Collins' Illustrated Guide to London and Neighbourhood. Anonymous

this is one of the most agreeable of the suburban districts.

      If, instead of the Strand and Piccadilly route, or the Holborn and Oxford Street route, a visitor takes the northernmost main route, he will find less to interest him. The New Road, in its several parts of City Road, Pentonville Road, Euston Road, and Marylebone Road, forms a broad line of communication from the city to Paddington, four miles in length. Though very important as one of the arteries of the metropolis, it is singularly deficient in public buildings. In going from the Bank to Paddington, we pass by or near Finsbury Square and Circus, the buildings and grounds of the Artillery Company at Moorfields, the once famous old Burial-ground at Bunhill Fields, St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum, the Chapel in the City Road associated with the memory of John Wesley, the old works of the New River Company at Pentonville, the Railway stations at King’s Cross (Great Northern), and St. Pancras (Midland)—the vast span of this station’s roof is noteworthy—and Euston Square (L. and N. Western), several stations of the Metropolitan Underground Railway, St. Pancras and Marylebone churches, and the entrance to the beautiful Regent’s Park. But beyond these little is presented to reward the pedestrian.

      It is well for a visitor to bear in mind, however, that all the routes we have here sketched have undergone, or are undergoing, rapid changes, owing chiefly to the wonderful extension of railways. Cannon Street, Finsbury, Blackfriars, Snow Hill, Ludgate Hill, Smithfield, Charing Cross, Pimlico, &c., have been stripped of hundreds, nay, thousands of houses.