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It is not only a well-understood fact, that the Great Metropolis is a sore puzzle to strangers, but even the dwellers therein are wont to give up, in despair, any attempt to define or limit it. What is London? There are two causes, or rather two sets of causes, which throw great doubt on the proper answer to this question. The one is the varying acreage or area comprised under this name, and the other is the natural increase of population over every part of the area. Let us shortly glance at both these groups of disturbing causes.

The original London was the nucleus of that which now constitutes the City of London. The London of the Britons before the Romans landed, is supposed to have been little other than 'a collection of huts set down on a dry spot in the midst of the marshes;' a forest nearly bounded this spot, at no great distance from the Thames; and a lake or fen existed, outside London, at or near the site now occupied by Finsbury Square. The area of London, at this early period, is supposed to have been bounded by—to use their modern designation—Tower Hill on the east, Dowgate Hill on the west, Lombard and Fenchurch Streets on the north, and of course the river on the south—a limited area, certainly, not much exceeding half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth. There are indications that brooks bounded this area on the north and west, and a marsh on the east; but there is no reason to believe that the city had walls. The terrible devastation in the time of Boadicea must have nearly destroyed London, destined to be replaced by one of Roman construction.

The Roman London was evidently of larger size. The ancient city-wall is known to have been of Roman substructure, although surmounted by work of later date. It had many turrets or towers, and seven double-gates, supposed to have been Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the Tower Postern-gate; and the streets now named from those gates will serve to mark out the included area. Roman London may be said to lie about sixteen feet below our London, over all this area; about two feet being the dÉbris of the Roman buildings, and the rest being subsequent accumulations of rubbish, at the rate, say, of a foot in a century. In the later Saxon and Norman times, the western portion of the wall was extended so as to include a somewhat larger area, the utmost limit of 'London within the walls' being 370 acres.

But London refused to stay within its walls; it walked forth into the country; and even so far back as 1662, London, beyond these limits, was four times as large as that 'within the walls.' Of this exterior portion, 230 acres constituted the 'city without the walls,' subjected to civic jurisdiction by successive grants; it formed 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 matter, for they include different districts at different times. In 1821, of the eighteen villages or hamlets named above, only five were included in the 'metropolis;' and in 1831, there were two additional. The metropolitan population in 1841, in comparison with that of 1831, differs by no less than 200,000 on this mere question of nomenclature alone, independent of real increase on other grounds. The poor-law grouping differs again from that of the Registrar-General; the metropolis, or the 'London division,' does not include so many of the marginal parishes as the Registrar's system. Again, the Post-office arrangement is independent of all the others; for it is based upon taking St Paul's as a centre, and drawing circles around this at a definite number of miles' radius; and the metropolis is thus made expansible on geometrical principles. Then the parliamentary limit is sui generis; for the metropolis here comprises the City of London, the city of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and the five modern boroughs of Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and Lambeth—a very capricious limit, truly; for while it includes the far east at Woolwich, it excludes Pimlico, Brompton, and a vast adjoining area. Lastly, to give one more mesh to this net, we find the police metropolis to be the most grasping of all: by the original act of 1829, the metropolis is made to fill a circle twenty-four miles in diameter, having Charing Cross in its centre; while in 1840, this circle was coolly stretched to a diameter of thirty miles.

When a reader, therefore, is told of the vast increase of population in London, let him sober down his astonishment until he knows which (among half-a-dozen different Londons) is the one alluded to. As 'our own country' may be taken to mean England only, or England and Wales, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or the British Empire, in five different degrees of largeness, so may 'our metropolis' have at least as many significations. Tables of metropolitan population have been issued in the following form:—1750, 676,250; 1801, 900,000; 1811, 1,050,000; 1821, 1,274,800; 1831, 1,471,941; 1841, 1,873,676; 1851, about 2,250,000. But this table is subject to the correction above hinted at. Nearly a century ago, Maitland said: 'This ancient city has engulfed one city, one borough, and forty-three villages.' A formidable addition has since been made to this 'engulfed' family. So enigmatical is this metropolis of ours, that it would be equally true to state that 'London is rapidly increasing in population,' and that 'London is slowly decreasing in population.' The metropolis, as a whole, yearly increases its numbers; but the City, the original London, is less populous now than a century ago, on account of the streets having been widened, and many small dwelling-houses removed, to make way for large commercial establishments, the managers and clerks of which almost all sleep out of London.

If we glance over a map of London, or, still better, take a resolute series of omnibus-rides or foot-rambles, we shall find ourselves as little able as before to settle the question, 'Where does London end?' That huge mass of small streets and poor houses, comprising the borough of the Tower Hamlets, allows us no rest till we get three miles eastward of St Paul's. Beyond this point, there are a few patches of Bow Common yet left; but Poplar and Blackwall, Bromley and Bow, tell us to go yet further eastward to the river Lea; and even West Ham and Stratford, though on the Essex side of the Lea, seem to claim a metropolitan position. Again, passing over Victoria Park—that pleasant oasis in a desert of houses—and bending round towards the north, we may ask where are the fields; and may wait until 'echo answers, Where.' Hackney and Homerton, Clapton and Dalston, Shacklewell and Newington, not only have the houses ranged themselves closely along the main roads to these villages, but have filled up nearly all the vacant ground between those roads. Is Tottenham to be included in our London; and if, not, why not? And at Highgate and Hampstead, as the rows of houses have ascended these hills, and climbed over the hills, why stop there? why not send London still further out of town? Look at the new town springing up around the Camden Station; at the Portland Town westward of Regent's Park; at the Westbourne Town far beyond the Paddington terminus; at the new town west of Kensington; at the vast mass of buildings between Kensington and the Thames—all these are the mere filling up of the districts which had before been marked out by the great roads; and the great roads themselves are carrying out their rows of houses still further into what we may, in courtesy, designate 'the fields.'

So it is on the south side of the river. Of the 13,000 vehicles which cross London Bridge in twelve hours on an average summer day, an immense number is employed in conveying 'City men' to and from their homes on the south of the Thames. Walworth, Camberwell, Kennington, and Brixton were once on the border region between town and country; nay, the city really did reach the country there; but now, all these belong to London. A bit of green at Kennington is, by good-luck, to be kept green as a people's park; but nearly all else has become brick and mortar; the City man has to go further to get a pleasant house and a good garden, and we have to go further to ascertain—where does London end?

Among many curious proofs of the wide grasp of the all-absorbing metropolis, we may adduce the horror of the Pentonvillians at the proposed new cattle-market. How many years ago is it since Copenhagen Fields were almost beyond the regions of civilisation, known only as a prairie lying between London and the Copenhagen Tea-gardens? Let any one, whose knowledge of the district goes back fifteen or twenty years, answer this question. But now, Copenhagen House itself is brought within the limits of London, by rows of goodly houses belting it in on the north; and the gentilities of the new town are shocked at the threatened advent of bullocks and sheep.

If we look into the stupendous London Directory, it does not remove our troubles; it gives us the names of nearly 7000 streets, places, roads, squares, circuses, crescents, quadrants, rows, hills, lanes, yards, buildings, courts, alleys, gardens, greens, mews, terraces, and walks, but it does not tell us how far the suburbs are included, nor what are the principles which determine the inclusion or exclusion.

In short, we began by asking a question, and must end by leaving it unanswered. Although tolerably familiar with London, we cannot tell—'Where does London end?'