[Illustration: GRADIENTS OF HOLBORN HILL & OF SNOW HILL LONDON
_Horizontal scale, 352 feet to an Inch._ _Vertical scale, 44 feet to an Inch._ ]
It is, however, a misnomer to call it a viaduct. It is true that, by means of a massive construction, the opposite sides of a valley—at their summits more than two-fifths of a mile apart—are connected together on the level. But, in reality, the viaduct is a great metropolitan work, worthy of the Corporation of the City of London, which, although well abused by persons who do not understand its operations, is never-ceasing, to the extent of its means, in carrying out improvements within its limits. A list of the works and changes effected by the Corporation in the last thirty years would show that it has expended millions in altering the face of the City,[116] and in increasing facilities for traffic, especially at points of aggregation. The manner in which the new street that is to run from the Mansion House to Blackfriars Bridge, within City boundaries, is advancing, contrasts markedly with what is doing beyond them. According to present appearances, the City will have completed its work and opened its portion of the street for traffic about the time that the Metropolitan Board of Works will have made a fair start upon what it has to accomplish.
The next great work that the Corporation has to take in hand is the widening of the Poultry, infinitely more important, and more absolutely required, in the opinion of all people who frequent the City, than the widening of Newgate Street, upon which the Corporation is now engaged. The expense, of course, will be enormous, but it must be met—somehow: land to be paid for by the square _inch_; splendid constructions to come down; historic Bucklersbury to disappear; even the Mansion House will stop the way, and His Lordship will have to find residence either at the rear of Guildhall, as was suggested some short time ago, or elsewhere. Metropolitan fellow residents, metropolitan suburbanists, and inhabitants who dwell to the extent of six miles outside the Post-Master General’s twelve mile postal circle, you may all rest assured that the granite pillars you see at the eighteen mile distance post from London, on railway and roadway, on river bank and canal tow-path—the columns of Luxor of the Corporation—with inscriptions on them destined, in remote future times, to represent the hieroglyphics of ancient Anglia—will remain and be found among the few signs then extant, of the by-gone civilisation which the prophesied New Zealander is to make his musings upon. Of the London coal tax as of the river:—