Springs were invented that yielded to every jolt; and, with the aid of cushions, rendered a visit to Highgate not much more fatiguing than we now find the journey to Edinburgh. Luxury went on—wealth flowed in—paviers were encouraged—coach-makers grew great men—and London, which our ancestors had left mud, was now stone. Year after year the granite quarries of Aberdeen poured themselves out on the streets of the great city, and a million and a half of people drove, and rode, and bustled, and bargained, and cheated, and throve, in the midst of a din that would have silenced the artillery of Trafalgar, and a mud which, if turned into bricks, would have built the tower of Babel. The citizens were now in possession of the "fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ;" but some of the more quietly disposed, though submitting patiently to the "fumum," and by no means displeased with the "opes," thought the "strepitumque" could be dispensed with, and plans of all kinds were proposed for obviating the noise and other inconveniences of granite blocks. Some proposed straw, rushes, sawdust; ingenuity was at a stand-still; and London appeared to be condemned to a perpetual atmosphere of smoke and sound. It is pleasant to look back on difficulties, when overcome—the best illustration of which is Columbus's egg; for, after convincing the sceptic, there can be no manner of doubt that he swallowed the yelk and white, leaving the shell to the pugnacious disputant. In the same way we look with a pleasing kind of pity on the quandaries of those whom we shall call—with no belief whatever in the pre-Adamite theory—the pre-Macadamites.

A man of talent and enterprise, Mr Macadam, proposed a means of getting quit of one of the objections to the granite causeways. By breaking them up into small pieces, and spreading them in sufficient quantity, he proved that a continuous hard surface would be formed, by which the uneasy jerks from stone to stone would be avoided, and the expense, if not diminished, at all events not materially increased. When the proposition was fairly brought before the public, it met the fate of all innovations. Timid people—the very persons, by the by, who had been the loudest in their exclamations against the ancient causeways—became alarmed the moment they saw a chance of getting quit of them. As we never know the value of a thing till we have lost it, their attachment to stone and noise became more intense in proportion as the certainty of being deprived of them became greater. It was proved to the satisfaction of all rational men, if Mr Macadam's experiment succeeded, and a level surface were furnished to the streets, that, besides noise, many other disadvantages of the rougher mode of paving would be avoided. Among these the most prominent was slipperiness; and it was impossible to be denied, that at many seasons of the year, not only in frost, when every terrestrial pathway must be unsafe; but in the dry months of summer, the smooth surfaces of the blocks of granite, polished and rounded by so many wheels, were each like a convex mass of ice, and caused unnumbered falls to the less adroit of the equestrian portion of the king's subjects. One of the most zealous advocates of the improvement was the present Sir Peter Laurie, not then elevated to a seat among the Equites, but imbued probably with a foreknowledge of his knighthood, and therefore anxious for the safety of his horse. Sir Peter was determined, in all senses of the word, to leave no stone unturned; and a very small mind, when directed to one object with all its force, has more effect than a large mind unactuated by the same zeal—as a needle takes a sharper point than a sword. Thanks, therefore, are due, in a great measure, to the activity and eloquence of the worthy alderman for the introduction of Macadam's system of road-making into the city.

Many evils were certainly got rid of by this alteration—the jolting motion from stone to stone—the slipperiness and unevenness of the road—and the chance, in case of an accident, of contesting the hardness of your skull with a mass of stone, which seemed as if it were made on purpose for knocking out people's brains. For some time contentment sat smiling over the city. But, as "man never is, but always to be, blest," perfect happiness appeared not to be secured even by Macadam. Ruts began to be formed—rain fell, and mud was generated at a prodigious rate; repairs were needed, and the road for a while was rough and almost impassable. Then it was found out that the change had only led to a different kind of noise, instead of destroying it altogether; and the perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones at the top, or ploughing through the wet foundation, was hardly an improvement on the music arising from the jolts and jerks along the causeway. Men's minds got confused in the immensity of the uproar, and deafness became epidemic. In winter, the surface of Macadam formed a series of little lakes, resembling on a small scale those of Canada; in summer, it formed a Sahara of dust, prodigiously like the great desert. Acres of the finest alluvial clay floated past the shops in autumn; in spring, clouds of the finest sand were wafted among the goods, and penetrated to every drawer and wareroom. And high over all, throughout all the main highways of commerce—the Strand—Fleet Street—Oxford Street—Holborn—raged a storm of sound, that made conversation a matter of extreme difficulty without such stentorian an effort as no ordinary lungs could make. As the inhabitants of Abdera went about sighing from morning to night, "Love! love!" so the persecuted dwellers in the great thoroughfares wished incessantly for cleanliness! smoothness! silence!

"Abra was present when they named her name," and, after a few gropings after truth—a few experiments that ended in nothing—a voice was heard in the city, that streets could be paved with wood. This was by no means a discovery in itself; for in many parts of the country ingenious individuals had laid down wooden floors upon their farm-yards; and, in other lands, it was a very common practice to use no other material for their public streets. But, in London, it was new; and all that was wanted, was science to use the material (at first sight so little calculated to bear the wear and tear of an enormous traffic) in the most eligible manner. The first who commenced an actual piece of paving was a Mr Skead—a perfectly simple and inartificial system, which it was soon seen was doomed to be superseded. His blocks were nothing but pieces of wood of a hexagon shape—with no cohesion, and no foundation—so that they trusted each to its own resources to resist the pressure of a wheel, or the blow of a horse's hoof; and, as might have been foreseen, they became very uneven after a short use, and had no recommendation except their cheapness and their exemption from noise. The fibre was vertical, and at first no grooves were introduced; they, of course, became rounded by wearing away at the edge, and as slippery as the ancient granite. The Metropolitan Company took warning from the defects of their predecessor, and adopted the patent of a scientific French gentleman of the name of De Lisle. The combination of the blocks is as elaborate as the structure of a ship of war, and yet perfectly easy, being founded on correct mechanical principles, and attaining the great objects required—viz. smoothness, durability, and quiet. The blocks, which are shaped at such an angle that they give the most perfect mutual support, are joined to each other by oaken dowels, and laid on a hard concrete foundation, presenting a level surface, over which the impact is so equally divided, that the whole mass resists the pressure on each particular block; and yet, from being formed in panels of about a yard square, they are laid down or lifted up with far greater ease than the causeway. Attention was immediately attracted to this invention, and all efforts have hitherto been vain to improve on it. Various projectors have appeared—some with concrete foundations, some with the blocks attached to each other, not by oak dowels, but by being alternately concave and convex at the side; but this system has the incurable defect of wearing off at the edges, where the fibre of the wood, of course, is weakest, and presents a succession of bald-pated surfaces, extremely slippery, and incapable of being permanently grooved. A specimen of this will be often referred to in the course of this account, being that which has attained such an unenviable degree of notoriety in the Poultry. Other inventors have shown ingenuity and perseverance; but the great representative of wooden paving we take to be the Metropolitan Company, and we proceed to a narrative of the attacks it has sustained, and the struggles it has gone through.

So long ago as July 1839, the inventor explained to a large public meeting of noblemen and men of science, presided over by the Duke of Sussex, the principle of his discovery. It consisted in a division of the cube, or, as he called it, the stereotomy of the cube. After observing, that "although the cube was the most regular of all solid bodies, and the most learned men amongst the Greeks and other nations had occupied themselves to ascertain and measure its proportions, he said it had never hitherto been regarded as a body, to be anatomized or explored in its internal parts. Some years ago, it had occurred to a French mathematician that the cube was divisible into six pyramidical forms; and it therefore had struck him, the inventor, that the natural formation of that figure was by a combination of those forms. Having detailed to his audience a number of experiments, and shown how the results thereby obtained accorded with mathematical principles, he proceeded to explain the various purposes to which diagonal portions of the cube might be applied. By cutting the body in half, and then dividing the half in a diagonal direction, he obtained a figure—namely, a quarter of the cube—in which, he observed, the whole strength or power of resistance of the entire body resided; and he showed the application of these sections of the cube to the purposes of paving by wood." Such is the first meagre report of the broaching of a scientific system of paving; and, with the patronage of such men of rank and eminence as took an interest in the subject, the progress was sure and rapid.

In December 1839, about 1100 square yards were laid down in Whitehall, and a triumph was never more complete; for since that period it has continued as smooth and level as when first it displaced the Macadam; it has never required repair, and has been a small basis of peace and quietness, amidst a desert of confusion and turmoil. Since that time, about sixty thousand yards in various parts of London, being about three-fourths of all the pavement hitherto introduced, attest the public appreciation of the Metropolitan Company's system. It may be interesting to those who watch the progress of great changes, to particularize the operations (amounting in the aggregate to forty thousand yards) that were carried out upon this system in 1842:—

St Giles's, Holborn

Foundling Estate

Hammersmith Bridge

St Andrew's, Holborn

Jermyn Street

Old Bailey

Piccadilly

Newgate Street, eastern end

Southampton Street

Lombard Street

Oxford Street

Regent Street;

besides several noblemen's court-yards, such as the Dukes of Somerset and Sutherland's, and a great number of stables, for which it is found peculiarly adapted.

The other projectors have specimens principally in the Strand; that near the Golden Cross, being by Mr Skead; that near Coutts's Bank, Mr Saunders; at St Giles's Church, in Holborn, Mr Rankin; and in the city, at Gracechurch Street, Cornhill, and the Poultry, Mr Cary. The Poultry is a short space lying between Cheapside and the Mansion-house, consisting altogether of only 378 square yards. It lies in a hollow, as if on purpose to receive the river of mud which rolls its majestic course from the causeway on each side. The traffic on it, though not fast, is perpetual, and the system from the first was faulty. In addition to these drawbacks, its cleansing was totally neglected; and on all these accounts, it offered an excellent point of attack to any person who determined to signalize himself by preaching a crusade against wood. Preachers, thank heaven! are seldom wanted; and on this occasion the part of Peter the Hermit was undertaken by Peter the Knight; for our old acquaintance, the opponent of causeways, the sworn enemy to granite, the favourer of Macadam, had worn the chain of office; had had his ears tickled for a whole year by the magic word, my lord, was as much of a knight as Sir Amadis de Gaul, and much more of an alderman; had been a great dispenser of justice, and sometimes a dispenser with law; had made himself a name, before which that of the Curtises and Waithmans grew pale; and, above all, was at that very moment in want of a grievance. Sir Peter Laurie gave notice of a motion on the subject of the Poultry. People began to think something had gone wrong with the chickens, or that Sir Robert had laid a high duty on foreign eggs. The alarm spread into Norfolk, and affected the price of turkeys. Bantams fell in value, and barn-door fowls were a drug. In the midst of all these fears, it began to be whispered about, that if any chickens were concerned in the motion, it was Cary's chickens; and that the attack, though nominally on the hen-roost, was in reality on the wood. It was now the depth of winter; snowy showers were succeeded by biting frosts; the very smoothness of the surface of the wooden pavement was against it; for as no steps were taken to prevent slipperiness, by cleansing or sanding the street—or better still, perhaps, by roughing the horses' shoes, many tumbles took place on this doomed little portion of the road; and some of the city police, having probably, in the present high state of English morals, little else to do, were employed to count the falls. Armed with a list of these accidents, which grew in exact proportion to the number of people who saw them—(for instance, if three people separately reported, "a grey horse down in the Poultry," it did duty for three grey horses)—Sir Peter opened the business of the day, at a meeting of the Commissioners of Sewers for the City of London, on the 14th of February 1843. Mr Alderman Gibbs was in the chair. Sir Peter, on this occasion, transcended his usual efforts; he was inspired with the genius of his subject, and was as great a specimen of slip-slop as the streets themselves. He requested a petition to be read, signed by a Mr Gray, and a considerable number of other jobmasters and livery stable-keepers, against wood pavement; and, as it formed the text on which he spoke, we quote it entire:—

"To the Commissioners of Sewers—

"The humble memorial of your memorialists, humbly showeth,—That in consequence of the introduction of wood pavements into the City of London, in lieu of granite, a very great number of accidents have occurred; and in drawing a comparison between the two from observations made, it is found where one accident happened on the granite pavement, that ten at least took place upon the wood. Your memorialists therefore pray, that, in consequence of the wood pavement being so extremely dangerous to travel over, you would be pleased to take the matter into your serious consideration, and cause it to be removed; by doing which you will, in the first place, be removing a great and dangerous nuisance; and, secondly, you will be setting a beneficial and humane example to other metropolitan districts."

Mr Gray, in addition to the memorial, begged fully to corroborate its statements, and said that he had himself twice been thrown out by the falling of his horse on the wood, and had broken his shafts both times. As he did not allude to his legs and arms, we conclude they escaped uninjured; and the only effect created by his observation, seemed to be a belief that his horse was probably addicted to falling, and preferred the wood to the rough and hard angles of the granite. Immediately after the reading of the stablemen's memorial, a petition was introduced in favour of wood pavement from Cornhill, signed by all the inhabitants of that wealthy and flourishing district, and, on the principles of fair play, we transcribe it as a pendant to the other:—

"Your petitioners, the undersigned inhabitants of the ward of Cornhill and Birchen Lane, beg again to bring before you their earnest request, that that part of Cornhill which is still paved with granite, and also Birchen Lane, may now be paved with wood.

"Your petitioners are well aware that many complaints have been received of the wood paving in the Poultry; but they beg to submit to you that no reports which have been, or which may be made, of the accidents which have occurred on that small spot, should be considered as in any way illustrative of the merits of the general question. From its minuteness, and its slope at both extremities, it is constantly covered with slippery mud from the granite at each end; and that, together with the sudden transition from one sort of paving to another, causes the horses continually to stumble on that spot. Your petitioners therefore submit that no place could have been selected for experiment so ill adapted to show a fair result. Since your petitioners laid their former petition before you, they have ascertained, by careful examination and enquiry, that in places where wood paving has been laid down continuously to a moderate extent—viz. in Regent Street, Jermyn Street, Holborn, Oxford Street, the Strand, Coventry Street, and Lombard Street—it has fully effected all that was expected from it; it has freed the streets from the distracting nuisance of incessant noise, has diminished mud, increased the value of property, and given full satisfaction to the inhabitants. Your petitioners, therefore, beg to urge upon you most strongly a compliance with their request, which they feel assured would be a further extension of a great public good."

In addition to the petition, Mr Fernie, who presented it, stated "that the inhabitants (whom he represented) had satisfied themselves of the advantages of wood paving before they wished its adoption at their own doors. That enquiries had been made of the inhabitants of streets in the enjoyment of wood paving, and they all approved of it; and said, that nothing would induce them to return to the old system of stone; that they were satisfied the number of accidents had not been greater on the wood than they had been on the granite; and that they were of a much less serious character and extent."

Sir Peter on this applied a red silk handkerchief to his nose; wound three blasts on that wild horn, as if to inspire him for the charge; and rushed into the middle of the fight. His first blow was aimed at Mr Prosser, the secretary of the Metropolitan Company, who had stated that in Russia, where wooden pavements were common, a sprinkling of pitch and strong sand had prevented the possibility of slipping. Orlando Furioso was a peaceful Quaker compared to the infuriate Laurie. "The admission of Mr Prosser," he said, "proves that, without pitch and sand, wood pavements are impassable;" and fearful was it to see the prodigious vigour with which the Prosser with two s's, was pressed and assaulted by the Proser with only one. Wonder took possession of the assemblage, at the catalogue of woes the impassioned orator had collected as the results of this most dangerous and murderous contrivance. An old woman had been run over by an omnibus—all owing to wood; a boy had been killed by a cab—all owing to wood; and it seemed never to have occurred to the speaker, in his anti-silvan fury, that boy's legs are occasionally broken by unruly cabs, and poles of omnibuses run into the backs of unsuspecting elderly gentlemen on the roads which continue under the protecting influence of granite or Macadam. He had seen horses fall on the wooden pavements in all directions; he had seen a troop of dragoons, in the midst of the frost, dismount and lead their un-roughed horses across Regent Street; the Recorder had gone round by the squares to avoid the wooden districts; one lady had ordered her coachman to stick constantly to stone; and another, when she required to go to Regent Street, dismissed her carriage and walked. The thanks he had received for his defence of granite were innumberable; an omnibus would not hold the compliments that had been paid him for his efforts against wood; and, as Lord Shaftesbury had expressed his obligations to him on the subject, he did not doubt that if the matter came before the House of Lords, he would bestow the degree of attention on it which his lordship bestowed on all matters of importance. Working himself us as he drew near his peroration, he broke out into a blaze of eloquence which put the Lord Mayor into some fear on account of the Thames, of which he is official conservator. "The thing cannot last!" he exclaimed; "and if you don't, in less than two years from this time, say I am a true prophet, put me on seven years' allowance." What the meaning of this latter expression may be, we cannot divine. It seems to us no very severe punishment to be forced to receive the allowance of seven years instead of one, the only explanation we can think of is, that it contains some delicate allusion to the dietary of gentlemen who are supposed to be visiting one of the colonies in New Holland, but in reality employ themselves in aquatic amusements in Portsmouth and Plymouth harbour "for the space of seven long years"—and are not supposed to fare in so sumptuous a manner as the aldermen of the city of London.

"The poor horses," he proceeded, "that are continually tumbling down on the wood pavement, cannot send their representatives, but I will represent them here whenever I have the opportunity"—(a horse laugh, as if from the orator's constituents, was excited by this sally.) "But, gentlemen, besides the danger of this atrocious system, we ought to pay a little attention to the expense. I maintain you have no right to make the inhabitants of those streets to which there is no idea of extending the wood paving, pay for the ease and comfort, as it is called, of persons residing in the larger thoroughfares, such as Newgate Street and Cheapside. But the promoters say, 'Oh I but we will have the whole town paved with it'—(hear, hear.) What would this cost? A friend of mine has made some calculations on this point, and he finds that, to pave the whole town with wood, an outlay of twenty-four millions of money must be incurred!"

It was generally supposed in the meeting that the friend here alluded to was either Mr Joseph Hume or the ingenious gentleman who furnished Lord Stanley with the statistics of the wheat-growing districts of Tamboff. It was afterwards discovered to be a Mr Cocker Munchausen.

Twenty-four millions of money! and all to be laid out on wood! The thought was so immense that it nearly choked the worthy orator, and he could not proceed for some time. When at last, by a great effort, he recovered the thread of his discourse, he became pathetic about the fate of one of the penny-post boys, (a relation—"we guess"—of the deceased H. Walker, Esq. of the Twopenny Post,)—who had broken his leg on the wooden pavement. The authorities had ordered the lads to avoid the wood in future. For all these reasons, Sir Peter concluded his speech with a motion, "That the wood pavement in the Poultry is dangerous and inconvenient to the public, and ought to be taken up and replaced with granite pavement."

"As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After some well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him who enters next
Thinking his prattle to be tedious,
Even so, or with more scorn, men's eyes
Were turned on——Mr Deputy Godson!"

The benevolent reader may have observed that the second fiddle is generally a little louder and more sharp set than the first. On this occasion that instrument was played upon by the worthy deputy, to the amazement of all the connoisseurs in that species of music in which he and his leader are known to excel. From his speech it was gathered that he represented a district which has been immortalized by the genius of the author of Tom Thumb; and in the present unfortunate aspect of human affairs, when a comet is brandishing its tail in the heavens, and O'Connell seems to have been deprived of his upon earth—when poverty, distress, rebellion, and wooden pavements, are threatening the very existence of Great Britain, it is consolotary to reflect that under the guardianship of Deputy Godson Little Britain is safe; for he is resolved to form a cordon of granite round it, and keep it free from the contamination of Norway pines or Scottish fir. "I have been urged by my constituents," he says, "to ask for wood pavement in Little Britain; but I am adverse to it, as I think wood paving is calculated to produce the greatest injury to the public.