TWELFTH LETTER-LONDON.

NCE more in the City-the great city of LONDON,

or, as the rough countryman calls it, "Lun'un." This great centre of British commerce, civilization and power is not to be measured as we measure other places. To them we by-and-by get accustomed-we know all their streets; we find out every "nook and cranny."

With all objects of interest-" the sights"—we are very familiar, but who can so speak of Lun'un? I remember when wife and I first landed in the great city, our objective point was Shoot-up-Hill, Brondesbury. We landed at King's Cross. We asked direction of the employees at the station. Brondesbury, Brondesbury. I seay, Bill, wares Brondesbury?" As for Shoot-up-Hill, I might as well have asked him. for some cross-roads in Timbuctoo. However, after a little we descended to those lower regions where, amidst clanking of chains and sulphurous fumes and darkness, and terrible din, we come by the underground railway to Brondesbury, in the north, and go

up Shoot-up-Hill," to Home Villa, the home of our friend.

Although our host was born and reared in London, and for many years past in business on Leadenhall

Street, he cannot trust himself to give us reliable directions to many points which we wished to visit without the aid of a map of the great metropolis.

One reason for this is, some of the places after which we are inquiring, and some of the objects of historic

interest which we must see, he has never seen himself, and very likely never will see.

When we returned from our visit to the Tower we were talking of what we had seen, especially the Crown of England, and the royal jewels and other emblems and rich ornaments; the nephew of our host, a bright young man of twenty-three, a Londoner all his life, told us that he had never been at the Tower, nor had he any desire to go, and so we proved again

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view."

In the more than two months altogether which I have spent in London I have never been able to get, while in it, any correct idea of the points of the compass. I sometimes get on fairly well if I go by 'bus, but the underground railway never fails to put me wrong, so I long since gave it up for a bad job.

If the founders of London and suburbs could have foreseen the great future of this metropolis they might have done much to simplify it. Now it is almost an interminable maze-a perfect labyrinth.

The difficulty of making straight roads or streets was, as we can easily imagine, very great, when we learn that many of the very best parts of the present suburban London-such as Westminster, Pimlico, Chelsea and Kensington-were almost entirely covered by

water, nearly the whole region being low and marshy. Then there were small rivers, tributaries of the Thames, running down through what are now the busiest parts of the city. The Fleet river was navigable up to King's Cross. There were also the Tyburn and the Westbourne, smaller streams, which have long since been replaced by the accumulations of made earth.

The greater part of the district east and south of the river in the neighborhood of Sydenham and Greenwich consisted of marshes or shallow lagoons.

The hilly regions in the neighborhood of Kensington and Notting Hill formed part of a great forest, and St. John's Wood was a dense thicket. Through all these places I have gone, but saw nothing of the little rivers, the marshes, lagoons, or thickets. Through Epping Forest we had a lovely drive with friends in March last (1888), and although it is more lovely than I can describe here, I fancy if our old kings and queens were to come back they would not know it, though once familiar with every square acre of it.

We saw the "Hunting Lodge" of "Good Queen Bess," which in her day was thought far out, now surrounded on all sides with suburban dwellings.

The growth of London is very marvellous. We were at Stratford, which is in the borough of West Ham, Eastern district of London. An old gentleman,

manager of the gas works, told us that when he moved into the borough about thirty-five or forty years ago, there were only fifteen thousand; now there are two hundred thousand people.

Then there are a little farther west Forest Gate (Epping Forest) and Leytonstone, which have grown up all within the past few years, and are still growing as rapidly as towns and cities in America. Having lectured in several of these parts of London, I had a good opportunity to study the growth of that great city.

Crooked though the streets may be, we must have a ramble through them. Come on, then; don't waste the time in making yourself look over nice. You can pass all through London streets in the plainest clothes. There are too many people, and they are all too busy, to look very closely at you and me, so we can go along right in the midst of innumerable thousands with almost as little attention paid to us as if we were in a forest.

As we shall have to do a good deal of walking anyway, we had better take the underground railway to Bishopsgate. Being very plain people and not overburdened with means, a third-class ticket will do us very well.

We can walk down. Houndsditch, which, by way of