be at the conduit in the service-time, nor leave
there no tankard nor pail; for, if they do so offend,
the churchwardens shall take the said tankard or
pails, and keep them, until such time that the
said offenders do come and put into the poor-
man's chest fourpence, and then the said party
to have his tankard again." Some citizens,
shut out from the conduits, supplied themselves
from the Thames, and even stopped up the lanes
leading to the river, suffering none to pass without
paying toll. These encroachments were at
last checked by complaints to the mayor and
aldermen.

The task of inspecting the conduits, confided
to the lord mayor and corporation, was, of course,
converted into an annual festival—a procession
of civic officers, with the ladies following in
waggons. "These conduits," says Stow, "used
to be in former times yearly visited; but
particularly on the 18th of September, 1562, the
Lord Maior Harper, aldermen, and many
worshipful persons, and divers masters and wardens
of the twelve companies, rid to the conduits'
head, for to see them after the old custom. And
afore dinner they hunted the hare and killed her,
and thence to dinner at the head of the conduit.
There was good number entertained with good
cheer by the chamberlain; and after dinner they
went to hunting the fox. There was a great
cry for a mile, and at length the hounds killed
him at the end of St. Giles's. Great hallowing
at his death, and blowing of hornes: and thence
the lord maior, with all his company, rode
through London to his place in Lombard-street."

The principal places, or conduit heads, from
which the water flowed to the conduits, were
Conduit Head, which now forms the site of
Conduit-street, New Bond-street, and several of
the adjoining streets, Tyburn, Paddington,
White Conduit-fields, Highbury Barn, and
Hackney. The spring in White Conduit-fields
was destroyed by the Regent's Canal Tunnel
(described in Household Words), which passes
under the river at Islington and Pentonville.
The place where the hunting party dined, on the
occasion of visiting the conduits, was the Lord
Mayor's Banqueting House, then situated on a
part of the site at present occupied by Stratford-
place, Oxford-street, where a bridge crossed the
Tyburn rivulet as it ran through to Tothill-fields.
Nine conduits were erected near this bridge in
1238 for supplying the City with water.

These, and many other conduits, failed to
satisfy the power of suction existing in the
spreading City, and an act of parliament was
obtained by the corporation in 1544, empowering
them to bring more water from Hampstead Heath,
Marylebone, Hackney, and Muswell-hill. Fifty
years elapsed before the objects of this act were
fairly realised; but still this was the foundation
of the earliest known water company in London.
The works and privileges were regularly
transferred to a company called the Hampstead Water
Company in 1692.

The art of supplying water to towns was in a
very rude state until the appearance of Peter
Morice, a Dutchman, in 1582, who laid the
foundations of the Old London-bridge Water
Works. He threw water over St. Magnus's
steeple, much to the astonishment of the
corporation and citizens, who assembled in great
crowds to observe the novel experiment; and
he was the first man who largely supplied the
City with Thames water forced "into men's
houses" through leaden pipes. "All the
contrivances of the Romans," says Mr. Matthews,
"as well as those previously adopted for
supplying London, had evidently been formed upon
the simple and well-known principle, that water
will flow by its natural gravity along any channel
that has the slightest inclination downwards.
The purpose of Morice's machinery, however,
was to impel the water in an ascending direction,
and thus supply places much higher than
its usual level. . . . . Although no particular
description is given of the means he employed
to effect this object, it will be obvious that the
use of the forcing-pump accomplished it. This
pump was applied to fire-engines in 1663."

Before and after Peter Morice there were
many ingenious inventors and daring projectors,
but none who succeeded in making their mark
upon London like Master Hugh Myddelton.

RUSSIAN TRAVEL.

THE GREAT NATIONAL RAILWAY LINE.

ON a good Russian map of Russia, between
Petersburg and Moscow, there is a red line
drawn. That is the line of the Great
National Railway. It is almost straight; it has no
curves, no tunnels, in its whole distance of six
hundred and twenty versts. It was, when made,
a great deal longer than that; the government
was charged seven hundred and twenty
versts; and the line shrank to its present length
after the contractors and officials interested
were all paid. Thus the length of this line
has always been in the Russian archives matter
of doubt. Several persons, however, got their
free passage to Siberia for counting the versts
as seven hundred and twenty. There are also
verst posts now pat up, and the number of
these is a hundred less.

The Emperor Nicholas was not pleased with
the plans first drawn for this line. There were too
many twists and curves made, to accommodate
towns lying about the route, to facilitate the
traffic of the country between the two capitals.
This was not his aim; he had his own use for
a railway. It was a way to convey soldiers
swiftly and directly to and from Moscow. The
straighter the line, the better for this purpose; so
he took his pencil, drew it straight across the
map from point to point between the two cities,
and said, "Make the railway there." His line,
of course, was adopted, and thus Nicholas was
the off-hand engineer of a great railway,
distinguished from all others by the fact that it
does not pass through, or very near, any town but
one in its whole course. The immense tract of
country lying on both sides between Moscow and
Petersburg has been, therefore, very little the
better for railway communication: more particularly