geographical knowledge; is the railing of a pen
which encloses us as securely as sheep are
secured in the market-place. To know it not, is to
argue yourself unknown—a pariah beneath the
notice of rate-collectors on the one hand,
beyond the sympathies of "relieving officers" on
the other. This mysterious line is the great
regulator of vestry taxation, of workhouse
charity, and of those laws which preside over
"settlement and removal." In some cases, it
softly encloses a happy family of housekeepers,
who have much to give, and no paupers worth
speaking of, to maintain; in others, it binds
tightly round a hard-working district, where the
empty mouths are almost too numerous for those
whose duty it is to fill them. This is one result
of the changes and varieties in house-property,
the system of rating, and a want of an equalisation
of poor's-rates.

We are all familiar enough with the strange
and the remote; learned, to a fault, in
distant boundaries of foreign states, the limits
of disputed principalities, the quarrels of ministers
at Vienna, or St. Petersburg. But how
many of us ever looked into our Vestry Hall in
the next street, or can tell the name of the man
who " represents" us in that building? We
shrink from the heavy demands that are made
upon our purses by our local assemblies; we
are surrounded, perhaps, by small nuisances,
and sometimes suppose that the turnpike-man,
the crossing-sweeper, the policeman, or the
fire-engine-keeper, is the proper officer to remove
them; we pay for vast underground tunnels,
new roads, new lamps, and a hundred other
things that may have no existence, as far as we
know, except upon paper; and we seldom ask
for information, because we laugh at a beadle,
and despise an overseer. The beadle grows,
however, surely and steadily, and so does the
overseer. New districts spring up, and fall into
their hands; while old districts expand until
they become as large as all London a
century ago. The money these despised officers
command and deal with, would have astonished
our imperial chancellors of the exchequer in our
great-grandfathers' days. The " local expenditure"
of the United Kingdom, in the present
year, for county, town, and parochial purposes,
will be eighteen  millions sterling; or within
five millions sterling of the whole expenditure,
government and local, of the thirty-two states of
America, for the same period, with a greater
population!*

If figures like these are not sufficient to arouse
us from our sleep of parochial indifference, a
number of parish newspapers are now printed
and published, to teach us something about our
local affairs. The oldest of these may have been
born about eighteen hundred and fifty-three—
the youngest, only the day before yesterday; and
one or more may have " gone away, leaving no

address;" but, at present, to the number of about
five-and-twenty, there they are. The abolition
of the stamp and advertisement duty has brought
them into life, and the abolition of the paper
duty, when it comes in due time, will possibly
swell their numbers and increase their size.

To those who remember what a leading French
newspaper was, and what a leading American
newspaper is, a halfpenny journal, like the Clerkenwell
News, or the Islington Times, or the Islington
Gazette, must appear a wonder of trading
enterprise. In the first of these journals, nearly
two thousand advertisements in a single impression,
have appeared—a proof of the business
activity of the district. The others show signs
of vigorous health, and their general literary
contents present little that can be cavilled at.

The work they set out to perform, and
do perform, with more or less judgment, taste,
and skill, is essentially parochial. Nothing
occurring, within that boundary can be too
small and insignificant to interest their readers;
as nothing occurring outside it can be large
enough to interest them. The City Press,
the largest of the district penny papers, is a
model in this respect. If we search its columns
week after week, we shall find nothing that is
not strictly within the shadow of St. Paul's. It
is so conducted that hundreds outside the limits
of the City welcome it as the most complete
record of City life; and a century hence its
"files" will, perhaps, be found amongst the
most valuable materials for history in the British
Museum.

The City Press is a faithful representative
of that large gathering of small parishes,
districts, and liberties, included under the general
title of the City of London. The turbulent
parishes of Marylebone and St. Pancras
including the smaller and distinct parish of
Paddington, are looked after by the
Marylebone Mercury, the St. Pancras Reporter,
the St. Pancras News, the St. Pancras and
Holborn Times, and Marylebone and Finsbury
Advertiser, the Holborn Journal, and the
Paddington News. The important parish of St.
George's, Hanover-square, with the smaller
parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and
Westminster generally, may consider themselves
watched by the West-End Examiner and the
West Central News. Chelsea, Kensington,
Bayswater, and their intermediate districts, are
attended to by the Chelsea Chronicle, the West
Middlesex Advertiser, the West London
Observer, and the Bayswater Chronicle. Clerkenwell
and Islington are happy in possessing the
Clerkenwell News, before alluded to, and the
Clerkenwell Journal, with the Islington Times
and the Islington Gazette, while the distant
district of Hackney, with all that it includes,
is represented by the North-East London News.
The Hendon, Hampstead, Highgate, Colney-
Hatch, and Hornsey clans of the London
highlands are regulated in print by the North
Middlesex Weekly Express, a full-grown quadruple-
leaved pennyworth, nearly as large as the Times.
In the lowlands, the great parish of St. Leonard,