On Tuesday, the 4th of April, Sir Peter buckled on his armour once more, and led the embattled cherubim to war, on the modified question, “That wood-paving operations be suspended in the city for a year;” but after a repetition of the arguments on both sides, he was again defeated by the same overwhelming majority as before.

Such is the state of wood paving as a party question among the city authorities at the present date.  The squabbles and struggles among the various projectors would form an amusing chapter in the history of street rows—­for it is seen that it is a noble prize to strive for.  If the experiment succeeds, all London will be paved with wood, and fortunes will be secured by the successful candidates for employment.  Every day some fresh claimant starts up and professes to have remedied every defect hitherto discovered in the systems of his predecessors.  Still confidence seems unshaken in the system which has hitherto shown the best results; and since the introduction of the very ingenious invention of Mr Whitworth of Manchester, of a cart, which by an adaptation of wheels and pullies, and brooms and buckets, performs the work of thirty-six street-sweepers, the perfection of the work in Regent Street has been seen to such advantage, and the objections of slipperiness so clearly proved to arise, not from the nature of wood, but from the want of cleansing, that even the most timid are beginning to believe that the opposition to the further introduction of it is injudicious.  Among these even Sir Peter promises to enrol himself, if the public favour continues as strong towards it for another year as he perceives it to be at the present time.

And now, dismissing these efforts at resisting a change which we may safely take to be at some period or other inevitable, let us cast a cursory glance at some of the results of the general introduction of wood pavement.

In the first place, the facility of cleansing will be greatly increased.  A smooth surface, between which and the subsoil is interposed a thick concrete—­which grows as hard and impermeable as iron—­will not generate mud and filth to one-fiftieth of the extent of either granite roads or Macadam.  It is probable that if there were no importations of dirt from the wheels of carriages coming off the stone streets, little scavengering would be needed.  Certainly not more than could be supplied by one of Whitworth’s machines.  And it is equally evident that if wood were kept unpolluted by the liquid mud—­into which the surface of the other causeways is converted in the driest weather by water carts—­the slipperiness would be effectually cured.

In the second place, the saving of expense in cleansing and repairing would be prodigious.  Let us take as our text a document submitted to the Marylebone Vestry in 1840, and acted on by them in the case of Oxford Street; and remember that the expenses of cleansing were calculated at the cost of the manual labour—­a cost, we believe, reduced two thirds by the invention of Mr Whitworth.  The Report is dated 1837:—­