a coach arrives, the whole gate is open indeed, but this is an operation that requires time, and the porter is very careful to shut it up again immediately, for reasons to him very weighty. Few in this vast city suspect, I believe, that behind an old brick wall in Piccadilly there is one of the finest pieces of architecture in Europe." All to the west and north of Burlington House was park and country, where huntsmen followed the chase, or fowlers plied their toils with gun and net, or anglers wielded rod and line on the margin of fair ponds of water. "We should greatly err," observes Mr. Macaulay, "if we were to suppose that any of the streets and squares then wore the same appearance as at present. The great majority of the houses, indeed, have since that time been wholly or in part rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, we should be disgusted with their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Convent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held, close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps, at the thresholds of the countess of Berkshire and of the bishop of Durham." Shops in those days did not present the bravery of plate glass and bold inscriptions, with all sorts of devices, but exhibited small windows, with huge frames, which concealed rather than displayed the wares within; while all manner of signs, including Saracens'

heads, blue bears, golden lambs, and terrific griffins, with other wonders, swung on projecting irons across the street, a humble resemblance of the row of banners lining the chapels of the Garter and the Bath, at Windsor and Westminster. Though a general paving and cleansing act for the streets of London was passed in 1671, they continued long afterwards in a deplorably filthy condition, the inconvenience occasioned by day being greatly increased at night by the dense darkness, at best but miserably alleviated by the few candles set up in compliance with the watchman's appeal, "Hang out your lights." Glass lamps, known by the name of convex lights, were introduced into use in 1694, and continued to be employed for twenty-one years, after which there was a relapse into the old system. It was dangerous abroad after dark without a lantern, and the streets, with a few wayfarers, guided by this humble illumination, must have presented a spectacle not unlike some gloomy country path, with here and there a will-o'-th'-wisp dancing up and down.

to go

Inns, of course, which still wore the appearance of the old hotels, and have left a relic for example in the yard of the Spread Eagle, and a more notable one in that of the Talbot, Southwark, had their conspicuous signs, including animals known and unknown, and heads without end. From their huge and hospitable gateways all the public conveyances of London took their departure; and in an alphabetical list of

these, in 1684, the daily outgoings average forty-one, but the numbers in one day are very unequal to those in another, seventy-one departing on a Thursday, and only nine on a Tuesday. As there was only one conveyance at a time to the same place, we have a remarkable illustration in this record of the public provision for travelling, as well as the stay-athome habits of our good forefathers of the middle class, about a century and a half ago. The gentry and nobility were the chief travellers, and they performed their expeditions on horseback, or in their own coaches. As to the number of the inhabitants in London, at the close of the century, only an approximation to the fact can be made, for no census of the population was taken. According to the number of deaths, it is computed there were about half a million of souls-a population seventeen times larger than that of the second town in the kingdom, three times greater than that of Amsterdam, and more than those of Paris and Rome, or Paris and Rouen put together. Though the amount of trade was small compared with what it is now, yet the sum of more than thirty thousand a year, in the shape of customs, (it is more than eleven millions now,) filled our ancestors with astonishment. Writers of that day speak of the masts of the ships in the river as resembling a forest, and of the wealth of the merchants, according to the notions of the day, as princelike. More men, wrote sir Josiah Child in 1688, were to be found upon the

Exchange of London, worth ten thousand pounds, than thirty years before there were worth one thousand. He adds, there were one hundred coaches kept now for one formerly; and remarks, that a serge gown, once worn by a gentlewoman, was now discarded by a chambermaid. The manufactures of the country were greatly increased and wonderfully improved by the arrival of multitudes of French artisans in 1685, on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. "An entire suburb of London,” says Voltaire, in his Siècle de Louis XIV., “was peopled with French manufacturers of silk; others carried thither the art of making crystal in perfection, which has been since this epoch lost in France." Spitalfields is the suburb alluded to; thousands besides were located in Soho and St. Giles's. "London," observes Chamberlayne, in 1692, " is a large magazine of men, money, ships, horses, and ammunition; of all sorts of commodities, necessary or expedient for the use or pleasure of mankind. It is the mighty rendezvous of nobility, gentry, courtiers, divines, lawyers, physicians, merchants, seamen, and all kinds of excellent artificers of the most refined arts, and most excellent beauties; for it is observed, that in most families of England, if there be any son or daughter that excels the rest in beauty or wit, or perhaps courage or industry, or any other rare quality, London is their north star, and they are never at rest till they point directly thither."

CHAPTER VI.

LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

FROM Maitland, who published his History of London in 1739, we learn that there were at that time, within the bills of mortality, 5,099 streets, 95,968 houses, 207 inns, 447 taverns, and 551 coffee-houses. In 1681, the bills included 132 parishes; 147 are found in those for the year 1744. Judging from the bills of mortality, which however cannot be trusted as accurate, population considerably increased in that portion of the century included in Maitland's history. During the seventeen years from 1703 to 1721, the total number of burials was 393,034. During the next seventeen years, to 1738, they amounted to 457,779. The extension of London was still towards the west. In the Weekly Journal of 1717 it is stated, the new buildings between Bond-street and Marylebone go on with all possible diligence, and the houses even let and sell before they are built. In 1723, the duke of Grafton and the earl of Grantham purchased the waste ground at the upper end of Albemarle and Doverstreets for gardens, and turned a road leading into May Fair another way.* Devonshire House remained for some time the boundary of the buildings in Piccadilly, though further on, by the Hyde Park Corner, there were several *London, vol. i. p. 3:0.