LONDON IN MODERN TIMES; OR, SKETCHES OF THE GREAT METROPOLIS DURING THE LAST TWO CENTURIES. LONDON: THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY; Instituted 1799. LONDON IN MODERN TIMES. INTRODUCTION. THE history of an old city opens many views into the realms of the past, crowded with the picturesque, the romantic, and the religiouswith what is beautiful in intellect, sublime in feeling, noble in character—and with much, too, the reverse of all this. Buildings dingy and dilapidated, or tastelessly modernized, in which great geniuses were born, or lived, or died, become, in connexion with the event, transformed into poetic bowers; and narrow dirty streets, where they are known often to have walked, change into green alleys, resounding with richer notes than ever trilled from bird on brake. Tales of valour and suffering, of heroism and patience, of virtue and piety, of the patriot's life and the martyr's death, crowd thickly on the memory. Nor do opposite reminiscences, revealing the footprints of vice and crime, of evil passions and false principles, |