van and a waggon, they seem to seek temporary resting-places on soil which civilization has disdained to occupy. Before the Great Northern Railway routed them, Battlebridge had a number of these tenants. A part of Lock's Fields in Walworth also exhibits the same phenomena. Sometimes the moveable houses in which they live become fixtures to the soil, and gradually acquire a more stable foundation than wheels. But there are reasons for avoiding this, as such dwellings are exempt from rates. A whimsical illustration of this fact occurred, but a few years ago, in the vicinity of Dockhead. Here is a house built of wood, and on wheels. Its ingenious tenant has rendered it in appearance a very comfortable lodging, and the passing stranger would scarcely discover its peculiar features. In answer to a summons from the parish authorities for rates, the occupant declared "his house was a 'wehikel,' a cart," and to prove it, horses were harnessed, and, amid a throng of admiring spectators, it was drawn down to the police office that the question might be settled. There was no gainsaying a fact so palpable, it was a "wehikel" as the man asserted, and he and his cart returned in triumph to its resting-place.

The Regent's Park, which occupies so large a space in the district under consideration, is a great boon to the metropolis. It has interposed a large gap between the increasing neighbourhoods, and does its office as one of the great lungs to purify an atmosphere tainted by the breath of so many thousands. The addition of Primrose Hill was a good move in a good direction; but how much has been neglected in this way, and how tardy has our government been in providing those places for recreation, which are so eminently demanded by our social system. Taking our stand on Primrose Hill, we have a glance at what is going on now in the extension of London. St. John's Wood has become an immense neighbourhood, with Portland Town contiguous to it, and we find it has now reached Kilburn on one side, and advanced within a few fields of Hampstead. The grounds of Belsize House, which lie immediately between Primrose Hill and Hampstead, are now in course of transformation, and will soon be covered with residences: and it is

greatly to be lamented that this property was not secured to the nation, and a noble walk continued from Regent's Park to Hampstead Heath. Passing Chalk Farm on the east, let us see what is doing in the fields near Kentish Town, through which was, a few years ago, so pleasant a stroll up to the Heath. It is positively distressing to behold such gigantic strides of bricks and mortar, but still more to perceive the reckless and miserable manner in which the ground is being laid out. Many ranges of dwellings look as if they had been tumbled together by chance, or as if a deliberate attempt at creating a very ugly and low district had been resolved on.

Kentish Town is an old hamlet, but Camden Town, its neighbour, was begun in 1791, and is now of portentous dimensions, stretching out to shake hands with Islington. The increase in the last few years has been immense, but in all this no ground has been set aside for public recreation, notwithstanding the enormous population who are interested in it, whilst time goes on, and daily the chances are passing away for any effective purpose. The space I have been considering between Islington and Kilburn, which has been engulphed in the last century, excepting those parts appropriated to Regent's park, measures, in a direct line, three miles and a half, and is rather over two in width, on the average. Thus, in this space alone, we have nearly as much area as the whole of London in 1766. The space between the Edgware Road, Paddington, and Bayswater, comprising the district called Westbourn Grove, has been filled up quite recently, and subsequently to the construction of the terminus of the Great Western Railway. The fine ranges of mansions facing Hyde Park are for the most part recent, and the last remnant of the gardeners' grounds adjoining Bayswater will soon disappear altogether. There are similar extensions of the metropolis throughout Kensington, Brompton, and Chelsea; all these are now in close union with each other, and all the fields in the neighbourhood of Pimlico, about King's Road and down to the water-side, have been swallowed up in the last twenty years. Belgravia, a low flat soil, by nature a marsh, but by fashion's caprice con

verted into a chosen spot for the residences of wealth and nobility, serves to unite in a compact mass the former outlying hamlets before enumerated. The "Five Fields," behind Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge, was an open space of considerable extent until the neighbourhood formed by Belgrave Square arose, and gradually closed up the whole space between the Palace and Brompton.

It is impossible in so superficial a glance as space condemns me to, to convey a very accurate or perfect idea of London's extension in every direction. On the Surrey side it has filled up all the vacant space between Kent Street and Newington and Walworth; for gardeners' grounds in my recollection lay between Kent Street and the New Kent Road. The latter had no dwellings at the time of our map, and but few until within the last fifty years, and the Old Kent Road had but a very few scattered buildings here and there. Now, all the intervening space (vacant in 1766) between Vauxhall and Kennington, Kennington and Camberwell, up to the Old Kent Road, is occupied, and but a small interval separates Deptford from Rotherhithe.

Returning again to the other side of the river, we find that in 1766, north of the line of the City Road, Finsbury Fields, so long a favourite place of recreation to the citizens, made a complete division between Islington, Hoxton, and Kingsland. Strange to say, whilst many more distant plots have long ago been swallowed up, a large piece of this a very few years since was untouched, and yet is not wholly seized on, although the gradual wasting of the brick-earth is fast preparing the soil for its tenants. Here again we must regret, that no attempt was made to secure a piece of land, so advantageously situated between the densely-inhabited districts of Clerkenwell, Hoxton, and Islington, for the purpose of public recreation. It would have been near the homes of many thousands who cannot afford either time, or money, for a trip by railway into the regions of fresh air and green fields, which are daily becoming to the Londoner so distant and so difficult of access. But a walk of five minutes from the north end of Britannia Fields, for so the remaining portion of this district is called, brings

us to a fine piece of open ground adjoining the Islington Cattle Market. I regret to say this will soon be covered with dwellings, and then this increasing neighbourhood will be as distant from a walk into fields as any part of London in 1750. This supineness on the part of the government, and perhaps of the people themselves, is the more lamentable, as the district, I am now speaking of, has had around it many pieces of land very suitable in position for public purposes, although not sufficient in size to be elevated to the dignity of a park.

Further east the same story of extension must be told. The Tower Hamlets have closed up, and become compact; Spitalfields has long ceased to have a green blade; and the time does not appear to be distant when the river Lee will be the eastern boundary of the metropolis. It is fortunate for the inhabitants of this part of London, and for a still increasing neighbour hood, that Victoria Park has been formed; but it is to be regretted that it is not at a less distance from the heart of the city. At another extreme of London, Battersea, the same tardy wisdom has appeared; Battersea Park is an instalment of great value, but nothing more.

Before I close this very imperfect sketch, I will just glance at the position of London a century ago and at the present time. In 1766 it contained but 8 square miles; it now covers 40. Should even the ratio of increase for the last century continue during a similar period, London would cover 200 square miles; but, as the real increase has been during the last thirty years, should we take that ratio of increase, it is stupendous to contemplate the gigantic bulk to which it may attain! What would our nervous ancestors who, 200 years since, endeavoured by Act of Parliament to prevent London's extension, and what would Major Rennell say, to find a capital already exceeding in population the amount he considered the ultimatum of possibility in regard to adequate supplies of food?

Many other points of interest have occurred to me during this examination, but I must leave their consideration for a future time.

J. G. WALLER.

a small practice, and much starvation, at Sacco, were jealously deemed as almost too good for a sage with a bar sinister in his scutcheon. During the six or seven years of his residence at the little town just named, Cardan laid the foundation of the mixed reputation which attached to him during his after-life; he performed one or two cures in cases of difficulty, wrote various medical treatises that were not varied with respect to merit, and devoted himself largely to gambling as a resource whereby to live. When he had not his pen in hand the dice-box was there, and Cardan wore a dagger on his thigh, and he was as rapid with the use thereof as he ever was with that of his tongue. He was a strange mixture of fierceness and affection, wisdom and weak judgment, knowledge and ignorance; simple faith and abject savage superstition; and Mr. Morley very well says of him, that "where Cardan was thought mad by his neighbours, we should think him wise; and where his neighbours thought him wise, we should think him mad."

This is, however, to be taken with exception, as, for instance, when Cardan, unable to maintain himself becomingly, tempted fortune and took unto himself for wife the young Lucia dei Banderini, a dowerless girl, with whom he removed to Milan, in 1532. Famine alone gave them welcome there, and Jerome and his bride removed to the town of Gallareta, where every day he grew poorer, save in knowledge and superstition, played away too even his wife's jewels and bed, and in nineteen months earned forty crowns. The couple returned once more to Milan, the wife with a little son on her bosom, and the strange triad took temporary shelter in the workhouse, a depth of degradation to which even Tasso was reduced once in his life, and at which the poet was as little affected as the physician.

The latter, it must be confessed, was the nobler man of the two. He was not content to live at the cost of others, nor was it in his nature to be ungrateful for service rendered. He fought the battle of life in Milan like a true-hearted soldier. He was often beaten down upon one knee, but with a stout heart and arm he held the buckler of resolution above his head GENT. MAG. VOL. XLII.

and pushed his way through opposing ills while he bore the blows of fortune uncomplainingly. He made a few friends, courted them assiduously, but not servilely, obtained some small occupation returning, indeed, but a slender honorarium for the exercise of any of them, and wrote treatises enough on various sciences to make the fortune and reputation of half a hundred scholars. And at last one of his treatises was printed. It was that "On the Bad Practice of Medicine in Common Use," and it gained for him more shame than honour. The physicians could not refute him, but they could abuse both him and his treatise. The people at large followed the lead given by the faculty, and Cardan was accounted of as being the very slave of that crass ignorance he had attempted to expose. It has ever been so. The old stagers, being idly disposed, are wrathful when they are required to unlearn gross errors, and they take their revenge by denouncing every new teacher as an ignoramus. Jenner was called "fool and knave" by the entire body of medical gentlemen of his day, and when these were compelled to follow Jenner they talked of his discovery as if the merit were not his but theirs.

Despite opposition, Cardan was enabled to set up a household, take his mother into it, and engage a "famulus." If he indulged much in dissipation, he was also a gigantic worker. His brain and his pen were never at rest, but he was not always happy in his subjects. Fame descended slowly upon him for his scientific treatises; but when he brought his astrology to bear, by casting the nativity of Christ, and writing a biography of the Saviour confirmatory of the horoscope, he was spoken of as a daringly speculative atheist. He was not far from being seized by the Inquisition for this work; but this was at a later period, and he had already made his peace with the Church by submitting all he had written to her judgment. The judg ment did not at all affect Cardan's convictions. He simply bowed, smiled, and was silent.

In the meantime Cardan maintained a terrible struggle for existence. The College of Milan steadily refused to acknowledge him, and the few patients E

he acquired barely enabled him to live. He was in that condition that the birth of two children, a son and daughter, pressed upon him; and the death of his mother relieved him. Sad condition of society when a newlyborn child meets with no welcome, and the departure of a parent is a matter for joy!

It was not till 1539 that the turning point in his fortune was fairly reached. In that year was imprinted his Practica Arithmetica, which gave him lasting fame as an author; and in the same year, after twelve of application and rebuff, he was enrolled among the members of the Milanese College of Physicians," and acquired the legal right of practising for fees, or taking office as a teacher in the university." It was but reasonable that thereupon he addressed himself to the completion of an able work on consolation; after much weariness and disappointment, he had found for both the consolation upon which he wrote. Yet, after all, he earned, even now, less as a physician than as an almanack-maker and dabbler in astrology. He added something by his lectures, but he was unfortunate enough to have friends will ing to lend him money, and he still frequented the gaming table, where he won, upon system, and occasionally plucked a pigeon. The funds, however, got very quickly spent. His companionship was not always with scholars. His table was as often surrounded by singers; and they who sang, drank deeply, and the house of a man who was imbued with solemn ideas of religion was but an unsanctified home. Amid the extravagance a third child was born, and Cardan thereupon buckled himself to sterner labour, and in 1544, he was teaching the college youth of Pavia, at an annual income of two hundred and forty gold crowns, which sum was irrespective of what he might be enabled to make by the practice of his profession as physician. Ill-employed as many of his hours had been, he had nevertheless found leisure and sufficient clearness of intellect to compose his great work on Algebra. It was his masterpiece, and, like all chefs d'œuvre, it was attacked by the sciolists, and not spared by the sages; but Cardan had an answer for all, and he and his book were triumphant. His

pen was occupied besides on many other subjects, and that at one time; some were completed, some were never seriously intended to be so; some were illustrative of wisdom, some of science, some of art, some of morals, and a tract or two were marked by such foolery as scholars could once delight in who preferred to write nonsense rather than let their restless minds run to waste. The result of all was an increase both of fame and, in some degree, of fortune, and he fully merited both, for never had the sun seen a man who laboured more assiduously while he did labour, or who could so easily, after his jubilant relaxations, put on again the burthen of toil, and work on like a giant refreshed. He bore all well, for the simple reason that he kept early hours, and enjoyed full rest. "He liked to spend ten hours in bed, during eight of which he slept, if his health happened to be pretty good. When he was wakeful, he was accustomed to get up and walk round his bed, counting thousands, with the hope of making himself sleepy. He took but little medicine, being a doctor The me

dicinal remedies most used by him to procure sleep were bears' grease, or an ointment of poplar, applied externally in seventeen places." "He loved old fashions in dress; and as regards diet he preferred heavy suppers_to light ones, and fish to meat. His dinner was the repast of an anchorite, and the supper was in fact a late dinner. His beverage was wine and water, a half pint of each fairly commingled. He was an uneasy sleeper, he was ever looking for omens when awake, and his slumbers were oppressed by fearful dreams; but he was, in his way, happy, until swift death took from him his Lucia, and then he returned to Milan, where, to draw his sorrowful thoughts from dwelling on his bereavement, he wrote a laboured encomium on gout and a panegyric of the Emperor Nero.

Cardan might have found what the French call "distraction" in his sorrow had he accepted an offer made him to become physician to Pope Paul III. (Alexander Farnese), but, favourable as were the terms proposed, Cardan declined them; "the Pope," he said, "is decrepit, he is but a crum