The Project Gutenberg E-text of London in Modern Times, by Anonymous

New York
PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER,
SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 200 MULBERRY-STREET.

1851

LONDON
IN MODERN TIMES.

INTRODUCTION.

This history of an old city opens many views into the realms of the past, crowded with the picturesque, the romantic, and the religious—with 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 connection 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 valor 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, fail to arise, fraught with salutary warnings and cautions. The broad thoroughfare is a channel, within whose banks there has been rolling for centuries a river of human life, now tranquil as the sky, now troubled as the clouds, gliding on in peace, or lashed into storms.

These dwelling-places of man are proofs and expressions of his ingenuity, skill, and toil, of his social instincts and habits. Their varied architecture and style, the different circumstances under which they were built, the various motives and diversified purposes which led to their erection, are symbols and illustrations of the innumerable forms, the many colored hues, the strange gradations of men's condition, character, habits, tastes, and feelings. Each house has its own history—a history which in some cases has been running on since an era when civilization wore a different aspect from what it does now. What changeful scenes has many a dwelling witnessed!—families have come and gone, people have been born and have died, obedient to the great law—"the fashion of this world passeth away." Those rooms have witnessed the birth and departure of many, the death of the guilty sinner or pardoned believer, the gay wedding and the gloomy funeral, the welcome meeting of Christmas groups around the bright fireside, and the sad parting of loved ones called to separate into widely divergent paths. Striking contrasts abound between the outward material aspect and the inward moral scenery of those habitations. In this house, perhaps, which catches the passenger's eye by its splendor, through whose windows there flashes the gorgeous light of patrician luxury, at whose door lines of proud equipages drive up, on whose steps are marshaled obsequious footmen in gilded liveries, there are hearts pining away with ambition, envy, jealousy, fear, remorse, and agony. In that humble cottage-like abode, on the other hand, contentment, which with godliness is great gain, and piety, better than gold or rubies, have taken up their home, and transformed it into a terrestrial heaven.

All this applies to London, and gives interest to our survey of it as we pass through its numerous streets; it clothes it with a poetic character in the eyes of all gifted with creative fancy. The poetry of the city has its own charms as well as the poetry of the country. The history of London supplies abundant materials of the character now described; indeed, they are so numerous and diversified that it is difficult to deal with them. The memorials of the mother city are so intimately connected with the records of the empire, that to do justice to the former would be to sketch the outline, and to exhibit most of the stirring scenes and incidents of the latter. London, too, is associated closely with many of the distinguished individuals that England has produced, with the progress of arts, of commerce and literature, politics and law, religion and civilization; so that, as we walk about it, we tread on classic ground, rich in a thousand associations. Its history is the history of our architecture, both ecclesiastical and civil. The old names and descriptions of its streets, houses, churches, and other public edifices, aided by the few vestiges of ancient buildings which have escaped the ravages of fire, time, and ever-advancing alterations, bring before us a series of views, exhibiting each order of design, from the Norman to the Tudor era. In the streets of London, too, may be traced the progress of domestic building, from the plain single-storied house of the time of Fitzstephen, to the lofty and many-floored mansion of the fifteenth century, with its picturesque gables, ornamented front, and twisted chimneys. Then these melt away before other forms of taste and art. In the days of Elizabeth, churches and dwellings become Italianized. The architects under the Stuart dynasty make fresh innovation, till, during the last century, skill and genius in this department reached their culminating point. Since that period a recurrence to the study of old models has gradually been raising London to distinction, with regard to the elegance and beauty of its architectural appearance.

The history of London is the history of our commerce. Here is seen gushing up, in very early times, that stream of industry, activity, and enterprise, which from a rill has swelled into a river, and has borne upon its bosom our wealth and our greatness, our civilization, and very much of our liberty.

The London guilds and companies; the London merchant princes; the London marts and markets; the London granaries for corn; the public exchanges, built for the accommodation of money-brokers and traders long before Gresham's time; the London port, wharfs, and docks, crowded with ships of all countries, laden with treasures from all climes; the London streets, many of which still bear the names of the trades to which they were allotted, and the mercantile purposes for which they were employed:—all these, which form so large a part of the materials, and supply so great a portion of the scenes of London history, are essentially commercial, and bring before us the progress of that industrial spirit, which, with all its failings and faults, has contributed so largely to the welfare and happiness of modern society.

The history of London is a history of English literature. Time would fail to tell of all the memorials of genius with which London abounds; memorials of poets, philosophers, historians, and divines, who have there been born, and lived, and studied, and toiled, and suffered, and died. No spot in the world, perhaps, is so rich in associations connected with the history of great minds. There is scarcely one of the old streets through which you ramble, or one of the old churches which you enter, but forthwith there come crowding over the mind of the well-informed, recollections of departed genius, greatness, or excellence.

The history of London is the history of the British constitution and laws. There thicken round it most of the great political conflicts between kings and barons, and lords and commons; between feudalism and modern liberty; between the love of ancient institutions and the spirit of progress, from which, under God, have sprung our civil government and social order.

The history of London is the history of our religion, both in its corrupted and in its purified forms. Early was it a grand seat of Romish worship; numerous were its religious foundations in the latter part of the mediæval age. Here councils have been held, convocations have assembled, controversies were waged, and truth exalted or depressed. Smithfield and St. Paul's Churchyard are inseparably associated with the Reformation. The principles proclaimed from the stone pulpit of the one could not be destroyed by the fires that blazed round the stakes of the other. The history of the Protestant Establishment ever since is involved in that of our city; places connected with its grand events, its advocates, and its ornaments, are dear to the hearts of its attached children; while other spots in London, little known to fame, are linked to the memory of the Puritans, and while reverently traced out by those who love them, are regarded as hallowed ground.

In London, too, have flourished many of the excellent of the earth; men who, amidst the engrossing cares and distracting tumults of a large metropolis, have, like Enoch, walked with God, and leavened, by virtue of their piety and prayers, the masses around them. Here also have flourished, and still flourish, those great religious institutions, which have made known to the remotest parts of the earth the glad tidings of the gospel, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"—truths more precious than the merchandise of silver, and the gain whereof is greater than pure gold.

Some of the early chapters of London history we have already written;[ 1 ] we have given some sketches of its scenes and fortunes, from the time when it was founded by the Romans to what are called, with more of fiction's coloring than history's faithfulness, "the golden days of good queen Bess." We now resume the story, and proceed to give some account of London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

CHAPTER I.

LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY.

London was hugely growing and swelling on all sides when Elizabeth was on the throne, as may be seen from John Stow, from royal orders and municipal regulations. Desperately frightened were our fathers lest the population should increase beyond the means of support, lest it should breed pestilence or cause famine. But their efforts to repress the size of the then infant leviathan, so far as they took effect, only kept crowded together, within far too narrow limits, the ever-increasing number of the inhabitants of the city, thus promoting disease, one of the greatest evils they wished to check. In spite of all restrictions, however, the growth of population, together with the impulses of industry and enterprize, would have their own way, and building went on in the outskirts in all directions. James imitated Elizabeth in her prohibitions, and the people imitated their predecessors in the disregard of them. The king was soon obliged to give way, so far as to extend the liberties of the city; and in the fifth year of his reign he granted a new charter, embracing within the municipal circuit and jurisdiction the extra-mural parishes of Trinity, near Aldgate-street, St. Bartholomew, Little St. Bartholomew, Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and Cold Harbor, Thames-street. These grants were confirmed by Charles I., whose charter also enclosed within the city boundaries both Moorfields and Smithfield. These places rapidly lost more and more of their rural appearance, and became covered in the immediate vicinity of the old walls with a network of streets. But London as it appears on the map of that day, was still a little affair, compared with its subsequent enormous bulk. Pancras, Holloway, Islington, Kentish Town, Hampstead, St. John's Wood, Paddington, Kilburn, and Tottenham Court, were widely separated from town by rural walks; these "ways over the country," as a poet of the day describes them, not being always safe for travelers to cross. St. Giles's was still "in the fields," and Charing Cross looked towards the west, upon the fair open parks of the royal domain. But the Strand was becoming a place of increasing traffic, and the houses on both sides were multiplying fast. So valuable did sites become, even in the beginning of the seventeenth century, that earls and bishops parted with portions of their domains in that locality for the erection of houses, and Durham Place changed its stables into an Exchange in 1608.

Of the architecture which came into fashion in the reign of James I., three noble specimens remain in London and the neighborhood. Northumberland House, which stands on the spot once occupied by the hospital of St. Mary, finally dissolved at the Reformation, was erected by Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, son of the poet Surrey, and originally called from him Southampton House; he died in 1614. It afterwards took the name of Suffolk House, from its coming into the possession of the earl of Suffolk; its present name was given on the marriage of the daughter of Suffolk with Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland. It was built with three sides, forming with the river, which washed its court and garden, a magnificent quadrangle. Jansen is the reputed architect, but the original front is considered to have been designed by Christmas, who rebuilt Aldersgate about the same time. The fourth side was afterwards built by the earl of Northumberland, from a design by Inigo Jones. Holland House, at Kensington, now occupied by Lord Holland, belongs to the same period, being erected in 1607 by Sir Walter Cope, and enlarged afterwards by the Earl of Holland, from plans prepared by the illustrious architect just named. These structures are worthy of examination. They evince some lingering traits of the Tudor Gothic, which flourished in the middle of the former age, but exhibit the predominance of that Italian taste which had been introduced in the reign of Elizabeth, and which continued to prevail till it ended in the corrupt and debased style of the last century. The Banqueting House at Whitehall is a more imposing and splendid relic, and presents an instance of the complete triumph of the Italian school of architecture over its predecessors. It was designed by Inigo Jones in the maturity of his genius, and forms only a small part of a vast regal palace, of which the plans are still preserved. The exterior buildings were to have measured eight hundred and seventy-four feet on the east and west sides, and one thousand one hundred and fifty-two on the north and south. The Banqueting House was finished in 1619, and cost £17,000. It is curious to learn, that the great "architect's commission" amounted to no more than 8 s. 1 d. a day as surveyor, and £46 a year for house-rent, a clerk, and other expenses. It may be added, that further specimens of this architecture and sculpture of that period can be seen in some parts of the Charter House.

Generally, it may be observed, London retained much of its ancient architectural appearance till it was destroyed by the fire. Old public buildings were still in existence; Gothic churches lifted up their gray towers and spires, and vast numbers of the houses of the nobility and rich merchants of a former age displayed their picturesque fronts, and opened their capacious hospitable halls; while the new habitations of common citizens were usually built in the slightly modified style of previous times, with stories projecting one above another, adorned with oak carvings or plastic decorations. Royal injunctions were repeatedly issued to discontinue this sort of building, and to erect houses of stone or brick. A writer of the day affords many peeps into the state of London at the time we now refer to. He describes ladies passing through the Strand in their coaches to the china houses or the Exchange. He tells of 'a rare motion, or puppet-show,' to be seen in Fleet-street, and of one representing 'Nineveh, with Jonah and the whale,' at Fleet-bridge. Indeed, this was the thoroughfare or the grand place for the quaint exhibitions of the age. Cold Harbor is described as a resort for spendthrifts, Lothbury abounded with coppersmiths, Bridge-row was rich in rabbit-skins, and Panyer's-alley in tripe. So nearly did the houses on opposite sides of the way approach together, that people could hold a tête à tête in a low whisper from each other's windows across the street. From another source we learn that dealers in fish betook themselves to the Strand, and there blocked up the highway. "For divers years of late certain fishmongers have erected and set up fish-stalls in the middle of the street in the Strand, almost over against Denmark House, all which were broken down by special commission this month of May, 1630—lest, in short space, they might grow from stalls to sheds, and then to dwelling-houses, as the like was in former times in Old Fish-street, and in St. Nicholas's shambles, and other places."[ 1 ]

It may be added, that it was still, at this period, the custom for persons of a similar trade to occupy the same locality. "Then," says Maitland, in his History of London, "it was beautiful to behold the glorious appearances of goldsmiths' shops on the south row of Cheapside, which in a continued course reached from Old Change to Bucklersbury, exclusive of four shops only of other trades in all that space." This "unseemliness and deformity," as his majesty was pleased to call it in an order of council in 1629, greatly provoked the royal displeasure; yet in spite of efforts to the contrary from that high quarter, not only did the four obnoxious tradesmen keep their ground, but a few years after the king had to complain of greater irregularities. Four and twenty houses, he affirmed, were inhabited by divers tradesmen, to the beclouding of the glory of the goldsmiths, and the disturbance of his majesty's love of order and uniformity. He went so far as to threaten the imprisonment of the alderman of the ward, if he would not see to this matter, and remove the offenders. It is said of Charles V., that after he resigned his crown, he amused himself by trying to make several clocks keep the same time, and on the failure of his experiment observed, that if he could not accomplish that, no wonder he had not succeeded in bringing his numerous subjects into a state of ecclesiastical conformity. Charles I. might, from his inability to make men of the same trade live together in one row, have learned a similar lesson. This trifling conflict exhibits no unapt similitude of one of the aspects of the great evil conflict, the edge of which he was then approaching. Other street irregularities were loudly complained of by the lord mayor. Notwithstanding the numerous laws made to restrain them from so doing, bakers, butchers, poulterers, and others, would persist in encumbering the public thoroughfares with their stalls and vendibles.

London, during the reign of the first James and Charles, was a sphere of commercial activity. Monopolies and patents did, it is true, greatly cripple the movements of trade. Nothing scarcely could be done without royal permission, for which large sums of money had to be paid. It was complained of, that "every poor man that taketh in but a horse on a market-day, is presently sent up for to Westminster and sued, unless he compound with the patentees (of inns) and all ancient innkeepers; if they will not compound, they are presently sued at Westminster for enlargement of their house, if they but set up a post, or a little hovel, more than of ancient was there." Yet the very patents sought and granted for exclusive trades and manufactures, though tending to diminish commerce by fettering it, are proofs of demand and consumption, and of the industrial energy of the age. These monopolies were bestowed on courtiers and noblemen, but still, no doubt, some of the citizens of London were employed in their management. Of the wealth yielded by commerce, in spite of these restrictions, ample proof was given in the supplies yielded repeatedly to the exorbitant demands of the crown. Both James and Charles knew what it was to have an empty exchequer, and in their emergencies they usually repaired to the good city of London as to a perfect California. Loan on loan was obtained. These demands, like leeches, sucked till one would have supposed they had drained the body municipal; but soon its veins appear to have refilled, and the circulation of wealth went briskly on. One of the most remarkable enterprises in the reign of James I. was that of Sir Hugh Myddelton, who in 1608 began, and in 1613 finished his project of providing London with water, by means of the canal commonly called the New River. The importance of this laborious and expensive achievement, which reflects great honor on its originator, can be estimated sufficiently only after remembering how difficult, if not impossible almost, it was before to obtain a large supply of the indispensible element in a state at all approaching purity. The opening of the river and the filling of the basin formed a very splendid gala scene, the laborers being clothed in goodly apparel, with green caps, and at a given signal opening the sluices, with the sound of drums and trumpets, and the acclamations of the people; the lord mayor and corporation being present to behold the ceremony.

In the train of wealth came indulgence and luxury. Sad lamentations were expressed on account of the extravagance of the upper classes, who spent their money in the city on "excess of apparel, provided from foreign parts to the enriching of other nations, and the unnecessary consumption of the treasures of the realm, and on other vain delights and expenses, even to the wasting of their estates." London, during the sitting of the law courts, seems to have been deluged with people, who came up from the country, and vied with each other in their expensive mode of living; so that, at the Christmas of 1622, the monarch, with a very paternal care of his subjects, ordered the country nobility and gentry forthwith to leave the metropolis, and go home and keep hospitality in the several counties. St. Paul's Cathedral was desecrated at this time, by its middle walk being made a lounging and loitering place for the exhibition of extravagant fashions, and for indulgence in all kinds of pursuits. There the wealthy went to exhibit their riches, and the needy to make money, the dissolute to enjoy their pleasures, the mere idler to while away his time. Bishop Earle, in his Microcosmographic, published in 1628, gives the following description of the place, and thereby throws light on the habits of the Londoners: "It is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this; the world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion justling and turning. It is a heap of stones, and men with a vast confusion of languages; and, were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buz mixed of walking, tongues, and feet. It is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politic, jointed and laid together in the most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here, like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is, that it is the thieves' sanctuary, which rob more safely in a crowd than a wilderness, while every searcher is a bush to hide them. The visitants are all men without exception, but the principal inhabitants and possessors are state knights and captains out of service—men of long rapiers and breeches, which after all turn merchants here and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for a stomach; but thrifty men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap."

Riding about in coaches, as well as walking in smart array about St. Paul's, was a method of display which those who could afford it were very fond of. Hackney coaches made their appearance in 1625, and so greatly did they multiply, that the king, the queen, and the nobility, could hardly get along; while, to add to the annoyance, the pavements were broken up, and provender much advanced in price. "Wherefore," says a proclamation, "we expressly command and forbid that no hackney or hired coaches be used or suffered in London, Westminster, or the suburbs thereof, except they be to travel at least three miles out of the same. And also that no person shall go in a coach in the said streets, except the owner of the coach shall constantly keep up four able horses for our service when required."

The increasing wealth of the citizens made them covetous of honor, and king James, to replenish his exhausted coffers, was willing to sell them titles of knighthood. The attainment of these distinctions led to some curious displays of human vanity, and excited those mean jealousies which our fallen and debase nature is so apt to cherish. It was a question keenly agitated among the civic dignitaries and their ladies,—Whether a knight commoner should rank before an untitled alderman—whether a junior alderman just knighted should take precedence of a senior brother, without that distinction, who had long passed the chair? A marshal's court was at length held to decide the matter, and it was arranged that precedence in the city should be attached to the aldermanic office, rather than the knightly name—an instance of flattering respect to municipal rank.

While the wealthier classes were closely pressing on the heels of their more aristocratic neighbors, the humbler orders were, in their own way, seeking to imitate their superiors. The pride of dress was generally indulged in, and manifested, as is always the case, in times and countries distinguished by mercantile activity. To check extravagance in this respect, sumptuary laws were adopted, after the fashion of former ages, and with a like unsuccessful result. With tailor-like minuteness, the dress of the inferior citizens was prescribed. No apprentice was to wear a hat which cost more than five shillings, or a neck-band that was not plainly hemmed. His doublet was to be made of Kersey fustian, sackcloth, canvas, or leather, of two shillings and sixpence a yard, and under; his stockings to be of woolen, and his hair to be cut short and decent. Like minute directions were issued relative to the attire of servant maids. Linen was to be their clothing, and that not to exceed five shillings an ell.

Pageants, which had been so common in the days of the Tudors, reached an unexampled stage of extravagant and absurd display under the first two monarchs of the house of Stuart. Even grave lawyers, including the great Mr. Selden himself, took part in getting up these exhibitions; and a particular account is given of a masquerade of their devising, which was performed at the expense of the inns of court, before king Charles, in 1633.

Liveries, and dresses of gold and silver, glittering in the light of torches, horses richly caparisoned, and chariots sumptuously fitted up, were set off by contrast with beggars and cripples, who were introduced in the procession, riding on jaded hacks. Very odd devices, illustrative of the taste of the period, and of the way in which satirical feelings found vent, through the medium of emblematical characters, were combined with the other quaint arrangements of this show, such as boys disguised as owls and other birds, and persons representing the patented monopolists, who were extremely unpopular. A man was harnessed with a bit in his mouth, to denote a projector who wished to have the exclusive manufacture of that article; another, with a bunch of carrots on his head and a capon on his wrist, caricatured some one who wanted to engross the trade of fattening birds upon these vegetables. The object was to convey to the king an idea of the ridiculous nature of many of the monopolies then conferred. All sorts of pageants and shows, with a dramatic cast in them, were exhibited at Whitehall under royal patronage, and filled the edifice with revelry and riot at Christmas and other festivals. The genius of Inigo Jones was for many years chained down to the invention of scenery and decoration for these trifles, while Ben Jonson exercised his muse in writing verses and dialogues for the masquerades.

At a later period of the reign of Charles I., the year 1638, there was much excitement produced in London by the grand entry of Mary de'Medici, mother of the queen Henrietta, upon which occasion a spectacle of unusual grandeur was exhibited. A very full account of this was published by the Historiographer of France, the Sieur de la Sierre.

After detailing the order of procession, reporting the speeches delivered, and describing the rooms and furniture of the palace, and the manner of the reception of the queen-mother by her daughter Henrietta, the author dwells with wonderful delight on the public illuminations and fireworks on the evening of the day: "For the splendor of an infinite number of fireworks, joined to that of as many stars, which shone forth at the same time, both the heavens and the earth seemed equally filled with light. The smell had all its pleasures of the cinnamon and rosemary wood, which were burning in a thousand places, and the taste was gratified by the excellence of all sorts of wine, which the citizens vied with each other in presenting to passengers, in order to drink together to their majesties' health." "Represent to yourself that all the streets of this great city were so illuminated by an innumerable number of fires which were lighted, and by the same quantity of flambeaux with which they had dressed the balconies and windows, and from afar off to see all this light collected into one single object, one could not consider it but with great astonishment."

These festive transactions on the surface of London society little indicated the awful convulsion that was near at hand. In the chronicles of London pageantry, the waters look calm and bright, and no stormy petrel flaps his wing as an omen of an approaching tempest. But a time of controversy and confusion was near. A great struggle was impending, both political and religious. What has just been noticed of court and civic life was but

In some departments of London history, however, premonitions might have been discovered of an approaching crisis. The anti-papal feelings of the people had been aroused by the treaties between James and the king of Spain, and the projected marriage of prince Charles with the infanta. So turbulent was popular emotion on this subject, that on one occasion the Spanish ambassador was assailed in the streets. When, in the reign of Charles I., mass was celebrated in the ambassador's chapel, and English papists were allowed to join in the ceremony, an attack was made upon the house of the embassy, and the mob threatened to pull it down. But a far deeper and stronger impression was produced upon the minds of sound Protestants by the proceedings of archbishop Laud and his friends. The consecration of St. Catherine Cree church, on the north side of Leadenhall-street, was attended by ceremonies so closely approximating to those of Rome, as to awaken in a large portion of the clergy and laity most serious apprehension. The excitements of later times on similar grounds find their adequate type and representation in the troubled thoughts and agitated bosoms of a multitude of Londoners in the early part of the year 1631. It was a remarkable era in the ecclesiastical annals of London. The church having been lately repaired, Laud, then bishop of London, came to consecrate it. "At his approach to the west door," says Rushworth, "some that were prepared for it cried, with a loud voice, 'Open, open, ye ever-lasting doors, that the king of glory may enter in.' And presently the doors were opened, and the bishop, with three doctors and many other principal men, went in, and immediately falling down upon his knees, with his eyes lifted up, and his arms spread abroad, uttered these words, 'This place is holy, this ground is holy—in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.' Then he took up some of the dust, and threw it up into the air several times, in his going up towards the church. When they approached near to the rail and communion table, the bishop bowed towards it several times, and returning they went round the church in procession, saying the hundredth Psalm, after that the nineteenth." Then cursing those who should profane the place, and blessing those who built it up and honored it, he consecrated, after sermon, the sacrament in the manner following: "As he approached the communion table, he made several lowly bowings, and coming up to the side of the table, where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed several times, and then, after the reading of many prayers, he came near the bread, and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin wherein the bread was laid; and when he beheld the bread he laid it down again, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times towards it, then he drew near again, and opened the napkin, and bowed as before. Then he laid his hand on the cup which was full of wine, with a cover upon it, which he let go, went back, and bowed thrice toward it; then he came near again, and lifted up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine he let fall the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before: then he received the sacrament, and gave it to many principal men; after which many prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended." The bishop of London consecrated St. Giles's church in the same manner, and on his translation to Canterbury, studiously restored Lambeth chapel, with its Popish paintings and ornaments. The displeasure awakened by these superstitious formalities and Popish tendencies was not confined to men of extreme opinions. The moderate, amiable, but patriotic Lord Falkland, the brightest ornament on the royalist side in the civil war, sympathized with the popular displeasure, and thus pertinently expressed himself in a speech he made in the House of Commons: "Mr. Speaker, to go yet further, some of them have so industriously labored to deduce themselves from Rome, that they have given great suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least to meet it half-way; some have evidently labored to bring in an English, though not a Roman Popery. I mean not only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people on the clergy, and of the clergy on themselves; and have opposed the papacy beyond the seas, that they might settle one beyond the water, ( trans Thamesin —beyond the Thames—at Lambeth.) Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England, and be so absolutely, directly, and cordially Papists, that it is all that £1,500 a year can do to keep them from confessing it." This fondness for Romish ceremonies, and these notions of priestly supremacy, cherished and expressed by Laud and his party, were connected with the intolerant treatment of those ministers who were of the Puritan stamp. Some of them were silenced and even imprisoned. Mr. Burton, the minister of Friday-street, preached and published two sermons in the year 1633 against the late innovations. For this he was brought before the High Commission Court, and imprisoned.

About the same time, Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was imprisoned, and had his ears cut off, for writing against plays and masks; and Dr. Bastwick was also confined in jail for writing a book, in which he denied the divine right of the order of bishops above presbyters. These men were charged with employing their hours of solitude in the composition of books against the bishops and the spiritual courts, and for this were afresh arraigned before the arbitrary tribunal of the Star Chamber. "I had thought," said lord Finch, looking at the prisoner, "Mr. Prynne had no ears, but methinks he has ears." This caused many of the lords to take a closer view of him, and for their better satisfaction the usher of the court turned up his hair, and showed his ears; upon the sight whereof the lords were displeased they had been no more cut off, and reproached him. "I hope your honors will not be offended," said Mr. Prynne; "pray God give you ears to hear."[ 2 ] The sentence passed was, that the accused should stand in the pillory, lose their ears, pay £5,000, and be imprisoned for life. When the day for executing it came, an immense crowd assembled in Palace-yard, Westminster. It was wished that the crowd should be kept off. "Let them come," cried Burton, "and spare not that they may learn to suffer." "Sir," cried a woman, "by this sermon God may convert many unto him." "God is able to do it, indeed," he replied. At the sight of the sufferer, a young man standing by turned pale. "Son," said Burton, "what is the matter? you look so pale; I have as much comfort as my heart can hold, and if I had need of more, I should have it." A bunch of flowers was given to Bastwick, and a bee settled on it. "Do you not see this poor bee?" he said, "she hath found out this very place to suck sweet from these flowers, and cannot I suck sweetness in this very place from Christ?" "Had we respected our liberties," said Prynne, "we had not stood here at this time; it was for the general good and liberties of you all, that we have now thus far engaged our own liberties in this cause. For did you know how deeply they have encroached on your liberties, if you knew but into what times you are cast, it would make you look about, and see how far your liberty did lawfully extend, and so maintain it." The knife, the saw, the branding-iron, were put to work. Bastwick's wife received her husband's ears in her lap, and kissed them. Prynne cried out to the man who hacked him, "Cut me, tear me, I fear not thee—I fear the fire of hell, not thee." Burton fainting with heat and pain, cried out, "'Tis too hot to last." It was too hot to last.

Sympathy with the principles of these Puritan sufferers pervaded, to a great extent, the population of London. Side by side with, but in stern contrast to, the gay merry-makings and pageants of the Stuart age, there lay a deep, earnest, religious spirit at work, mingling with political excitement, and strengthening it. The Puritan preachers of a former age had been popular in London. Their sentiments had tended greatly to mould into a corresponding form the opinions, habits, and feelings of a subsequent generation. An anti-papal spirit, a love of evangelical truth, a desire for simplicity in worship, a deep reverence for the Lord's day, and a strict morality, characterized this remarkable race of men. The strange doings of Archbishop Laud, the doctrines they heard in some of the parish churches, the profanation of the Sabbath, and the profligacy of the times, filled these worthies with deep dismay, and vexed their righteous souls. Boldly did they testify against such things; and when the Book of Sports came out, the magistrates of London had so much of the Puritan spirit in them, that they decidedly set their faces against the infamous injunctions, and went so far as to stop the king's carriage while proceeding through the city during service-time. King James, enraged at this, swore that "he had thought there had been no kings in England but himself," and sent a warrant to the mayor, commanding that the vehicle should pass; to which his lordship, with great firmness and dignity, replied, "While it was in my power I did my duty, but that being taken away by a higher power, it is my duty to obey." In the reign of Charles, the chief magistrate issued very stringent orders in reference to the Sabbath.

The proceedings of the Star Chamber, its barbarous punishments and mutilations, with the accompaniments of fines and captivity, for conscientious adherence to what was considered the path of duty, galled the spirits and roused the indignation of many a Londoner. The citizens went home from the public execution of iniquitous sentences, from the sight of victims pilloried and mangled for their adherence to virtuous principle, with a deep disquietude of soul, which swelled to bursting as they reflected on the tragedies they had witnessed. The avenging hand of Providence on injustice and oppression was about to be manifested, visiting national iniquities with those internal calamities and convulsions which so long afflicted the land. A significant scene, prophetic of the new order of things, took place in London in the year 1640, just after the opening of the Long Parliament. Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, were restored to liberty. Crowds went forth to meet them. "When they came near London," says Clarendon, "multitudes of people of several conditions, some on horseback and others on foot, met them some miles from town, very many having been a day's journey; so they were brought about two o'clock of the afternoon in at Charing Cross, and carried into the city by above ten thousand persons, with boughs, and flowers, and herbs in the way as they passed, making great noise and expressions of joy for their deliverance and return; and in these acclamations mingling loud and virulent exclamations against those who had so cruelly persecuted such godly men." The scarred faces, the mutilated ears of the personages thus honored, would tell a tale of suffering and heroism, sure to appeal to the popular sympathy, and turn it in a stream of violent indignation against the mad oppressors. What followed we shall see in the next chapter. Meanwhile we may remark, that much of what has now been detailed furnishes a singular historical parallel to the events of our own times, and illustrates the observation of Solomon of old: "Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." Eccles. i, 10. We have lived in the nineteenth century to witness the revival of superstitious mummeries and popish errors; and taught by the past, the true Christian will earnestly pray that they may be extirpated without the recurrence of those awful calamities, of which their introduction in former times proved the precursor. Meanwhile may each reader remember, that an obligation is laid upon him to counteract these deviations from Scriptural truth by maintaining that unceremonial and spiritual religion which Christ taught the woman of Samaria, and by cultivating that vital faith which rests on Him alone for acceptance, while it works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world!

CHAPTER II.

LONDON DURING THE CIVIL WARS.

Charles I. unfurled his standard at Nottingham, in the month of August, 1642, and staked his crown and life on the issue of battle; a high wind beat down the flag, an evil omen, as it was deemed by some who saw it, and a symbol, as it proved, of the result of the unnatural conflict. Sadly was England's royal standard stained before the fighting ended. London took part at the beginning with the parliament. Its Puritan tendencies; its awakened indignation at the assaults made by misguided monarchs and their ministers on conscientious, religious, brave-hearted men; its long observation of Stafford's policy, which had roused the displeasure of the citizens, and led to riots; its jealousy of the constitution being violated and imperiled by the arbitrary proceedings of Charles, especially by his attempt to reign without parliaments; and, added to these, a selfish, but natural resentment at the exorbitant pecuniary fines and forfeitures with which it had been visited in the exercise of royal displeasure, contributed to fix London on the side of those who had taken their stand against the king. One can easily imagine the busy political talk going on at that time in all kinds of dwellings and places of resort—the eager expectancy with which citizens waited for news—the haste with which reports, often exaggerated, passed from lip to lip—the sensation produced by decided acts on either side; as when, for example, Charles went down to the House of Commons, demanding the arrest of five obnoxious members, and when the House declared itself incapable of dissolution save by its own will—the hot and violent controversies that would be waged between citizens of opposite political and religious opinions—the separation of friends—the divisions in families—the reckless violence with which some plunged into the strife, and the hard and painful moral necessity which impelled others to take their side—the mean, low, selfish, or fanatical motives which influenced some, and the high, pure, and patriotic principles which moved the breasts of others—the godless zeal of multitudes, and the firm faith and wrestling prayer that sustained not a few. These varied elements, grouped and arranged by the imagination upon the background of the scenery of old London, in the first half of the seventeenth century, form a picture of deep and solemn interest.

After the battle of Edgehill, in October, Charles marched towards London, anxious to possess himself of that citadel of the empire. So near did the royal army come, that many of the citizens were scared by the sound of Prince Rupert's cannon. The horrors of a siege or invasion of a city, penned in by lines of threatening troops, expected every hour to burst the gates or scale the walls—the spectacle of soldiers scouring the streets, slaying the peaceful citizen, pillaging his property, and burning his dwelling—such were the anticipations that presented themselves before the eyes of the Londoners in that memorable October, creating an excitement in all ranks, which the leaders of the popular cause sought to turn to practical account.

Eight speeches spoken in Guildhall on Thursday night, October 27th, 1642, have come down to us; and as we look on the old reports, which have rescued these utterances from the oblivion into which the earnest talking of many busy tongues at that time has fallen, we seem to stand within the walls of that civic gathering-place, amidst the dense mass of excited citizens assembled at eventide, their faces gleaming through the darkness, with the reflected light of torches and lamps, and to hear such sentences as the following from the lips of Lord Saye and Sele, whose words were applauded by the multitude, till the building rings again with the echo: "This is now not a time for men to think with themselves, that they will be in their shops and get a little money. In common dangers let every one take his weapons in his hand; let every man, therefore, shut up his shop, let him take his musket, offer himself readily and willingly. Let him not think with himself, Who shall pay me? but rather think this, I will come forth to save the kingdom, to serve my God, to maintain his true religion, to save the parliament, to save this noble city." The speaker knew what kind of men he was appealing to; that their feelings were already enlisted in the cause; that they had already given proofs of earnest resolution to support it, and of a liberal and self-denying spirit. While his majesty had been getting himself "an army by commission of array, by subscription of loyal plate, pawning of crown jewels, and the like—London citizens had subscribed horses and plate, every kind of plate, down to women's thimbles, to an unheard-of amount; and when it came to actual enlisting, London enlisted four thousand in one day." As might have been expected, therefore, the audience responded to Lord Saye and Sele, and prepared themselves to obey the summons of their leaders; so that a few days afterwards, on hearing that Prince Rupert with his army had come to Brentford, and on finding that the roar of his cannon had reached as far as the suburbs, the train bands, with amazing expedition, assembled under Major-General Skippon, and forthwith marched off to Turnham Green. Besides enlistment of apprentices and others, and contributions of all kinds for raising parliament armies, measures were adopted for the permanent defence of London. The city walls were repaired and mounted with artillery; the sheds and buildings which had clustered about the outside of the city boundaries in time of peace were swept away. All avenues, except five, were shut up, and these were guarded with military works the most approved. The first entrance, near the windmill, Whitechapel-road, was protected by a hornwork; two redoubts with four flanks were raised beside the second entrance, at Shoreditch; a battery and breastwork were placed at the third entrance, in St. John's street; a two-flanked redoubt and a small fort stood by the fourth entrance, at the end of Tyburn, St. Giles's Fields; and a large fort with bulwarks overlooked the fifth entrance, at Hyde Park Corner. Other fortifications were situated here and there by the walls, so as to fit the city to stand a long siege. A deep enthusiasm moved at least a considerable party in the performance of these works. They were not left to engineers or artillerymen and the paid artificers, who in ordinary times raise bastions and the like. "The example of gentlemen of the best quality," says May, "knights and ladies going out with drums beating, and spades and mattocks in their hands, to assist in the work, put life into the drooping people." While warlike harangues, enlistments, contributions, and the building of fortifications, were going on, and the bustle and music of military marches were heard in the street, while the walls and gates bristled with cannons and soldiery, there were those within that war-girdled city who sympathized indeed in the popular cause, but who were far differently employed in its defence and promotion.

"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Who had a voice whose sound was like the sea."

His place of abode was in Aldersgate-street, in an humble house, with a small garden—"the muses' bower," as he called it; and there his marvelous mind was searching out the foundations of laws and governments, breathing after liberty, civil and religious, and picturing an ideal commonwealth of justice, order, truth, purity, and love, which he longed and hoped to see reduced to a reality in his own native land; he was preparing, also, for some high work, which should be "of power to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of public virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune—a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine, nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."

John Milton, who thus describes his employment in grand and sonorous English, such as he alone could write, was by birth a Londoner, having first opened his eyes in one of the houses of old Bread-street, and received the elements of his vast and varied learning at St. Paul's School. Antiquarian research has traced him through successive residences in St. Bride's Churchyard, Aldersgate-street, Barbican, Holborn, Petty France, Bartholomew-close, Jewin-street, Bunhill-fields, to his last resting-place in the upper end of the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. (Knight's London, vol. ii, p. 97.) In youth he had pursued his studies in his native city, after his removal from Cambridge,

"I, well content, where Thames with refluent tide
My native city laves, meantime reside,
Nor zeal, nor duty, now my steps impel
To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell.
If peaceful days in lettered leisure spent
Beneath my father's roof be banishment,
Then call me banished: I will ne'er refuse
A name expressive of the lot I choose;
For here I woo the muse, with no control;
For here my books, my life, absorb me whole."

In the maturity of his manhood, at the outbreak of the civil war, Milton was pursuing his favorite studies at his house in Aldersgate-street, combining with his literary researches and sublime poetic flights, deep theological inquiries and lofty political speculations. At a time when the rumors of invasion were afloat, and the inroads of an incensed enemy expected, he appealed to the chivalrous cavalier in his own classic style:—

"Lift not thy spear against the muse's bower.
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground; and the repeated air
Of sad Elecha's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."

Relieved from the fears of invasion, he continued to occupy his pen in the production of those wonderful prose works, which, scarcely less than his poetry, are monuments of his enduring fame. Probably it was in his house in Barbican—the queer old barbican of that day, with a portion of the Barbican, or tower, still standing, and picturesquely gabled and carved dwellings crowded close against it—that Milton, musing on his native city, wrote some of his most stirring political tracts. He was the representative of a large class of London citizens, who, without taking up arms on either side, earnestly entered into the great struggle, and thought and talked, and worked and wrote, as men agitated and in travail for the restoration and welfare of their distracted and bleeding country.

It is interesting, in connection with this illustrious man, to notice one of his London contemporaries, also distinguished in English literature, but in another way, presenting an opposite character, and the type of a different class. While Milton was exercising his lofty intellect and plying his mighty pen on divinity and politics, Isaac Walton, so well known as the author of the Complete Angler, and the lives of Dr. Donne and others, was, besides pursuing his occupation as a Hamburgh merchant, busily amusing himself with his favorite sport, and preparing materials for his celebrated work, (which was published in 1653,) as well as writing two of his lives, that of Donne and Wotton, which appeared in 1640 and 1651. When London was moved from one end to the other by storms of political excitement, Walton, undisturbed by the commotion in public affairs, quietly sought enjoyment on the banks of the Thames with his rod and line, below London Bridge, where he tells us "there were the largest and fattest roach in the nation;" or, taking a longer excursion, rambled by the Lea side, or went down as far as Windsor and Henley. It is certainly (whatever opinion we may form of the pursuits which engrossed so large a portion of Walton's time) a relief, amidst scenes of strife, to catch a view of little corners in English society, which seem to have been sheltered from the sweeping tempest. Curious it is also to observe how little some men are affected by the great changes witnessed in their country. Moderation is frequently, however, nearly allied to selfishness, and Walton apparently belonged to a class of individuals, from whom society may in vain look for any improvements which involve the sacrifice of personal ease or comfort. He could, to use the language of Dr. Arnold, "enjoy his angling undisturbed, in spite of Star Chamber, ship-money, High Commission Court, or popish ceremonies; what was the sacrifice to him of letting the public grievances take their own way, and enjoying the freshness of a May morning in the meadows on the banks of the Lea?"

However the great conflict might be regarded or forgotten, it waxed hotter every day, and London became increasingly involved in the strife. For a while the parliament and the army were united in their efforts against the king, and the city of London continued to lend them efficient aid. But at length disagreements arose between the legislative and military powers, the former being in the main composed of Presbyterians, while the latter were strongly leavened by the Independents. The rent became worse as time rolled on, till these two religious parties, diverging in different directions, tore the commonwealth asunder, and from having been allies became decided antagonists.

The Presbyterians were strong in London; Presbyterians occupied the city pulpits—Presbyterians ruled in the corporation. The Westminster Assembly, which began to sit in 1642, and continued their sessions through a period of six years, numbered a large majority of that denomination, and in the measures for the establishment of their own views of religion throughout the country, met with the sympathy and encouragement of a considerable portion of London citizens. In the church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, under the shadow of the venerable abbey, the members of this assembly, with the Scots' commissioners, and representatives from both houses of parliament, met on the 25th of September, 1643, to take the Solemn League and Covenant, the chosen symbol and standard of the Presbyterian party. It was certainly one of the most remarkable scenes in the ecclesiastical history of our country; and whatever opinion may be formed of the ecclesiastical principles which moved that memorable convocation, no person of unprejudiced mind can fail to admire the piety, the earnestness, zeal, and courage, which many of them evinced in the performance of their task. Solemn prayers were offered, addresses were delivered in justification of the step they were taking, and then, as the articles of the Covenant were read out from the pulpit, distinctly one by one, each person standing uncovered, with his hand lifted bare to heaven, swore to maintain them. On the Lord's-day following, the Covenant was tendered to all persons within the bills of mortality of the city of London, and was welcomed by a number of ministers and a great multitude of people. Of the excitement which prevailed, some idea may be gathered from the narrative of a royalist historian. We are informed by Clarendon, that the church of St. Antony, in Size-lane, Watling-street, being in the neighborhood of the residence of the Scotch commissioners, was appropriated to their use during their stay, and that Alexander Henderson, a celebrated preacher, and one of their chaplains, was accustomed to conduct service there. "To hear these sermons," he says, "there was so great a conflux and resort by the citizens out of humor and faction, by others of all qualities out of curiosity, by some that they might the better justify the contempt they had of them, that from the first appearance of day in the morning of every Sunday to the shutting in of the light the church was never empty; they, especially the women, who had the happiness to get into the church in the morning, (those who could not hang upon or about the windows without, to be auditors or spectators,) keeping the places till the afternoon exercises were finished."

As discussions arose between the parliament and the Presbyterians on the one side, and the army and Independents on the other, the city of London showed unequivocally its attachment to the former. In addition to difficulties arising from an embargo laid by the king on the coal trade between Newcastle and London, difficulties met by parliamentary orders for supplying fuel in the shape of turf or peat out of commons and waste grounds, and also out of royal demesnes and bishops' lands; in addition to other difficulties, commercial, municipal, and social, springing from the disjointed state of public affairs—the Londoners were plunged into new difficulties, ecclesiastical and political, by an important step which they conceived it their duty to take. The Presbyterian ministers of London, upheld by their flocks, were zealous for the full and unrestricted establishment of their own scheme of discipline through the length and breadth of the city. In June, 1646, the ministers met at Zion College, contending for the Divine right of their form of government, and maintaining that the civil magistrate had no right to intermeddle with the censures of the Church. The lord mayor and common council joined them in a petition to the parliament to that effect; but the political powers would not allow them that uncontrolled and supreme ecclesiastical constitution which they craved. However, they were authorized to carry out their Church polity according to the law enacted for the whole kingdom, and to have presbyteries in every parish, which parochial bodies should be represented in a higher assembly called the classes, the classes again in the provincial synod, and the synod in the general assembly. London formed a province with twelve classes, each containing from eight to fifteen parishes. Nowhere else but in London and in the county of Lancashire did the Presbyterian establishment come into full operation, and even in the metropolitan city, with all the zeal of the ministers to support it, and with the majority of the people which they could command, the success of the plan was very limited. On the 19th of December, 1646, the lord mayor and his brethren went up to Westminster with a representation of grievances, including first the contempt that began to be put upon the Covenant; and secondly, the growth of heresy and schism, the pulpits being often usurped by preaching soldiers, who infected all places where they came with dangerous errors. Of these grievances they desired redress. In the next year, 1647, the synod at Zion College published their testimony to the truth, as it was termed, in which a passage occurs curiously illustrative of the opinions on the subject of toleration that were then prevalent. The last error they witness against is called, they say, "the error of toleration, patronizing and promoting all other errors, heresies, and blasphemies, whatsoever, under the grossly-abused notion of liberty of conscience." The Independents, who, though a minority, were a considerable body in the city of London, being advocates for an extended toleration, as well as for the enjoyment of liberty themselves, greatly displeased the Presbyterian brethren, and materially thwarted the success of their plans. On both sides, no doubt, there were sincere, earnest, and holy men, nor did they disagree as to the essential truths of our blessed religion. They were worshipers of the same everlasting Father, through the same Divine Mediator, and trusted to the aid of the same gracious Spirit. They looked not to any morality of their own, as the ground of their acceptance with their Creator, but, conscious of manifold sins, rested on the sacrifice of "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Yet it is grievous to think, that in some instances a difference, which extended no further than to the outward polity of the Church, could dissever and almost alienate those whom grace had made one. And yet more grievous is it that good men who had only just escaped from persecution themselves, should have been ready to fasten the yoke upon brethren who could not see as they did. However, in this imperfect state of existence, such things have been and still are; but it is consoling to remember, that a state of being shall one day exist, when these sad anomalies will prevail no more. Freed from prejudice, passion, and infirmity, souls united by the tie of a common faith in the essentials of the gospel, shall then rejoice in a perfect and unbroken unity.

While the earlier stages of the struggle to which we have referred were going on, some distinguished men in London, on both sides, were removed from the scene of strife into the peaceful mansions of their Father's house. Two in particular are worthy of mention here as of the gentler cast, who, though they differed, felt that charity had bonds to bind the souls of godly men together, stronger than any difference of ecclesiastical opinion could break. Dr. Twiss, an eminent and learned Presbyterian clergyman, the prolocutor of the assembly of divines, died in London in 1646. He had refused high preferment and flattering invitations to a foreign university. Forced from his living at Newbury by the royalist party, and detained in London by his duties in the assembly, for which he received but a very small allowance, he had to struggle with poverty. Indeed, he was so reduced, that when some of the assembly were deputed to visit him, they reported that he was very sick and in great straits. He was buried in the Abbey, "near the upper end of the poor folk's table, next the vestry, July 24th; thence, after the Restoration, he was dug up and thrown into a hole in the churchyard of St. Margaret's, near the back door of one of the prebendaries' houses." In the same year died Jeremiah Burroughs, of the Independent school, and preacher to two of the largest congregations about London, Stepney, and Cripplegate. "He never gathered a separate congregation, nor accepted of a parochial living, but wore out his strength in continual preaching, and other services of the Church. It was said the divisions of the time broke his heart. One of the last subjects he preached upon and printed was his Irenicum, or attempt to heal divisions among Christians." Under the ascendency of the Presbyterians in London, the old church ceremonies of course were abandoned—churches were accommodated to the simplicity of worship preferred by the party in power. Superstitious monuments, images, and paintings, were removed; the crosses in Cheapside and Charing Cross pulled down. Even St. Paul's Cross, because of its form and name, was not spared, though hallowed by the remembrance of the great Reformers, who had there so effectively preached. Religious festivals were abolished, not excepting Christmas—a measure to which the citizens did not quietly submit, old habits and predilections being too strong to be overcome by law. In 1647, on that day most people kept their shops shut, and many Presbyterian ministers occupied their pulpits. Time, however, was allotted for recreation; and it was arranged "that all scholars, apprentices, and other servants should, with the leave of their masters, have such convenient reasonable relaxation every second Tuesday in the month, throughout the year, as formerly they used to have upon the festivals." It may be added, that stage plays were forbidden, and the theatres in London closed; galleries, seats, and boxes, were removed by warrant from justices of the peace, and all actors convicted of offending against this law were sentenced to be publicly whipped.

In consequence of the excitement of the times, the parliament issued an order forbidding persons to appear in the streets of London armed, or to come out of doors after nine o'clock at night. It was further enjoined, that all persons coming into the city should present themselves at Guildhall and produce their passes, and also enter into an engagement not to bear arms against the parliament. The misunderstanding between the legislature and the army becoming more grave and ominous than ever, the city corporation besought the former to disband the latter—a thing more easily proposed than accomplished. The citizens desired to have a militia for their own defence, under officers to be nominated by the common council; and were likewise anxious that the king, now in the hands of the army, should be brought to London, and a personal treaty entered into with him. Tumultuous assemblages, gathered from London, took place round the doors of the House of Commons, some of the mob thrusting in their heads, with their hats on, and shouting out, "Vote, vote;" and even forcing the speaker, when he was about to leave the chair, to remain at his post, violently demanding that their petition should be granted. The army at the time lay coiled up near London with most threatening aspect, and to add to the terror of the city, the speaker of the Commons and a hundred members withdrew from the metropolis, and repaired to the camp. Orders were now given by the common council to the train bands to repair the fortifications, and for all persons capable of bearing arms to appear at the appointed places of rendezvous. Fairfax and Cromwell, the commanders of the army, wrote an expostulatory letter to the city, stating their grievances, and disavowing all desire to injure the place. An answer was sent, very unsatisfactory to the parties addressed, and things wore an increasingly alarming appearance. Still the citizens seemed determined to oppose the army, and entered into an engagement to promote the return of the king to London. Shops were shut up, a stop was put to business, horses were forbidden to be sent beyond the walls, and whole nights were spent in anxious deliberation. The army, however, was pressing towards the gates on the Southwark side, and while the citizens were debating and planning, showed in an unmistakable manner that it at least was in action. The peril being imminent, on the 4th of August the common council and committee assembled in Guildhall, vast multitudes of the people repairing thither to learn the result of the deliberations. An express arrived, stating that Fairfax with the army had halted on their march. "Let us go out and destroy them," cried a stentorian voice; but a second express, on the heels of the first, ran in to correct the mistake of his predecessor, and to assure them that Fairfax and his men were no halters, but were marching on with great energy. This changed the tone of the assembly, and all exclaimed, "Treat! treat!" The committee spent most of the night in consultation, and the next morning despatched a submissive letter to the general. The inhabitants of Southwark not having sympathized with their brethren on the other side of the water in their opposition to the army, privately intimated to the general their willingness to admit him, and, accordingly, a brigade took possession of the borough about two o'clock in the morning, and thereby became masters of London Bridge. Another letter was despatched from the city authorities, more submissive than the first, and commissioners were speedily despatched to Hammersmith to wait upon Fairfax, who had there taken up his quarters, and formally yield to him all the forts on the west side of the metropolis. On the 6th of August, 1647, the general was received in state by the corporation at Hyde Park, and escorted in procession to the city, being the same day constituted constable of the Tower by the ordinance of parliament. Three days afterwards, he took possession of that old fortress, being attended by a deputation from the common council, who complimented him in the highest terms, and invited him and his principal officers to dinner. After an interval of another three days, the city voted £1,200, to be spent on a gold basin and ewer, as a present to this distinguished officer. The fortifications were dismantled, ports and chains taken away, and the army quartered in and about the city: many, we are told, in great houses, though the season was rigorous, were obliged to lie on the bare floor, with little or no firing. Orders were issued to provide bedding for the cold and weary soldiers; and when the city failed to fulfil its promise to pay money to the army, troops were dispatched to Weavers', Haberdashers', and Goldsmiths' Halls, the first of which they lightened of its treasure to the amount of £20,000. Strict injunctions, however, were given for the orderly and peaceable conduct of the military, on pain of death. London was now reduced to dumb quietude, save that murmurings were heard from the Presbyterians, who still insisted upon making terms with the king; but it was all in vain. The torrent rolled on, and swept away monarch and throne; of its devastations there are awful recollections associated with Charing Cross and Whitehall.

The latter was made the prison-house of the monarch during his trial. Hence he passed to the old orchard stair, to take boat for Westminster Hall. A servant, whom he particularly noticed on these occasions, has become an object of interest to the religious portion of the English public, from his having been the father of the eminently holy Philip Henry, and the grandfather of Matthew Henry, the commentator. When Charles returned to the palace after the absence of a few years, which, because of the sorrows that darkened them, seemed an age, he accosted his old attendant with the inquiry, "Art thou yet alive?" "He continued," says Philip Henry, speaking of his father, "during all the war time in his house at Whitehall, though the profits of his place ceased. The king passing by his door under a guard to take water, when he was going to Westminster to that which they called his trial, inquired for his old servant, Mr. John Henry, who was ready to pay his due respects to him, and prayed God to bless his majesty, and to deliver him out of the hands of his enemies, for which the guard had like to have been rough upon him." The king was condemned by the court of justice instituted for the occasion, and on the 30th of January, 1649, was publicly beheaded. The place which had been the scene of many of his youthful revels with the Duke of Buckingham, and which had witnessed the early pomp and pageants of his reign, having been converted into his prison, now became the spot where his blood was to be spilt. He had been removed to St. James's Palace, after his sentence, and there spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. At ten o'clock on Tuesday, he crossed the park to Whitehall, under military guard, Juxon, bishop of London, walking on the right, and Colonel Tomlinson, who was his jailer, on the left. Reaching the palace, he went up the stairs leading to the long gallery into his chamber, where he remained in prayer for an hour, and received the sacrament. Two or three dishes of refreshments had been prepared, which he declined, and could only be prevailed on to take a piece of bread and a glass of claret. All things being prepared, and the hour of one arrived, he passed into the Banqueting House, and thence proceeded, by a passage broken through the wall, to the scaffold. It was covered with black, and exhibited the frightful apparatus of death. There stood the block, and by it two executioners in sailor's clothes, with vizards and perukes. Regiments of horse and foot were stationed round the spot, while a dense multitude crowded the neighboring avenues, and many a serious countenance looked down from the windows and the roofs of houses. No shouts of insult met the unhappy prince as he stepped on the stage of death, but perfect and solemn silence pervaded the closely-pressed throng, as well as the soldiers on duty. Pity for the fallen monarch in his misfortunes, prevailed even with some who had condemned his unconstitutional and arbitrary course; so completely do the gentler feelings of our nature at such times master the conclusions at which the judgment has before arrived. Nor should it be forgotten, that very many there, who had regarded with alarm and indignation not a few of the acts which Charles had performed, shrank from the thought of the penalty to which he was doomed, as too severe, or decidedly impolitic. Others, also, were present, royalists in heart, whatever might be their caution at such a time in avowing their principles. It was the king's wish to address the multitude; but not being able to make himself heard so far, he delivered a speech to those who were near him, in which he expressed his forgiveness of his enemies, and then proceeded to maintain those high notions of kingly power which had proved his ruin. At the suggestion of the bishop, he closed by declaring, "I die a Christian, according to the profession of the Church of England, as I found it left me by my father. I have on my side a good cause and a gracious God." "There is but one stage more," said Juxon: "it is turbulent and troublesome, but a short one. It will carry you from earth to heaven, and there you will find joy and comfort." "I go," he said, "from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown." "You exchange," rejoined the bishop, "an earthly for an eternal crown—a good exchange." Taking off his cloak, he gave the insignia of the order of the garter to the prelate, adding significantly, "Remember!" then kneeling down by the block, his head was severed from his body at a blow. Philip Henry, son of the old Whitehall servant, witnessed that mournful tragedy. "There he was," says his son Matthew, "when the king was beheaded, and with a very heavy heart saw that tragical blow given. Two things he used to relate, that he took notice of himself that day, which I know not if any historians mention. One was, that at the instant the blow was given, there was such a dismal universal groan among the thousands of people that were within sight of it, as it were with one consent, such as he had never heard before, and desired that he might never hear the like again, nor see such cause for it. The other was, that immediately after the stroke was struck, there was, according to order, one troop marching from Charing Cross towards King-street, and another from King-street towards Charing Cross, purposely to disperse and scatter the people, and to divert the dismal thoughts with which they could not but be filled, by driving them to shift every one for his own safety."

A commonwealth was established, and London submitted in form, if not in heart, to the victorious Cromwell. Returning from Worcester, where he fought his last great battle, he entered the city in triumph; speaker and parliament, lord president and council of state, mayor, sheriff, and corporation, with an innumerable multitude, rending the air with their shouts, accompanied by cannon salutes; in the midst of which, says Whitelock, "he carried himself with much affability, and now and afterwards, in all his discourses about Worcester, would seldom mention anything of himself, mentioned others only, and gave, as was due, the glory of the action to God."

When the commonwealth had lasted four years, the government was changed into the form of a protectorate, and Cromwell was installed lord protector. Of all the grand ceremonials that have taken place in London or Westminster, this was among the most remarkable, and certainly quite unique. The coronation of princes within the walls of St. Peter's Abbey has been of frequent occurrence; but the installation of the chief of the English republic was without precedent, and without imitation. On the 16th of December, 1653, soon after noon, Cromwell proceeded in his carriage to Westminster Hall, through lines of military, both horse and foot. The aldermen of London, the judges, two commissioners of the great seal, and the lord mayor, went before, and the two councils of state, with the army, followed. Entering the Court of Chancery, Cromwell, attired in a suit and cloak of black velvet, with long boots and a gold-banded hat, was conducted to a chair of state, placed on a rich carpet. He took his place before the chair, between the commissioners; the judges formed a circle behind, the civilians standing on the right, the military on the left. The clerk of the council read the instrument of government, consisting of forty-two articles, which the lord protector, raising his right hand to heaven, solemnly swore to maintain and observe. General Lamberth, falling on his knees, offered him a civic sword in a scabbard, which he received, putting aside his military weapon, to indicate that he intended to govern by law and not by force. Seating himself in the chair, he put on his hat, the rest remaining uncovered; then, receiving the seal from the commissioners, and the sword from the lord mayor of London, he immediately returned them to the same officers, and at the close of this ceremony proceeded again to the palace at Whitehall. He was soon afterwards invited by the city to dine at Guildhall, where he was received with as much honor as had been formerly paid to sovereigns, the companies in their stands lining the streets through which he passed, attended by the lord mayor and aldermen on horseback. After the protector had been sumptuously entertained, he conferred the honor of knighthood on the chief magistrate of the city. Standing in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, with his first parliament before him, he alludes with special satisfaction to this city visit. "I would not forget," he says, "the honorable and civil entertainment I found in the great city of London. Truly I do not think it folly to remember this; for it was very great and high, and very public, and included as numerous a body of those that are known by names and titles, the several corporations and societies of citizens in this city, as hath at any time been seen in England,—and not without some appearance of satisfaction also." Cromwell returned the compliment paid him by the city, and invited the mayor and court of aldermen to dine with him. A good understanding seems to have been maintained between the lord protector and the metropolitan authorities. When plots were formed to take away his life, he called the corporation together, and gave them an extraordinary commission to preserve the peace, and invested them with the entire direction of the municipal militia. He also relieved the citizens from some of their taxes, revived the artillery company, and granted a license for the free importation of four thousand chaldrons of coals from Newcastle for the use of the poor—measures which made his highness popular in London.

"Subsequently to the annihilation of the royal authority, or between that and the protectorate, the city became the grand focus of the parliamentary government, as is abundantly testified by the numerous tracts and other records of the period. Guildhall was a second House of Commons, an auxiliary senate, and the companies' halls the meeting-places of those branches of it denominated committees. All the newspapers of the day abound with notices of the occupation of the companies' premises by their committees. Goldsmiths' Hall was their bank, Haberdashers' Hall their court for adjustment of claims, Clothworkers' Hall for sequestration, and all the other halls of the great companies were offices for the transaction of other government business. Weavers' Hall might properly be denominated the exchequer. From this place parliament was accustomed to issue bills, about and before 1652, in the nature of exchequer bills, and which were commonly known under the name of Weaver-Hall bills."— Herbert's Hist. of Livery Companies , vol. i. During the melancholy time that the civil war raged in England, the London companies were much oppressed, and spoiled of their resources by the arbitrary exactions made by those in power; but they seem to have enjoyed a better condition under the protectorate, when a season of comparative rest and quietude returned.

Cromwell's state residence in London was Whitehall. With much less of splendor and show than had been exhibited by the former occupants of that palace, the protector maintained a degree of magnificence and dignity befitting the chief ruler of a great country.[ 1 ] He had around him his court—composed of his family, some leading officers of the army, and a slight sprinkling of the nobility; but what interests posterity the most, it included Milton, Marvell, Waller, and Dryden. Foreign ambassadors and other distinguished personages were entertained at his table in sober state, the dinner being brought in by the gentlemen of his guard, clothed in gray coats, with black velvet collars and silver lace trimmings. "His own diet was spare and not curious, except in public treatments, which were constantly given the Monday in every week to all the officers in the army not below a captain, when he used to dine with them. A table was likewise spread every day of the week for such officers as should casually come to court. Sometimes he would, for a frolic, before he had half dined, give order for the drum to beat, and call in his foot-guards, who were permitted to make booty of all they found on the table. Sometimes he would be jocund with some of the nobility, and would tell them what company they had kept, when and where they had drunk the king's health and the royal family's, bidding them when they did it again to do it more privately; and this without any passion, and as festivous, droll discourse."[ 2 ] In the neighboring parks, the protector was often seen taking the air in his sedan, on horseback, and in his coach. On one occasion he turned coachman, with a rather disastrous result, which is amusingly told by Ludlow, whose genuine republicanism prejudiced him against Cromwell after he had assumed the supreme power. "The duke of Holstein made Cromwell a present of a set of gray Friesland coach-horses, with which taking the air in the park, attended only by his secretary Thurloe and a guard of janizaries, he would needs take the place of the coachman, not doubting but the three pair of horses he was about to drive would prove as tame as the three nations which were ridden by him, and, therefore, not content with their ordinary pace, he lashed them very furiously; but they, unaccustomed to such a rough driver, ran away in a rage, and stopped not till they had thrown him out of the box, with which fall his pistol fired in his pocket, though without any hurt to himself: by which he might have been instructed how dangerous it was to meddle with those things wherein he had no experience." In connection with these anecdotes of Cromwell may be introduced an extract from the Moderate Intelligencer, illustrative of the public amusements in London at that time:—

"Hyde Park, May 1, 1654.—This day there was a hurling of a great ball by fifty Cornish gentlemen of the one side, and fifty on the other; one party played in red caps and the other in white. There was present, his highness the lord protector, many of his privy council, and divers eminent gentlemen, to whose view was presented great agility of body, and most neat and exquisite wrestling, at every meeting of one with another, which was ordered with such dexterity, that it was to show more the strength, vigor, and nimbleness of their bodies, than to endanger their persons. The ball they played withal was silver, and was designed for that party which did win the goal." Coach-racing was another amusement of the period, perhaps something of an imitation of the old chariot races; races on foot were also run.

The author of a book entitled, "A Character of England, as it was lately presented to a Nobleman of France," published in 1659, further describes Hyde Park in the manner following: "I did frequently in the spring accompany my lord N—— into a field near the town, which they call Hide Park; the place not unpleasant, and which they use as our course, but with nothing of that order, equipage, and splendor, being such an assembly of wretched jades and hackney coaches, as, next a regiment of carmen, there is nothing approaches the resemblance. The park was, it seems, used by the late king and nobility for the freshness of the air and the goodly prospect; but it is that which now (besides all other exercises) they pay for here, in England, though it be free in all the world besides, every coach and horse which enters buying his mouthful, and permission of the publican who has purchased it, for which the entrance is guarded with porters and long staves."

During the commonwealth, what may be called a drab-colored tint pervaded London life, absorbing the rich many-colored hues which sparkle in the early picturesque history of the old metropolis. The pageantries of the Tudors and Stuarts were at an end; civic processions lost much of their glory; maskings and mummings were expelled from the inns of court; May-day became as prosaic as other days; Christmas was stripped of its holly decorations, and shorn from its holiday revels. The companies' halls were divested of royal arms, and the churches purified from images and popish adornments. But the preceding particulars show that the tinge of the times was not quite so drab as it seems on the pages of some partial and prejudiced writers. London had not the sepulchral look, and commonwealthmen had not the funeral-like aspect commonly attributed to them. They had, as we have seen, their cheerfulness and festivity, their banquets, recreations, and amusements; and, no doubt, in the mansions and houses of the city folk, both Presbyterian and Independent, there was comfort and taste, and pleasure, far different from what would be inferred from the accounts of them given by some, as if they were all starched precisians, a formal and woe-begone race. There was a dash of humor in Cromwell, to many about him quite inconsistent with that lugubriousness so often described as the characteristic of the times. With the suppression of the rude, boisterous, profligate, and vicious amusements of earlier times, there was certainly an improvement of the morals of the people. London was purified from a good deal of pollution by the change. The order, sobriety, and good behavior of the London citizens, during the period that regular government existed under Cromwell, appear in pleasing contrast to the confusion and riots of earlier times. There was a general diffusion of religious instruction, an earnestness in preaching, and an example of reverence for religion, exhibited by those in authority, which could not but operate beneficially. No doubt in London, as elsewhere, there were formalism and hypocrisy; the length of religious services had sometimes an unfavorable influence upon the young; severity and force, too, were unjustifiably employed in controlling public manners; but when all these drawbacks are made, and every other which historical impartiality may demand, there remains in the condition of London in those times, a large amount of genuine virtue and religion.

The night of the 2d of September, 1658, was one of the stormiest ever known. The wind blew a hurricane, and swept with resistless violence over city and country; many a house that night was damaged, chimneys being thrown down, tiles torn off, and even roofs carried away. Old trees in Hyde Park and elsewhere were wrenched from the soil. Cromwell was lying that night on his death-bed, and the Londoners' attention was divided between the phenomena of the weather, and the great event impending in the history of the commonwealth. The royalists said that evil angels were gathering in the storm round Whitehall, to seize on the departing spirit of the usurper; his friends interpreted it as a warning in providence of the loss the country was about to sustain. Amidst the storm and the two interpretations of it, both equally presumptuous, Cromwell lay in the arms of death, breathing out a prayer, which, whatever men may think of the character of him who uttered it, will be read with deep interest by all: "Lord, though a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee, through thy grace, and may and will come to thee for thy people. Thou hast made me a mean instrument to do them some good and thee service. Many of them set too high a value upon me, though others would be glad of my death. Lord, however thou disposest of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Teach those who look too much upon thy instruments to depend more upon thyself, and pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too."

Cromwell was not by any means given to excessive state and ceremony, but after his death his friends evinced their fondness for it by the singularly pompous funeral which they appointed for him. Somerset House was selected as the scene of the lying in state, and thither the whole city flocked to witness the spectacle of gorgeous gloom. They passed through three ante-chambers, hung with mourning, to the funeral apartment. A bed of state covered the coffin, upon which, surrounded by wax lights, lay Cromwell's effigy, attired in royal robes. Pieces of his armor were arranged on each side, together with the symbols of majesty, the globe and sceptre. Behind the head an imperial crown was exhibited on a chair of state. Strikingly did the whole portray the fleeting and evanescent character of earthly pomp and power. It being found necessary to inter the body before the conclusion of the public funereal pageant, the effigy was removed to another room, and placed in an erect instead of a recumbent position, with the emblems of kingship in its hands, and the crown royal on its head. This exhibition continued for eight days, at the conclusion of which period there was a solemn procession to Westminster Abbey. The streets were lined with military, and the principal functionaries of the city of London, the officers of the army, the ministers of state, the foreign ambassadors, and some members of Cromwell's family, composed the cortége, which conducted the funeral car bearing the effigy to the place where the body was interred.

The city of London acknowledged Richard Cromwell as lord high protector on his father's death. Probably an address of congratulation from the metropolis on the event of his accession, was included among the contents of the old trunks, filled with such documents, to which Richard humorously referred when his short career of rulership reached its close. "Take particular care of these trunks," he said to his servant, when giving some directions about them; "they contain no less than the lives and fortunes of all the good people of England." The corporation of London having played a conspicuous part in all the changes of those changeful times, was particularly consulted by the parties who seized the reins of government when they had fallen from the hands of Oliver, and could not be held by his incompetent son. So cordial seemed the understanding between the city magistrates and the ruling authorities—consisting of the rump parliament, the council of state, and the officers of the army—that an entertainment was given to the latter at Grocers' Hall, on the 6th of October, 1659, by the lord mayor and corporation, to celebrate Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth, who had raised an insurrection in the west of England. At these festivities there was, on the part of the city, more of the semblance than the reality of friendship; for in the disjointed state of public affairs, and the manifest impotence of those who had undertaken to rule, London shared the general sentiments of dissatisfaction and alarm. It was felt that the parliament was but a name, and the re-establishment of a military despotism by the army was the object of apprehension. In the disagreement between parliament and army the city wished to stand neutral, though the apprentices rose in riotous opposition to the committee of safety, which was formed of republican officers. The feelings of this youthful part of the community were sympathized in by many others, though they prudently desired to avoid any infraction of the public peace. A general wish pervaded the city that a free parliament might be called; and when the rump parliament required the collection of the taxes, the citizens refused the impost, and objected to the power which had levied it. General Monk was ordered to march on the refractory citizens, which he did. He forthwith stationed guards at the gates of the city, and then broke them down, destroying the portcullises and removing the posts and chains. While Monk was thus chastising the Londoners, he fell out with the parliament, in whose service he professed to act, and at once changing sides, sought the forgiveness of the city for his deeds of violence, which, as he alleged, had been done, not from his own inclination, but at the command of the parliament. Mutual engagements and promises were now exchanged between the general and the citizens. Posts, gates, chains, portcullises, were replaced and repaired; and the corporation being let into the secret of Monk's design to promote the restoration of the monarchy, cordially acquiesced in the object. When messengers from Charles, who was at Breda, reached the city, they were joyfully welcomed, and £10,000 was voted out of the civic coffers to assist his majesty. While preparations for the king's return were proceeding prosperously, a solemn thanksgiving-day was held on the 10th of May, 1660, on which occasion the lord mayor and aldermen and the several companies assembled at St. Paul's Cathedral, when the good Richard Baxter preached to them on "Right Rejoicing: or, The Nature and Order of rational and warrantable Joy." Feeling deeply as he did for the political welfare of the city and the country, and deeming the restoration of the monarch conducive to that end, yet the preacher, filled as he was with love to souls and zeal for God, would not let the occasion pass without wholly devoting it to the highest ends of the Christian ministry. It was his compassion, he says, to the frantic merry world, and to the self-troubling melancholy Christian, and his desire methodically to help them in their rejoicing, which formed his exhortation, and prompted the selection of his subject. No doubt men of all kinds thronged old St. Paul's to hear the Puritan preach on the king's return; and on reading over his wonderfully earnest and conscience-searching sermon, one cannot help feeling how many there must have been there to whom his warnings were as appropriate as they still are to multitudes in our own day, perhaps even to some person now perusing this sketch of the history of London. "Were your joy," said he, "but reasonable, I would not discourage it. But a madman's laughter is no very lovely spectacle to yourselves. And I appeal to all the reason in the world, whether it be reasonable for a man to live in mirth that is yet unregenerate and under the curse and wrath of God, and can never say, in the midst of his greatest pomp and pleasure, that he is sure to be an hour out of hell, and may be sure he shall be there forever, if he die before he have a new, a holy, and a heavenly nature, though he should die with laughter in his face, or with a jest in his mouth, or in the boldest presumption that he shall be saved; yet, as sure as the word of God is true, he will find himself everlastingly undone, as soon as ever his soul is departed from his body, and he sees the things that he would not believe. Sirs, is it rational to dance in Satan's fetters, at the brink of hell, when so many hundred diseases are all ready to mar the mirth, and snatch away the guilty soul, and cast it into endless desperation? I exceedingly pity the ungodly in their unwarrantable melancholy griefs, and much more an ungodly man that is bleeding under the wounds of conscience. But a man that is merry in the depth of misery is more to be pitied than he. Methinks it is one of the most painful sights in all the world, to see a man ruffle it out in bravery, and spend his precious time in pleasure, and melt into sensual and foolish mirth, that is a stranger to God, and within a step of endless woe. When I see their pomp, and feasting, and attendance, and hear their laughter and insipid jests, and the fiddlers at their doors or tables, and all things carried as if they made sure of heaven, it saddeneth my heart to think, alas! how little do these sinners know the state that they are in, the God that now beholdeth them, the change that they are near. How little do they think of the flames that they are hastening to, and the outcries and lamentations that will next ensue." Baxter knew that he would have, in all probability, many a light and careless mortal to hear him at St. Paul's that day, whose every thought and feeling would be engrossed in the anticipation of the gayeties that were about to return and supersede the strictness of Puritan times; he anticipated the presence of men who, like moths round a candle, were darting about in false security on the borders of everlasting fire, and thus he sent the arrows of his powerful eloquence direct at their consciences. Imagination can scarcely refrain from picturing some dissipated merry-maker arrested by such appeals, trembling under such tremendous and startling truths, quailing with terror, pale with anguish, melted into repentance, fleeing to the Saviour for mercy, and going home to pour forth in secret tears and prayers before God.

On the 26th of May, King Charles II. landed at Dover, and on the 29th entered the metropolis. He was met by the corporation in St. George's fields, Southwark, where a grand tent had been fitted up for receiving him. A sumptuous collation was ready, and the lord mayor waited to place in the hands of the monarch the city sword. Arrived and welcomed by his subjects, Charles conferred the honor of knighthood on the chief magistrate, and then proceeded to London, amidst a display of rejoicing such as brought back the remembrance of other days. The streets were lined with the companies and train bands; the houses were adorned with tapestries and silks; windows, balconies, roofs, and scaffolds, were crowded with spectators; and the conduits ran with delicious wines. The procession was formed of a troop of gentlemen, arrayed in cloth of silver; two hundred gentlemen in velvet coats, with footmen in purple liveries; another troop in buff coats and green scarfs; two hundred in blue and silver, with footmen in sea-green and silver; two hundred and twenty, with thirty footmen in gray and silver, and four trumpeters; one hundred and five, with six trumpets; seventy, with five trumpets; two troops of three hundred, and one of one hundred, all mounted and richly habited. Then followed his majesty's arms, carried by two trumpeters, together with the sheriff's men and six hundred members of the companies on horseback, in black velvet coats and gold chains. Kettle-drums and trumpets, twelve ministers at the head of the life-guards, the city marshal, sheriffs, aldermen, all in rich trappings, the lord mayor, and last of all, the king, riding between the Dukes of York and Gloucester. The rear of the procession was composed of military. An entertainment at Guildhall followed, on the 5th of July. Nothing could exceed the rapture of the old royalist party in London. Cavaliers and their followers, restrained by the regulations and example of the governing powers during the commonwealth, and now freed from all restriction on their indulgence, were loud and extravagant in their demonstrations of joy. London was transformed into a scene of carnival-like festivity. There were bonfires and the roasting of oxen, while the rumps of beef divided among hungry citizens suggested many a joke on the rump parliament. Revelry and intemperance were the order of the day. The taverns rang with the roundelay of the licentious and intemperate—"The king shall enjoy his own again." At night, the riotous amusement continued, amidst illumination of the most brilliant kind which at that time could be supplied. The whole was a fitting prelude to the reign that followed, and an affecting commentary on the moving exhortations of Baxter, to which we have before referred.

A band of wild and crazy enthusiasts, denominated Fifth Monarchy men, troubled the peace of the city in the beginning of the following year. Led on by a fanatic named Venner, they insisted on the overthrow of King Charles, and the establishment of the reign of King Jesus. Though only between sixty and seventy in number, they were so feebly opposed by the authorities who had the safety of the city intrusted to them, that they marched from street to street, bearing down their opponents, and engaging in successful skirmishes, both with train-bands and horse-guards. For two days this handful of misguided men kept up their insurrection, and at last intrenched themselves in an ale-house in Cripplegate, where, after severe fighting, the remnant of them were captured. About twenty persons were killed on each side during the whole fray, and eleven of the rebels were afterwards executed. Soon after this, on the 23d of April, the coronation took place, which occasioned another gala day for the citizens, who now, in addition to other demonstrations of joy, erected four triumphal arches—the first in Leadenhall-street, representing his majesty's arrival; the second in Cornhill, forming a naval representation; the third in Cheapside, in honor of Concord; and the fourth in Fleet-street, symbolical of Plenty.

The old national amusements were revived in London on the restoration. May-day and Christmas resumed their former appearance. The May-pole in the Strand was erected in 1661. The theatres were re-opened, pouring forth a flood of licentiousness. The love of show and decoration was cherished afresh. Dresses and equipages shone in more than their ancient splendor. In 1661, it was thought necessary to repress the gilding of coaches and chariots, because of the great waste and expense of gold in their adorning.

London also witnessed other accompaniments of the restoration. The regicide trials took place soon after the king's return, and could not fail deeply to interest, in one way or the other, the mass of the citizens, many of them personally acquainted with the parties, and perhaps abettors of the acts for which they were now arraigned. Charing Cross was the scene of the execution of Harrison, Scrope, Jones, Hugh Peters, and others. The spirit in which they met their deaths was very extraordinary. "If I had ten thousand lives," said Scrope, "I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all to witness in this matter." Jones, the night before he died, told a friend that he had no other temptation but this, lest he should be too much transported, and carried out to neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in that cause. Peters, whom Burke styles "a poor good man," said, as he was going to die, "What, flesh, art thou unwilling to go to God through the fire and jaws of death? This is a good day; He is come that I have long looked for, and I shall be with him in glory; and so he smiled when he went away." Others were executed at Tyburn; and there, too, the bodies of the protector Oliver Cromwell, Treton, and Bradshaw, were ignominiously exposed on a gibbet, having been dug out of their tombs in Westminster Abbey.

[ 1 ] He loved paintings and music, and encouraged proficients in elegant art. "I ventured," says Evelyn, in 1656, "to go to Whitehall, where of many years I have not been, and found it very glorious and well furnished."

CHAPTER III.

THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON.

Terrific pestilence had often visited London, and swept into the eternal world multitudes of victims; but no calamity of this kind that ever befel the inhabitants can be compared with the awful visitation of the great plague year. It broke out in Drury-lane, in the month of December, 1664. For some time it had been raging in Holland, and apprehensions of its approach to the shores of England had for months agitated the minds of the people. Remarkable appearances in the heavens were construed into Divine warnings of some impending catastrophe; and the common belief in astrology led many, in the excited state of feeling, to listen to the prognostications that issued from the press, in almanacs and other publications of the day. Defoe, in his remarkable history of the plague, which, though in its form fictitious, is doubtless in substance a credible narrative, describes a man who, like Jonah, went through the streets, crying, "Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed." Another ran about, having only some slight clothing round his waist, exclaiming, with a voice and countenance full of horror, "O, the great and dreadful God!" Yet the forebodings which were excited by reports from the continent, the traditions of former visitations of pestilences, the actual breaking out of the disease in a few instances, together with the superstitious aggravations just noticed, only shadowed forth, in light pale hues, the dark and intensely gloomy colors of the desolating providence which the sovereign Ruler of all events brought over the city of London. Head-ache, fever, a burning in the stomach, dimness of sight, and livid spots on the chest, were symptoms of the fatal disorder. These signs became more numerous as the months of the year 1665 advanced; yet the cases of plague were comparatively few till the month of June. "June the 7th," says an observant writer of that period in his diary, "the hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did see in Drury-lane two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord, have mercy upon us!' writ there, which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw." Again, on the 17th of June: "It struck me very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney coach down Holborn from the lord treasurer's, the coachman I found to drive easily, and easily, at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me he was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind he could not see; so I light, and went into another coach, with a sad heart for the poor man, and myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague." This description of the first sight of the marked door, and the coach going more and more easily till it stood still, with its plague-struck driver, places the reader in the midst of the scene of disease and sorrow, awakening sympathetic emotions with those sufferers in a now distant age.

The alarm increased as the deaths multiplied, and people began to pack up and leave London with all possible haste. The court and the nobility removed to a distance, and so also did vast numbers beside who had the means of doing so, and were not confined by business; yet the general terror was so great throughout the kingdom that friends were sometimes far from being welcomed by those whom they visited. "It is scarcely possible," says Baxter, "for people who live in a time of health and security to apprehend the dreadful nature of that pestilence. How fearful people were thirty or forty, if not a hundred miles from London, of anything they brought from mercers' or drapers' shops, or of goods that were brought to them, or of any persons who came to their houses. How they would shut their doors against their friends; and if a man passed over the fields, how one would avoid another, how every man was a terror to another. O, how sinfully unthankful are we for our quiet societies, habitations, and health!" But the bulk of the people, of course, were compelled to remain in the city, and, pent up in dirty, close, unventilated habitations, while the weather was burning hot, were exposed to the unmitigated fury of the contagion. The weekly bills of mortality rose from hundreds to thousands, till, in the month of September, the disease reached its height, and no less than ten thousand souls were hurried into eternity. The operations of business were of course checked, and in many cases entirely suspended by the terrific progress of the calamity. Several shops were closed in every street; dwellings were often left empty, the inmates having been smitten or driven away by the fatal scourge. Some of the public thoroughfares were nearly deserted. The markets being removed beyond the city walls, to prevent the people as much as possible from coming together in masses; the erection of houses also being unnecessary, and therefore discontinued for a while—carts and wagons, laden with provision, or with building materials, no longer frequented the highways, which, a few short months before, had been the scene of busy activity. Coaches were seldom seen, except when parties were hurrying away from the city, or when some one, affected by the disorder, was being conveyed home, with the curtains of the vehicle closely drawn. The grass growing in the streets, and the solemn stillness which pervaded many parts of the great city, in contrast with its previous state, are circumstances particularly mentioned in the descriptions of London in the plague year, and they powerfully serve to give the reader an affecting idea of the awful visitation. Few passengers appeared, and those few hurried on, in manifest fear of each other, as if each was carrying to his neighbor the summons of death.[ 1 ] The daughters of music were brought low; the din of business, and the murmur of pleasant talk, and the London cries were silenced. The shrieks, however, of sufferers in agony, or of maniacs driven mad by disease, broke on the awful quietude. People might be heard crying out of the windows for some to help them in their anguish—to assuage the burning fever, or to carry their dead away. Occasionally, some rushed towards the Thames, with bitter cries, to seek relief from their torments by suicide. The Rev. Thomas Vincent, who was residing in London at the time, describes some touching examples of sorrow, which were only specimens of what prevailed to an indescribable extent. "Amongst other sad spectacles," he says, "two, methought, were very affecting; one of a woman coming alone, and weeping by the door where I lived, (which was in the midst of the infection,) with a little coffin under her arm , carrying it to the new churchyard. I did judge that it was the mother of the child, and that all the family besides were dead, and that she was forced to coffin up and to bury with her own hands this her last dead child!" The second case to which this writer alludes is even more terrible than that now given, but out of regard to our readers' feelings we refrain from quoting it. A passenger, the same eye-witness adds, could hardly go out without meeting coffins; and Defoe gives us a picture, as graphic as it is awful, of the mode of sepulture adopted when the plague was at its height. He informs us that a great pit was dug in the churchyard of Aldgate parish, from fifteen to sixteen feet broad, and twenty feet deep; at night, the victims carried off in the day by death were brought in carts by torchlight to this receptacle, the bellman accompanying them, and calling on the inhabitants as they passed along to bring out their dead. Sixteen or seventeen bodies, naked, or wrapped in sheets or rags, were thrown into one cart, and then huddled together into the common grave.

The king of terrors sweeping into the eternal world so many thousands, is a picture which must excite in the mind of the Christian solemn emotions. It is pleasing, however, to learn from Vincent how tranquilly God's people departed in that season of Divine judgment. "They died with such comfort as Christians do not ordinarily arrive unto, except when they are called forth to suffer martyrdom for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Some who have been full of doubts, and fears, and complaints, whilst they have lived and been well, have been filled with assurance, and comfort, and praise, and joyful expectations of glory, when they have been laid on their death-beds by this disease; and not only more growing Christians, who have been more ripe for glory, have had their comforts, but also some younger Christians, whose acquaintance with the Lord hath been of no long standing." There were persons, however, who had lived through a course of profligacy, who, so far from being led to repentance by the awful dispensation they witnessed, only plunged into deeper excesses, driving away care by riot and intemperance, or availing themselves of the confusion of the times to commit robbery. The immorality, daring presumption, and reckless wickedness of a portion of the people during the London plague, as in the plague at Florence in 1348, and the plague at Athens, described by Thucydides, prove the depravity of the human heart, and the inefficacy of afflictions or judgments, if unaccompanied by Divine grace, to melt or change it. We learn, however, that by the preaching of the gospel some were graciously renewed and saved. Baxter informs us, that "abundance were converted from their carelessness, impenitency, and youthful lusts and vanities, and religion took such a hold on many hearts as could never afterwards be loosed." The parish churches were in several instances forsaken by their occupants, but many godly men who had been ejected by the Uniformity Act, now came forward, with their characteristic disinterestedness and zeal, to supply their brethren's lack of service. Vincent, already mentioned, with Clarkson, Cradock, and Terry, distinguished themselves by holy efforts for the conversion of sinners at that dreadful time. A broad sheet exists in the British Museum, containing "short instructions for the sick, especially those who, by contagion, or otherwise, are deprived of the presence of a faithful pastor, by Richard Baxter, written in the great plague year, 1665." Preaching was the principal method of doing good. Large congregations assembled to hear the man of God faithfully proclaim his message. The imagination readily restores the timeworn Gothic structure in the narrow street—the people coming along in groups—the crowded church doors, and the broad aisles, as well as the oaken pews and benches, filled with one dense mass—the anxious countenances looking up at the pulpit—the divine, in his plain black gown and cap—the reading of the Scriptures—the solemn prayer—the sermon, quaint indeed, but full of point and earnestness, and possessing that prime quality, adaptation—the thrilling appeals at the close of each division of the discourse—the breathless silence, broken now and then by half-suppressed sobs and lamentations—the hymn, swelling in dirge-like notes—and the benediction, which each would regard as possibly a dismissal to eternity; for who but must have felt his exposure to the infection while sitting amidst that promiscuous audience? It is at times like these that the worth of the soul is appreciated, and a saving interest in Christ perceived to be more valuable than all the accumulated treasures of earth. So far as their health was concerned, the prudence of the people in congregating together in such crowds, at such a season, has been often and fairly questioned; yet who that looks at the imminent spiritual peril in which multitudes were placed, but must commend the religious concern which they manifested; and who that takes into account the peculiar circumstances of the preachers, laboring without emolument at the hazard of their lives, but must applaud their apostolic zeal?— Spiritual Heroes , p. 289.

The plague reached its height in September—during one night of that month ten thousand persons died. After this the pestilence gradually diminished, and by the end of the year it had ceased. The visitation has acquired additional interest for us of late from the occurrence of cholera to an alarming extent. The former, like the latter, was increased by poverty and filth, and to a much greater degree; for, badly as houses have been ventilated, of late, and defective as may be our drainage, our fathers were incomparably worse off than we are in these respects. Houses were crowded together, and left in a state of impurity which would shock the least delicate and refined of the present day. There were scarcely any under sewers. Ditches were the channels for carrying off refuse; and as supplements to these imperfect methods of cleansing a great city, there were public dunghills. The effluvia from such sources was, indeed, humanly speaking, enough to cause a pestilence, and at the time of the plague must have been intolerable from the heat of the weather; while some means, also, adopted by the authorities for stopping the ravages of mortality, only promoted the evil—such as the shutting up of houses, and the kindling fires in the streets. The state of the metropolis then, and even now, may be assigned as an auxiliary cause of the spread of plague and cholera; but it must be confessed, there lies at the bottom of these visitations much of mystery, inexplicable by reference to mere human agencies. There is a power at work in the universe deeper far than any of those which our poor natural philosophy can detect. Not that these extraordinary occurrences show us the presence of a Divine providence which does not operate at other, and at all times; not as if the mysterious agency of God were sometimes in action, and sometimes in repose; not as if the Almighty visited the earth yesterday, and left it to-day; not as if his kingly rule over the world were broken by interregnums;—by no means; still these events are like the lifting up of the veil of second causes, and the disclosure of depths of power down which mortals ought to look with reverence. They suggest to the devout solemn views of nature and man—of life and death—of God ruling over all. Loudly, also, do they remind us of the malignity of sin, and the evils which it has brought on a fallen world. Happy is he who, amidst desolations such as we have now described, can, through a living faith in Christ, exclaim, "The Lord is my refuge and fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver me from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence."

[ 1 ] Judge Whitelock came up to London from Buckingham to sit in Westminster Hall. He reached Hyde Park Corner on the morning of the 2d, "where he and his retinue dined on the ground, with such meat and drink as they brought in the coach with them, and afterwards he drove fast through the streets, which were empty of people and overgrown with grass, to Westminster Hall, where he adjourned the court, returned to his coach, and drove away presently out of town."— Whitelock , p. 2.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

"One woe is past, another woe cometh quickly." Just a year after the plague was at its height, the great fire of London occurred. On Sunday, September 3d, 1666, soon after midnight, the house of Farryner the king's baker, near London-bridge, was discovered to be in flames. Before breakfast time no less than three hundred houses were consumed. Such a rapid conflagration struck dismay throughout the neighborhood, and unnerved those who, in the first instance, by prompt measures might have stayed the mischief. Charles II., as soon as he heard of what had happened, displayed a decision, firmness, and humanity, which relieve, in some degree, the dark shades Of his character and life; and gave orders to pull down the houses in the vicinity of the fire. Soon afterwards he hastened to the scene of danger, in company with his brother, the duke of York, using prudent measures to check the conflagration, to help the sufferers, and inspire confidence in the minds of the people. But the lord mayor was like one distracted, uttering hopeless exclamations on receiving the royal message, blaming the people for not obeying him, and leaving the scene of peril to seek repose; while the inhabitants ran about raving in despair, and the fire, which no proper means were employed to quench, went on its own way, devouring house after house, and street after street. By Monday night, the fire had reached to the west as far as the Middle Temple, and to the east as far as Tower-street. Fleet-street, Old Bailey, Ludgate-hill, Warwick-lane, Newgate, Paul's-chain, Watling-street, Thames-street, and Billingsgate, were destroyed or still wrapped in flame.

On Tuesday the fire reached the end of Fetter-lane and the entrance to Smithfield. Around Cripplegate and the Tower, the devouring element violently raged, but in other directions it somewhat abated. Engines had been employed in pulling down houses, but this process was too slow to overtake the mischief. Gunpowder was then used to blow up buildings, so that large gaps were made, which cut off the edifices that were burning from those still untouched. By these means, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the devastation was curbed. The brick buildings of the Temple also checked its progress to the west. Throughout Wednesday the efforts of the king and duke, and some of the lords of the council, were indefatigable. Indeed, his majesty made the round of the fire twice a day, for many hours together, both on horseback and on foot, giving orders to the men who were pulling down houses, and repaying them on the spot for their toils out of a money-bag which he carried about with him. On Thursday, the fire was thought to be quite extinguished, but in the evening it burst out afresh near the Temple. Renewed and vigorous efforts at that point, however, soon stayed its ravages, and in the course of a short time it was finally extinguished.

The space covered with ruins was four hundred and thirty-six acres in extent. The boundaries of the conflagration were Temple-bar, Holborn-bridge, Pye-corner, Smithfield, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, near the end of Coleman-street, at the end of Basinghall-street, by the postern at the upper end of Bishopsgate-street, in Leadenhall-street, by the Standard in Cornhill, at the church in Fenchurch-street, by the Clothworkers' Hall, at the middle of Mark-lane, and at the Tower-dock. While four hundred and thirty-six acres were covered with ruins, only seventy-five remained with the property upon it uninjured. Four hundred streets, thirteen thousand houses, eighty-seven parish churches, and six chapels; St. Paul's Cathedral, the Royal Exchange and Custom House, Guildhall and Newgate, and fifty-two halls of livery companies, besides other public buildings, were swept away. Eleven millions' value of property the fire consumed, but, through the mercy of God, only eight lives were lost.

The rapid spread of the devastation may be easily accounted for in the absence of timely means to stop it. The buildings were chiefly constructed of timber, and covered with thatch. The materials were rendered even more than commonly combustible by a summer intensely hot and dry. Many of the streets were so narrow that the houses facing each other almost touched at the top. A strong east wind steadily blew for three days over the devoted spot, like the blast of a furnace, at once fanning the flame and scattering firebrands beyond it. It was like a fire kindled in an old forest, feeding on all it touched, curling like a serpent round tree after tree, leaving ashes behind, and darting on with the speed of lightning to seize on the timber before.

Into the origin of the calamity the strictest investigation was made. Some ascribed it to incendiaries. Party spirit led to the accusation of the papists, as perpetrators of the deed. One poor man was executed, on his own confession, of having a hand in it, but under circumstances which pretty clearly prove that he was a madman, and was really innocent of the crime of which, through a strange, but not incredible hallucination of mind, he feigned himself guilty. Other persons ascribed it to what would commonly be called an accidental circumstance—a great stock of fagots in the baker's shop being kindled, and carelessly left to burn in close contiguity with stores of pitch and rosin. Many considered that the providence of Almighty God, who works out his own wonderful purposes of judgment and mercy by means which men call accidental, overruled the circumstances out of which the fire arose, as a source of terrific chastisement for the sins of a wicked and godless population, who had hardened their necks against Divine reproof administered to them in another form so shortly before. A religious sentiment in reference to the visitation took possession of many minds, habitually undevout; and even Charles himself was heard, we are told by Clarendon, to "speak with great piety and devotion of the displeasure that God was provoked to."

Eye-witnesses have left behind them graphic sketches of this spectacle of terror. "The burning," says Vincent, in his tract called "God's Terrible Advice to the City by Plague and Fire,"—"the burning was in the fashion of a bow; a dreadful bow it was, such as mine eyes never before had seen—a bow which had God's arrow in it with a flaming point." "The cloud of smoke was so great, that travelers did ride at noon-day some six miles together in the shadow of it, though there were no other clouds to be seen in the sky." "The great fury of the fire was in the broader streets in the midst of the night; it was come down to Cornhill, and laid it in the dust, and runs along by the stocks, and there meets with another fire, which came down Threadneedle-street, a little farther with another which came up from Wallbrook, a little farther with another which came up from Bucklersbury, and all these four joining together break into one great flame, at the corner of Cheapside, with such a dazzling light and burning heat, and roaring noise by the fall of so many houses together, that was very amazing." One trembles at the thought of these blazing torrents rolling along the streets, and then uniting in a point, like the meeting of wild waters—floods of fire dashing into a common current. Evelyn observes that the stones of St. Paul's Cathedral flew about like granadoes, and the melted lead ran down the pavements in a bright stream, "so that no horse or man was able to tread on them." "I saw," he says in his Diary, "the whole south part of the city burning, from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill, (for it likewise kindled back against the wind as well as forward,) Tower-street, Fenchurch-street, Gracechurch-street, and so along to Baynard's Castle, and was taking hold of St. Paul's Church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly." He saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with such property as the inhabitants had time and courage to save; while on land the carts were carrying out furniture and other articles to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with movables of all sorts, and with tents erected to shelter the people. "All the sky," he adds, "was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen for above forty miles around for many nights; the noise and cracking of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like a hideous storm; and the air all about so hot and inflamed, that at last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still, and let the flames burn on, which they did for nearly two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismal, and reached upon computation nearly fifty miles in length."

A great fire is a most sublime, as well as appalling spectacle, and generally presents some features of the picturesquely terrible. Guildhall, built of oak, too solid and old to blaze, became so much red-hot charcoal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a building of burnished brass. There were circumstances, too, connected with the destruction of magnificent edifices, full of a sort of poetical interest. The flame inwrapped St. Paul's Cathedral, and rent in pieces the noble portico recently erected, splitting the stones into flakes, and leaving nothing entire but the inscription on the architrave, which, without one defaced letter, continued amidst the ruins to proclaim the builder's name. In remarkable coincidence with this, at the same time that the fire entered the Royal Exchange, ran round the galleries, descended the stairs, compassed the walks, filled the courts, and rolled down the royal statues from their niches, the figure of the founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, was left unharmed, as if calmly surveying the destruction of his own munificent donation to the old city, and anticipating the certainty of the re-edification of that monument of his fame, as well as the revival of that commerce, in the history of which his own is involved. As we think of this, we call to mind another interesting incident, which occurred when the building was burned down a second time in 1838. Some readers, perhaps, will remember, that the bells in the tower rang out their last chime to the tune of "There's na' luck about the house," just as they were on the point of coming down with a tremendous crash; as though uttering swanlike notes in death.

The area devastated by the fire may be estimated, if we fancy a line drawn from Temple Bar to the bottom of Holborn-hill, then through Smithfield across Aldersgate-street to the end of Coleman-street, then sweeping round by the end of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall-streets, and taking a curve till it touches the Tower, the river forming the southern boundary of this large space. Within these limits, after the fire, there arose a new London, of nobler aspect, and formed for grander destinies than the old one, relieved by that very fire, under the blessing of Divine Providence, from liability to the recurrence of the dreadful plague, which had from time to time recruited its death-dealing energy from the filth of old crowded streets, with all their noxious exhalations. If a panic seized the citizens when the first alarm of the conflagration spread among them, they redeemed their character by the self-possession and activity which they evinced in repairing the desolation. Not desponding, but inspired with the hope of the future prosperity of their venerable city, they concurred with king and parliament in the zeal and diligence requisite for the emergency. Scarcely were the flames extinguished, when they set to work planning the restoration. "Everybody," observes Evelyn, "brings in his idea; amidst the rest, I presented his majesty my own conceptions, with a discourse annexed. It was the second that was seen within two days after the conflagration, but Dr. Wren had got the start of me." This Dr. Wren had been spoken of by the same writer, fourteen years before, as a miracle of a youth. Having made wonderful attainments in science, he had devoted himself with enthusiasm to the study of architecture, and now, in the wide space in which at once a full-grown city was to appear, a field presented itself worthy of the exercise of the greatest powers of art—a field, indeed, which could rarely in the world's history be looked for. Doubtless Wren's mind was all on fire with the grand occasion, and put forth all its marvelous ability to meet so unparalleled a crisis. Before the architect's imagination there rose the view of a city, built with scientific proportions, with a broad street running in a perfect line from a magnificent piazza, placed where St. Dunstan's church stands, to another piazza on Tower-hill, with an intermediate piazza corresponding with these, from each of which streets should radiate. Then, on the top of Ludgate-hill, over which the broad highway was to run, the new cathedral was to rise, in the midst of a wide open space, displaying to advantage its colossal form; and on its northern side there was to branch out, at a narrow angle with the other main thoroughfare, an avenue of like dimensions, leading to the Royal Exchange—the site, in fact, (but intended to cover a wider space,) of our present Cheapside. The Royal Exchange was to be an additional grand centre, adorned with piazzas, whence a third vast thoroughfare was to sweep along to Holborn. All acute angles were to be avoided. The great openings were to exhibit graceful curves, parochial edifices were to be conspicuous and insulated, the halls of the twelve great companies were to be ranged round Guildhall, and architecture was to do the utmost possible in every street. A like vision dawned on the fancy of Sir John Evelyn, who in this respect was no unworthy compeer of Wren. But, though the architect showed the practicability of the scheme, without any loss of the property, or infringement of the rights of the citizens, their obstinacy in not allowing the old foundations to be altered, and their determination not to give up the ground to commissioners for making out the new streets and sites of buildings, defeated the scheme; "and thus," writes Wren, (with a deep sigh one thinks he penned the words while his darling dream melted away,) "the opportunity, in a great degree, was lost, of making the new city the most magnificent, as well as commodious for health and trade, of any upon earth." Sir Christopher Wren could do nothing as he wished. The Monument was not what he meant it to be. The churches were not placed as he would have had them, so as to exhibit to advantage their architectural character. Even St. Paul's was shorn of the glory with which it was enriched in the architect's mind. It was narrowed and altered by incompetent judges, especially the Duke of York, who wished to preserve in it arrangements convenient for a popish cathedral, which he wildly hoped it would ultimately become. When Wren was compelled to give way, he even shed tears in the bitterness of his disappointment and grief. He finally had to do on a large scale, what common minds are ever doing in their little way—sacrifice some fondly cherished ideal to a stern necessity.

But, crippled as his genius was by the untoward position in which he was placed, he accomplished marvelous works of art in the churches so numerous and varied, built from his designs, and especially in the grand cathedral, which rises above the rich group of towers, domes, steeples, and spires, with a lordly air. It is related, in connection with the building of St. Dunstan's church in the east, the steeple of which is constructed upon quadrangular columns, that so anxious was he respecting the result, that he placed himself on London-bridge, watching through a lens the effect of removing the temporary supporters, by the aid of which the building was reared. The ascent of a rocket proclaimed the stability of the structure, and Sir Christopher smiled at the thought of his having for a moment hesitated to trust to the certainty of mathematical calculations. Informed one night afterwards, that a hurricane had damaged all the steeples in London, he remarked, "Not St. Dunstan's, I am quite sure." St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, is generally considered the chef-d'oeuvre of Sir Christopher Wren. "Had the materials and volume," to quote the opinion of two celebrated architects, "been so durable and extensive as those of St. Paul's Cathedral, he had consummated a much more efficient monument to his well-earned fame than that fabric affords." But the beauty of the edifice is in the interior. "Never was so sweet a kernel in so rough a shell—so rich a jewel in so poor a setting." The cost of the fabric was only £7,652. 13 s. (Cunninghame's Handbook of London.)

The first stone of St. Paul's was laid on the 21st of June, 1675, by the architect; and he notices in his Parentalia a little circumstance connected with the preparations, which was construed by those present into a favorable omen, and which evidently interested and pleased his own mind. When the centre of the dimensions of the great dome was fixed upon, a man was ordered to bring a flat stone from the heap of rubbish, to be laid as a mark for the masons. The piece he happened to take up for the purpose was the fragment of a grave-stone, with nothing of the inscription left but the words, " Resurgam ," "I shall rise again." And, true enough, St. Paul's did rise again, with a splendor which posterity has ever admired. It is, undoubtedly, the second church in Christendom of that style of architecture, St. Peter's at Rome being the first. Inferior in point of dimensions, and sadly begrimed with smoke, in contrast with St. Peter's comparatively untarnished freshness—destitute, too, of its marble linings, gilded arches, and splendid mosaics'—it is, on the whole, as Eustace, a critic prejudiced on the side of Rome, acknowledged, a most extensive and stately edifice: "It fixes the eye of the spectator as he passes by, and challenges his admiration, and, even next to the Vatican, though by a long interval, it claims superiority over all the transalpine churches, and furnishes a just subject of national pride and exultation." It was not until 1710 that the building was complete, when the architect's son laid the topmost stone on the lantern of the cupola.

In the prospectus published by Evelyn for the rebuilding of London, he observed, that if the citizens were permitted to gratify their own fancies, "it might possibly become, indeed, a new, but a very ugly city, when all was done." The citizens were permitted to have their own way, and the result was very much what he anticipated. The old sites of streets and public buildings were, to a great extent, adopted. The former remained narrow, winding, inconvenient—indeed, more inconvenient than ever; for what might be borne with when even ladies of quality traveled on horseback, became scarcely endurable when lumbering coaches were all the fashion. Churches and other edifices of importance were planted in inappropriate situations, and were blocked up by houses and shops. In Chamberlayne's Angliæ Notitia for 1692, he laments that within the city the spacious houses of noblemen, rich merchants, the halls of companies, and the fair taverns, were hidden from strangers, the room towards the street being reserved for tradesmen's shops; but from his account and that of others, it appears plain enough that the men of that day felt that London, as rebuilt after the fire, was far superior to what it had been in the times of their fathers. The old wooden lath and plaster dwellings gave place to more substantial habitations of brick and stone, and the public structures appeared to those who were contemporary with their erection, proud trophies of skill, art, and wealth. "Notwithstanding," exclaims the author just noticed, "all these huge losses by fire, notwithstanding the most devouring pestilence in the year immediately foregoing, and the then very chargeable war against three potent neighbors, the citizens, recovering in a few months their native courage, have since so cheerfully and unanimously set themselves to rebuild the city, that, (not to mention whole streets built and now building by others in the suburbs,) within the space of four years, they erected in the same streets ten thousand houses, and laid out three millions sterling. Besides several large hospitals, divers very stately halls, nineteen fair solid stone churches were all at the same time erecting, and soon afterwards finished, and now, in the year 1691, above twenty churches more, of various beautiful and solid architecture are rebuilt. Moreover, as if the late fire had only purged the city, the buildings are becoming infinitely more beautiful." The author speaks with immense satisfaction of the new houses, churches, and halls, richly-adorned shops, chambers, balconies, and portals, carved work in stone and wood, with pictures and wainscot, not only of fir and oak, but some with sweet-smelling cedar, the streets paved with stone and guarded with posts; and ends by observing, that though the king might not say he found London of brick and left it of marble, he could say, "I found it wood and left it brick."

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE CITY TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.

Great as was the consternation described in the foregoing chapter, scarcely less terror was produced in the minds of the citizens by the apprehension of a Dutch invasion about the same time. In 1666, even before the fire, this feeling was excited. The ships of France and Holland approached the Thames, and engaged with the English fleet. "After dinner," says Lady Warwick, whose entry in her journal, under date, July 29, brings the occurrence home to us—"after dinner came the news of hearing the guns that our fleet was engaged. My head was much afflicted by the consideration of the blood that was spilt, and of the many souls that would launch into eternity." There is a fine passage, descriptive of the excitement at this time, in Dryden's Essay on Poesie: "The noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city, so that men being alarmed with it, and in dreadful suspense of the event, which we knew was then deciding, every one went following the sound as his fancy led him, and leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the park, some cross the river, others down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of the silence. Taking, then, a barge, which the servant of Lisidenis had provided for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them that great fall of waters, which hindered them from hearing what they desired; after which, having disengaged themselves from many vessels which rode in anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up the passage to Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently; and then every one favoring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air breaking about them, like the noise of distant thunder, or of swallows in the chimney, those little undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror, which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had listened till such time as the sound, by little and little, went from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory, adding, we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of that noise, which was now leaving the English coast." This passage, which Montgomery eulogizes most warmly in his Lectures on English Poetry, as one of the most magnificent in our language, places before us, with graphic force, the state of curiosity, suspense, and solicitude, which was experienced by multitudes of citizens at the period referred to.

In the following year, fresh excitement from the same source arose. The monarch was wasting upon his pleasures a considerable portion of the money which parliament had voted for the defence of the kingdom. The national exchequer was empty, and the credit of the navy commissioners gone. No loans could be obtained, yet ready money was demanded by the laborers required in the dockyards, by the sailors who were wanted to man the vessels, and by the merchants from whose stores the fleet needed its provisions. Not a gun was mounted in Tilbury Fort, nor a ship of war was in the river ready to oppose the enemy, while crowds thronged about the Admiralty, demanding their pay, and justly upbraiding the government. The Dutch ships, under De Ruyter, entered the Thames, sailed up the Medway, and seized the Royal Charles, besides three first-rate English vessels. One can easily conceive the second panic which this event must have produced among the citizens; nor is it difficult to imagine the suspension of business, the general exchange of hasty inquiries in that hour of terror, and the flocking of the people to the river-side to learn tidings of the fleet. Though the Dutch ships, unable to do further mischief on that occasion, returned to join the rest of the naval force anchored off the Nore; yet the citizens could not be relieved from their anxiety by this circumstance, for they knew that the foe would remain hovering about their coasts, and they could not tell but that in some unlooked-for moment the invaders might approach the very walls of their city. Some weeks of painful apprehension followed, and twice again did the admiral threaten to remount the Thames. An engagement between the English squadron and a portion of the invading armament of Holland prevented the accomplishment of that design, and saved London for the present from further fear.

Strong political excitement was produced in the city of London, at a later period of Charles II.'s reign, by another kind of invasion. The monarch and court, finding themselves thwarted in their arbitrary system of government by the spirit of the citizens, who were jealous of their own liberties, ventured, in defiance of the national constitution and the charters of the city, to interfere in the municipal elections. They attempted to thrust on the people as sheriffs men whom they knew they could employ as tools for despotic purposes. In 1681, a violent attempt of this sort was made, when the city returned in opposition to the wishes of king and court, two patriotic and popular men, Thomas Pilkington and Samuel Shaw. The king could not conceal his chagrin at this election, and when invited to dine with the citizens, replied, "Mr. Recorder, an invitation from the lord mayor and the city is very acceptable to me, and to show that it is so, notwithstanding that it is brought by messengers so unwelcome to me as those two sheriffs are, yet I accept it." Many of the citizens about the same time, influenced by fervent Protestant zeal, and by attachment to the civil and religious liberties of the country, were apprehensive of the consequences if the Duke of York, known to be a Roman Catholic, were allowed to ascend the British throne. The anti-papal feelings of the nation had been increased by the belief of a deeply-laid popish plot, which the infamous Titus Oates pretended to reveal; and in London those sentiments had been rendered still more intense by the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfery, the magistrate who received Oates's depositions. His death, over which a large amount of mystery still rests, was attributed to the revenge of the papists for the part he had taken in the prosecution against them. The hatred of which, in general, Roman Catholics were the objects, centered on the prince, from whose succession to the crown the restoration of the old religion of the country was anticipated. His name became odious, and it was difficult to shield it from popular indignity. Some one cut and mangled a picture of him which hung in Guildhall. The corporation, to prevent his royal highness from supposing that they countenanced or excused the insult, offered a large reward for the detection of the offender, and the Artillery Company invited the prince to a city banquet. The party most active in opposing his succession determined to have a large meeting and entertainment of their own, to express their opinion on the vital point of the succession to the crown; but the proceeding was sternly forbidden by the court, a circumstance which only served to deepen the feelings of discontent already created to a serious extent in very many breasts. This was followed up by the lord mayor nominating, in the year 1682, a sheriff favorable to the royal interests, and intimating to the citizens that they were to confirm his choice. The uproar at the common hall on Midsummer-day was tremendous. The citizens contended for their right of election, and nominated both sheriffs themselves, selecting two persons of popular sentiments. Amidst the riot, the lord mayor was roughly treated, and consequently complained to his majesty, the result of which was, that the two sheriffs already in office, and obnoxious to the court, were committed to the Tower for not maintaining the peace. Papillion and Dubois, the people's candidates, were elected. The privy council annulled the election, and commanded another; when the lord mayor most arbitrarily declared North and Box, the court candidates, duly chosen. Court and city were now pledged to open conflict; the former pursuing thoroughly despotic measures to bring the latter to submission. One rich popular citizen was fined to the amount of £100,000, for an alleged scandal on the popish duke, and at length it was resolved to take away the city charter. Forms of law were adopted for the purpose. An information, technically entitled a quo warranto , was brought against the corporation in the court of King's Bench. It was alleged, in support of this suit at the instance of the crown, that the common council had imposed certain tolls by an ordinance of their own, and had presented and published throughout the country an insolent petition to the king, in 1679, for the calling of parliament. The court, swayed by a desire to please the king, pronounced judgment against the corporation, and declared their charter forfeited; yet only recorded that judgment, as if to inveigle the corporation into some kind of voluntary submission, as the price of preserving a portion of what they were now on the point of altogether losing. Such an issue, of course, was regarded by the court as more desirable than an act of direct force, which was likely to irritate the citizens, and arouse wrath, which might be treasured up against another day. The city, to save their estates, yielded to the law, and submitted to the conditions imposed by the king—namely, that no mayor, sheriff, recorder, or other chief officer, should be admitted until approved by the king; that in event of his majesty's twice disapproving the choice of the citizens, he should himself nominate a person to fill the office, without waiting for another election; that the court of aldermen might, with the king's permission, remove any one of their body, and that they should have a negative on the election of the common council, and, in case of disapproving a second choice on the part of the citizens, should themselves proceed to nominate such as they themselves approved. "The city was of course absolutely subservient to the court from this time to the revolution." (Hallam's Constitutional History, chap. ii, p. 146.)

The unconstitutional proceedings of the king and court, of which the circumstances just related are a specimen, aroused some patriotic spirits in the country; but the power which inspired their indignation crushed their energies. Two illustrious men, who fell victims to that power, were connected with the city of London as the place of their abode, and the scene where they sealed their principles by death. Russell and Sydney both perished there in 1683. They were accused of participation in the notorious Rye House plot, and upon evidence, such as would convince no jury in the present day, were found guilty of treason. Lord Russell was conveyed from Newgate on the 21st of July, 1683, to be beheaded in Lincoln's-inn-fields. The duke of York, who intensely hated the patriot, wished him to be executed in Southampton-square, before his own residence; but the king, says Burnet, "rejected that as indecent." Lord Russell's behavior on the scaffold was in keeping with his previous piety and fortitude. "His whole behavior looked like a triumph over death." He said, the day before he died, that the sins of his youth lay heavy on his mind, but he hoped God had forgiven them, for he was sure he had forsaken them, and for many years had walked before God with a sincere heart. The faithful lady Rachel, who had so nobly acted as his secretary on his trial, and had used her utmost efforts to save his life, attended him in prison, and sought to strengthen his mind with the hopes and consolations of the gospel of Christ. Late the last night he spent on earth their final separation in this world took place; when, after tenderly embracing her several times, both magnanimously suppressing their indescribable emotions, he exclaimed, as she left the cell, "The bitterness of death is past." Winding up his watch the next morning, he observed, "I have done with time, and am going to eternity." He earnestly pressed upon Lord Cavendish the importance of religion, and declared how much comfort and support he derived from it in his extremity. Some among the crowds that filled the streets wept, while others insulted; he was touched by the tenderness of the one party, without being provoked by the heartlessness of the other. Turning into Little Queen-street, he said, "I have often turned to the other hand with great comfort, but now I turn to this with greater." "A tear or two" fell from his eyes as he uttered the words. He sang psalms a great part of the way, and said he hoped to sing better soon. On being asked what he was singing, he said, the beginning of the 119th Psalm. On entering Lincoln's-inn-fields, the sins of his youth were brought to his remembrance, as he had there indulged in those vices which characterized the court of Charles II. "This has been to me a place of sinning, and God now makes it the place of my punishment." As he observed the great crowds assembled to witness his end, he remarked, "I hope I shall quickly see a better assembly." He walked round the scaffold several times, and then delivered to the sheriffs a paper, which had been carefully prepared, declaring his innocence of the charge of treason, and his strong attachment to the Protestant faith. After this, he prayed by himself, and then Dr. Tillotson prayed with him. Another private prayer, and the patriot, having calmly unrobed himself, as if about to lie down on his couch to sleep, placed his head upon the block, and with two strokes of the axe was hastened into the eternal world. The faith, hope, patience, and love of his illustrious lady surpassed even his own, and her letters breathe a spirit redolent of heaven rather than earth. After a severe illness, she wrote, in October, 1680: "I hope this has been a sorrow I shall profit by; I shall, if God will strengthen my faith, resolve to return him a constant praise, and make this the season to chase all secret murmurs from grieving my soul for what is past, letting it rejoice in what it should rejoice—His favor to me, in the blessings I have left, which many of my betters want, and yet have lost their chiefest friend also. But, O! the manner of my deprivation is yet astonishing." Five years afterwards she says, "My friendships have made all the joys and troubles of my life, and yet who would live and not love? Those who have tried the insipidness of it would, I believe, never choose it. Mr. Waller says—

And 'tis enough; for if there is so charming a delight in the love, and suitableness in humors, to creatures, what must it be to the clarified spirits to love in the presence of God!"

Algernon Sydney was a man of very powerful mind and of great eloquence, in these respects utterly eclipsing his noble compatriot; but in his last days it is painful to miss that Christian faith, tenderness of heart, and beautiful religious hope, which shone with such serene brightness amidst the sorrows of his friend. Sydney was a staunch republican, and his patriotism was cast in the hard and severe mould of ancient Rome. He was another Brutus. This distinguished man was executed on Tower-hill, December the 7th, 1683, and faced death with the utmost indifference, not seeking any aid from the ministers of religion in his last moments, nor addressing the assembled multitude, but only remarking to those who stood by that he had made his peace with God, and had nothing to say to man.

Another sufferer in the same cause, less known to history, but more closely connected with London, was alderman Cornish. From his great zeal in the cause of Protestantism, he had become peculiarly odious to the reigning powers. He was suddenly accused of treason, and hurried to Newgate on the 13th of October. On the following Saturday he received notice of his indictment, and the next Monday was arraigned at the bar. Having been denied time to prepare his defence, he was completely in the hands of his persecutors, who wreaked on him their vengeance with merciless intensity and haste. On the 23d of the same month, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, in front of his own house, at the end of King-street, Cheapside. After his death his innocency was established, and it is said that James, who now occupied the throne, lamented the injustice he had done. The duke of Monmouth, the king's nephew, perished on Tower-hill, July, 1685, for his rebellion in the western counties. The awful tragedy of an execution, with which the citizens had become so familiar, was in this instance rendered additionally horrid by the circumstance that the headsman, after several ineffectual attempts to decapitate his victim, who, with the gashes in his neck, reproached him for his tardiness, flung down the axe, declaring he could not go on; forced by the sheriffs, the man at length fulfilled his bloody task.

The arbitrary and cruel government of the country for many years was now on the point of working out its remedy. The trial and acquittal of the seven bishops at Westminster hastened on a crisis, and nothing could exceed the joy which the city evinced on that occasion. On their way to the Tower by water, the most enthusiastic demonstrations of sympathy were evinced by the multitudes who lined the banks of the Thames, and on reaching the fortress itself, the garrison knelt and begged their blessing. Their subsequent discharge on bail, and especially their final acquittal, excited boundless joy throughout the city, and were celebrated by bonfires and illuminations. The king, observing the tide of popular feeling set in so decidedly against him, endeavored to reconcile the city of London by restoring to it the charter, which, in his brother's reign, had been so unjustly taken away. But though this brought votes of thanks in return, it established no confidence towards the sovereign on the part of the people. The prince of Orange, invited over by several distinguished persons, wearied by the long continuance of tyranny, landed at Torbay, when James, having committed the care of the metropolis to the lord mayor, marched forth to meet his formidable rival. The result belongs to the history of England. The lords spiritual and temporal held one of their important meetings, during the interregnum, at Guildhall, and summoned to it the chief magistrate and aldermen. Judge Jeffreys, of infamous memory, was brought before the lord mayor, and committed to the Tower, where he died through excessive drinking. Disturbances broke out in the city, and the populace plundered the houses of the papists. The mayor, aldermen, and a deputation from the common council, were summoned to attend the convention parliament, which raised the prince of Orange to the throne. These are the principal incidents in the history of London, as connected with the glorious revolution of 1688.

William and Mary were soon welcomed by the citizens to a very splendid entertainment, the usual token of loyalty offered by them to new sovereigns; and no time was lost by their majesties in reversing the quo warranto , and fully restoring to the city its ancient charter. When a conspiracy against William was discovered, in 1692, the city train bands displayed their loyalty, and marched to Hyde Park to be reviewed by the queen; and again, when an assassination plot was detected, an association was formed among the citizens to defend his person. These occurrences, with sundry rejoicings and entertainments upon the king's return to this country, after the Irish and foreign campaigns in which he engaged, are the principal civic events connected with the reign of William III.

On turning from the political history of London to look at the manners and morals of society during the latter part of the seventeenth century, our attention is immediately arrested by the scenes at Whitehall during the reign of Charles II. There the monarch fixed his court, gathering around him some of the most profligate persons of the age, and freely indulging in the most criminal pleasures. The palace was adorned with the greatest splendor, the ceilings and walls being decorated, and the furniture and other ornaments being fashioned according to the French taste, as it then prevailed under Louis XIV. Courtiers and idlers here flocked together from day to day, to lounge in the galleries, to talk over public news and private scandal, and to listen to the tales and jests of the king, whose presence was very accessible, and whose wit and familiarity with his courtiers made him a great favorite. Banquets, balls, and gambling, formed the amusements of the evening, often disgraced by open licentiousness. "I can never forget," says Evelyn, "the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God, (it being Sunday evening,) which this day se'nnight I was witness of." This was at the close of the sovereign's wretched career. "Six days after," adds the writer, "was all in the dust!" This passage cannot but call up in the Christian mind, awful thoughts of the eternal condition of such as spend their days in the pleasures of sin, and then drop into that invisible world, on the brink of which they were all along "sporting themselves with their own deceivings." Sinful practices, such as stained the court of Charles II., are too often attempted to be disguised under palliative terms; but the solemn warning of Scripture remains, "Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God on the children of disobedience." It is pleasing here to remember, that among those whom their dignified station, or their duties towards the sovereign and royal family, brought more or less into contact with the court, there were persons of a very different character from the gay circle around them, and whose thoughts, amidst the most brilliant spectacles, were lifted up to objects that are beyond earthly vision. "In the morning," says lady Warwick, in her diary, April 23, 1667, "as soon as dressed, in a short prayer I committed my soul to God, then went to Whitehall, and dined at my lord chamberlain's, then went to see the celebration of St. George's feast, which was a very glorious sight. Whilst I was in the Banqueting House, hearing the trumpets sounding, in the midst of all that great show God was pleased to put very mortifying thoughts into my mind, and to make me consider, what if the trump of God should now sound?—which thought did strike me with some seriousness, and made me consider in what glory I had in that very place seen the late king, and yet out of that very place he was brought to have his head cut off. And I had also many thoughts how soon all that glory might be laid in the dust, and I did in the midst of it consider how much greater glory was provided for a poor sincere child of God. I found, blessed be God! that my heart was not at all taken with anything I saw, but esteemed it not worth the being taken with."— Lady Warwick's Memoirs . Lady Godolphin was another beautiful instance of purity and piety amidst scenes of courtly splendor, and manifold temptations to worldliness and vice; and the more remarkable in this respect, that her duties required her frequent attendance at Whitehall, and brought her into close contact with the perils of the place.

The parks were favorite places of resort. "Hyde Park," observes a cotemporary writer, "every one knows is the promenade of London; nothing was so much in fashion during the fine weather as that promenade, which was the rendezvous of magnificence and beauty; every one, therefore, who had a splendid equipage, constantly repaired thither, and the king seemed pleased with the place. Coaches with glasses were then a late invention; the ladies were afraid of being shut up in them." Charles was fond of walking in the parks, which he did with such rapidity, and for such a length of time as to wear out his courtiers. He once said to prince George of Denmark, who was corpulent, "Walk with me, and hunt with my brother, and you will not long be distressed with growing fat." Playing with dogs, feeding ducks, and chatting with people, were occupations the king was much addicted to, and were thought by his subjects to be so condescending, familiar, and kind, that they tended much to promote his personal popularity with the London citizens and others. Along St. James's Park, at the back of what are now Carlton Gardens, there ran a wall, which formed the boundary of the king's garden. On the north side of it was an avenue, with rows of elms on one side, and limes on the other, the one sheltering a carriage road, the other a foot-path. Between lay an open space, called Pall Mall, which designation was derived from a game played there, consisting of striking a ball through an iron hoop suspended on a lofty pole. This was a favorite sport in the days of Charles, and many a gay young cavalier exercised himself, and displayed his dexterity among those green shades, where now piles of houses line the busy street, still retaining the name it bore nearly two centuries ago.

The pleasures of the parks and Whitehall, with all the licentious accompaniments of the latter, were not always enough to meet the vitiated appetite for amusement which then prevailed among the courtiers. Lord Rochester—whose end formed such a striking contrast to his life; whose sorrow for his sins was so intense, and his desire for forgiveness and spiritual renewal so earnest—was prominent in these extravagances, and set himself up in Tower-street as an Italian mountebank, professing to effect extraordinary cures. Sometimes, also, he went about in the attire of a porter or beggar. This taste was cherished and indulged by the highest personages. "At this time," (1668,) says Burnet, "the court fell into much extravagance in masquerading; both the king and queen and all the court went about masked, and came into houses unknown, and danced there with a great deal of wild frolic. In all this people were so disguised, that without being in the secret none could distinguish them. They were carried about in hackney chairs. Once the queen's chairman, not knowing who she was, went from her. So she was alone, and was much disturbed, and came to Whitehall in a hackney coach; some say a cart." Scenes of dissipation at Whitehall, with occasional excesses of the kind just noticed, make up the history of the court at London during the reign of Charles II. The palace, under his brother James, who, with all his popish zeal, was far from a pure and virtuous man, though cleansed from some of its pollution, was still the witness of lax morals. The habits of William III. and his queen Mary, greatly changed the aspect of things at Whitehall, till its destruction by fire, (the Banqueting House excepted,) in the year 1691. Afterwards the royal residence was either at Kensington or Hampton Court.

The riotous pleasures of Charles II. and his favorites, naturally encouraged imitation among the citizens of London, and during the whole reign of Charles it was full of scenes of revelry. The excesses which had been restrained during the commonwealth, and the abandoned characters who, to escape the churchwardens and other censors of public morals, sought refuge in retired haunts of villany, now appeared in open day. The restoration had introduced a sort of saturnalia; and no wonder, then, that the event was annually celebrated by the lovers of frivolous pleasure in London, with the gayest rejoicings, in which the garland and the dance bore a conspicuous part. While habits of dissipation were too common among the inhabitants generally, vice and crime were encouraged among the abandoned classes, by the existence of privileged places, such as Whitefriars, the Savoy, Fuller's Rents, and the Minories, where men who had lost all character and credit took refuge, and carried on with impunity their nefarious practices. Other persons, also, who ranked with decent London tradesmen, would sometimes avail themselves of these spots; and we are informed that even late in the seventeenth century, men in full credit used to buy all the goods they could lay their hands on, and carry them directly to Whitefriars, and then sending for their creditors, insult them with the exhibition of their property, and the offer of some miserable composition in return. If they refused the compromise, they were set at defiance.

The flood of licentiousness which rolled through the city in the time of Charles II. happily proved insufficient to break down the religious character of a large number of persons, who had been trained under the faithful evangelical ministry of earlier times, or had been impressed by the teaching of earnest-minded preachers and pastors who still remained. The fire, as well as the plague, in connection with the fidelity of some of God's servants, was, no doubt, instrumental, under the blessing of his Holy Spirit, in turning the hearts of many from darkness to light. The black cloud, as Janeway calls it, which no wind could blow over, till it fell in such scalding drops, also folded up in its skirts treasures of mercy for some, whose souls had been unimpressed by milder means.

By the Act of Uniformity many devoted ministers had been silenced in London—Richard Baxter, among the rest, whose sermons had attracted, as they well might, the most crowded auditories;[ 1 ] but in private they continued to do the work of their heavenly Master; and when spaces of toleration occurred in the persecuting reigns of Charles and James II., they opened places of worship, and discharged their holy functions with happy effects on their numerous auditories. After the fire, they were for a little time in the enjoyment of this privilege; but, in 1670, an act was passed for the suppression of conventicles, and the buildings were forthwith converted into tabernacles, for the use of the establishment while the parish churches were rebuilding. Eight places of this description are mentioned, of which may be noticed the meeting-house of the excellent Mr. Vincent, in Hand-alley, Bishopsgate-street, a large room, with three galleries, thirty large pews, and many benches and forms; and also Mr. Doolittle's meeting-house, built of brick, with three galleries, full of large pews below. Dr. Manton, a celebrated Presbyterian divine, was apprehended on a Sunday afternoon, at the close of his sermon, and committed a prisoner to the Gate-house. His meeting-house in White-yard was broken up, and a fine of £40 imposed on the people, and £20 on the minister. It is related of James Janeway, that as he was walking by the wall at Rotherhithe, a bullet was fired at him; and that a mob of soldiers once broke into his meeting house in Jamaica-row, and leaped upon the benches. Amidst the confusion, some of his friends threw over him a colored coat, and placed a white hat on his head, to facilitate his escape. Once, while preaching in a gardener's house, he was surprised by a band of troopers, when, throwing himself on the ground, some persons covered him with cabbage leaves, and so preserved him from his enemies. (Spiritual Heroes, p. 313.) In secresy the good people often met to worship, according to the dictates of their consciences; and until lately there remained in the ruins of the old priory of Bartholomew, in Smithfield, doors in the crypt, which tradition reported to have been used for admission into the gloomy subterranean recesses, where the persecuted ones, like the primitive Christians in the catacombs of Rome, worshiped the Father through Jesus Christ. The Friends, or Quakers, as they were termed, at this time manifested great intrepidity, and continued their worship as before, not stirring at the approach of the officers who came to arrest them, but meekly going all together to prison, where they stayed till they were dismissed, for they would not pay the penalties imposed on them, nor even the jail fees. On being discharged, they went to their meeting-houses as before, and finding them closed, crowded in the street around the door, saying "they would not be ashamed nor afraid to disown their meeting together in a peaceable manner to worship God, but in imitation of the prophet Daniel, they would do it more publicly because they were forbid." Neale's Puritans , vol. iv, p. 433. William Penn and William Mead, two distinguished members of the Society of Friends, were tried at the Old Bailey in 1670, and were cruelly insulted by the court. The jury, not bringing in such a harsh verdict as was desired, were threatened with being locked up without "meat, drink, fire, or tobacco." "We are a peaceable people, and cannot offer violence to any man," said Penn; adding, as he turned to the jury, "You are Englishmen, mind your privileges, give not away your rights." They responded to the noble appeal, and acquitted the innocent prisoners.

When, in the next year, Charles exercised a dispensing power, and set aside the persecuting acts, wishing to give freedom to the papists, most of the London nonconformist ministers took out licences, and great numbers attended their meetings. In 1672, the famous Merchants' Lecture was set up in Pinner's Hall, and the most learned and popular of the dissenting divines were appointed to deliver it. Alderman Love, member for the city, in the name of such as agreed with him, stood up in the House of Commons, refusing to take the benefit of the dispensing power as unconstitutional. He said, "he had rather go without his own desired liberty than have it in a way so destructive of the liberties of his country and the Protestant interest, and that this was the sense of the main body of dissenters." The indulgence was withdrawn. Toleration bills failed in the House of Commons. The Test Act was brought in; fruitless attempts were made for a comprehension; and London was once more a scene of persecution. Informers went abroad, seeking out places where nonconformists were assembled, following them to their homes, taking down their names, ascertaining suspected parties, listening to private conversation, prying into domestic scenes, and then delivering over their prey into the hands of miscalled officers of justice, who exacted fines, and rifled their goods, or carried them off to prison. Such proceedings occurred at several periods in the reigns of Charles and James II., after which the revolution of 1688 brought peace and freedom of worship to the long-oppressed nonconformists in London and throughout the country.

Popery lifted up its head in London on the restoration of Charles II. Many professors of it accompanied the king on his accession to the throne, and crowded round the court, being treated with conspicuous favor. The queen-mother came from France, and took up her abode at Somerset House, where she gathered round her a number of Roman Catholic priests. The foreign ambassadors' chapels were used by English papists, who thus obtained liberty of worship, while the London Protestant nonconformists were shamefully persecuted. Jesuit schools and seminaries were established, under royal patronage, and popish bishops were consecrated in the royal chapel of St. James's. At Whitehall, the ecclesiastics appeared in their canonical habits, and were encouraged in their attempts to proselyte the people to the unreformed faith. A diarist of the times, under date January 23, 1667, records a visit he paid to the popish establishment in St. James's Palace, composed of the chaplains and priests connected with Catharine of Braganza, Charles II.'s queen: "I saw the dormitory and the cells of the priests, and we went into one—a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, and set with books. The priest was in his cell, with his hair-clothes to his skin, barelegged, with a sandal only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed, but yet I thought soft enough, his cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have: and I was in the refectory where every man had his napkin, knife, cup of earth, and basin of the same; and a place for one to sit and read while the rest are at meals. And into the kitchen I went, where a good neck of mutton at the fire, and other victuals boiling—I do not think they fared very hard. Their windows all looking into a fine garden and the park, and mighty pretty rooms all. I wished myself one of the Capuchins."

But it does not appear that the London commonalty were infected with the love of the Papal Church, whatever might be done at court to foster it. On the contrary, a strong feeling was cherished by multitudes in opposition to all the popish proceedings of their superiors. Ebullitions of popular sentiment on the question frequently appeared, especially in the annual burning of the pope's effigy, on the 17th of November, at Temple Bar. This was to celebrate the accession of Queen Elizabeth; and after the discovery of the so-called Meal Tub plot, in the reign of Charles II., it was performed with increased parade and ceremony. The morning was ushered in with the ringing of bells, and in the evening a procession took place, by the light of flambeaux, to the number of some thousands. The balconies, and windows, and tops of houses, were crowded with eager faces, reflecting the light that blazed up from the moving crowds along the streets. Mock friars, bishops, and cardinals, with the pope, headed by a man on horseback, personating the dead body of Sir Edmondbury Godfery, composed the spectacle. It started from Bishopsgate, and passing along Cheapside and Fleet-street terminated at Temple Bar, where the pope was cast into a bonfire, and the whole concluded with a display of fireworks. While anti-popish proceedings of this description might be leavened with much of the ignorance and intolerance which mark the odious system thus assailed, and can, therefore, be regarded with little satisfaction, it must be remembered that there was abundant cause at that time for those who prized the liberties of their country, as well as those who valued the truths of religion, to regard with alarm and to resist with vigor the incursions of a political Church, which sought to crush those liberties, and to darken those truths. The evils of Popery, inherent and unchangeable, obtruded themselves most offensively, and with a threatening aspect, at a period when they were defended and maintained in high places; and it was notorious that the successor to the English crown was plotting for the revival of Popish ascendency. During the reign of James II., the grounds of excitement became stronger than before. Everything dear to Englishmen as well as Protestants was at stake. The destinies of Church and state, of religion and civil policy, were trembling in the balance. Men's hearts might well fail them for fear, and only confidence in the power of truth, and the God of truth, with earnest prayer for his gracious succor and protection, could still and soothe their agitated bosoms. Weapons of the right kind were employed. The best divines of the Church of England manfully contended in argument against the baneful errors of Romanism. Dissenting divines, especially Baxter, threw their energies into the same conflict. Political measures were also adopted vigorously and with decision—their nature we can neither criticise nor describe—and through the good providence of God our fathers were delivered from an impending curse, which we pray may neither in our times, nor in future ages, light on our beloved land.

In approaching the termination of this chapter, it is desirable to insert some account of the extent and state of buildings in London at the close of the seventeenth century, and a few notices of other matters relating to that period, which have not yet come under our consideration. Chamberlayne, in his Angliæ Notitia , 1692, dwells with warm delight upon the description of the London squares, "those magnificent piazzas," as he terms them; and then enumerates Lincoln's-inn-fields, Convent Garden, St. James's-square, Leicester-fields, Southampton-square, Red Lion-square, Golden-square, Spitalfields-square, and "that excellent new structure, called the King's-square," now Soho. These were all extramural, and beyond the liberties of the municipality, and they show how the metropolis was extending, especially in the western direction. As early as 1662, an act was passed for paving Pall Mall, the Haymarket, and St. James's-street. Clarendon, in 1604, built his splendid mansion in Piccadilly, called in reproach Dunkirk House by the common people, who "were of opinion that he had a good bribe for the selling of that town." Others, says Burnet, called it Holland House, because he was believed to be no friend to the war. It was much praised for its magnificence, and for the beautiful country prospect it commanded. Evelyn's record of an interview with the builder of the proud palace, is an affecting illustration of the vanity of this world's grandeur, and of the disappointments and mortifications that follow ambition. Clarendon had lost the favor of his sovereign, and the confidence of the public. "I found him in his garden," says Evelyn, "at his new-built palace, sitting in his gout wheel-chair, and seeing the gates set up towards the north and the fields. He looked and spake very disconsolately. After some while, deploring his condition to me, I took my leave. Next morning, I heard he was gone." The house was afterwards pulled down. In 1668, Burlington House was finished, placed where it is because it was at the time of its erection thought certain that no one would build beyond it. "In London," says Sir William Chambers, "many of our noblemen's palaces towards the streets look like convents; nothing appears but a high wall, with one or two large gates, in which there is a hole for those who are privileged to go in and out. If 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, an 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 to go 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 traveler.

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 traveling, as well as the stay-at-home habits of our good forefathers of the middle class, about a century and a half ago. The gentry and nobility were the chief travelers, 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."

[ 1 ] He mentions his preaching once at St. Dunstan's church, when an accident occurred, which alarmed the vast concourse, and was likely to have occasioned much mischief. He relates the odd circumstance of an old woman, squeezed in the crowd, asking forgiveness of God at the church door, and promising, if he would deliver her that time she would never come to the place again.

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 Dover-streets for gardens, and turned a road leading into May Fair another way. (London, vol. i, p. 310.) Devonshire House remained for some time the boundary of the buildings in Piccadilly, though farther on, by the Hyde Park Corner, there were several habitations. Lanesborough House stood there by the top of Constitution-hill, and was, in 1773, converted into an infirmary, since rebuilt, and now known as St. George's Hospital. It may be added, that Westminster Hospital, the first institution of the kind supported by voluntary contributions, was founded in 1719. Several churches were erected in the early part of the eighteenth century. In the year 1711, an act was passed for the erection of no less than fifty, but only ten had been built on new foundations when Maitland published his work. These ecclesiastical edifices exhibit the architectural taste of the age. The finest specimen of the period is the church of St. Martin-in-the-fields, built by Gibbs. It was commenced in 1721, and finished in 1726, at a cost of nearly £37,000. In spite of the drawback in the ill-placed steeple over the portico, without any basement tower, the building strikes the beholder with an emotion of delight. St. George's, Hanover-square, and St. George's, Bloomsbury, (the latter exhibiting a remarkable campanile,) were also built about the same time, the one in 1724, the other in 1731. Almost all the churches built after the fire are in the modern style, imported from Italy. In its colonnades, porticoes, architraves, and columns, this style presents elements of the Greek school of design, but differently arranged, more complicated in composition, more florid and ambitious in detail. Taste must assign the palm of superiority to the Grecian temple, with its severe beauty and chastened sublimity. The one style indicates the era of original genius, and exhibits the fruits of masterminds in that line of invention, while the other marks an epoch of mere imitation, supplying only the degenerate produce of transplanted taste.

Feeble attempts were made to improve the state of the streets, but they remained pretty much in their former condition till the Paving Act of 1762. Stalls, sheds, and sign-posts obstructed the path, and the pavement was left to the inhabitants, to be made "in such a manner, and with such materials, as pride, poverty, or caprice might suggest. Curb stones were unknown, and the footway was exposed to the carriage-way, except in some of the principal streets, where a line of posts and chains, or wooden paling, afforded occasional protection. It was a matter of moment to go near the wall; and Gay, in his Trivia, supplies directions to whom to yield it, and to whom to refuse it."— Handbook , by Cunninghame, xxxi. "In the last age," says Johnson, "when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people—those who gave the wall and those who took it, the peaceable and the quarrelsome. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; and if one is taking the wall another yields it, and it is never a dispute." The lighting, drainage, and police, were all in a wretched condition.

To attempt to give anything like a detailed chronological account of events in London during the first half of the eighteenth century, is neither possible nor desirable in a work like this. Indeed, the far greater part of the incidents recorded in the city chronicles relates to royal visits, city feasts, celebration of victories, local tumults, and remarkable storms and frosts. All that can be done, or expected, in this small volume, is to fix upon a few leading and important scenes and events, illustrative of the times.

In the reign of queen Anne, the chief matter of interest in connection with London was the political excitement which prevailed. It turned upon questions relating to the Church and the toleration of dissenters. Dean Swift, in a letter dated London, December, 1703, tells a friend, that the occasional Conformity Bill, intended to nullify the Toleration Act, was then the subject of everybody's conversation. "It was so universal," observes the witty dean, "that I observed the dogs in the street much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual; and the very night before the bill went up, a committee of Whig and Tory cats had a very warm debate upon the roof of our house." Defoe, the well-known author of Robinson Crusoe, and a London citizen, rendered himself very conspicuous by his advocacy of the rights of conscience; and in consequence of writing an ironical work, which then created great excitement, entitled, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," he was doomed to stand three successive days in the pillory, at the Royal Exchange by the Cheapside Conduit, and near Temple Bar. Immense crowds gathered to gaze on the sufferer; but "the people, who were expected to treat him ill, on the contrary pitied him, and wished those who set him there were placed in his room, and expressed their affections by loud shouts and acclamations when he was taken down."— Life of Defoe , by Chalmers, p. 28.

The political excitement of London reached its height during the trial of Dr. Sacheverell. He had preached two sermons, one of which was delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 5th of November, 1709, in which he inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance, and inveighed with great bitterness against all nonconformists. The drift of his sermon was to undermine the principles of the Revolution, though he professed to approve of that event, pretending to consider it as by no means a case of resistance to the supreme power. The ministry, considering that his doctrine struck a fatal blow at the constitution, as established in 1688, prosecuted him accordingly. With Sacheverell numbers of the clergy sympathized, especially Atterbury, the leader of his party. It was supposed that the queen was not unfriendly to the arraigned divine. He was escorted to Westminster Hall, the place of his trial, by immense crowds of people, who rent the air with their huzzas. The queen herself attended at the proceedings, and was hailed with deafening shouts, as she stepped from her carriage, "God bless your majesty; we hope your majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell." The spacious building in which he was tried, the scene of so many state trials, was fitted up for the occasion, benches and galleries being provided for peers and commoners, peeresses and gentlewomen, who crowded every seat; the lower classes squeezing themselves to suffocation into the part of the old building allotted to their use. The London rabble were so much excited by what took place, or were so completely swayed by more influential malcontents, that on the evening of the second day of the trial they attacked a meeting-house in New-Court, tearing away doors and casements, pews and pulpit, and proceeding with the spoil to Lincoln's-inn-fields. In the open space—where was then no fair garden inclosed with palisades, it being a rendezvous for mountebanks, dancing bears, and baited bulls—the populace kindled a bonfire, and consumed the ruins of the conventicle. They went forth in quest of the minister, Mr. Burgess, in order to burn him and his pulpit together. Happily disappointed of their victim, they wreaked their vengeance upon six other dissenting places of worship. An episcopal church in Clerkenwell shared the same fate, being mistaken for one of the hated structures through want of a steeple; for steeple and no steeple probably constituted the only difference in religion appreciable by these infatuated mortals. The advocates of toleration, even though they might be good Churchmen, as Bishop Burnet for example, were also in danger. Indeed, the tumult became of such grave importance, that queen and magistrates, court and city, felt it a duty to combine in order to quell the disgraceful outbreak. A few sword cuts, and the capture of several prisoners, put down the insurrection; but ecclesiastical politics still ran high in London, and whigs and dissenters were in low estimation in many quarters, till the Hanoverian succession brightened the prospects of the liberal party. While Queen Anne lay ill, deep anxiety pervaded the political circles in London. It is not generally known, but it is stated on the authority of tradition, that the first place in which the decease of Anne was publicly announced, and the accession of George I. proclaimed, was the very meeting-house in New Court which had been formerly attacked by the mob. The day on which the queen died was a Sunday; and as Bishop Burnet was riding in his coach through Smithfield, he met Mr. Bradbury, then the minister of the chapel, and told him that immediately upon the royal demise, then momentarily expected, he would send a messenger to give tidings of the event. Before the morning service was over a man appeared in the gallery, and dropped a handkerchief, being the preconcerted signal; whereupon the preacher, in his last prayer, alluded to the removal of her majesty, and implored a blessing on King George and the house of Hanover.

The most striking feature in the history of London in the reign of George I., was the extraordinary spirit of speculation which then existed. The moderate gains of trade and commerce did not satisfy the cupidity of the human breast, which then, as it has done since, burst out into a fever, that consumed all reason, prudence, and principle. Men made haste to be rich, and consequently fell into temptation and a snare. In 1717, an unprecedented excitement pervaded the money market. Every one familiar with the city knows the plain-looking edifice of brick and stone which stands in Threadneedle-street, not far from the Flower-pot, and which is so well described by one whose youth was passed within it, as "deserted or thinly peopled, with few or no traces of comers-in or goers-out, like what Ossian describes, when he says, I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." That grave-looking edifice, now like some respectable citizen retired from business, was at one time the busiest place in the world. A scheme was planned and formed for making fortunes by the South Sea trade. A company was incorporated by government for the purpose, and the house in Threadneedle-street was the scene of business. Stock rapidly doubled in value, and went on till it reached a premium of nine hundred per cent. People of all ranks flocked to Change-alley, and crowded the courts in riotous eagerness to purchase shares. The nobleman drove from the West-end, the squire came up from the country, ladies of fashion, and people of no fashion, swarmed round the new El Dorado, to dig up the sparkling treasure. Swift compares these crowds of human beings to the waters of the South Sea Gulf, from which their imagination was drawing such abundant draughts of wealth.

"Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in her leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again;
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wits' end like drunken men."

The mania spread so that the South Sea scheme itself could not satisfy the lust for money. Maitland enumerates one hundred and fifty-six companies formed at this time. Among some which look feasible, there were the following characterized by extravagant absurdities:—An association for discovering gold mines, for bleaching hair, for making flying engines, for feeding hogs, for erecting salt-pans in Holy Island, for making butter from beech trees, for making deal boards out of saw-dust, for extracting silver from lead, and finally, (which seems to have been much needed to exhaust the maddening vapors that had made their way into it,) for manufacturing an air pump for the brain.

Some of them were surely mere satires on the rest; yet Maitland says, after giving his long list, "Besides these bubbles, there were innumerable more that perished in embryo; however, the sums intended to be raised by the above airy projects amounted to about three hundred million pounds. Yet the lowest of the shares in any of them advanced above cent. per cent., most above four hundred per cent., and some to twenty times the price of subscription." The bulk of these speculators must clearly have been bereft of their senses, and the madness was too violent to last long. The evil worked its own cure. The golden bubble was blown larger, and larger, till it burst. Then came indescribable misery. Thousands were ruined. Revenge against the inventors now took the place of cupidity, and indignation aroused those who had looked patiently on during the rage of the money mania. One nobleman in parliament proposed that the contrivers of the South Sea scheme should, after the manner of the Roman parricide, be sown up alive in sacks, and flung into the Thames. A more moderate punishment was inflicted in the confiscation of all the estates belonging to the directors of the company, amounting to above two millions, which sum was divided among the sufferers. The railway speculation in our own time was a display of avarice of the same order; and all such indulgence in the inordinate lust of gain is sure to be overtaken, in the end, by its righteous penalty. The laws of Divine providence provide for the punishment of those who thus, under the influence of an impetuous selfishness, grasp at immoderate possessions. Covetousness overreaches itself in such cases, and misses its mark. How many instances have occurred in the present day illustrative of that wise saying in Holy Scripture: "As the partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not, so he that getteth riches and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at the end shall be a fool!" The solemn lessons thus suggested should be practically studied by the man of business, and while he is taught to moderate his desires after the things of this world, he is also instructed to turn the main current of his thoughts and feelings into a far different channel, to seek durable riches and righteousness—bags which wax not old—treasures which thieves cannot break through and steal; and to "so pass through things temporal, as not to lose the things which are eternal."

The history of London in the reign of George II. is remarkable for the excitement which was produced by the northern rebellion, and for a far different excitement, which we shall presently notice with great delight. The progress of the arms of Prince Edward, the pretender, in the year 1745, created much alarm in all parts of the country, especially in London, the seat of government. When the invading army was found to have proceeded as far as Derby, it was generally expected it would advance to the metropolis. The loyalty of the citizens was called forth by the impending peril, and all classes hastened to express their attachment to the sovereign, and their readiness to support the house of Hanover in this great emergency. The corporation, the clergy, and the dissenting ministers, presented dutiful addresses. Several corps of volunteers were raised, large sums of money were contributed, and even the peace-loving body of Friends came forward to furnish the troops with woolen waistcoats to be worn under their clothing. As the cause of Popery was identified with that of the pretender, the Papists in London were regarded with great apprehension. A proclamation was issued for putting the laws in force against them and all non-jurors. Romanists and reputed Romanists were required to remove out of the city, to at least ten miles off. All Jesuits and priests who, after a certain time, should be found within that distance were to be brought to trial. The pretender was defeated at Culloden, and the news took off a heavy burden of fear from the minds of the London citizens. Many prisoners were brought to the metropolis, and among them the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Lovat, who were all executed for treason on Tower-hill. The beheading of the last of these brought to a close the long series of sanguinary spectacles of that nature, which had gathered from time to time such a vast concourse of citizens, on the hill by the Tower gates.

The other kind of excitement in London, hinted at above, relates to the most important of all subjects. Spiritual religion had been at a low ebb for a considerable period among the different denominations of Christians. A cold formalism was but too common. It is not, however, to be inferred that men of sound and earnest piety did not exist, both among Churchmen and dissenters. One beautiful specimen of religious fervor and consistency may be mentioned in connection with the earlier part of this century. Sir Thomas Abney, who filled the office of lord mayor in 1701, and also represented the city in parliament, is described as having been an eminent blessing to his country and the Church of God. He died in 1722, deeply regretted, not only by his religious friends, but by his fellow-citizens in general. We have seen or heard it stated respecting him, that during his mayoralty he habitually maintained family worship, without suffering it to be interrupted by any parties or banquets. On such occasions prayer was introduced, or he retired to present it in the bosom of his family. Many other beautiful instances of a devout spirit, of faith in Christ, and of love to God, were, no doubt, open at that time to the eye of Him who seeth in secret; but neither then, nor for some time afterwards, were any vigorous efforts made to bring religion home with power to the mass of the London population. That distinguished man, the Rev. George Whitefield, was an instrument in the hand of God of effecting in the metropolis, before the close of the first half of the century, an unprecedented religious awakening. He came up to officiate in the Tower in 1737, but his first sermon in London was delivered in Bishopsgate church. On his second visit, crowds climbed the leads, and hung on the rails of the buildings in which he was engaged to minister, while multitudes went away because not able to get anywhere within the sound of his voice. Nothing had been seen like it since the days of such men as Baxter and Vincent. When collections were needed, Whitefield was eagerly sought, as the man capable above all others of replenishing the exhausted coffers of Christian beneficence. The people sat or stood densely wedged together, with eyes riveted on the speaker, and many a tear rolled down the cheeks of citizen and apprentice, matron and maiden, as the instructions and appeals of that wonderful preacher, expressed in stirring words and phrases, fell upon their ears, in tones marvelously rich, varied, and musical. With an eloquence, which now flashed and rolled like the elements in a thunder-storm, and then tenderly beamed forth like the sun-ray on the flower whose head the storm had drenched and made to droop, did he enforce on the people truths which he had gathered out of God's precious word, and the power of which he had evidently himself realized in all the divinity of their origin, the sublimity of their import, the directness of their application, and the unutterable solemnity of their results. As a man dwelling amidst eternal things, with heaven and hell before him, the eye of God upon him, and immortal souls around him, hastening to their account,—in short, as every minister of Christ's holy gospel ought to deliver his message, did he do so. The holiness of God, as a Being of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; the perfect excellence of the Divine law; its demand of entire obedience; its adaptation, if observed, to promote the happiness of man; its spirituality, reaching to the most secret thoughts and affections of the heart; the corruption of human nature; the alienation of man from God, and his moral inability to keep the Divine law; the sentence of everlasting condemnation, which, as the awful, but righteous consequence, falls upon our race; the marvelous kindness of God in so commending his love to us, "that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us;" the Saviour's fulfillment of the law in his gracious representative character; the perfect satisfaction for sin rendered by his atoning sacrifice; the unutterable condescension and infinite love with which he receiveth sinners; the grace of the Holy Spirit; the necessity of an entire regeneration of the soul by his Divine agency; the full and free invitations of the gospel to mankind at large; forgiveness through the blood of Christ offered to all who believe; the universal obligation of repentance; the requirement of holiness of heart and life, as the evidence of love to Christ, and the indwelling of the Spirit, as the Author of holiness; such were the grand truths which formed the theme of Whitefield's discourses, and which, in numerous instances, fell with startling power on ears unaccustomed to evangelical statements and appeals. The preacher was a man of prayer as well as eloquence, and in his London visits poured out his heart in earnest supplication to God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit upon the vast masses of unconverted souls, slumbering around him in the arms of spiritual death. Whitefield could not confine himself to churches, and his out-door preaching soon increased the interest which his former services had produced. "I do not know," said the celebrated Countess of Hertford, in one of her letters, "whether you have heard of our new sect, who call themselves Methodists. There is one Whitefield at the head of them, a young man of about five-and-twenty, who has for some months gone about preaching in the fields and market-places of the country, and in London at May Fair and Moorfields to ten or twelve thousand people at a time." Larger multitudes still are said to have been sometimes convened; on Kennington Common, for example, the number of Whitefield's congregation has been computed at sixty thousand.

The notice taken of the young preacher by this lady of fashion, is only a specimen of the interest felt in his proceedings by many persons in the same rank of life. The nobility attended in the drawing-room of the Countess of Huntingdon to listen to his sermons, or accompanied her to the churches where he had engaged to officiate. Long lists of these titled names have been preserved, in which some of the unlikeliest occur, such as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Bolingbroke, Bubb Doddington, and George Selwyn. Indeed, it seems to have been quite the fashion for the great ones of the land to cluster round this man of God. He was the theme of their conversation. By all he was marveled at; by some he was censured or ridiculed; by more he was praised and caressed; by a few he was honored and blessed as the means of their spiritual renewal or edification. Among the middle and lower classes in London, as elsewhere, did he reap his richest harvests. How many hundreds and thousands were melted down under the power of the word which he proclaimed! How many of that generation in our old city are now before the throne of the Lamb, adoring the gracious Providence which brought them within the sound of Whitefield's voice!

A remarkable occurrence in London, in the year 1750, gave occasion for a singular display of this great preacher's holy zeal. Shocks of an earthquake were felt in different parts of London and the vicinity, especially in the neighborhood of the river Thames. Such visitations are sure to produce violent terror, and on this occasion the feeling reached its highest pitch. The people, apprehending there was greater danger in their own houses, and in the streets lined with buildings, than in wide spaces open and unencumbered, rushed, in immense crowds, to Hyde Park, and there waited, in fearful foreboding of the judgments of the Almighty. One night, when the excitement was overwhelming, and a dense multitude had congregated there under the dark arch of heaven, Whitefield, regarding it as a signal opportunity for preaching the gospel to his fellow-countrymen, hastened to the spot, and delivered one of his most powerful and pathetic discourses. He called the attention of the throngs before him to the coming advent of the Son of God, to judge the world in righteousness, when not the inhabitants of one city only, but all of Adam's race, in every clime, would be gathered together, to receive from the lips of Eternal Justice their final and unalterable sentence. Nor did he fail to point out the character of Christ in his relation to man as a Saviour as well as Judge, urging his hearers to flee from the wrath to come, and to lay hold on the hope set before them in the gospel. "The awful manner in which he addressed the careless, Christless sinner, the sublimity of the discourse, and the appearance of the place, added to the gloom of night, continued to impress the mind with seriousness, and to render the event solemn and memorable in the highest degree." While the shades of night rendered him invisible to his audience, his clear voice—which could be heard distinctly at the distance of a mile, passing through a marvelous variety of intonations, in which the very soul of the speaker seemed to burst out in gushes of terror or love—must, as it sounded over the park, and fell upon the eager listening thousands, have seemed to them like the utterance of some impalpable and unseen spirit, who, with unearthly powers of address, had come down from heaven to warn and invite. "God," he observed, in writing to Lady Huntingdon, "has been terribly shaking the metropolis; I hope it is an earnest of his giving a shock to secure sinners, and making them to cry out, 'What shall we do to be saved?' What can shake a soul whose hopes of happiness in time and in eternity are built upon the Rock of ages? Winds may blow, rains may and will descend even upon persons of the most exalted stations, but they that trust in the Lord Jesus Christ never shall, never can be totally confounded." Charles Wesley was in town during this dispensation of Providence, (which happily passed off without inflicting any serious injury,) and he also employed himself in faithful and earnest preaching. So did Mr. Romaine, whose ministry will be noticed more particularly in the next chapter. The only additional information we can give respecting this religious revival, is that the Rev. John Wesley, equally distinguished with Whitefield, but by gifts of a different order, began his course in London as the founder of the Methodist Connection, in 1740, and spent among the London citizens a large portion of his apostolic and self-denying labors, with unconquerable perseverance and eminent success. He was accustomed, at the commencement of his career, to meet with the Moravians for religious exercises in their chapel in Fetter-lane; thus associating that edifice, which still remains, with the early history of Methodism. "There the great leaders in this glorious warfare, with their zealous coadjutors—persons whose whole souls were consecrated to the cause of God our Saviour—often took sweet counsel together. They have all long since gone to their rest, to meet in a better temple together, as they have often worshiped in the temple below, and to go out no more."

In further illustration of the state of London at the time now under our review, we will turn to consider some other of its social aspects. Literary society presents some curious and amusing facts. The booksellers before the fire were located, for the most part, in St. Paul's Church-yard. It is stated that not less than £150,000 worth of books were consumed during that conflagration. The calamity proved the ruin of many, and was the occasion of raising very enormously the price of old books. Little Britain, near Duck-lane, became the rendezvous of the trade, which remained there for some years afterwards. "It was," says Roger North, "a plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned authors." The shops were spacious, and the literati of the day gladly resorted thither, where they seldom failed to find agreeable conversation. The booksellers themselves were intelligent persons, with whom, for the sake of their bookish knowledge, the most brilliant wits were pleased to converse. Before 1750, the literary emporium of London was transferred to Paternoster-row. Up to that time the activity in the publishing business was very great, especially in the pamphlet line; perhaps there were more publishers then than even now. Dunton, a famous member of the fraternity, wrote his own life, in which he enumerates a long list of his brethren, with particulars relating to their character and history. The authors of London were computed by Swift to amount in number to some thousands. While a Swift, a Pope, an Addison, a Steele, a Bolingbroke, a Johnson, and other world-known names in that Augustan age of letters, produced works of original genius, the bulk of the writers who supplied the trade were "mere drudges of the pen—manufacturers of literature." A whole herd of these were dealers in ghosts, murders, and other marvels, published in periodical pamphlets, upon every half sheet of which the tax of a halfpenny was laid on in the reign of Queen Anne. "Have you seen the red stamp the papers are marked with?" asks Dean Swift, in a letter to Mr. Dingley—"methinks the stamping is worth a half-penny." These panderers to a vitiated taste, which is far from having disappeared in our own day, and other writers of the humbler class, were so numerous in Grub-street, that the name became the cognomen for the humblest brethren of the book craft. There and elsewhere did they pour forth their lucubrations in lofty attics, which led Johnson to make the pompous remark, "that the professors of literature generally reside in the highest stories. The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated situation; why else were the muses stationed on Olympus or Parnassus, by those who could, with equal right, have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander?" The favorite places of resort for poets, wits, and authors, were the coffee-houses, especially Wills', in Russell-street, Convent Garden, where Dryden had long occupied the critics' throne, and swayed the sceptre over the kingdom of letters. Thither went the aspirant after fame, to obtain subscribers for his forthcoming publication, or to secure the approving nod of some literary Jupiter; and there many an offspring of the muse was strangled in the birth, or if suffered to live, treated with merciless severity. In the same street lived Davies, the bookseller, at whose house Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, became acquainted with his hero. "The very place," he says, "where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work, deserves to be particularly marked. It was No. 8. I never pass by without feeling reverence and regret."

Pope was the most successful author of his time, and realized £5,320 by his Iliad. The keenness of his satire in the Dunciad threw literary London into convulsions. On the day the book was first vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop, threatening to prosecute the publisher, while hawkers crushed in to buy it up, with the hope of reaping a good harvest from the retailing of so caustic an article. The dunces held weekly meetings to project hostilities against the satirical critic, whose keen weapon had cut them to the quick. One wrote to the prime minister to inform him that Mr. Pope was an enemy to the government; another bought his image in clay to execute him in effigy. A surreptitious edition was published, with an owl in the frontispiece, the genuine one exhibiting an ass laden with authors. Hence arose a contest among the booksellers, some recommending the edition of the owl, and others the edition of the ass, by which names the two used to be distinguished. In 1737, Dr. Johnson came up to the metropolis with two-pence halfpenny in his pocket—David Garrick, his companion, having one halfpenny more. Toiling in the service of Cave, and writing for the Gentleman's Magazine, then a few years old, the former could but obtain a bare subsistence, which forced from him the well-known lines in his poem on London:—

"This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed."

He lodged at a stay-maker's, in Exeter-street, and dined at the Pine Apple, just by, for eight-pence. An odd example of the intercourse between bookmakers and bookvenders, is preserved in the anecdote of Johnson beating Osborne, his publisher, for alleged impertinence. Of the genial habits of literary men in London, we have an illustration in the clubs which he formed, or to which he belonged. That which still continues to hold its meetings at the Thatched House, is the continuation of the famous one established at a later period than is embraced in this chapter, at the Turk's Head, where Johnson used to meet Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith.

But it is time to glance at fashionable London. As to its locality, it has been anything but stationary. Gradually, however, it has been gliding westward for the last three centuries and more. First breaking its way through Ludgate, and lining the Thames side of the Strand with noble houses, then pushing its course farther on, and spreading itself out over the favored parishes of St. James and St. George. Here, during the first half of the last century, might be seen the increasing centralization of English patricians. The city was deserted of aristocratic inhabitants, and Devonshire-square was the spot "on which lingered the last lady of rank who clung to her ancestral abode." But this westward tendency, flowing wave on wave, was checked for awhile in Soho and Leicester-squares, which remained till within less than a hundred years ago, the abode or resort of the sons and daughters of fashion. St. James's, Grosvenor, and Hanover-squares, were, however, of a more select and magnificent character. The titled in Church and state loved to reside in the elegant mansions which lined and adorned them, so convenient for visits to court, which then migrated backwards and forwards between St. James's and Kensington. Still, though these anti-plebeian regions were scenes of increasing convenience, comfort, and luxury, some of the nuisances of former days lingered amidst them; and as late as 1760, a great many hogs were seized by the overseers of St. George's, Hanover-square, because they were bred, or kept in the immediate neighborhood of these wealthy abodes.

On the levee day of a prime minister, a couple of streets were sometimes lined with the coaches of political adherents, seeking power or place, when favored visitors were admitted to an audience in his bedchamber. The royal levees were thronged with multitudes of courtiers, who thereby accomplished the double purpose of paying their respect to the sovereign and reviving their friendships with each other. It is very melancholy to read in dean Swift's letters such a passage as the following, since it evinces so painful a disregard of the religious character and privileges of the Lord's-day, very common, it is feared, at the time to which it relates: "Did I never tell you," he says, "that I go to court on Sundays, as to a coffee-house, to see acquaintances whom I should not otherwise see twice a year."

"Drawing-rooms were first introduced in the reign of George II., and during the lifetime of the queen were held every evening, when the royal family played at cards, and all persons properly dressed were admitted. After the demise of the queen in 1737, they were held but twice a week, and in a few years were wholly discontinued, the king holding his 'state' in the morning twice a week."— Cunninghame .

Promenading in Pall Mall and the parks on foot was a favorite recreation of the lords and ladies of the first two Georges' reigns, at which they might be seen in court dresses, the former with bag wig and sword, the latter with hooped petticoats and high-heeled shoes, sweeping the gravel with their trains, and looking with immense contempt on the citizens east of Temple-bar who dared to invade the magic circle which fashion had drawn around itself. These gathering places for the gay were often infested by persons who committed outrages, to us almost incredible. Emulous of the name, as of the deeds of the savage, they took the title of Mohawks, the appellation of a well-known tribe of Indians. Their sport was, sword in hand, to attack and wound the quiet wayfarer. On one occasion, we find from Swift's letters, that he was terribly frightened by these inhuman wretches. Even women did not escape their violence. "I walked in the park this evening," says Swift, under date of March 9th, 1713, "and came home early to avoid the Mohawks." Again, on the 16th, "Lord Winchelsea told me to-day at court, that two of the Mohawks caught a maid of old lady Winchelsea's at the door of their house in the park with a candle, who had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face, and beat her without any provocation."

Another glimpse of the London of that day, which we catch while turning over its records, presents a further unfavorable illustration of the state of society, both in high and in low life. In May Fair there stood a chapel, where a certain Dr. Keith, of infamous notoriety, performed the marriage service for couples who sought a clandestine union; and while the rich availed themselves of this provision, persons in humbler life found a similar place open to them in the Fleet prison. Parliament put down these enormities in 1753.

Ranelagh and Vauxhall were places of frivolous amusement resorted to even by the higher classes. From these and other haunts of folly, lumbering coaches or sedan chairs conveyed home the ladies through the dimly lighted or pitch dark streets, and the gentlemen picked their way over the ruggedly paved thoroughfares, glad of the proffered aid of the link boys, who crowded round the gates of such places of public entertainment or resort as were open at night, and who, arrived at the door to which they had escorted some fashionable foot passenger, quenched the blazing torch in the trumpet-looking ornament, which one now and then still sees lingering over the entrance to some house in an antiquated square or court, a characteristic relic of London in the olden time. A walk along some of the more quiet and retired streets at the west end of the metropolis, which were scenes of fashion and gayety a hundred years ago, awaken in the mind, when it is in certain moods, trains of solemn and healthful reflection. We think of the generations that once, with light or heavy hearts, passed and repassed along those ways, too many of them, we fear, however burdened with earthly solicitudes, sadly heedless of the high interests of the everlasting future. Led away by the splendid attractions of this world, its wealth, power, praise, or pleasure, they too surely found at last that what they followed so eagerly, and thought so delightful, was only a delusion, like the gorgeous mirage of the desert. Some few years hence, and we shall have ourselves gone the way of all the earth. Other feet will tread the pavement, and other eyes drink in the light, and look upon the works and ways of fellow-mortals; and other minds will call up recollections of the past, and moralize with sombre hues of feeling as we do now; and where then will the reader be? It is no impertinent suggestion in a work like this, that he should make that grave inquiry—nor pause till, in the light which illumines the world to come, he has duly considered all the materials he possesses for supplying a probable answer.

CHAPTER VII.

LONDON DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

"In the latter half of the century few public buildings were erected, yet among them were two of the noblest which the city even now possesses, namely, the Excise Office and Newgate. The end of the last century was, however, marked by the erection of the East India House, more decidedly Grecian than anything else which preceded it. Compared with what it has since been, architecture then was rather at a low ebb, for although one or two of the buildings above mentioned are noble works, they must be taken as exceptions to the meagre, insipid, and monotonous style which stamps this period, and which such erections as the Adelphi and Portland-place rather confirm than contradict. With the exception of St. Peter-le-poor, 1791, and St. Martin Outwich, 1796, not one church was built from the commencement of the reign of George III., till the regency."— Penny Cyclopædia, art. London . This remark applies to the city. Paddington church was built during that period, and opened in 1791. The chief public buildings of the period, besides those noticed, are the Mansion House, finished in 1753; Middlesex Hospital, built 1756; Magdalen Hospital, 1769; Freemasons' Hall, 1775; Somerset House, in its present state, 1775; and Trinity House, 1793. Westminster bridge was finished in 1750, and Blackfriars begun ten years afterwards; these, with London bridge, were the only roadways over the Thames during the eighteenth century.

The extremities of London continued to extend. Grosvenor-place, Hyde Park Corner, was reared 1767; Marylebone-garden was leased out to builders 1778; Somers-town was commenced 1786. "Though London increases every day," observes Horace Walpole in 1791, "and Mr. Herschel has just discovered a new square or circus, somewhere by the New-road, in the via lactea , where the cows used to feed; I believe you will think the town cannot hold all its inhabitants, so prodigiously the population is augmented." "There will be one street from London to Brentford, ay, and from London to every village ten miles round; lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish-town for building 1,400 houses; nor do I wonder; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saw it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was a mob; not at all, it was only passengers."

The Westminster Paving Act, passed in 1762, was the commencement of a new system of improvement in the great thoroughfares. The old signs, posts, water-spouts, and similar nuisances and obstructions, were removed, and a pavement laid down for foot passengers.

But until the introduction of gas, in the present century, the streets continued to be dimly lighted, and the services of the link boy at night to be in general requisition. In 1760, names began to be placed on people's doors, and four years subsequently, the plan of numbering houses originated. Burlington-street was the first place in which this convenient arrangement was made. In Lincoln's-inn-fields it was next followed.

The history of London, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, was emphatically that of an age of public excitements, some of them specially pertaining to the city, while in others the whole country shared. The removal of Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, from the high ministerial position he had occupied—an event which occurred in 1757—produced very strong ebullitions of feeling in the hearts of his numerous admirers. London largely participated in the popular admiration of that extraordinary man, and expressed a sense of his services by voting him the freedom of the city, which was presented to him in an elegant gold box. The success of the British arms during the next year, in the taking of Louisbourg, led to great rejoicings, illuminations, and the presentation to the king of loyal congratulatory addresses. In the year following, the wants of the army being found very urgent, and men being unwilling to enlist, a subscription was opened at Guildhall to meet the exigency by raising a fund, out of which the amount of premium on enlistment might be augmented. The taking of Quebec, in 1759, again awakened enthusiastic joy; and the record of bonfires, ringing of bells, and kindred demonstrations, are conspicuous in the civic annals for that year. The accession of George III., in 1760, was marked by the full payment to the young sovereign of all those loyal dues, which are tendered by the metropolitan authorities and community when such an important event occurs as the transfer of the sceptre into new hands. But the public excitement in his favor was soon exchanged for feelings equally intense of an opposite character. John Wilkes appeared on the stage of public life in 1754—a man utterly destitute of virtue and principle, but possessed of certain qualities likely to render him popular, especially an abundance of humor, and a wonderful degree of assurance. By attacking Lord Bute, the favorite of the king, but no favorite with the people, he gained applause, and was set down as a patriot. In No. 45 of the "North Briton," a newspaper which he edited, a violent attack on his majesty appeared; indeed, it went so far as to charge him with the utterance of a falsehood in his speech from the throne. The house of Wilkes was searched, and his person seized for this political offence; but sheltering himself under his parliamentary privileges, he obtained his dismissal from custody. Upon an information being filed against him by the attorney-general, he declined to appear, when the House of Commons took the matter in hand, and declared Wilkes's paper to be a false, seditious, and scandalous libel, and ordered it to be burned by the common hangman. The sympathies of many in London being with Wilkes, a riot ensued upon the attempt which the sheriffs made to execute the parliamentary sentence. Wilkes's disgrace was turned into a triumph, and the metropolis rang with the applause of this worthless individual. Unhappily, the proceedings against him had involved unconstitutional acts, which are sure to produce the indignation of a free people, and to transform into a martyr a man who is really criminal. He was next convicted of publishing an indecent poem; but again the improper means adopted to secure his conviction placed him before the people as a ministerial victim, and diverted attention from his flagrant vices. But the reign of this demagogue in London, properly speaking, did not begin till 1768, when he returned to England, after a considerable absence, and offered himself as a candidate for the city. Though exceedingly popular, he failed to obtain his election, but afterwards, with full success, he appealed to the Middlesex constituency. Then came the tug of war between the electors and the House of Commons. The latter invalidated the return, in which the former persisted. Riots were the consequence. One dreadful outbreak took place in St. George's-fields, when the military were ordered to fire, and some were killed or wounded. Three times Wilkes was returned by the people to parliament, and three times the parliament returned him to the people. This violation of popular rights was deeply resented in London, and throughout the country. It also made Wilkes's fortune; £20,000 were raised for him; all kinds of presents were showered on the favorite; and his portrait, in every form of art, was in universal request. In the Common Pleas, he afterwards obtained a verdict against Lord Halifax for false imprisonment and the illegal seizure of papers. He was subsequently elected sheriff, alderman, and mayor of London; and finally, in 1779, sank down into neglect much more comfortably than he deserved, as chamberlain of the city. His history singularly illustrates how illegal proceedings defeat their object, though it be right; and how a rash eagerness in pursuing the ends of justice overturns them.

In connection with the Wilkes affair, there is a remarkable episode in the municipal history of the metropolis. A most serious misunderstanding took place between the monarch and the corporation. The proceedings of ministers in reference to the Middlesex election, led the civic authorities to present to the king a very strong remonstrance, begging him to dissolve the parliament, and dismiss the ministry. The monarch took time to consider what reply he should make to so formidable an application, and at length informed the corporation that he was always ready to receive the requests and listen to the complaints of his subjects, but it gave him concern to find that any should have been so far misled as to offer a remonstrance, the contents of which he considered disrespectful to himself, injurious to parliament, and irreconcilable with the principles of the constitution. Among the aldermen, there were some who disapproved of the remonstrance, and now strongly protested against it; but Beckford, who then, for the second time, filled the office of lord mayor, and strongly felt with the common council, livery, and popular party, earnestly resisted such opposition, and encouraged the citizens to maintain their stand against what was considered an exercise of arbitrary power on the part of government. The mayor summoned the livery, and delivered a speech just adapted to the assembly. Another remonstrance was drawn up, to be presented to his majesty by the lord mayor and sheriffs. To this the king replied, that he should have been wanting to the public and himself, if he had not expressed his dissatisfaction at their address. Beckford, who must have been a bold and eloquent man, breaking through all the rules of court etiquette, delivered an extempore speech to the sovereign, which he concluded by saying, "Permit me, sire, to observe, that whoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavor, by false insinuations and suggestions, to alienate your majesty's affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from the city of London in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in, and regard for, your people, is an enemy to your majesty's person and family, a violator of public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution, as it was established at the glorious and necessary revolution." Of course, no reply was given to this impromptu address, but it seemed to have excited no little wonder among the courtiers present on the occasion. On the birth of the princess Elizabeth, a short and loyal address of congratulation, avoiding all controversial topics, was presented by the same chief magistrate; to which his majesty answered, that so long as the citizens of London addressed him with such professions, they might be sure of his protection. The stormy agitation was of brief continuance. The ripples on the stream soon subsided. With this interview the good understanding between the king and the city appears to have been restored, though the bold remonstrance the latter had presented produced no practical effect. The popular lord mayor, who signalized himself especially by his speech in the royal closet, was removed by Divine Providence out of this life before the term of his mayoralty expired. After his decease, the citizens, to mark their esteem for his character, erected a monument to him in Guildhall, and engraved on it the speech which had given him so much celebrity.

The great dispute between the mother country and America, which began as early as 1765, could not fail to excite a deep interest in the capital of the empire. "The sound of that mighty tempest," as it was termed by Burke, was heard with deep concern at first by the London merchants, as threatening to injure their commercial interests; and when the Stamp Act, so odious from its influence in that respect, was repealed soon after it was passed, the whole city beamed with gladness and satisfaction. When, however, America asserted her independence, many in London, as well as in other parts of the country, felt their national pride so much wounded, that they encouraged the war, till finding the conflict with so distant and powerful a colony all in vain, they were willing to hear of peace, though at the expense of losing the chief part of the British territory in the western hemisphere. But in the feelings that the protracted struggle awakened, the metropolis only shared in connection with the provinces; they must, therefore, be passed over with this cursory notice, that we may attend to what particularly constitutes the history of the city.

This plunges us at once amidst scenes of excitement, much more serious and shocking than any others that have lately come under review. In 1779, the Protestant Association was formed, in consequence of some of the Roman Catholic disabilities being removed. The society met at Coachmakers' Hall, Noble-street, Foster-lane, under the presidency of lord George Gordon, whose general eccentricity bordered upon madness, and whose professed abhorrence of Popery sank into fanaticism. The association, in May, 1780, determined to petition for a repeal of the Act just passed, and it was resolved that the whole body should attend in St. George's-fields, on the second of June, to accompany lord George with the petition to the House of Commons. His lordship enforced this motion with vehement earnestness, and said that if less than 20,000 of his fellow-citizens attended him, he would not present the document. At the time and place appointed, an immense multitude assembled, computed at 50,000 or 60,000, wearing blue ribbons in their hats, marshaled under standards displaying the words "No Popery." In three divisions they marched six abreast, over Londonbridge, towards Westminster, being reinforced at Charing Cross by great numbers on horseback and in carriages. The then narrow avenues to the houses of parliament were thronged by these crowds, and such members of the legislature as they disliked were treated with insult, as they made their way through the dense concourse. The petition was presented; but when that business was finished for which the populace had been invited by the foolish nobleman, he found it impossible to disperse them. Harangues, so potent in convening the host, were utterly powerless when employed for their separation. Nor did the magistracy attempt a timely interference; but the mob was left to its own wild will, and like a swollen torrent, which bursts its banks, it poured over the city with destructive havoc. The chapels of the Bavarian and Sardinian embassy were pulled down that night. On the next day, Saturday, they committed no violence; but on Sunday they assailed a popish chapel and some houses in Moorfields, within sight of the military, who stood by unable to do anything, because they had no commands from the chief magistrate, who alone could authorize them to act. All that was done was to take a few of the rioters into custody, while the rest were left without any attempt at their dispersion. Utterly unnerved, the lord mayor virtually surrendered the city at this momentous crisis into the hands of the mob. Encouraged by the impunity with which they were left to pursue their own course, they attacked on the next day the house of Sir George Sackville, in Leicester-square, because he had moved the Catholic Relief Bill. On Tuesday, waxing bolder than ever, they besieged the old prison of Newgate, where a few of their associates were confined. Breaking the roof, and tearing away the rafters, they descended into the building by ladders, and rescued the prisoners. Two eye-witnesses, the poet Crabbe and Dr. Johnson, have left their impressions of this extraordinary scene: "I stood and saw," says the former of these writers, "about twelve women and eight men ascend from their confinement to the open air, and conducted through the streets in their chains. Three of them were to be hanged on Friday. You have no conception of the frenzy of the multitude. Newgate was at this time open to all; anyone might get in, and what was never the case before, anyone might get out."

"On Wednesday," says Dr. Johnson, "I walked with Dr. Scott, (lord Stowell,) to look at Newgate, and found it in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred, but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day." Besides Newgate, lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury-square was pulled down, and his valuable library burned. The Fleet, King's Bench, the Marshalsea, Wood-street Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, were all opened, and such a jail delivery effected as the citizens had never witnessed before. A stop was put to business on the Wednesday; shops were closed; pieces of blue, the symbol of Protestant truth and zeal, were required to be hung out of the windows, and "No Popery" chalked on the doors. Before night, even the Bank was assailed, but not without a dreadful and destructive repulse from the military who garrisoned it, and were ordered to act. It is stated that the king, alarmed at the danger of his capital, and indignant at the inaction of the magistrates, took upon himself to command the services of the military for putting down the riot. While thirty fires were blazing in the streets, and the inhabitants passed a sleepless night, full of anguish, a large body of soldiers was engaged in the terrible, though necessary work of suppressing the riot by force. This was accomplished at the expense of not less than five hundred lives. By Friday, quietude was restored. Lord George Gordon was apprehended, but was acquitted upon trial, his conduct not coming within the limits of the statute of treason. Sixty of the deluded creatures, who at first were excited by his mischievous agitation however, had to pay the extreme penalty of the law. A happy contrast to this brutal kind of excitement has been recently (1850-51) displayed in the calm, deep, and, for the most part, intelligent resistance made to a far different measure—the papal aggression, in the creation of territorial bishoprics; one really calculated to excite far greater opposition. The years 1780 and 1850, stand out at the extremes of a period which has witnessed, in London and elsewhere, a change in public thought and habit of the most gratifying kind; and to what can this be so fairly ascribed, under the providence and blessing of God, as to the increase of instruction, especially religious instruction, through the medium of Sabbath and other schools, together with the distribution of the Bible and tracts, as well as other meliorating agencies operating on society?

Eight years after the anti-popery riots, another excitement, of a different kind, rolled its waves over the public mind in London; not, indeed, confined to the metropolis, but concentrating its force there, as the scene of the occurrence which produced it. This was the trial of Warren Hastings, for his alleged mal-administration of Indian affairs. But the great length to which it was extended wearied out the public patience, and ere the forensic business came to its close the court was forsaken, and the numerous London circles, at first thrown into a storm of feeling by the occurrence, resumed their former quietude, and almost forgot the whole matter.

The same year that Hastings' trial commenced, the public sympathy and sorrow were aroused in London, and throughout the nation, by the melancholy mental illness of George III., but the next year his sudden recovery created universal joy, which was demonstrated in the metropolis, after the usual fashion.

Then loyalty, with all his lamps
New trimmed, a gallant show,
Chasing the darkness and the damps,
Set London in a glow.

It was a scene, in every part,
Like those in fable feigned,
And seemed by some magician's hand
Created and sustained.

On the 23d of April, a general thanksgiving was held for the king's recovery, and on that account his majesty, accompanied by the royal family, went in procession to attend public worship in St. Paul's Cathedral; thus reminding us of the words of the Babylonish monarch, "Mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation."

At the close of the eighteenth century, the proceedings of revolutionary France sent a fresh stream of excitement through the public mind of England. On one side or the other, in sympathy with or in aversion to the measures adopted on the opposite side of the channel, most politicians, high and low, eagerly ranged themselves. The efforts of Mr. Pitt to prevent anything like the enactment here of what our neighbours were doing, were condemned or applauded by the two parties according to the principles they espoused. "The trials of Hardy, Tooke, Thelwall, and others," says a minister, then a student near the metropolis, "which took place not long after my entrance on college life, agitated London to an extent which I have never seen equaled, though my life has fallen on times and events of the most prodigious and portentous character."— Autobiography of the Rev. W. Walford . Clubs were formed of a more than questionable description, of which we remember to have received an illustrative anecdote from a citizen of London, now gray-headed, but then in the flower of his youth. Invited by a person of about his own age to attend a meeting, held in some obscure street, he was surprised on entrance to find a number of men, ranged on either side a room, sitting beside long tables, with one at the upper end, where sat the president for the evening. Several foaming tankards were brought in, when the president calling on the company to rise, took up one of the vessels, and striking off with his hand the foam that crested the porter, gave as a toast, "So let all —— perish." The blank was left to be filled up as each drinker pleased. The avowed dislike to kings, entertained by the boon companions there assembled, suggested to the visitor the word intended for insertion, and he gladly left the place, not a little alarmed lest he should be suspected of sympathy in treasonable designs.

Following political excitement came a monetary crisis, which struck a panic through the body of London merchants; for, in 1797, the Bank of England suspended its cash payments. But after all these storms, which severely tested its strength, the vessel of the state, under the blessing of the Almighty, righted itself, and scenes of political calm again smiled, and tides of commercial prosperity flowed upon old London.

In passing on to notice the general state of society in the metropolis during the last half of the eighteenth century, it is painful to notice the continuance of some of the revolting features which mark an earlier age. The old-fashioned burglaries, with the robberies and rogueries of the highway, were still perpetrated. A walk out of London after dark was by no means safe; and therefore, at the end of a bill of entertainment at Bellsize House, in the Hampstead-road, St. John's-wood, there was this postscript—"For the security of the guests, there are twelve stout fellows, completely armed, to patrol between London and Bellsize, to prevent the insults of highwaymen and footpads who infest the road." To cross Hounslow-heath or Finchley-common after sunset was a daring enterprise; nor did travelers venture on it without being armed, and even ball-proof carriages were used by some. At Kensington and other places in the vicinity of London, it was customary on Sunday evenings to ring a bell at intervals, to summon those who were returning to town to form themselves into a band, affording mutual protection, as they wended their way homewards. Town itself did not afford security; for George IV. and the Duke of York, when very young men, were stopped one night in a hackney-coach and robbed on Hay-hill, Berkeley-square. The state of the police, as these facts indicate, was most inefficient; but when the law seized on its transgressors, it was merciless in the penalty inflicted. Long trains of prisoners, chained together, might be seen marching through the streets on the way to jail, where the treatment they received was cruel in the extreme, and much more calculated to harden than to correct. The number of executions almost exceeds belief; and every approach to town exhibited a gibbet, with some miserable creature hanging in chains. These public spectacles missed their professed object, and the frequent executions did anything but check the commission of crime. The lowest classes constantly assembled to witness such spectacles, regarded them generally as mere matters of amusement, or as affording opportunities for the indulgence of their vices.

Some startling revelations of the state of things among London tradesmen, as well as the lowest orders, were made before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1835, relative to the period fifty years earlier. "The conduct of tradesmen," said one of the witnesses, "was exceedingly gross as compared with that of the same class at the present time. Decency was a very different thing from what it is now; their manners were such as scarcely to be credited. I made inquiries a few years ago, and found that between Temple-bar and Fleet-market, there were many houses in each of which there were more books than all the tradesmen's houses in the streets contained when I was a youth." He mentions, also, the open departure of thieves from certain public-houses, wishing one another success—"In Gray's-inn-lane," he remarks, "was the Blue Lion, commonly called the Blue Cat. I have seen the landlord of this place come into the room with a large lump of silver in his hand, which he had melted for the thieves, and pay them for it. There was no disguise about it. It was done openly." "At the time I am speaking of, there were scarcely any houses on the eastern side of Tottenham-court-road; there, and in the long fields, were several large ponds; the amusement here was duck-hunting and badger-baiting; they would throw a cat into the water, and set dogs at her; great cruelty was constantly practised, and the most abominable scenes used to take place. It is almost impossible for any person to believe the atrocities of low life at that time, which were not, as now, confined to the worst paid and most ignorant of the populace."

Turning to look for a moment at the opposite extreme of society, it is delightful to mark the improvement which had there taken place. While drawing-rooms and levees were held as before, though less frequent, the former being confined to once a week; while equipages of similar fashion as formerly continued to roll through the parks, Piccadilly, and the Mall; while the costumes and habits of courtiers exhibited no great variation; while theatres, and other places of amusement, were frequented by the fashionables; while gossiping calls in the morning, and gay parties at night, were the common and every-day incidents of West-end life—a very obvious improvement arose in the morals and general tone of feeling of people about court, in consequence of the exemplary and virtuous character of George III. and Queen Caroline. Fond of quiet and domestic repose, retiring into the bosom of their family, surrounded by a few favorite dependents, encouraging a taste for reading and music, and ever frowning upon vice in all its forms, they exerted a powerful influence upon those around them, and turned the palace into a completely different abode from what it had been in the time of the earlier Georges. Religion, too, if not in its earnest spirituality, yet in its decorous observances and its moral bearings, was maintained and promoted, both by royal precept and example. The monarch and his family were accustomed to attend regularly upon the services in the chapel attached to St. James's Palace.

The revival of religion in London, to which we adverted in a former chapter, produced permanent results. During the last half of the century, Christian godliness continued to advance. Whitefield's labors, as often as he visited the metropolis, produced a deep impression on the multitudes who, in chapels or the open air, were eager to hear him. Whitefield died in America, but a monument is erected to his memory in Tottenham-court Chapel, the walls of which often echoed with his fervid oratory. Wesley's exertions were prolonged till the year 1792. After a life of most energetic effort in the cause of Christ, this remarkable man expired at his house in London, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age.

The countess of Huntingdon, Whitefield's early friend, exerted in London a powerful religious influence, "scattering the odors of the Saviour's name among mitres and coronets, and bearing a faithful testimony to her Divine Master in the presence of royalty itself." She has left behind her in the metropolis two remarkable proofs of her religious liberality and zeal, in Zion and Spafields Chapels, both of which she was the means of transforming out of places of amusement into houses for the service and praise of God.

The labors of Mr. Romaine, the minister of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and St. Anne, Blackfriars, claim special notice. Previous to his induction to those parishes, he had preached at St. Dunstan's and St. George's, Hanover-square, exciting great attention, and, by the benediction of God, enjoying great success. The parishioners in the latter church were sometimes incommoded by the vast concourse who came to hear this evangelical clergyman. On one occasion, the Earl of Northampton rebuked them for complaining of the inconvenience, observing that they bore with patience the crowded ball-room or play-house. "If," he said, "the power to attract be imputed as matter of admiration to Garrick, why should it be urged as a crime against Romaine? Shall excellence be considered exceptionable only in Divine things?" Mr. Romaine was strongly opposed by some who disapproved of his sentiments, and was soon turned out of St. George's Church; after which the countess of Huntingdon made him her chaplain for awhile, in which office he preached in her drawing-room to the nobility, in her kitchen to the poor. Her house, where these services were performed, was in Park-street. Settled, at length, as the rector of the two churches above-named, this eminent servant of Christ—of whom it has been said that he was a diamond, rough often, but very pointed, and the more he was broken by years the more he appeared to shine—pursued uninterruptedly his holy and edifying ministrations till the time of his death in 1795. He was interred in St. Andrew's Church, where a monument, not devoid of artistic beauty, and executed by the elder Bacon, a well-known sculptor of that day, distinguishes the place of his remains. In 1780, there came to minister in the parish of St. Mary Woolnoth another individual, whose praise is in all the churches. This was John Newton, the friend of the poet Cowper. He lies buried in the edifice where he loved to proclaim the glorious Gospel of the blessed God; and on the tablet raised as a memorial of his worth is inscribed the following succinct account of his eventful life and of his character, so illustrative of Divine grace, in words written by himself: "John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy."

Rowland Hill, originally a clergyman of the establishment, and never fully sympathizing with any dissenting denomination, though confessing to many clerical irregularities, occupies a distinguished place among the men who devoted themselves to the faithful preaching of the Gospel in the metropolis. Surrey Chapel, which has proved a school in which many spirits have been trained for the celestial world, was erected by him in Blackfriars-road, 1782, and there till his death he continued to preach.

Two very celebrated prelates filled the see of London during this eventful period in the history of religion: Dr. Lowth, the elegant scholar and able commentator, who was translated to London in 1777; and Dr. Porteus, who succeeded him on his death in 1786, and though inferior in talents and learning, earned for himself a considerable literary reputation as a Christian divine, and distinguished his episcopate, which lasted till 1808, by his pious diligence and catholic charity.

Science, literature, and art, were promoted in London during the period before us, by the establishment of several well-known institutions. The British Museum was formed in 1753, in consequence of the will of Sir Hans Sloane, who bequeathed his large collection of curiosities to government for £20,000, which was £30,000 less than they cost him. An act of parliament was passed for their purchase, and Montague House, Bloomsbury, was taken and fitted up for the reception of Sloane's treasures, and other collections, scientific and literary, upon which great sums of money were expended. The Royal Academy, for the encouragement and improvement of British artists and sculptors, was constituted in 1768, and the first public exhibition was made at Somerset House in 1780. The Royal Institution in Albemarle-street was opened in 1799. The College of Surgeons was incorporated in 1800.

Other institutions, sacred to humanity and benevolence, and fraught with great benefit to multitudes of our suffering race, were originated within the last fifty years of the eighteenth century. In 1755, Middlesex Hospital was founded, the generous exertions which led to it having begun some years earlier. Three years later, the Magdalen Hospital, for the reformation and relief of penitent females, was opened in Prescott-street, Goodman-fields, and afterwards transferred to an appropriate building, erected for the purpose in St. George's-fields, in 1709. The foundation-stone of the Lying-in Hospital, on the Surrey side of Westminster-bridge, was laid in 1765; and a similar institution was begun in the City-road in 1770. The Royal Humane Society, for the recovery of persons from drowning, commenced in 1774. The Royal Literary Fund, for the relief of poor authors, was instituted in 1790.

The religious societies of London, whose character adorns the English capital, eclipsing its artistic and commercial splendour, chiefly belong to the present century. The London Missionary Society, however, for preaching the Gospel of Christ among the heathen, began as early as 1795. The declaration of the Society was signed at the Castle and Falcon, Aldersgate-street. In the year 1709 was formed, also, the institution by which the present volume is issued—the Religious Tract Society. Commencing with small beginnings, it has, through the prospering hand of God upon its labors, been privileged to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ in one hundred and ten languages and dialects; and, in the course of half a century, to circulate its varied messengers of mercy to the vast amount of five hundred millions of copies.

Since the conclusion of the eighteenth century, London has undergone an unprecedented change, upon which the limits of this volume will not allow us to touch. The city, which is still swelling every year, in a degree which, if Horace, Walpole were living, would fill him with greater surprise than ever, is really new London. Few of the principal streets exhibit the appearance they did fifty years ago, and the architectural alteration is but a type of the social one. The superior sanitary arrangements, the more efficient police, the better education of most classes of society, the augmented provision for religious instruction and worship, the more decidedly evangelical tone of preaching in the metropolitan pulpits, and the increase of real piety amongst the population, must strike everyone, on even a superficial comparison of the past and present; and when we consider the great change wrought in half a century, it inspires encouragement in relation to the future. The impulse which things have received of late has been so mighty, that there is no calculating the acceleration of their future progress. Thus the remembrance of the past yields advantage, and we pluck hopes, "like beautiful wild flowers from the ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland for the living forehead."— Coleridge . On taking a longer reach of comparison, an amount of wonder is inspired not to be adequately expressed. Had some sage in the Roman senate, two thousand years ago, proclaimed that the day would come, when an obscure town, situated on the Thames, a river scarcely known then to the Latin geographer, would vie with the city in which they were assembled on the Tiber, nay, eclipse it, and wax in glory while the other waned, that prediction would have strangely crossed their pride, and would have been indignantly pronounced incredible. Yet that day has come. The British town, then a mere inclosure, containing a few huts, has swelled into a city teeming with a population of above two millions, crowded with public buildings and costly habitations, filled with commerce, wealth, and luxury, the mirror of modern civilization, the metropolis of a mighty empire, and the wonder of the world—while the Roman city, then the mightiest and most splendid on the face of the earth, and the mistress of the globe, so far as its regions were discovered, retains no traces of her glory, and is chiefly interesting on account of her ancient name and associations.

Happily the genius of civilization in the two cities is completely diverse. In the early days of the Roman kingdom and republic, the people fought in self-defence; in later times, from a pure thirst for glory and dominion. In the best periods of its history, the virtues of the citizens were of the martial cast, and found a fostering influence in all the institutions of the state. To Rome, which then cradled a warlike people, London presents a contrast on which we look with satisfaction. London is the type of commercial civilization. The merchant, not the soldier, is most prominent and influential. The inhabitants of the English metropolis and country, it may be safely asserted, are looking not to armies as sources of greatness, and objects for gratulation, but to the busy thousands who are deepening and spreading the resources of national wealth by their commercial and manufacturing industry. The spirit of mercantile enterprise is as strongly stamped upon the English character, in their metropolis of the nineteenth century, as the spirit of war was stamped upon the character of the Romans in their metropolis before the Christian era. Rome had her trade as well as her army—her Ostia, whither her vessels brought for her use the luxuries of the East; but it was not there, but to the Campus Martius, where their legions performed their evolutions, that the stranger would have been taken to see the greatness of the republic. So the metropolis of the British empire is the rendezvous of a great military establishment, as well as an emporium of merchandise; but it is to the scenes on the borders of the Thames, to her spacious docks, her crowded shipping, her stores and warehouses, with all the accompaniments of busy commerce, presenting a spectacle which perfectly overpowers the mind with wonder—it is to those scenes that we should take the stranger, to impress him with an idea of the greatness of our chief city. The Hyde Park review, with cuirasses and swords glittering in the sun, and martial music floating through the air, affords a brilliant holiday entertainment, but all must feel that the English spirit of the nineteenth century is not there expressed. It is very true that the love of war has not lost its hold entirely on the public mind; that there are many who still pant for the conflict, and for the honors and prizes which successful warfare brings; but, we repeat it, the spirit of the nineteenth century is not there expressed, but it finds its exponent in the earnest activity which is ever witnessed round the neighborhood of London-bridge and the Exchange. The time is coming—is already come, when, as most intelligent men turn over the pages of the world's history, they award the palm of the noblest civilization to London, a city full of merchants and artisans, rather than to Rome, a city full of soldiers, flushed with the pride of victory, and drunk with the blood of the slain.

In all that relates to the state of society, the genius of the people, public opinion, general intelligence, taste, feeling, character—the comparison is decidedly in favor of the English capital. This is to be ascribed to many causes—to the intermingling of races, an insular position, political revolutions, enlarged experience, providential discoveries, and the creation of sentiments and opinions during centuries of mental activity; but, above all, it is to be ascribed to Christianity, which has long had a strong hold upon the hearts of multitudes, and which has indirectly exercised a most beneficial reflex influence upon the character of others, who have little regard for its doctrinal principles. The richest forms of modern civilization in London are founded on our religion. The elevation of woman to her proper rank, the improved character of the judicial code, the extinction of domestic slavery, the elevation of serfs of the soil to freemen having an estate in their own labor, the value set on life, the philanthropic institutions which abound—are all the results of evangelical light and principle. Let any one walk through the streets of London, and compare the aspect of things with what was exhibited to the man who walked through the streets of ancient Rome—and with all the vice and misery which exist in the former, there are found elements of social welfare, the acknowledged creation of Christian morals, at work, unknown in the latter. Indications of intelligence, peace, freedom, and charity, are found here, which were wanting there. The power and permanence of London must depend upon her morality and religion.

We look with intense interest to the young men of London. With pain, such as we cannot describe, we regard the gay, the dissolute, the intemperate—those who drown the higher faculties of the soul in sensual indulgence, who degrade their mental, moral, and spiritual nature, and, forgetting their relationship to angels, sink to the level of the brutes that perish. With pleasure, however, equally indescribable, we turn to the steady, the sober, the virtuous, the enlightened—those who labor after mental improvement, and especially those who seek spiritual excellence, who ask and practically answer the question, "While I am attending to the intellectual culture of the mind, ought I not to prepare for that eternity to which I am hastening, where moral and spiritual character will be all in all?" and who, repairing to the word of God, the source of all religious wisdom, have become the subjects of a discipline, which adorns the intellect with the beauties of sanctity, and prepares the soul for the vision and worship of heaven. Of such, London may well say with the mother of the Gracchi, but in a far more important sense, "These are my jewels."

Let it be the endeavor, as it is the duty of London citizens, to aid all wise schemes for its physical and intellectual amelioration, but especially such as relate to morals and religion. With a clear eye, a loving heart, a steady hand, and a determined will, each must apply himself to pulling down the evil, and building up the good. The moral health of a city should be the care of all its members. The most precious object amidst the multitude of precious things in the chief city of England is the citizen himself. Man, out of whose intellect, energy, and power, all the rest has grown—man, in whose capacities are found the germs of a greatness, the cultivation of which will a thousand times repay the toil it involves. The noblest of enterprises, be it remembered, is to be found, not in commercial speculation, or political reform, or even literary and scientific knowledge, but in the promotion of Christ's holy and saving religion, and in the recovery and purification of the soul, through faith in him, and its preparation for other realms of being in the infinite Hereafter. The enduring magnificence of such labor and its results exceeds all the doings of earthly ambition, even as the mighty Alps and Andes surpass the houses of ice and snow which children in their sports build up, and which are melting away before that sun in whose rays they glitter.

Or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 18mo., pp. 222.

Or, the Sad End of Bad Ways. Reminiscences of the West India Islands. Second Series, No. II. Three Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 159.

Or, the Story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. By a Sunday-School Teacher. Two Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 64.

A Pattern for Sunday-School Teachers and Tract Distributers. By J. A. JAMES. 18mo., pp. 84.

Or, Business and Pleasure. By the Author of "Nature's Wonders," "Village Science," etc. Sixteen Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 269.

By Rev. J. T. BARR, Author of "Recollections of a Minister," "Merchant's Daughter," etc. Five Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 286.

Conversations on the Mountains of the Pentateuch, and the Scenes and Circumstances connected with them in Holy Writ. 18mo., pp. 202.

Originally written in French, by Rev. CESAR MALAN, of Geneva. With Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 82.

Or, the First Twenty Sabbaths of the Pilgrims of New England. By DR. W. A. ALCOTT. 18mo., pp. 95.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of London in Modern Times

LONDON
IN MODERN TIMES.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY.

CHAPTER II.

LONDON DURING THE CIVIL WARS.

CHAPTER III.

THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE CITY TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.

CHAPTER VI.

LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER VII.

LONDON DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Chap.
	INTRODUCTION
I.	LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY
II.	LONDON DURING THE CIVIL WARS
III.	THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON
IV.	THE FIRE OF LONDON
V.	FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE CITY TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY
VI.	LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
VII.	LONDON DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Project Gutenberg eBook of London in Modern Times

LONDON IN MODERN TIMES.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY.

CHAPTER II.

LONDON DURING THE CIVIL WARS.

CHAPTER III.

THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE CITY TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.

CHAPTER VI.

LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER VII.

LONDON DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

LONDON
IN MODERN TIMES.