The Press.
London, England, 1856-12-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Poor Pebbles, of course, got plucked, and then
" Torn Hood " lets us have a peep at his rooms.
Paimrgus, it seems, like other " Jacks-of-all-
trades," was an amateur:—
The demou whispered, Pebbles have a taste.
The following description might have been
penned by Vyvyan Joyeuso for Knight's Quar-
terly Magazine:—

His rooms were hung with proofs•before•letters, that
vied in cost ( although they were, in a pictorial point of
view, not very valuable) with the choice engravings of
Burin, the great amateur artist of St. Mark's. His
Madonnas, and Oak Crosses, and Saints, excited the envy
of Reredos of Oriel ; while Snaffle, of Merton, did not tun►
out in a better pink or brighter boots than Pebbles,
although the latter seldom did more than ride to the meet
and back.

Featherwell admired Panurgus's gig, as she floated at
her moorings by the barge, and he vowed she was well
worth the money, much as it was, atwhich she was valued.
De Villiers of Ch. Ch., had not more costly furniture than
our hero. whose rooms nevertheless were a consummation
of bad taste. Bookstall, of Balliol, did not lay out more on
his library than Pebbles, whose numerous volumes were
merely costly rubbish notwithstanding. In short, as Jack•
of alhtrades had he set up in Oxford, and no small sum
did it cost him to purchase his stock, so that when he came
to survey his position, he found himself considerably in
debt, and without a testamur.
Pebbles " succeeded in nothing but ruining
" himself," and there is the true Tom-Hoodian
punning pathos in the finis of his history :

He sleeps in a little churchyard near Boulogne.
Featherwell and I visited the place 'est vacation. It was
a bright summer's day, and the shade of the tower lay
clearly defined across the grass, and the shadow of the
weathercock seemed, as if in mockery, to rest upon Peb-
bles' grave.
" Man is but a vane shallow," said Featherwell ; and so
we turned away and left him to sleep under the head-stone,
with the simple inscription—
Hic Jacet,
PANURGUS PEBBLES.

Our readers can form a fair opinion of the
pretensions of this volume from our extracts.
The writer could make his own way without
any adventitious distinction for his name. We
entreat of him to have a care not to turn out a
litera►;y Pebbles. His mind is evidently not
formed ; he is still in a transitional state ; and
he must make a choice as to whether ho ought
to aim at being poet, artist, essayist, pun-
wright, or chansonnier. Let him find out his
aptitude, and work in that vein, whatever it
may be. We congratulate him on the fact
that, he is not likely, judging from these pages
before us, to become a writer of burlesques.
If he should fall into that wretched literary
plight, " Tom Hood " will become a lost man.
Let none of his friends tempt him to write a
piece for Robson. His animal spirits want the
riotous vivacity absolutely necessary for " the
professional humorist." His wit is evidently
of too verbal a kind. It would not answer,
or example, to have much writing in the fol-
lowing strain :

Do not try to make things look what they are not—let a
chair be a chair, a table a table. (We remember one in
the Exhibition formed by the shield of a gladiator, who
knelt with a drawn sword underneath—an inhospitable

board—anew plan for cutting disagreeable acquaintances.)
No, we say, let everything seem what it ia. Do not
have your inkstand shaped like a wolfs head with a
moveable brain-pan, or (though it does please your anti•
Russian ideas) a bear with his throat cut, and a hinge
instead of a vertebra. We repeat, this is false taste ; let
your ink-stand be an ink-stand, or, at least, as ink slandish
as possible. Let your mantel piece be a mantel-piece ;do
not Gingham and Grodynaples advertise their mantle-
pieces in the best taste at one guinea? Let your sofa be a
sofa in so far as may be.
Our natural modesty prevents us from asserting that
the new receptacles for letters in the City were first sug-
gested by us ; being in accordance with our theory, post-
boxes and nothing but it.

The author's next volume will be his most
important step, and we cordially wish him
success in his career. We must add that it is
or advantage in his favour that he is " a
" popular man," thus showing that he
has personal qualities which elevate him
beyond " a book in breeches," and entitle him
to more fiiendly sympathy than is given to a
man made of brains, and nothing more.

l'imt-gilice London Directory, 1857. London:

Kelly.
As we gaze on this latest product of Mr.
Kelly's industry we hardly know which to
wonder at most,--the rapid growth of the
metropolis, which its dimensions indicate, or
the remarkable ingenuity and patience which
must be exercised in keeping pace with that
growth. At the
.close of the last great war,

II

1198

in 1815, the London Directory was a little
volume, about the size of "Keightley's History
of Greece," containing a list of no more than
17,000 merchants, traders, &c , of London,
and parts adjacent. It is needless to say
that the collection of commercial names,
which were all to be procured at regular places
of business, presented little or no difficulty in
comparison with the task of obtaining private
ones. The private addresses of such persons
as the world was supposed to care about were
given then and for many years subsequently
in the " Court Guide." It was not, indeed,
till the year 1841 that the names of the
gentry were added to Messrs. Kelly's publi-
cation. In 18-12 on official directory was added
also ; while in 1838 the full Christian names
had been inserted for the first time insteal of
the initials only, a change productive of more
convenience than would at first sight be ima-
gined. Strange to say, Mr. Kelly experienced
considerable difficulty in inducing persons to
disclose their Christian names ; and it was
only by laying down a stringent rule that no
person who refused to do so should hay( his
name in the " Directory" at all, that the pre-
sent wonderful completeness of the work was
accomplished. The energetic publisher is not,
however, content with resting on his laurels.
Every year he endeavours to devise some fresh
improvement, and to keep the " Directory "
alongside of all the changes which take place
annually either in the streets themselves, in
the arrangements of the Post-office, or the
condition of public conveyances. In the
present edition initial letters will be found
appended to each place throughout the
" street directory," imended to denote the
ten postal districts into which it is contem-
plated to divide London and the suburbs. A.
new and convenient description of all places
where money orders can be obtained has been
also introduced, which will save all persons
who are in the habit of receiving remittances
from the country an infinity of delay and
irritation.

The heaving, restless mass of human life oon-
tained within the limits to which this Directory
extends might well be supposed to furnish no
small amount of trouble to persons whose busi-
ness it is to discover fixed residences ; and
how far the habits of Londoners are nomad or
stationary, how many old homes are broken
up or deserted and new ones established
in the course of one year, are points which
might afford much interesting speculation.
Mr. Kelly computes that about 20,000 remo-
vals and 23,000 entirely new entries are re•
corded by him in the present edition ; and
that he has also inserted about 13,000 altera-
tions of names, and descriptions of trades,
&c. As many of these have of course to be
corrected in several different portions of the
work, it is reckoned that the sum total of
corrections in the entire volume amounts
to about 175,000. This will afford our
readers some little notion of the labour
annually undergone in producing this ad-
mirably useful and convenient work. In
collecting and correcting this information
about twenty-five different forms or papers
are issued to the clerks engaged in it.
Nor is the increase in that aggregate of
brick and stone which we call London less
astonishing when we refer to the maps and
directories of thirty or forty years ago. On
comparing Cary's plan of London for the year
1815 with the handsome map turned out by
Mr. Kelly for 1857, it would seem as if London
had increased by nearly one half. We mean,
at least, that the area has been nearly doubled.
Let the reader take any ordinary map of re-
cent timeg, and observe all that oblong region
which is bounded on the east by Grace-
church.street, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch
as far as the Church ; north, by the City-
road and New-road ; west, by a little bit
of the Edgeware-road and Park-lane ; and
south, by Piccadilly, and the Thames, round
again to London-bridge, the very heart
and viscera of London, and he will find that,
since the earlier date above given, a space of
exactly similar dimension has been added to
AA the metropolis on the north side alone It is
not so thickly covered with buildings, and in
one portion the Regent's-park and Primrose-
hill occupy a considerable slice of it ; but it
is as closely covered as any new districts not

1194

devoted to business are likely to be for the
future, and is fairly brought within the boun-
daries of the great city. The region we allude
to is that which lies just on the other side the
northern boundary of the above-mentioned
tract, rea -thing northward as far as the North
London Railway, and lying between the Kings-
land and Edgewaro Roads on the east and
west respectively. This district is entirely now
since 1x15; but it has already drained off a
great number of the class who were supposed
to be indigenous to Bloomsbury, and seems
likely to hold the same relative position to
Belgravia as the former once held to Mayfair
and St. James's-street.

Turning towards the west and south, we
observe a similar development. Due west of
the Edgeware-road fifty years ago were open
fields, stretching towards Westbourne-green
on the north, and coming down to the Ux-
bridge-road southwards. Here now is the
fashionable region of Bayswater, with its spa-
cious streets and squares, and its cheerful
gardens and terraces. Southwards still lay
Holland -house, Kensington - gardens, and
Hyde-park, and between these and the river
were nothing but the suburbs of Brompton and
Chelsea, then little more than villages. Be-
tween these and Buckingham Palace was an
empty space, now covered with the magnifi-
cent structures of Belgrave and Eaton Squares,
and nearer the river with those of Warwick
and Eccleston ; while the carpenter and mason
are still extending their labours westward,
and gradually extirpating all that dingy mass of
building which formed the outskirts of Chelsea

On the Surrey side of the Thames, though
the character of the change is not so promi-
nent or so extensive, it has probably afforded
more additional trouble to the Directory clerks
than the corresponding growth of dwellings
on this side the water. Battersea, for-
merly a distant village, but now a connected
suburb, has row upon row of neat white cot-
tage villas, which are often not occupied by
the same tenant for more than a year together,
not because they are not in themselves ex-
cellent houses, but because they afford such
facilities to persons wishing to get a sub-
urban residence for the summer months with-
out the annoyance of lodgings. Here too, as all
round the " Surrey side" from Battersea to
Bermondsey, will be found a large sprinicling
of that numerous class who for various reasons
never own an address. Like David's army,
the population of Battersea, Lambeth, and
Camberwell is composed of very hetero-
geneous and very loose materials, among
which the " Finder-out "—as described by a
weekly periodical—from Old Boswell-court is
variously suspected of being either a tax-
gatherer, a bailiff, or aPolish count, with an eye
to the great coats.
Thus slowly and unnoticed is the great city
extending herself. On two sides, certainly, a
breadth of nearly two miles has been added to
its dimensions within this century, and about
half that distance on the third. Not the least
curious or interesting result is the altered re-
lation in which the different parts of town now
stand to each other, and the extent to which
they promise alteration for the future. What
was a central position twenty years ago has
already lost much of that character, and in
twenty years to come will perhaps have lost it
altogether. Thus, for instance, on the ques-
tion whether Kensington or Trafalgar-square
were the most fitting site for the new National
Gallery, it has been fisumed that the former
is still a suburb, the latter still the centre of
London for artists and the middle class.
But now that artists have emigrated to
Tyburnia and Bayswater, and the majority
of their patrons to Belgravia, Kensington is
decidedly the more central position of the two.
What changes may yet be in store for the
shops, theatres, and other public places of the
metropolis is a curious subject for contempla-
tion. Will they have eventually to follow
their customers, or will their customers come
to them ? The fact of the Houses of Parlia-
ment and all the public offices standing where
they do will always prevent the population of
London from drifting westward beyond a
certain point. But what that point may he
seems very undecided at present. Year by
year now streets and squares, each further
west, and each combining more and more of

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