carriers' lines, at hours when London is fast asleep, the trucks of goods, received from the north by goods' trains during the night, are wheeled into the warehouse, and speedily for delivery by the road-wagons belonging to the firm. The warehouse presents twice the area of Westminster-hall; and beneath it is vaulted stabling for the accommodation of a hundred horses.

The inland transit of goods from Manchester gives rise to a vast canal and railway traffic. Ten years ago it was calculated that the inland transit by canal alone from Manchester to towns southward of it, and leaving unnoticed the traffic to the north, east, and west, amounted to 700,000 tons annually. A mighty commercial machinery is this. The great firms of Pickford, Crowley, Chaplin and Horne, Shipton, &c., conduct the carrying business on a scale little imagined by persons who have not had opportunities of observing it. They (especially Pickford's) have establishments not only at Manchester and at London, but at most of the towns through which canals pass. The horses and carts and wagons of the carrier may be seen in many a busy street of Manchester, conveying goods to the canal stations; and the carrier is responsible for the safety of these goods until they are deposited in the warehouse of the consignee at London. The bales are securely stowed away in the canal-boat: each boat has a captain' or leader; and he is responsible for the goods till placed in the hands of the carriers' servants at the depôt, where they are unshipped, sorted, carted, and conveyed to the houses of the London merchant or dealer..

But the railway-goods traffic is even more interesting to study than that by canal. Go to the Camden Town station of the giant railway company, and what do we see? We see vast warehouses, on which are written the names of those very carriers who have for many years been the magnates of the canal system. They are wise in time. They did what could fairly be done to check the advance of the new order of things; but that failing, they took the sound-sense method: as they could not bend the system to them, they bent to the system, and became at once carriers by railway.' At the station of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway (now absorbed into the London and NorthWestern), in Store-street, the bales of cotton and other goods are deposited in the wagon-trucks, and thence conveyed by railway to Camden Town; where, at the stations of the various carriers, the goods are transferred from the railway-trucks to the road-wagon, and conveyed to the wholesale warehouses in London. Pickford's warehouse, at the Camden Town station, is a vast structure. It is said to contain no less than three millions of bricks: so substantial is the arching necessary to support the platform of the warehouse over vaults beneath. The floor of the warehouse is intersected with lines of railway in every direction, con

The reader is not asked to believe that the canal and railway traffic above alluded to relates to Manchester cottons only he is only requested to bear in mind, that the transmission of those goods to London and other parts of England, employ a notable portion of that energy and commercial activity exhibited in the carrier system. And the counting-house machinery (if such an expression may be used) involved in this transit trade at Manchester, is also very complete and extensive. The warehouses, the branch Bank of England (Cut, No. 4), and other banks, the Exchange, and the various commercial offices, in and near Mosleystreet, are the scene of never-ending activity. Mr. Kohl seems to have been as much struck as M. Foucher, with the untiring business-habits of the merchants and clerks of the Manchester warehouses. He says, "This class is, I believe, in no town so industrious as in Manchester; nowhere, at least, do I remember to have seen so many wealthy people exclusively and passionately devoted to business. There are people here possessing annual incomes of many thousands who work like horses all the year round, stinting themselves in sleep and meal-times, and grudging every moment given to amusement or society. Those who wonder at this fact should recollect that what passes for pleasure with the idle and dissipated, would be intolerably wearying to these men of business,' who are as much in their element in the life they lead, as fish in water, and would be like fish out of water if they were removed to the lighter atmosphere of pleasure. Business is their habit, their delight, their very existence; and a place without business would be to them empty and joyless in the extreme. The hopes and fears, the gains and losses, the failures and successes, attending their occupations, afford them an excitement as absorbing, and, after a time, as necessary, as the warrior feels in his battles, or the gamester over his faro-table." Mr. Lowe, too, speaking of the manufacturers as a class, says, 'They allow little relaxation to the duties of business. An annual visit of a fortnight to a watering-place, generally the nearest, is all the relief they permit to a year's toil. And this attention to business is not for a few hours only in the day: it commences early in the morning, and is protracted to a late hour in the evening. It is a common thing to see the leading merchants of the town-some of them possessed of wealth to the amount of a quarter of a million sterlingposting from their country villas to their countinghouses between eight and nine o'clock in the morning; and many of them do not return (except when not at the club, or to a hasty dinner) till nine or ten o'clock in the evening.

PORTSMOUTH is a spot which claims our attention on many grounds. First, it is a Government Arsenal conducted on a vast scale, and comprising many distinct establishments connected with the defence of the country. There is a dock-yard for building ships, and all the necessary arrangements for repairing ships already built. There are all the countless stores for supplying these ships for their sea-service, whether for actual navigation or for war-from a nail or a ball of twine to an anchor or a sail. There is the victualling-department, whence the thousands who man these ships can at a short notice be provided with their rations. There is the splendid harbour, where the majestic floating fortresses can take up a temporary station when not in active service. There are the fortifications surrounding Portsea and Portsmouth, rendering them conjointly the best defended spot, perhaps, in England. There are the military arrangements connected with these defensive works; and the noble Hospital at Haslar, for the sick and wounded. There are the fine open ground at Portsdown, and the old Castle at Porchester; the pleasant sea-bathing places at South-sea and at Hayling; the Spithead and the Solent, and the mighty fleets that have so often anchored there; the delightful Isle of Wight inviting you on the one hand, and the Southampton Water on the other.

The situation of Portsmouth is not a little remarkable. We find, on inspecting a map of Hampshire and the neighbouring counties, that a straight line drawn from the Isle of Purbeck to Selsea Bill passes through the middle of the Isle of Wight, so that this Isle is situated in a kind of bay included between those two limits. If the Isle of Wight were away, the mouth of Southampton Water would be the innermost or deepest part of this imaginary bay; but as things really are, the Isle seems to fill up a sort of gap; its northern shore being very similar in shape to the opposite shore of Hampshire. Between the two is a sea-channel, of which the eastern half constitutes Spithead, and the western half the Solent. The Southampton Water branches up north-westward, from a point between the Solent and Spithead; and the Hampshire coast from that point to Hurst Castle proceeds pretty nearly south-west. On the contrary, the Hampshire coast, in the direction from Southampton Water towards Selsea Bill, bends round towards the south-east. In the middle of this distance, the shore is broken up by a remarkable assemblage of bays, islands, and peninsulas, to which Portsmouth owes its formation and its importance. First we have Portsmouth Harbour-an inlet of the sea, narrow at its entrance, but widening considerably as it extends northwards; then we have the peninsula, or Isle of Portsea, suspended as it were from the main land at Portsdown Hill, and hanging down into the sea: at the south-west corner of this isle the towns of Portsea

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and Portsmouth are situated. Going further east, we arrive at another deep indentation of the sea, to which the name of Langston Harbour has been given it is as large as Portsmouth Harbour; but its smaller depth and other circumstances have prevented it from assuming such maritime and commercial importance. Then we come to Hayling Island, at least two-thirds the size of the Isle of Portsea, and noteworthy chiefly as a sea-bathing and invalid holiday-place. Further east we have another inlet or bay, sometimes called Chichester Harbour, in which are Thorney and Pilsey Islands, and the eastern margin of which is formed by the county of Sussex. If we further imagine a lofty hilly ridge, stretching east and west at a small distance northward of Portsmouth and Langston Harbours, we shall have some idea of the general nature of the district. The coast of Sussex, as we have said, forms the eastern boundary of this family of bays and islands; the road from Gosport to Fareham forms the western; the road from Fareham through Havant to Emsworth forms the northern; while Spithead and one corner of the Isle of Wight front it on the south. This singularly-varied district runs about fifteen miles from east to west, and five from north to south: being composed, mainly, of three sheets of water, separated by two masses of land; on the westernmost of which is situated the town about to engage our attention.

Portsmouth is now in possession of two railway arteries to London, wholly distinct throughout. Until the South-western Company (against the wishes of the folks of Portsmouth, be it told), advanced their works into the county, the route to London was by way of Petersfield, Haslemere, Guildford, &c. Portsmouth looks upon Southampton as a young stripling, who pertly thrusts himself into notice, and would even measure weapons with the great arsenal itself. Portsmouth would not have a railway when it might; and when Southampton had received what the other had rejected, a feeling of uneasiness was engendered, which led to the construction of a branch line from Bishopstoke to Gosport. A consequence of this has been, that for some years past the line of travel from Portsmouth to London has been by crossing the harbour to the Gosport Station, and thence proceeding by the SouthWestern Railway vid Bishopstoke and Winchester. Portsmouth felt itself placed in the back-ground by this arrangement; for Southampton was the main terminus of the line, and has not failed to avail itself of this advantageous position. For this, however, the inhabitants of Portsmouth had chiefly to blame themselves: like the inhabitants of Maidstone, Northampton, and many other towns, they made a mistake in the infancy of the railway system, and have had up-hill work to right themselves again.

Matters are now, however, in a better train for Portsmouth. The Brighton Company, having a short coast-line springing westward to Shoreham, began to