The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-28 00:00:00

misnomer.

And now the area of our capital is such that it
is estimated at some eighteen square miles, having

within it a population of nearly 2,500,000 !—ex-
tending northwards to Highgate, southwards to
Norwood, eastwards to Epping-forest, and west-
wards to Shepherd's-bush! An ancient prediction

.• _ _
says that Hampstead is eventually to be the centre
of the metropolis. London is still, as CRUIK-
SHANK'S pencil once facetiously depicted it to be—
going out of town : the country in all directions
being yet steadily, at some points, rapidly invaded
by an army of bricks and mortar. At the different

outskirts, new streets, and squares, and terraces are
springing up perpetually. Where the occupants
come from, remains still an inscrutable mystery :
but come from some part they evidently do as
quickly as the new tenements are completed. The
mere index of names—the names of the houses and
of their inhabitants—has grown to be that ponder-
ous tome under which Mr. PUNCH and his faith-
ful attendant Toby are represented as stag-
gering in the vain attempt to lift it on to one
of the bookshelves, in the last number of our
comic contemporary. The capital is increasing in
every way—in its contents, in its extent, in its
wealth, in its populousness—in everything but its
beauty and convenience. As an illustration of this
—there is the instance of the national library at the
British Museum, considerably enlarged though the
building has been in the last few years, so incon-
veniently crowded now by its accumulated stores of
literature, that it is seriously proposed that the rest
of the collection now there should be removed else•
where, and that the British Museum should be
ultimately devoted to the purposes of a library ex-
clusively—a suggestion which, we certainly con-
ceive, it would be well before long to have actually
realised. Twenty-three years ago Dr. GREGORY
remarked—as though the idea expressed were some
impossible day-dream—that the library of the na-
tion, to be worthy of its name, ought to consist of
volumes numbering in all 600,000. The library of
the British Museum consists, altogether, of nearly
600,000 volumes—it contains at this moment, at
the lowest estimate, 560,000. And the rate of
annual increase is something quite astounding.
The average of the yearly increase is about 75,000
—for the year last past it was over that, being ex-
actly 75,067. The manuscript catalogue, now in
use in the reading-room, extends to very nearly
one thousand volumes. The new and complete
catalogue, which has been in preparation now for
the last quarter of a century, and which is under-
stood to be at length upon the very eve of its
perfected appearance, will extend to just double
that number—to as nearly as possible 2,000 folio
volumes. Seventeen of these volumes consist exclu-
sively of the catalogue of Bibles— three relate to
SHAKSPERE—two to ARISTOTLE—tWO to HOMER
—one to HORACE, and so forth. All languages,
all nations, have contributed their quota to this
treasury of literature. As a testimony of the wide
range of its completeness, it is credibly asserted
by a citizen of the United States, in every respect
a competent authority, that the British Museum
contains double the number of books published in
the transatlantic Republic, literally about double the
number of those books anywhere discoverable to-
gether in the States themselves—oar American
collection numbering altogether :about 30,000 vo-
lumes. Since the magnificent new reading room
was opened, on the 18th of May, during the year,
upwards of 75,000 readers were in attendance. So
that, curiously enough, the annual number of
readers and the annual increase to the library are
now very nearly equivalent—the increase, as we
have seen, being for the last year 75,067—the
number of readers being for the last year 75,128.
Gigantic though the proportions of that superb
reading room, the room is at times inconve-
niently crowded—there is occasionally insufficient
accommodation. The number of readers will pro-
bably, before much longer, attain a full total of
100,000—the contents of the library must in a few
short years, at the present rate of increase, reach
the wondrous sum of 1,000,000 volumes. It is a
type of the general growth of the metropolis itself,
of the increase of its material wealth, and of its
resident population. For this there must be due
provision. Hence is it becoming every day more
and more obvious, the necessity of better social,
sanitary, moral or political, of our adventuring be-
times upon bold and comprehensive measures of
metropolitan improvement.
.d, I

There is plenty of cant in other things as well
as in religion ; and, if it must be ever most odious
where the motives to sincerity and reality are the
profoundest which can be imagined, it is yet con-
temptible everywhere. Most of all is it to be repro-
bated in those who know that they are speaking
or writing cant. The penny-a-liner, in his penny
paper, or Lord LITTLE-BRAINS, asked to take the
chair only because he is a lord, may well be only
laughed at; but writers of higher pretensions, and
speakers whose just reputation obtains them a
hearing, deserve severer measure ; they ought not,
when better arguments fail, to shake their heads
with the look of solemn wisdom, while they re-
hearse the old song which sounds like sense to
those who know no better, but which they know to
have no other merit than that of having been said
or sung for the thousandth time. We need hardly
advert to politics as one of the most fertile subjects
of cant next to religion, and while we avoid
rio
loss or
t a
o
men-
tioning the name of a writer, or a speaker,
journal, most of our readers will be at
recollect numerous illustrations of the taut political.
" Our glorious Constitution," for instance, has had
to do plenty of involuntary penance in this line,
The conservators of every abuse have set the
words to their melancholy music as each abuse has
been attacked, and not perhaps in vain for a time.
Negro Slavery, Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic
Disabilities, Parliamentary Reform, of course, Corn
Laws, even Church-rates, above all, coped vot-
ing ; in a word, all improvements worth struggling
for, have been resisted to the tune of that favourite
air of corruptionists—" Our glorious Constitution."
It is wonderfully in vogue just now, and, strange