EXTREMES MEET.
IT is curious to note the extension of London giving rise to arrange- ments which used to characterize the thinly-peopled districts of Westmoreland. The vallies of that sequestered region were wont to be traversed by travelling tea-merchants, who retailed their com- modity at the doors of the peasantry from the backs of their pack- horses. Now-a-days, a considerable number of the London bakers and grocers employ spring-vans, not only to carry goods to their customers, but to keep up an itinerant quest of chance-sales. In our youth, stage-coaches were familiar enough things on roads between town and town ; but the 'busses are now regular stages between one street and another. Stage-waggons and carriers' carts were invented for considerable distances ; but many vans of the Parcels Delivery Companies have their circuits entirely "upon the stones." The density of London population drives men to adopt the resources of thinly-peopled regions. The 'buss and the Parcels Delivery van are driving the hackney-coachman and the porter from the streets, as the stage-coaches and the carriers cut up the business of posting and foot-messengers. Scarcely any thing but cabs can keep their ground; and as for porters, a few may still be seen loiter-
ing in the vicinity of Newgate and Fleet Markets to remind us "such things were" ; and that is all. This change is not without its in- fluence upon the character of our town-population. The Cockney, who rarely ventured beyond sound of Bow-bells, was proverbially good-natured, and serviceable even to officiousness. Within his shop-door, he was out of the crowd : no one trod upon his toes and disturbed his equanimity. Confinement to one place made him tired of inaction ; he did you a good turn to get rid of ennui, and habit rendered him only happy when he was assisting somebody. But the Cockney of our day, who by dint of omnibusses lives in the suburbs, is a much less amiable person. He is anxious and thoughtful ; for he must keep his time to a minute, to get into town and out of it again, and to do all his work in the interim. He is wrapped up in self; for even omnibusses cannot hold all who re- quire them, and he must elbow his way and battle for his place. The innocent gallantry of the Cockney of the olden time is gone : ladies might laugh at it, but they feel its want when jostled out of the only unoccupied seat by his rude descendant. The urbane citizens of London are relapsing into rusticity—becoming very Peter Bells :
"A savage wildness round them hangs, As of a dweller out-of-doors."
The hardness of the "dreary moors" of Hampstead and Hounslow is reflected in their countenances. A philosopher of the day, believing that men are apt to become corrupt through a certain moral putrefaction engendered by too close packing, proposes to reform the naughty class in cities by scattering them over the country—giving them elbow-room : he must take care not to fall into Scylla when he seeks to avoid Charybdis, and render his pupils rude and selfish at the same time that he cures them of other vices.
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