London in Modern Times / or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

by Unknown

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.