The Registrar-General has issued a kind of anticipatory Census. of
London. Taking the usual census limit, a circle round Charing Cross with a radius of six miles, London had in 1861 a population of 2,803,989. In 1871 the population is 3,247,631, showing an increase of 443,642, that is, of a city as great as Glasgow within the ten years. This is a smaller increase than was expected ; but it almost exactly tallies with the weekly calculations of the Registrar-General, who says that the population of London in-
sreases at a decreasing rate, only a certain number of people con- senting to live within a given area. Even at this rate the popu- lation of London is thrice that of any city in the world, except Paris—the population sometimes ascribed to Pekin being a mere delusion—and probably twice that ever attained by any city. De 'Quincey laboured hard to show that Rome once contained four
millions of people ; but his principal datum, the number of solsliers she sent out, was a blunder, and it is not probable that
Rome ever exceeded a million and a half. The cities now known 'to contain more than a million are probably only four,—London, Paris, New York, and Calcutta, the latter being degraded from its place, in books only, by an old habit of considering its limits -conterminous with the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
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