navigation is so much encouraged. In the first place, it is cheaper
than shoe-leather, leaving fatigue out of the question; it saves a
good two miles of walking, and that is no trifle, especially under a
heavy burden, or in slippery weather. In the second place, it may be
said to be often cheaper than dirt, seeing that the soil and injury to
clothing which it saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the
muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more than would the
cost of several journeys. These are considerations which the humbler
classes appreciate, and therefore they flock to the cheap boats, and
spend their halfpence to save their pence and their time. This latter
consideration of time-saving it is that brings another class of
customers to the boats. In order that it may be remunerative to the
projectors, every passage must be made with a regular and undeviating
rapidity; and this very necessity becomes in its turn a source of
profit, because it is a recommendation to a better class of business
men and commercial agents, to whom a saving of time is daily a matter
of the utmost importance. Hence the motley mixture of all ranks and
orders that crowd the deck.

Besides these half-penny boats, there are others which run at double
and quadruple fares; but they carry a different class of passengers,
and run greater distances, stopping at intermediate stations. They are
all remunerative speculations; and they may be said to have created
the traffic by which they thrive. They have driven the watermen's
wherries off the river almost as effectually as the railways have
driven the stage-coaches from the road; but, like them, they have
multiplied the passengers by the thousand, and have awakened the
public to a new sense of the value of the river as a means of transit
from place to place. The demand for safe, cheap, and speedy conveyance
to and from all parts of the river between London Bridge and
Battersea, and beyond, is becoming daily more urgent; and we hear that
it will shortly be met by the launching of a fleet of steam gondolas
constructed on an improved principle, combining accommodation for
enlarged numbers, with appliances calculated to insure at once
security and speed.

A LONDON NEWSPAPER IN 1667.

In a recent number of this Journal (14th February), some particulars
were given relating to a newspaper of a hundred years ago; and the
contrast--sufficiently strong--was shewn between the infan