society in England. From an agricultural, we have become, in great measure, a commercial and manufacturing people. In many districts, villages have swelled into towns, and towns into mighty cities. The population of several counties has increased with a rapidity unexampled probably in the history of the world, certainly without parallel in any long settled and civilized country. In Lancashire, which contained in the year 1700 one hundred and sixty-six thousand souls, there are now one million three hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. The population, therefore, has been multiplied more than eight times. In the West Riding of Yorkshire again, in parts of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and several other counties, the process has been and is proceeding with no less rapidity. The metropolis too, has wholly changed its character within the same period. The cities of London and Westminster it is well known, at no distant period, were separated by fields and gardens, and connected chiefly by the Thames. The population swarmed about the great marts of commerce, on the north bank of the river, in parishes astonishingly numerous and subdivided, now abandoned chiefly to warehouses and offices. A little to the west of Temple Bar were the pleasant gardens and houses of the nobility, extending along the Strand of the river, then no crowded street; and in many respects answering to those which may now be
