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[-64-]

PROFESSIONAL LONDON.

WE now pass from our general survey of the Metropolis, to consider its several parts in detail. For as geographers usually prefix to their Atlases a map of the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe, so have we, in this our literary Atlas of the World of London, first laid down a chart of the two opposite spheres of metropolitan society - the very rich and the very poor - a kind of Mercator's plan, as it were, wherein the antipodes of London life are brought under one view.
    This done, however, we now proceed, in due geographical order, to deal seriatim with each of the quarters of the Metropolitan World.
    And first of Professional London.
    Professional London, we consider to include that portion of metropolitan society of which the members follow some intellectual calling - living by mental, rather than manual dexterity; that is to say, deriving their income from the exercise of talent rather than skill. For the members of every profession must be more or less talented, even as every handicraftsman must be more or less skilful; and as the working engineer acquires, by practice, a certain expertness in the use of his fingers, so the member of a profession learns, by education, a certain quickness of perception and soundness of judgment in connection with the matters to which he attends; and thus people, lacking the faculty which he possesses, are glad to avail themselves of his services in that respect.
    According to the above definition, the members of the professions are not limited merely to lawyers, doctors, and clergymen, but include also professors, teachers, scientific men, authors, artists, musicians, actors-indeed all who live "by their wits," as the opprobrious phrase runs, as if it were a dishonour for a person to gain a livelihood by the exercise of his intellect; and the judge did not depend upon his mental faculties for his subsistence, as much as the chevalier d'industrie whom he tries.

    The professional or intellectual class is not a large one, even when thus extended beyond its usual limited signification; for in all Great Britain there are, in round numbers, only 230,000 people gaining a subsistence by their talents, out of a population of very nearly 21 millions; and this is barely a ninetieth part of the whole.
    Altogether, there are throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, 30,047 clergymen and ministers, 18,422 lawyers, and 22,383 medical men. Indeed, the Commissioners of the Census tell us, that the three professions, even with their allied and subordinate members, amount to only 112,193, and "though their importance cannot be overrated, they add," "yet, in numbers, they would be out-voted by the tailors of the United Kingdom."
    Of the unrecognized professions, the authors in Great Britain are 2,981 in number; the artists, 9,148; the professors of science (returned as such), only 491 ; while the teachers amount to 106,344 ;-making a total of 118,964 individuals
    Now, let us see what proportion of the body of professional people existing throughout Great Britain, is found located in the Metropolis.
    [-65-] According to the returns of the last census, the gross number of persons living by the exercise of their talents in London (including the same classes as were before mentioned), amounts to 47,746; and this out of a population of 2,362,236-so that the proportion is just upon one-fiftieth of the whole. Hence we find that whereas there are eleven people in every thousand belonging to the intellectual classes throughout Great Britain, or rather more than one per cent. of the gross population,* the ratio in the Capital is a fraction beyond twenty to the thousand, or about two per cent. of the entire metropolitan people.

* The distribution of the Professional Classes throughout the country, and the ratio they bear to the rest of the adult population is as follows

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES (MALES AND FEMALES ABOVE 20 YEARS) THROUGHOUT ENGLAND AND WALES, AD. 1851.

DIVISIONS	Clergymen, Prot. Ministers, Priests, &c.	Barristers, Solicitors, and others.	Physicians, Surgeons, and others	Authors, Editors, and others	Artists, Architects and others	Scientific Persons	Music, School and other Masters	Total	Population above Twenty years	Number to every 100
DIVISION I - LONDON	2388	5703	5100	1160	3666	146	14570	32733	1394963	23.4
DIVISION II - SOUTHERN-EASTERN COUNTIES
Surrey (ex-Metro)	372	360	247	23	82	3	1444	2531	111025	22.7
Kent (ex-Metro)	779	332	502	45	145	6	2678	4487	263292	17.0
Sussex	659	345	412	53	99	8	2316	3892	182164	21.3
Hampshire	744	292	372	43	138	8	2260	3857	222633	17.3
Berkshire	417	147	194	20	45	..	1165	1988	108017	18.4
Total	2971	1476	1727	184	509	25	9863	16755	887131	18.9
DIVISION III - SOUTH MIDLAND COUNTIES
Middlesex (ex Metro)	251	270	243	33	91	4	1255	2147	84190	25.5
Hertfordshire	315	115	231	6	26	2	904	1599	92152	17.3
Buckinghamshire	301	79	99	18	18	..	668	1183	76570	15.4
Oxfordshire	479	104	145	101	35	3	915	1782	92252	19.3
Northamptonshire	453	105	155	5	30	1	1022	1771	11735	15.3
Huntingdonshire	128	32	37	2	2	..	305	506	31260	16.1
Bedfordshire	228	45	92	4	16	1	453	839	67029	12.5
Cambridgeshire	393	113	131	123	27	8	934	1729	101587	17.0
Total	2548	863	1133	292	245	19	6456	11556	660775	17.4
DIVISION IV - EASTERN COUNTIES
Essex	624	194	282	29	53	5	1834	3021	183846
Suffolk	686	172	248	24	54	4	1672	2860	180371
Norfolk	860	292	294	25	72	5	2192	3740	239504
Total	2170	658	824	78	179	14	5698	9621	603720
DIVISION V - SOUTH-WESTERN COUNTIES
Wiltshire	484	142	172	22	25	5	1213	2063	129245	15.9
Dorsetshire	375	121	139	16	35	..	960	1646	95612	17.2
Devonshire	1064	497	625	52	174	9	3110	5531	318707	17.3
Cornwall	450	162	230	17	33	5	1401	2298	184879	12.3
Somersetshire	979	403	473	38	131	10	2635	4669	249581	18.7
Total	3352	1325	1639	145	398	29	9319	16207	978024	16.5
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DIVISION VI - WEST MIDLAND COUNTIES
Gloucestshire	837	478	517	67	201	19	2478	4597	236002	19.4
Herefordshire	217	100	83	20	15	1	447	883	56320	15.6
Shropshire	466	187	229	18	36	3	1100	2039	134691	15.1
Staffordshire	623	278	361	29	147	10	2209	3657	329602	11.0
Worcestershire	421	257	214	22	92	2	1314	2323	140867	10.4
Warwickshire	656	234	459	57	245	5	2226	3882	262905	14.7
Total	3320	1534	1863	213	737	40	9774	17381	1160387	14.9
DIVISION VII - NORTH MIDLAND COUNTIES
Leicestershire	422	100	167	17	61	5	1159	1931	127425	15.1
Rutlandshire	74	8	16	1	1	..	131	231	13260	17.4
Lincolnshire	729	207	325	19	61	7	2060	3408	213229	15.9
Nottinghamshire	366	118	184	20	69	5	1348	2110	160197	13.1
Derbyshire	320	126	185	14	43	4	1030	1722	140568	12.2
Total	1911	559	877	71	235	21	5728	9402	654679	14.3
DIVISION VIII - NORTH WESTERN COUNTIES
Cheshire	489	307	312	36	106	8	1819	3077	229013	13.4
Lancashire	1567	1025	1338	120	633	52	6488	11223	1122817	10.0
Total	2056	1332	1650	156	739	60	8307	14300	1351830	10.6
DIVISION IX - YORKSHIRE
West Riding	1256	611	857	71	284	28	4726	7833	712114	11.0
East Riding	401	232	282	30	115	3	1430	2493	142672	17.4
North Riding	349	121	183	9	28	2	1017	1710	107159	15.9
Total	2005	964	1322	110	427	33	7174	12036	961945	12.5
DIVISION X - NORTHERN COUNTIES
Durham	382	175	311	31	68	13	1496	2476	216638	11.4
Northumberland	335	169	277	34	80	6	1058	1959	166152	11.8
Cumberland	274	102	142	12	24	5	845	1404	106908	13.1
Westmoreland	128	31	54	7	16	1	283	520	31762	16.0
Total	1119	477	784	84	188	25	3682	6359	521460	12.2
DIVISION XI - MONMOUTHSHIRE AND WALES
Monmouthshire	309	82	126	1	21	4	513	1055	96821	11.0
South Wales	1160	246	300	37	80	2	1493	3318	326367	10.2
North Wales	762	158	224	16	29	..	884	2073	278492	7.4
Total	2231	486	650	54	130	6	2890	6447	701680	9.2
Total for England and Wales	25975	15377	16969	2547	7453	418	83461	152797	9875594	15.0

By the above table, it will be seen that the professional or highly-educated classes range from about 7.5 to [-67-] 25.5 individuals to every 1000 of the adult population throughout England and Wales; and that whilst the highest ratio of professional people is found in Middlesex, London, Surrey, and Sussex, the lowest proportion obtains in Northumberland, Durham, Stafford, the West Riding of York, Lancaster, Monmouth, and South and North Wales. This result coincides nearly with the returns of the relative amount of education prevailing throughout the several counties of England and Wales, as indicated by the number of persons who sign the marriage register with marks; and by which returns it appears that there is the least number of educated persons in Monmouth, South Wales, and North Wales, and the greatest number in Surrey and Middlesex. Thus we perceive that the proportion of professional classes is an indication of the educated state of the people in the various counties.

[-66-] When, therefore, we come to consider that the above estimate includes the whole of the "learned professions" (as they are invidiously styled), as well as all those whose lives are [-67-] devoted to the equally learned pursuits of literature, art, science, and education; that is to say, not only those versed in divinity, law, and physic, but the historian, the poet, the critic, the painter, the sculptor, the architect, the natural philosopher, and the musician, together with the teachers of youth and professors of science - in fine, not only the modem Butlers and Paleys, the Blackstones and Bacons, the Harveys and Hunters, but, in the words of the Census Commissioners, the living "Shakespeares, Humes, Handels, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Wrens, and Newtons" - when we consider this, we repeat, it must be confessed that the proportion of one, or even two, per cent. of such folk to the entire population, appears but little complimentary to the taste or culture of our race. Otherwise, surely every hundred persons in Great Britain would think it requisite to maintain more than one person for the joint cure of their bodies and sods, as well as the redress of their wrongs and the enlightenment or refinement of their minds.
    Still, another view must, in prudence, be taken of the matter. However much the intellectual classes may contribute to the honour and glory of a nation, nevertheless, we must admit, they add - directly - but little, if any, to its material wealth. Religion, health, justice, literature, art, science, education-admirable as they all be - are mental and spiritual riches, instead of commodities having an exchangeable value - being metaphysical luxuries, rather than physical necessities: for wisdom, taste, and piety do not tend to appease those grosser wants of our nature, which the grosser riches of a country go to satisfy; nor will the possession of them fill the stomach, or clothe the limbs, or shelter the head; so that those who give up their lives to such pursuits cannot possibly be ranked as self-supporting individuals, since they must be provided for out of the stock of such as serve directly, by their capital or their labour, to increase the products of the nation.
    Accordingly, the maintenance of even one such unproductive person to every hundred individuals (especially when we bear in mind that three-fourths in every such hundred must, naturally, be incapacitated from the severer labours of life, by either sex or age, as women and the very old and very young) reflects no little credit on our countrymen; since, in order to uphold that ratio, every twenty-five producers (i.e., one-fourth of each century of people) throughout the kingdom, must, in addition to the support of their own families (which may be taken at three-fourths in every such century), voluntarily part with a considerable portion of their creature comforts, in order to enjoy the benefit of the teachings, the advice, or the aspirations of their "professional" brethren.* [*The average number of persons to a family in England and Wales is 4.827.- Census Report for 1851.]
    It is, however, hardly fair to rank professional men among the non-producers of a country; for though your doctors in divinity, law, and physic, as well as poets, philosophers, and pedagogues, till not, "neither do they spin," it is certain that they contribute, indirectly, to the wealth of a nation, as much - if not more, perhaps - than any other class.
    Newton, for instance, by the invention of the sextant, as well as by that vast opening-up of our astronomical knowledge which served to render navigation simpler and safer, did more to extend our maritime commerce than any merchant enterprise could ever have effected. Again, all must allow that the steam-labourer created by Watt has tended to [-68-] increase our manufactures more than many million pairs of hands; whilst the steam-carriage of Stephenson has helped to distribute the products of particular districts over the entire country, far beyond the powers of an infinite number of carriers. Row many working men would it have taken to have enriched the nation to the same amount as Arkwright, the penny barber, did by his single invention of the spinning-jenny? What number of weavers would be required to make as much cloth as he, who devised the power-loom, produced by the mere effort of his brain? Surely, too, Lee, the university scholar, has given more stockings to the poor, by the invention of his "frame," than all the knitters that ever lived. Farther, have not the manures discovered by our chemists increased our crops to a greater extent than the whole of the agricultural labourers throughout the kingdom, and the reasonings of our geologists and metallurgists added to our mineral wealth more than the entire body of our miners and smelters?
    Still, these are merely the "economical" results springing from science and education; those results, on the other hand, which are due to the practice of the "learned" professions, though perhaps less brilliant, are equally indisputable. The medical skill which restores the disabled workman to health and strength surely cannot be regarded as valueless in the State; nor can we justly consider the knowledge which has prolonged the term of life, and consequently of industry, in this country, as yielding nothing to the wealth-fund of the nation. Moreover, that honourable vocation which has for its object the prevention and redress of wrong, and the recovery of every man's due, serves not only to give a greater security to capital, and so to induce the wealthy to employ rather than hoard their gains, but also to protect the poor against the greed and power of the avaricious rich-this, too, cannot but be acknowledged to be intimately concerned in promoting the industry and increasing the riches of the community; whilst that still higher calling, which seeks to make all men charitable and kind, rather than sternly just, to their less favoured brethren, which teaches that there are higher things in life than the "rights of capital" and political economy, and which, by inculcating special respect and duties to the poor, has been mainly instrumental in emancipating the labourer from the thraldomn of villanage, and consequently in giving a tenfold return to his industry as a free workman-such a calling may also be said to have a positive commercial value among us.
    Surely, then, professions which yield products like these cannot be regarded as altogether unproductive in the land.

    The professional classes constitute what, in the cant language of literature, is styled "the aristocracy of intellect;" and it must be admitted, even by those who object to the introduction of the title aristos into the republic of letters, that the body of professional men form by themselves a great intellectual clan-the tribe which is specially distinguished from all others by the learning, wisdom, or taste of its members, and the one, moreover, which in all philosophic minds cannot but occupy the foremost position in society. For, without any disposition to disparage those classes who owe their social pre-eminence either to their birth or their wealth, we should be untrue to our own class and vocation if we did not, without arrogance, claim for it-despite the "order of precedence" prevalent at Court - a position second to none in the community; and, surely, even those who feel an honourable pride in the deeds and glory of their ancestors, and they too, who, on the other hand, find a special virtue in the possession of inordinate riches or estates, must themselves allow that high intellectual endowments have an intrin8ic nobility belonging to them, compared with which the intrinsic nobility of "blood" or "lands" is a mere assumption and pretence.
    Now it must not be inferred, from the tenor of the above remarks, that we are adverse to the aristocratic institutions of this country. Far from it; we believe in no equality on this side of the grave: for as Nature has made one man wiser, or better, or braver, or more

[-69-] prudent than another, it is our creed that society must always own a superior class of some sort-superior in intellect, goodness, heroism, or worldly possessions, according as the nation chooses to measure by one or more of those standards. The Stanleys, the Howards, the Russells, &c., are, to all unprejudiced minds, unquestionably more worthy of social respect, as nature's own gentlemen, than the descendants of Greenacre, Burke, and Rush - nature's own ruffians; and so, again, we cannot but regard the Barings and the Jones-Lloyds as more dignified and useful members of the community than your able-bodied pauper or sturdy vagrant.
    But, while making these admissions, we must at the same time acknowledge that we hold the Shakespeares, the Newtons, the Watts, the Blackstones, the Harveys, the Fullers, the Reynolds, the Purcells, and indeed all who have distinguished themselves either in law, divinity, medicine, literature, art, science, or education, not only as being among the very worthiest of England's worthies, but as constituting the class which lends the chief dignity to a nation in the eyes of all foreign countries - the untitled nobility of the world, rather than of any mere isolated empire.
    Nor would it be just to ourselves, and our own order, if we did not here assert that the literary vocation - truthfully, righteously, and perfectly carried out - claims kindred, not only with all philosophy as the ground-work of each particular science, and ethics as the basis of all law, and humanism which enters so largely into medical knowledge, and aesthetics as the foundation of all arts connected with the beautiful, but also with religion itself, in its inculcation of the Christian principles - its use of the parabular* [* This word is hardly formed upon correct etymological principles, the Latin adjectival affix, "ular" - as in tabular, from "table" - cannot strictly be applied to a Greek substantive. The use, however, of the true graeco-adjective "parabolic" in a wholly different sense is, perhaps, sufficient apology for the formation of the mongrel term.] form of instruction - as well as its denunciation of wrong, and its encouragement of good-will and charity among all men.
    Moreover, it is our pride to add, that, of all pursuits and ranks in the world, there is none which depends so thoroughly on public acclaim, and so little on sovereign caprice, for the honour and glory of its members; and none, therefore, in which honours and glories cast so high and sterling a dignity upon its chiefs.

    Well, it is with the professional, or rather let us say the intellectual, portion of metropolitan society that we purpose first dealing here.
    The professionals resident in London number, as we have said, 47,000 and odd individuals in the aggregate; and, therefore, constitute nearly one-fifth of the entire intellectual class distributed throughout Great Britain.
    Included in the gross number of metropolitan professionals are, 5,863 lawyers, 5,631 doctors, 2,393 clergymen and ministers, and 11,210 "subordinates" - making altogether 25,097 persons belonging to the so-called "learned" professions; whilst to these must be added the sum of 22,649 persons connected with the "unrecognized professions; and including 1,195 literary men, 17,241 teachers, 156 professors of science, and 4,057 artists and architects.*

[*The distribution of the professional classes throughout the several districts of London is as follows:-

    Of each and all of these varieties of Professional London it is our intention to treat, seriatim, under the several divisions of Legal London - Medical London - Religious London - Literary London - Artistic London - Scholastic London, and so on, dealing with each of those phases of Metropolitan life as if it were a distinct Metropolis - estimating its population - marking out its boundaries and districts - and treating of the manners and customs of the people belonging to it, from the highest to the lowest; indeed, attempting for the first time to write and photograph the history of our multifarious Capital, in the nineteenth cen-[-70-]tury; and we shall now begin to set forth the several details in connection with the first of those divisions.