The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-21 00:00:00

LITERARY GAZETTE, OCTOBER IS, 1851.

One of the first symptoms of the decllng year is presented in the
publiektion of the fifty-third edition of the " Post Office London Di-
rectory." Mr. Kelly is the first in the field. with his very neat and
ponderous volume, comprising upwards of two thousand very
closely-printed pages ; and his machinery is so well organised, that
he Is enabled, with astonishing facilty, to correct every department
of it to within a few days of its publication. What a model for Mr.
Patftzi, for the publication of a printed catalogue of the books in
the British Museum, Is the construction of this eminently useful
volume."

BRITANNIA, OCTOBER 18, 1851.
LONDON AS IT IS.

London is a wide labyrinth, in which those who are uninitiated in
its topographical intricacies must, without the aid of guide or clue,
become hopelessly bewildered. Every years adds thousands and tens
of thousands to the enormous amount of its population. Squares,
streets, and terraces, which would elsewhere constitute flourishing
cities, are periodically annexed to its already unequally extent of
buildings, and it is impossible to calculate the breadth of area which
its encroaching wings threaten eventually to overshadow with their
vastness. If its ratio of increase in respect of extent, during the
ensuing century, shall equal what it was in the last, the surface of
the county in which it stands will be too circumscribed to contain its
limits. Its inhabitants, who in the reign of Queen Anne numbered
only three hundred thousand, have increased by the last census to
nearly two millions and a half—a population equal to that of the
whole of Scotland; and when we reflect that these teeming num-
bers are ail domiciled, clothed, and fed. in this human hive, the
sumptuary arrangements necessary for the purpose seem almost in-
comprehensible to the human mind. Yet such is the extraordinary
elasticity of our external and internal resources, that the supply
has always kept pace with the demand, and the daily wants of the
two millions and a half of human beings who are sheltered and Ted
in our capital, are supplied with an ease and a regularity unknown
In the days when London contained but a tenth part of its present
population. A survey of the number of the " Post Office London
Directory" for the year 1852, which has jest been publishe I, will
give some notion of the difficulty which the numerous foreigners
and strangers in London, who have lately been sojourning amongst
113, would have experienced in tracing amongst these thousands o
streets, and almost countless thousands of inhabitants, the desig-
nation and abodes of their friends and entertainers; but for the
timely aid of some such accurate and comprehensive record. The
mind can scarcely realise to itself a position of greater perplexity
and difficulty, than that of a stranger to our laud and our language,
launched for the first time, without guinance of any kind, in the
bewildering mazes of our metropolitan streets. Oar English no-
menclature sounds so strangely to continental ears, that, without an
interpreter, an Italian, or a Spaniard, in confabulation with a cab-
man or omnibus conductor, would have as much chance of mutual
intelligence, as with the denizen of another planet. To such, then,
the study of a faithful record of all that mighty London, in its
multitudinous' divisions and subdivisions, contains, will be of incal-
culable advantage. That which seems, wnen viewed en masse, to be
of a complexity utterly inextricable, through the ingenious arrange-
ments of our Court; Guides and London Directories, among which
Kelly's is the oldest and the best, has been made easy of comprehen-
sion to all who can read the Roman character. The foreigner, with
this Directory in his hand, while he contemplates with wonder both
the size of the volume and the amount of information it contains,
will admire the judicious mode of compilation, by the assistance of
which he Is enabled to thread his way through the labyrinth of
streets, to single out all that is most worthy of his observation, and
to form a comprehensive notion of the statistics, wealth, power, and
extent of the first city of the world.

The Smaller Edition of the Work, and which includes Map of
London, comprises, amongst other information—Official Directory—
Commercial Directory—Court Directory—Parlia-nontary Directory
—Postal Directory—Banking Directory, &c., &c., Price 155., may
now be had. _ .

Kelly and Co., " Post Office Directory Offices," 19 and 20, Old
Boswell-court, Temple-bar, London ; and all Booksellers.