The Express.
London, England, 1856-09-06 00:00:00

GREAT LOSS OF LIFE AT SEA.

PLYMOUTH, Fame,: Eviugixo.

The pilot sloop PoneenannOs brought is here this
afternoon the rasstir, math and ten of On new, with tin
passiegen, being a who are supposed to be saved from the
ship Ocean Ilene, which left Rotteedes en the Ist last. with
106 sun The Ocean Home Waged to Brunserieb, State
of Maine, 60 toss, Oeptala A. H. Merryman, and was
lades with a general cargo of madder, gin, wine, Meek tin,
Ike., and bound to New York; crew, including edam, 17
pancepn (men, wows, sad children), 88. This morning
she was goirg down the eitassal seder all possible sail,
Totals, topgallant, studding salle, wind B.E. by 8., en
the port quarter; and at twenty Wastes past two °Wolk,
when the Lizard bore north, distant about twenty-fra
mike, was ran into on the north bow by the ship Cherubim,
of 2,000 toes, from New York for London.
The foremast of the Omni Hone sae carried over the off
side, and she went down is about twenty minutes.
Bess of the scenes limped instantly late the rigging of
tht Cherubim. Meet of t►e pasteagers were Weep in their
bathe, bat tea *strived, with three of the crew, to get into
a quarter-boat, and in a slaking state to join the China/ Ma,
which tea then at same Masa. By ski concussing fits
wiedlue was driest an the fore•batch, which manna.*
seamen below from mons on deck.
Moan Merryman tan to the after•hatch to gall the
pampa, and was tAns down with the ship, from bong
entangled with the rigging; M as.. to the surface, caught
hold of a plea of wood, sad then of a cabs-door, which
supported bin four house, when he, with the sate, who
was saved in a similar minter, was resened by the Chun•
bin's beat.
The second mate mad two bands left the Oran Home is
one of the boats, bat it is supposed that they perished.
The Cherubim, Captain Bnith, of Ithaniond, United
States, has a (easel cargo and a number of pan apse,
useeg who are the widow and is children of the Ist.
Britieb Consul at New York, who died eery suddenly four-
Wm dsp. after soling.
Tbe estwater of this ship is latched away, mad some of
the taunts and butts stinted, bet she has promeaded up
channel.

LIST 07 ElAvia.

Crow.—Captehe A. H. Merryman. aid °Meer, Shields;
shles toll', Dialed Sad; parsnpn• cook, Jobs Sent;
sessees—Jobe Ambrose. Wind Aspisers, Charles Mas-
sie, Jetta Deltas, Edward Drown, °Wales Seek, Sines
Le% end James Cenangleame.
Peasesgen.—Wellor Mary, Danish Ambrose. (Mann
Wysfetl, Kids Ambles, Analogs Kelley. Mania Delmar,
Amen Waimea, G. Vessisk, H. J. Tot Slay, sad G. J.
Ter Horst.

ii••••w of the Ouse Zoo*, la slum of Ile Aserfess
Coml. sal dr prosegui, la damp a tb Badpwresked
Madsen' Soddy, boys bees NMI bdied s* OM More

No. 111.

The problem required to be solved in the arrange-
ment of the Clerkenwell Improvements, may be
stated succinctly enough. Given the quondam
bed of a river, lying between high banks on
either side, as the hoe for a new thoroughfare, so to
construct the street that the old thoroughfares which
it may become the medium of uniting, and the new
ones hereafter to be made, may Gross it without
serious hindrance to the traffic) of all or any.
Now obviously them are but two satisfactory lola- 1
Gnus cf this problem. The new street should either be
constructed at so low a level as to admit of its being
creased by viaducts connecting the streets placed on
the heights on either side, melee it should be raised
to so high a level as to render those viaducts
unnecessary.
The former is, we oonfess, the plan to which we
are most favourable in the case of Victoria-street;
seeing that the fact of a river having formerly run
in the same direction, and the unimportance of the
bye-streets, obviate all the objections and inconve-
niecess which so militate against, though we don't
ay they ought to negative, the project of a viaduct at
Holborn. hill.
Nor, indeed, is there anything in the level of Vic.
toria-etreet, as now opened, to preclude the construc-
tion of viadoots, if hereafter deemed necessary.
Their omission in the original plan is, of course, the
fault of the legislature, or the government of the time
being, and Dot of those who had to carry the act of

P•
parliament into effect.
But, then, it really won't answer to rely on the
good sense of posterity any more than on what used
to be called the wisdom of our ancestors. We have
no right to take for granted that those viaducts will
ever be constructed. And if they be not—if sena-
lators take a fancy to the locality, and cover the
ground with new buildings as now laid out—to what
a state of primitive inequality the whole of those new-
married thoroughfares will be condemned ! From
the top of Clerkenwsll-green, for instance, there will
be a descent of some twenty or five-and-twenty feet
to the level of the new street, and of several feet
additional to a still lower level, which, as hereafter
to be explained, it has been thought proper to pre-
serve. And then there will be a rise of some thirty
feet or upwards to the top of Leather-
lane—the inconveniences, in short, of Holborn-
hill and Ludgate-hill combined in the principal
eras thoroughfare thrown open by these soi &sant
" improvements." Of course, nothing but a viaduct
would perfectly. remedy the evil. But a somewhat
more rapid rise In Victoria-street, bringing it at this
point to about ten feet above its present level, would
have greatly mitigated the difficulty.
Bringing the upper part of Victoria-street to this
higher level would have hid the additional advan-
tage of causing it to meet Coppice-row at a consider-
ably higher point, and thus of correcting the needless
steepness of that acclivity likewise, as the Commis.
sioners found it, and left it. But the fact is, those
gentlemen seem to have set out with the notion that
a stiff bit of a bill was rather an agreeable feature
than otherwise in a new thoroughfare. More recently
they found out their mistake, and they are now busy
reducing the slope of Charles-street all the way from
Hatton-garden to Saffron-bill. And how are they
doing it? Are they making it as it ought to be, one
uniform and gradual ascent from Victoria-street to
Hatton-garden? Not a bit of it. There is first a
rise at one incline, from Victoria street to Saffron-
hill, and then a rise at a touch greater incline from
Saffron-bill to Hatton-garden, instead of having one
uniform rise throughout, at a medium incline between
the two.

And why was this? Aye, why? Well may you
ask the question, good teader. Au there is no madness
but has a certain method in it, and seems sound rea-
son in its own eyes, so there is no folly so great but
it has its own justification in some cther foolish notion
that preceded it. So saturated with syllogism are all
human transactions! Without a certain logical
sequence the folly of the most incorrigible fool would
come to a dead Ic2k. Indeed, what is commonly
asserted of great iuventiona—that they are remark-
able for their simplicity—may with still more
justice, and in more senses than one, be predicated
likewise of great blunders. Not only must the
booby be what in common parlance is called a sim-
pleton, but his special achievements in the blunder-
ing line must have a singleness and sincerity about
them, an air of perfect innocence, such as no loge-
itsiq could counterfeit. They must be hair-breadth
mbdtige of obvious facts or well-known principles,
each as it requires a sort of genius for stupidity to
perpetrate.
- What then is the origo primary error
of the Clerkenwell improvers, which deterred them
from raising the upper end of Victoria-street to a
coavenient level, and is leading them at this mo-
ment to form an ascent into Charles-street at two
different angles of inclination? What, "0 gentle
shepherd, tell me what?" They laid it down
as a principle from the beginning that it would
be indispensable to preserve the original level of
fief fren-hill !! Credste posteri! And not only
of Saffron-hill, but of every other paltry
street and lane, abutting on the Fleet river, of
whist' any portion remains. Rascally little streets
they are, that
were intended to be so—the best of them not rising
to the dignity of a decent stable lane—built and
paved with that grotesque irregularity which charac-
terises the back streets in the vicinity of a river bank
—one halt of them pulled down by the commis-
sioners. And yet the levels of the really important
cross thoroughfares, and the general disposition of
Victoriaetreet itself, are to be made to conform to
them! If in one place they rise above the level of
the latter the jucci ion with Victoria-street rises like-
wise. And it in another place, in the same line of
original street, the up and d .wn course of this primi-
tive specimen of street laying falls below the level of
Victoria-street, down goes the new joining street to
meet it, at the very place where the steepness of the
cross thoroughfares most imperatively called for an
wont.
Lot us consider for a moment what this botching
amounts to and results In. To obviate a variation of
two or three feet in the level of a tortuous tumble.
down back slum, naturally from the unequal nature
of the soil, and the carelessness of its construction,
abounding in such fluctuations—of a lane that might
without the slightest Ineouvenieoce to any human
being be rendered impassable for any but foot pas-
sengers—the construction of a great thoroughfare
like Victoria-street is vitiated, and the steepness of
the descents to it from the higher ground aggravated
by one-third or one-half! "The force of human
1415," the reader might say, "could no farther go."
Bat he would be mistaken. "Beneath the lowest,
deep" of corporate and high commissioned imbecility
this country there is "a deeper still." Saffron-
bill, unfortunately for the commissioners, does not
tun parallel toNictoriastreet during its entire course.
Saffron-hill, which was always known for its modest
sad retiring disposition, denied out of its poor wits
by the daylight so liberally let in upon it, and not
knowing what on earth to make of the deference paid
to it by the Clerico-patean mandarins. dodges them at
Bt. Peter's Church and runs breathless op the higher
elope. This must have been rather a blow to the
eenamissionera They were in great danger of being
at length compelled to follow the dictates of
common sense, from the bare want of an excuse
to act otherwise. This much may be conceded
to their primitive simplicity, that Saffron-hill bad at
least this pretension to be dealt with as gingerly es
Pall-mall or Piccadilly, that it was a line of commu-
nication from one district of the City to another.
Suppose Lather-lane, and Hatton-garden, and Vico
toria-street, all simultaneously blocked up, you could
with some risk and difficulty make your way from
Holborn-hill to Clerkenwell, through the purlieus of
Field-lane and Saffron-hill. ...Ergo," reasoned the
commissioners, "it would be nothing short of high
treason and blasphemy to touch ors atone of its pave-
meat, even though our sacrilegious hands have levelled
with the deaf the venerable edifices that skirted it on
the east.* Saffron-hill eseapieg them, they seemed
to be absolutely left without an idol before which to
sacrifice the time and comfort of Ware generations.
Bet the resources of stupidity " pare and simple* are
inexhaustible.
At the very lowest point of the Valley of the Fleet
wee a short alley, dignified with the name of Callow-
street, sad built, or at least baptised, we presume,
*beet a eatery ago, in the heyday of the popularity
et the speaker of the House of Commons of that um.

This alley ran parallel to Saffron-hill on the east, and
connected the parts of Castle-street and Vine-street,
that have been demolished. It had no other use, and
led no whither, either north or south. The houses on
the east side have been destroyed, and we infer that
those on the west side have only been spared on
account of a small chapel or school-house that occu-
pies a good portion of the very limited space. Will
it be believed that to the junction' of this con-
temptible little place with the undemolished
portion of Vine-street all the inclines are made
to converge? and that, for the sole purpose
of sparing its two or three score of inhabitants
the trouble of ascending a few steps into Vine-street,
when the level of the latter should be raised, as it
imperatively requires, being not only the lowest
point, but the steepest and most abrupt descent in
the whole district. Still worse, it lies direct in the
line of what ought to be, and we trust will yet be
made, the principal thoroughfare between the
southern portions of—don't blink the fact by calling
them the boroughs—the vast and mighty cities of
Finsbury and Marylebone. The north end of this
alley might have been blocked up altogether, and no
harm done, since the inhabitants could still have all
necessary access and egress southward into Castle-
street. But no, the vested right of the denizens of
this fraction of a back slum to an exit into Vine•
street was so sacred that the commissioners dared

not meddle with it, and the gap between
Clerkenwell and Hatton-wall is to remain
in conwquence, in meta° sceculorum, twice as deep
and precipitous as otherwise it need have been.
Don't let it be said that this is a temporary
arrangement. Visit the spot, use your own eyes,
and von will see that the arches beneath the new
junction that meets the remains of Vine-street, de.
crease in height till they reach the bottom of Vine.
street-hill. A similar, but not quite so glaring
mistake has been committed on the opposite side, at
the foot of Clerkenwell Court-hones ; so that the fol-
lowing will be what cab or waggon will have to go
through in penetrating across this defile. First,
there will be a steep descent from the top of Clerken-
well-men ; then a slight ascent to the level of
Victoria-street; then a sharp descent to the nadir of
Viae-street ; and last a toilful climbing up to the
zenith of Hatton-wall.

No doubt it may be intended to reduce the slope of
u that of Charles-street is now in
process of being. But considering that in the space
of some three or four hundred feet, taking the ex-
treme to which the slope can extend, there is a
descent of not much under forty feet, it is plain that
no reduction that is practicable can do more than
slighty alleviate the mischief. If the slope be made
gradual, and the cutting deep enough, the footway
on both aides of Vine street will be so far above the
level of the carriege way as to require being fenced
with iron rails. The proper course at this point
would have been to pull down the dozen houses of
which the remnant of Vine-street consists; and then
there would have been no obstacle to constructing a
new street from Hatton-wall to Clerkenwell Court-
house at a level some ten or fifteen feet higher
and with au incline proportionably leas than
that which it has been resolved to perpetuate.
At all events, what folly, by limiting the descent to
the corner of Onslow-street, to curtail by a hundred
feet or more the base of the new slope that must be
constructed, and which in the most improved form of
which it is capable will be as steep, though not quite
so lengthy, as Holborn-hill is now.
But it is hopeless by any expenditure of words to
communicate an adequate idea of the blunder which
we desire to expose. Let the reader who would com-
' prebend it in all its enormity follow the course, to
the eastward, of the traffic that calls for the bridging
over of this gap, which the commissioners are taking
such pains to deepen. Let him diverge from New
Oxford-street into Hart-street, and pass through
Theobald's-road till he reaches Gray's Inn-lane. Then
let him cross into Liquorpond-street and turn into
Leather-lane till he comes to Hatton wall.
Passing along Hatton-wall, he will in a couple
of minutes arrive at the top of Vine-street,
and then he can judge for himself. Casting his eyes
backward, he will perceive that the pavement of
Leather-lane is higher than the tops of the houses at
the corner of Onslow•street. The steep descent of
IVine-street wilt speak for itself, and is interesting to
contemplate for its own sake, the thoroughfare being
stopped at present (as if it had ever been passable),
and the roadway covered throughout its whole length
with the stock in trade of a furniture broker, spread
out upon the hill-aide with a complacency and a
picturesqueness which those twin glories of Tybornia
and Belgravia, the Panklibanon and the Pantechni.
eon, in all their lordly amplitude, might yet conde-
scend to envy. This broker is doubtless a clever
fellow. There is a stroke of the keenest satire in his
appropriating for the purposes of a warehouse—a
sub din showroom—what as a street must be worse
I than useless. _

Do not let it be supposed that we are exaggerating
for the sake of effect. So precipitous is the descent,
that we have seen a stalwart baker's boy dragged
remorselessly down the flagway by hie own hand-
cart, not a little to the peril of the children who were
playing about, as well as of the toes and ankles of her
Majesty's lieges who are wont to congregate in con.
siderable numbers on the scene of what is decidedly
at present one of the sights of London. No great
harm in all this, when Vine-street was merely a
byeway to the brink of the noisome Fleet, which
many of us can remember, and whose characteristics,
a century and a half ago, have been embalmed by
Swift in lines that deserve to be immortal. But
now that the lest remnants of the abomination have
been hidden from human sight, why. in Heaven's
name, perpetuate in the gangway of London inter-
course a steep which would be troublesome enough in
the solitude of an Alpine village!
Bat the worst is yet to come. The crowning joke
of this preposterous piece of Angleemandarinism is,
that even for the sake of the rights and privileges of
high aid mighty Onslow-rreet, the preservation of
this descent was perfectly unnecessary. So abrupt is
the descent of Onto w-street from St. Peter', church,
is well as of Vine-street from Hatton-wall, that the
outer angle of the inviolate corner house is some two
or three feet lower than the adjoining houses on
either side. The street might have been raised
some six or eight feet, and thus brought on a level
with Victoria-street, and done no more than equalise
the bases of the adjoining houses, which are now a
couple of feet each deeper in the earth on one side
than the other. We may be told that this
is intended to be done. But if so, it is plainly
an arsine pens& Else why have the arched
for the continuation of Vine-street been built
so low ? Are the inh.bitants of the houses that will
be built here to have their coals shot into their vaults
through tubes of some six or eight feet in length
before they can reach the roof of the vault that is to
contain them ? Are there to be stone steps from the
basements of those houses to the vaults, for the poor
people to slip in frosty weather, acd break their lege
or their arms, a cause of such accidents which the
records of the hospitals testify to be a very common
one ?
Possibly—as we do not profen to have surveyed the
ground scientifically, but have trusted to our eyes and
our walkingstick for the measurements which we have
given—we may be in error in assuming the bottom
of Vine-rreet to be the very lowest point in this part
of the valley of the Fleet. At all events, a similes
error to that which we have denounced has been cone.
mitted,at far greater li.n gtb, a little to the northot Vine-
street, io condonation of what used to be called Ray-
street. Bat though the total descent may be much
greater, the blunder is not so conspicuous, because of
the more gradoll ri-e on the west side, towards
Back-hill, as well as the perpetual zigzag of all the
streets hereabouts. The break-neck descent of the
lane called Crawford's-passage, which leads from Cop.
piorrow to the bottom of Back-hill, will sufficiently
show how little the commissioners have done to
mitigate the steepness of the heights at this end of
Victoria street. Yet this line might be made a very
useful thoroughfare, leading, as it does, from Smith-
field and the City Proper, through Cow-Cross street,
and Turnmillstreet. obliquely westward towards
Gray's Ina-lane and Ooilford-street.
Don't let it be said that we are laying too much
strew oo this whole affair—making mountains of
molehills, in short. Is Holborn-hill a molehill? If
it be, we should like vastly to see the mole that made
it. The mastodon or the inguanodon would be a
dwarf to him. Every hour in the day the ascent d
Holborn-hill yews a lose of horns* time and patienue,
a wear and tam of equine muscle, the total of which
in twelve mouths must amount to many thousand