“Abra was present when they named her name,” and, after a few gropings after truth—­a few experiments that ended in nothing—­a voice was heard in the city, that streets could be paved with wood.  This was by no means a discovery in itself; for in many parts of the country ingenious individuals had laid down wooden floors upon their farm-yards; and, in other lands, it was a very common practice to use no other material for their public streets.  But, in London, it was new; and all that was wanted, was science to use the material (at first sight so little calculated to bear the wear and tear of an enormous traffic) in the most eligible manner.  The first who commenced an actual piece of paving was a Mr Skead—­a perfectly simple and inartificial system, which it was soon seen was doomed to be superseded.  His blocks were nothing but pieces of wood of a hexagon shape—­with no cohesion, and no foundation—­so that they trusted each to its own resources to resist the pressure of a wheel, or the blow of a horse’s hoof; and, as might have been foreseen, they became very uneven after a short use, and had no recommendation except their cheapness and their exemption from noise.  The fibre was vertical, and at first no grooves were introduced; they, of course, became rounded by wearing away at the edge, and as slippery as the ancient granite.  The Metropolitan Company took warning from the defects of their predecessor, and adopted the patent of a scientific French gentleman of the name of De Lisle.  The combination of the blocks is as elaborate as the structure of a ship of war, and yet perfectly easy, being founded on correct mechanical principles, and attaining the great objects required—­viz. smoothness, durability, and quiet.  The blocks, which are shaped at such an angle that they give the most perfect mutual support, are joined to each other by oaken dowels, and laid on a hard concrete foundation, presenting a level surface, over which the impact is so equally divided, that the whole mass resists the pressure on each particular block; and yet, from being formed in panels of about a yard square, they are laid down or lifted up with far greater ease than the causeway.  Attention was immediately attracted to this invention, and all efforts have hitherto been vain to improve on it.  Various projectors have appeared—­some with concrete foundations, some with the blocks attached to each other, not by oak dowels, but by being alternately concave and convex at the side; but this system has the incurable defect of wearing off at the edges, where the fibre of the wood, of course, is weakest, and presents a succession of bald-pated surfaces, extremely slippery, and incapable of being permanently grooved.  A specimen of this will be often referred to in the course of this account, being that which has attained such an unenviable degree of notoriety in the Poultry.  Other inventors have shown ingenuity and perseverance; but the great representative of wooden paving we take to be the Metropolitan Company, and we proceed to a narrative of the attacks it has sustained, and the struggles it has gone through.