a belt nearly
around the portion 'within' the walls. These 600 acres, less than a
square mile, have ever since constituted the 'city of London,' divided
into two portions--'without' and 'within' the walls. There are
ninety-eight parishes in the inner portion, and eleven in the outer;
but the London which lay beyond the corporate rule had no social or
political bounds placed to its extension. There were the ancient city
of Westminster and the village of Charing, on the west; and London
marched along the Strand to meet them: there were Kensington and
Bayswater in the remoter west, and Piccadilly and Oxford Street became
links to join them to London: there were Killurn and Hampstead and
Highgate, Newington and Hornsey and Hackney, on the north; and London
has travelled along half-a-dozen great roads northward to fraternise
with them. So, likewise, on the east; and so, likewise, crossing the
river to the south, do we find this same process to have been active:
villages and hamlets have become absorbed into London, by London going
to meet them.

If we now ask, Where does London end? it will be found that this
ramification perplexes the subject greatly. Who shall say that such or
such a hamlet is _not_ in London? Who is to draw the line, and where?
It was said ten years ago, that the metropolis is a _hundred and forty
times_ as large as the _city_ of London 'within the walls;' but even
this is vague, unless we know where the limit is placed. One mode of
grouping, adopted before the appointment of the Registrar-General of
births, &c., depended on the 'London bills of mortality,' or the
record of deaths preserved by the parish-clerks. London, in this
sense, included the city within the walls, the city without the walls,
Westminster, and about forty out-parishes. Southwark was not included
in these bills originally, but became a component part afterwards. The
Registrar-General, under the improved modern system, gives an immense
range to London; it includes the City, Westminster, Southwark, all the
out-parishes of the former system, and the villages or hamlets of Bow,
Bromley, Brompton, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Fulham, Greenwich,
Hammersmith, Hatcham, Kensington, Brompton, Marylebone, Paddington,
Pancras, Highgate, Stoke-Newington, and Woolwich. It is true, he calls
all this the 'metropolis;' but the metropolis is in common parlance
identical with 'London.'

The population returns are not even a correct test in this matt