The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-21 00:00:00

IHE ILEE7 VALLEY.

Now that a new order of prophets is springing up, and
the Premier himself shows an example in prognostication,
we wish the most reliable of the Zadkiels would tell us
when the City of London will have the courage to
bridge over the deep hollow of the Holborn-valley, and
make the roadway there really fit for its appointed use. We
must be very careful not to boast of the magnificence of
this city while there is a sort of ditch to cross in the pas-
sage between High Holborn and the city; we must not
think of contrasting St. Paul's with St. Peter's, or the
pediment of the British Museum with the freizes of Nine-
veh, or the Covent-garden Conservatory with the hanging
gardens of Babylon. In fact, we had better just be quiet
about metropolitan grandeurs and civic architecture, and
the appliances of engineering in London, until that ancient
chasm is finally spanned with some sort of superstructure
worthy of the age and the place that require it. It
is an old grievance, that of the Fleet-valley. It
was once a tumbling torrent of sparkling water, and bore
ships upon its tide. The tanners and others following oc-
cupations on its banks polluted the stream by casting the
refuse of their trades into it, and in due time it became a
black ditch, and at last was hidden from the public eye, and
written down in the list of great underground sewers.
Where it crosses in the line of Victoria and Farringdon-
streets still exists an ancient stone bridge ; over the stone
bridge roars and rumbles the traffic of the city, more noisily
and more impetuously than the foul flood below; and the
only fame the valley has in modern annals is the fame of
horse killing, and of proving to all the world that the city
is not so grand and perfect a place as it is sometimes re-
presented:--City Press.

--- -
WHEAT versus MAIZE.—In England all cereals
used as food for man are called corn ; but those who first
landed in America from that country found a new cereal,
also used as food by the aborigines. They added it to their
catalogue of corn, with the prefix of Indian. As it had
been for ages the main dependence of the Indians, so it has
since become the real staff of life to 30 millions who now
occupy their places, while it is gradually making its way to
favour among other millions in Europe. The pioneers give
no accounts of the Indians having many varieties of corn.
They seem to have been content with what they had. The
higher civilisation of the whites quickly seized on the new
cereal, recognised its value as food for man and beast, im-
proved its culture, multiplied its varieties, made its increase
a hundred-fold, and, by the invention of machines for shell-
ing it rapidly and grinding it cheaply, raised it to the posi-
tion of a staple so important, that if the whole wheat crop
of this country were suddenly annihilated, the corn crop
alone would supply us plenteously with food, It already
equals the wheat crop of the whole world. The latter can
be profitably cultivated only within certain latitudes, but
corn grows luxuriantly in all. The border tropies refuse
to yield wheat. Louisiana and Florida produce but 1,500
bushels annually, but nearly 14,000,000 bushels of corn.—
Me Grocer.

DRESS.—Our forefathers were in many points
worse off than we are as regards dress, and it is most amus-
ing to contemplate the ridiculous appearance they must
have presented when certain fashions were " in." Fancy
a visit to the Exhibition or to a ball-rot m in shoes with
toes two feet long, either standing out at right angles to
the zenith, or gracefully curved upwards and fastened with
a gold or silve7 buckle to the knee of the wearer. Deerfoot
would scarcely manage a ten-mile run as rapidly as in his
mocassins, and the mere notion of a fashionable waltz in
shoes two feet long, turns one giddy with anticipation.
XTet
such shoes were worn, and neither ridicule nor terrors
the church could put them out of fashion.
relates, there was, some eight hundred yearsi ago,As
i ,a
a violent
quarrel between the clergy and the laity
re
e to long
toed shoes. The clergy denounced
longsynods con.
vehemence, and assembled councilse
and toe with groat
But the long
demned it as a profane and wick
despiteevice the power of the
toe, despite its inconvenience,
clergy, had its day; else church
urch could dethrone kings, but
it could not vanquish
long-toed shoes.—Social Science
Review,