Mile End, a distance of about seven miles; the entire course of which is more densely populated than any portion of New York. These great avenues run nearly parallel to each other, and in no part of London can a stranger be far distant from one or the other of them. At this time London is computed to contain upward of eighty squares, and 10,000 streets, lanes, rows, places, courts, &c., and the number of houses exceeds 200,000.

"You will not have been long in London," Captain Manners remarked, as we made an inquiry of one of the policemen, "without perceiving the immense advantages of the metropolitan police. It is probably the most efficient police in Europe. Property and life are as secure here, I suppose, as in any part of the world. I have walked thousands of miles at night through the streets and lanes of London, and yet I never was assaulted or treated in a rude manner but once, and then I called a policeman to my aid in less than a minute."

We have to-day taken a view of each great

section of London, from the scenes of unbounded opulence and fashion of the West End, to the poverty stricken and squalid abodes of Spitalfields. I have seen more magnificence and display than I ever wish to see in my own country, and more wretchedness than I ever supposed could exist in "merrie England." There is something very painful in the contemplation of a state of society so highly artificial. I love the spirit of American democracy better than ever. I love the interminable woods and prairies, which stretch away towards the shores of the Pacific, offering a home to the poor, oppressed, taxed, degraded lower classes of Great Britain. What motive, thought I, as to-day I passed through some of the dark. lanes of Spitalfields, what motive have the ignorant and depressed multitudes who inhabit such abodes as these, for exertion? What hope have they that they will ever know what it is to own one foot of the earth, and call it their own home?

"Half their time," said my companion,

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they cannot find employment; and when they can, what do they get for their labour? Not enough to satisfy the simplest wants of nature! They and their wives and children may work hard all the time, and yet not be able to get a compensation for it sufficient to procure any of the means of social or moral elevation. In England, the poor must labour or starve. They must let their employers fix the price of their labour; and although some trades and employments yield good wages, yet the proportion of these to the whole is very small. I never was so much affected by the sufferings of the labouring classes in England until I returned from a residence of eighteen months in the United States; and I declare to you that there is more wretchedness and pinching poverty, more disgusting and heart-sickening degradation here, in a lane in Spitalfields, than I saw during the whole of my residence in the United States. The contrast between the working classes of this country and yours struck me very forcibly when I

landed in America; and more so, if possible, when I returned. I do not pretend to meddle much with politics; but I have not yet been able to rid myself of the painful conviction, that misrule has produced very much of this suffering and vice. For it is universally acknowledged, I think, that England can maintain even a much larger population than she now does, if she will remove the heavy burdens which the Government and aristocracy have imposed upon the people. But when they will do this no one can tell."

I feel to-night as I have sometimes felt after awaking from a feverish dream, in which an ideal world of Oriental magnificence and of abject suffering had floated before my fancy, in one bewildering spectacle. But goodnight.

Faithfully yours,

London, June, 1840.

DEAR

"WELL," observed Captain Manners, as we sat at the breakfast-table this morning, “what

will you see to-day?"

replied.

Westminster Abbey, I

"Capital," rejoined the captain: "I've been to the old Abbey perhaps a thousand and one times; but you could not have named a place I should like so well to visit this morning. It is a fine old pile, and many a glorious legend is told about it, too; which may or may not be true: but I always liked a time-honoured fiction better than a dry modern fact."

We walked along through Westminster, and it brought a new joy over my heart when I saw the gray towers of the old Abbey rising above the stately elms of St. James's Park. The sight of the Abbey in the distance, with