[Illustration:  Plan For A New City]

(To the Editor of The Mirror.)

The various ages, interests, and tastes which govern the progressive growth of cities, seem to be irremediable causes of the irregularity and inconvenience of their final formations or plans—­and until this illustrious age of magnanimous projects and improvements, it would have been thought ridiculous to offer any radical expedient for a general improvement in the plans of cities; but now that we see new cities growing round the metropolis, and new towns planned for the distant dominions of Great Britain, it seems to be a convenient season for explaining my notions respecting the general plan of a city, with regard only to the directions of the streets, which after the repeated consideration of fifty years, I have concluded may, and ought to be, all straight streets, from every extremity, to the opposite, whatever be the form of the outermost boundary of the city or town.—­These conclusions would most probably have passed off in silence, but for an accidental fancy arising in my mind, on reading lately in the Psalms, “Jerusalem is a city that is in unity with itself.”  This text awakened my dormant ideas on the proper formation of streets, and anticipating the reunion of the Jews, I began the accompanying sketch for a “Holy City,” or “a New Jerusalem,” which accounts for the twelve gates according with the original number of the tribes of Israel, and the ten streets which diverge from each gate are symbolic of the Ten Commandments, wherein they were commanded to walk; the twelve circular areas I thought to be properly dedicated to the Twelve Apostles of Christianity, under the idea that when the Jews are again called together it will be under the new covenant of Christianity, so that nothing could (in that case) be more appropriate than placing the original propagators of it where so many paths led towards them—­and after fixing the place of public worship in the centre, my orthodoxy ceased to affect my scheme, for want of that technical knowledge which further detail would require—­and having accomplished my favourite determination of planning a town without winding streets or crooked lanes.  I offer it to the MIRROR as an amusing novelty for the entertainment of its numerous readers.  I think it would be not inappropriate to call it the Royal City of Victoria.

CHARLES MATTER.

(To the ingenious designer of the annexed sketch, we are likewise indebted for the Plan for a Maze, in our Vol. vii. page 233.  Mr. H. very pertinently observes to us “imagine what would have been said of this plan for a city, had Belzoni or Buckingham found exactly such a one in Assyria or Egypt,—­of antique date?”)

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

* * * * *