again as they were ten years ago. Lewisham,
indeed, has increased quite at the same rate;
while Islington is, in this respect, a little ahead
of the western suburb. Chelsea has made no
such start. Next to the districts of Hampstead,
Islington, and Kensington, Hackney is that
in which the proportionate addition of newly-
built houses has been greatest. These all
represent the determination of Londoners
towards the circumference. The rate of increase
at Poplar has been, from other causes, quite
equal to that at Hampstead, and the rate at
Rotherhithe equal to that at Hackney. With
these exceptions there is nothing very striking
in the figures representing growth of the town.
Wandsworth follows Hackney, and Camberwell
treads closely upon Wandsworth in the list of
districts which have increased far beyond the
average in population. There the addition has
been not quite a third. In Greenwich it has
been nearly a fourth. In Newington it is of
little more than a sixth. In Pancras and St.
George's, Hanover-square, it is of a sixth. In
Lambeth, of a seventh. In Shoreditch, not
quite so much. In Bethnal-green, of an eighth.
In Marylebone, of a thirteenth. In
Westminster, one house for every hundred and
seventy-five of the old ones. These figures
represent the direction and extent of London's
growth, in respect of bricks and mortar. Of
the whole population the increase is below half
a million. We are, in town and suburbs, more
than two million eight hundred thousand, and
may call ourselves three million four or five
years hence.

As to the proportion of houses to inhabitants
in some of the town districts: it is worth
noticing, that the proportion for the whole country
being, as we have said, nearer five than
six—there are six and two-tenths to a house in
Hackney, six and three-tenths in Wandsworth,
not so much as seven at Lewisham, seven and
two-tenths to a house in Kensington (where there
are some houses big enough to hold a colony),
but more than eleven and a half to a house in
St. Giles's, seven and two-tenths also in
Hampstead, seven and five-tenths in Islington, eight
and four-tenths in St. George's, Hanover-square,
where the servant population tells on the
returns, and there are many large houses, but nine
to a house in St. Luke's, nine and two-tenths in
Clerkenwell, where most people wait upon
themselves, and most houses are small.

A great deal that is curious in the way of
suggestive figures may be taken from these
tables, by anybody who will in this way make
little sums in his mind as he reads, but that we
confess is not on the whole a cheerful way of
getting through a publication. The tables
would be a godsend to a calculating boy, and
no doubt we shall very soon have all sorts of
reasoners founding all sorts of conclusions upon
them.

Look, for example, at the towns that have
gone up, and the towns that have gone down.
In Cambridgeshire there is a decrease of
population upon every district in the county. From
Cambridge, the capital, which has lost a thousand
and a half out of something under thirty
thousand, to North Witchford, which has lost
as much out of sixteen thousand, and is nearly
or quite at the head of the sinkers, every town
in Cambridgeshire shows loss of population.
Except Norwich, Ipswich, Yarmouth, and
Mutford, in Suffolk, which, although nobody out of
Suffolk ever heard of it, has been doing great
things, there are but three insignificant exceptions
to the same rule throughout all Suffolk
and Norfolk. Decrease of population is the
rule, also, in nearly all districts of Wiltshire;
Salisbury having added only about a hundred to
a population of about nine thousand, Cricklade
having added ten to a population of eleven thousand,
and there being decrease everywhere else
except in the two places of chief increase,
Highworth and Chippenham. On the other hand,
except at Kidderminster, where the decline is
very marked, there is increase of population
throughout Worcestershire; throughout
Cheshire, except at Macclesfield; throughout
Lancashire, except a large decline at Clitheroe and
a little one at Garstang. Durham alone exhibits
increase everywhere, as Cambridgeshire exhibits
decrease everywhere.

In many cases the decrease of population,
which is most strongly marked in the second
and third-rate agricultural towns, leaves many
houses uninhabited, but the reverse of this seems
to be quite as commonly the rule. In Cambridge,
more than three hundred additional houses are
tenanted, though there are about one thousand
five hundred fewer people to live in them, and
something like this is the case in six of the
nine districts of Cambridgeshire. In Suffolk,
of nine such districts, five show an increase of
house occupation in spite of the decrease of
population. On the whole, there appears to be
a decided tendency in the inhabitants of provincial
towns to extend slightly the amount of
separate house accommodation they allow
themselves. Thus the small town of Midhurst, in
Sussex, had contrived to build and occupy twenty-
one more houses, though it contains a thousand
fewer people than at the preceding census,
and for the smallest registered increase of
population, which is only two at Havant, accommodation
is made by the addition of forty-five
more tenanted houses.

The largest actual increase of population
during the last ten years, has been in Lancashire,
at West Derby, a part of Liverpool, and is of
seventy-two thousand. Next to it ranks, in
this respect, Chorlton, a part of Manchester,
where upwards of forty-five thousand have been
added to the population. The addition in
Manchester itself has been only fifteen, and in
Salford of seventeen thousand, while in the strictly
defined Liverpool registration district, the
increase is only of eleven thousand. The actual
increase at Birmingham approaches forty
thousand, but of all districts the one in which there
has been by far the highest proportionate increase
in population is that of West Ham, over the
London Border, where the Victoria Docks have