districts of the west could hardly form a conception, without a personal visit.

The very population is different to that in other parts of London, and is composed of a motley multitude of all hues and nations. There may be seen lounging the slim, but fierce, Lascar; the brown Malay; the heavy Russian; the swarthy negro; with a less noticeable crowd of Americans, Hollanders, Germans, Swedes, Frenchmen, and Portuguese, who all seem in the streets to have nothing else to do but to swear, and sputter, and smoke, and drink, but who, once upon ship-board, are the very models of bustling activity and cheerful labour.

But the glories of our river are not only to be found upon its bosom and on either side, but underneath it. The mass of its waters rolls over a work, which is one of the most remarkable instances of what the ingenuity and enterprise of man can accomplish. This is the Tunnel, now almost completed, the admiration of civilized Europe, and to many a stranger from afar the most wonderful of all the curiosities of England, and the first place on his memorandum-book to be visited and examined. Some years ago a still bolder undertaking was projected: a tunnel underneath the Thames at Gravesend, where the stream is considerably

wider, and the influence of the ocean tides more perceptible. It was commenced on the Gravesend side in the year 1798, and some slight progress was made; but the difficulties were found so great that the plan was abandoned.

The next tunnel was projected at Rotherhithe, in 1809, by Mr. R. Trevethick, and was intended for foot-passengers only. Some progress was made with the works, but, for want of encouragement, they were abandoned; and nothing more was heard of a tunnel until the year 1823, when the present undertaking was suggested by Mr. Brunel. An act of Parliament to form the company was granted in 1824; the foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on the 2nd of March 1825, and the works have ever since been continued, and have now [1840] reached beyond low-water mark on the opposite shore, so that the most difficult and dangerous portion has been completed. But this result has not been obtained without accident and loss of life. Father Thames has more than once rolled the large volume of his waters into the excavation; the first time in May 1827, when there were upwards of one hundred and twenty workmen in the shaft, who all escaped; and a second time in January in the following year, when six poor men were

drowned. On both occasions the damage was soon repaired: bales of cotton or wool, and loads of impermeable clay were deposited in the bed of the river where the irruption took place, the leak stopped, the invading waters pumped out, and the works resumed. A third and a fourth time the Thames;-not like a strong marauder who breaks wildly through the fences set up to restrain him, but like an insidious foe;-has penetrated and oozed through the soft strata of his bed, and filled the tunnel. On the last occasion, in November 1837, one man, who had drunk too freely of strong drink, and had fallen asleep in the shaft, was drowned. All the other workmen, being awake and attentive, received due notice of the impending deluge, and escaped without any difficulty. The opening to the tunnel is on the Surrey shore, a little to the eastward of the church of St. Mary, Rotherhithe. The tunnel is thirty-eight feet in width, with a double road for carriages going and returning, with pavements for foot-passengers. The height of the arch is twenty feet, and the crown of it in its whole extent is protected by masonry the most solid that the art of man can make; and there is a thickness of fifteen feet of earth between it and the bed of the river. The length of the tunnel, when completed, will be thirteen hundred feet.

Again, upon the bosom of the river, we pass on the left, Execution Dock, noted as the spot where pirates were formerly hung, and Limehouse, full of sea-faring people, and mentioned by Shakspeare in his Henry VIIIth, as famous for its blackguards, and by Ben Jonson also for the same reason. Beyond, we catch sight of the steeple of Stepney, to which parish all seamen in the merchant service pay their monthly threepence for poor-rates, to raise a fund for the maintenance of such poor as are born at sea, and who are entitled to a settlement in Stepney, provided they have not obtained another anywhere else. On the wall of the church was formerly a stone, affixed there in the year 1663, which, if we may believe the inscription upon it, once formed a part of the renowned Carthage. It has since been removed into the vestry. Stepney Church is noted for a monument to the memory of one Dame Rebecca Berry, who died in 1696, and who is supposed to have been the heroine of the once popular old ballad of "The Cruel Knight, or the Fortunate Farmer's Daughter."

In the reign of King Edward I, a parliament was summoned to meet at Stepney, in the house of Henry Walleis, then Mayor of London. The Barons, who chiefly composed the assembly, demanded of the King the con

firmation of the charter, which he had promised them for their aid in his Scottish wars. After certain delay, the King agreed, but when the document was ready for signature, the King inserted the words, "the rights of our crown saved," upon which the Barons broke up the conference and went away. Edward not wishing to offend such dangerous personages, sent for them again to Stepney some weeks afterwards, as we learn from Stowe, and struck out the obnoxious words, which, had they been allowed to remain, would have afforded continual occasion of dispute and ill-feeling.

On the other side of the river are Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, or, as the latter is more commonly called, Redriff, the first place where docks were constructed for the convenience of the commerce of London. The great dry dock here has existed for nearly two centuries. The great wet dock was finished in the year 1700. After the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, in 1720, the directors took a lease of this dock, where their ships, engaged in the whale fisheries of Greenland, landed their unfragrant blubber. The docks are still used for the same purposes, and are known by the name of the Commercial Docks. Adjoining are the Great East Country Dock, and several smaller ones. It was at Rotherhithe that King Canute is said to have be