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LONDON AS IT IS.
refuges for the destitute, the sick, and the lame, and the blind. Yet though there is scarcely a calamity that miserable humanity is liable to for which Pity in her affluence has not provided a palliative, the streets seem to he thronged with beggars. Without wishing to check the impulse of benevolence, we would recommend the stranger to be cautious in bestowing his indiscriminate charity as he walks along. This beggary is often a mere profession: and for those who happily have the means to spare, it is by far the best plan to make the magistrates of the public police-offices the almoners of their bounty. In a city of such colossal proportions, it is not wonderful that fires should be numerous—sometimes as many as five or six occurring in one night. To guard as far as possible against the loss of life from these outbreaks, the Royal Society for the Preservation of Life from Fire have been most active, during the last few years, in establishing stations, where fire escapes, with conductors, are placed during the night, ready to be called upon the first alarm of fire. Upwards of 50 such stations are now established in London and its vicinity. No society more richly deserves encouragement, and it would be well if its stations were largely extended. Upwards of 400 lives have been saved by its instrumentality during the last few years. The annual cost of maintaining a station, with its Fire Escape, is £80, in addition to a first outlay of £10, for the machine, &c. The visitor to London will observe, as the dusk of evening approaches, the various Fire Escapes being wheeled to their appointed stations by the conductors. The Institution, like many others of a benevolent character in London, is chiefly supported by voluntary contributions. An impartial French writer gives the following account of his impressions of London:— “I warned you,” he writes to a friend, “not to pay too much attention to my first impressions. I told you that I hated London, and afterwards, that the more I saw of it, the more I hated it. But now that I have seen still more of it, I begin to think it a very fine place. The general aspect of London is quite inferior to that of Paris. London has all the faults of great cities, in a greater degree, perhaps, than any other; and yet it seems to want almost all their redeeming virtues. From its immense extent, there is no consistency,
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