The scene is laid at the door of a French chapel in Hog Lane,—a part of the town at that time almost wholly peopled by French refugees or their descendants.
A kite blown from an adjacent field,[138] being entangled on the roof of the chapel, hangs pendant on the wall. One of Mr. Hogarth's commentators asserts, that "this is introduced only to break the disagreeable uniformity of a wall."[139] It certainly has that effect; but Hogarth so rarely presents any object without a particular and pointed allusion, that I am inclined to think he had some other meaning. May it not be designed to intimate that the good people who compose the congregation, after being blown out of their own country by a religious storm, found a peaceful harbour under this roof, safely sheltered from the hurricanes of enthusiasm and the blasts of superstition?
By the dial of St. Giles' Church, in the distance, we see that it is only half-past eleven. At this early hour, in those good times, there was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the evening. From twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as equally worthy of their serious attention.
The dead cat and choked kennels mark the little attention shown to the streets by the scavengers of St. Giles'. At that time noxious effluvia was not peculiar to this parish. The neighbourhood of Fleet Ditch, and many other parts of the city, were equally polluted.
Even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants. We ridicule the people of Paris and Edinburgh for neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the kennels of a street in the vicinity of St. Paul's Church are floated with the blood of slaughtered animals every market day. Moses would have managed these things better: but in those days there was no physician in Israel!
EVENING.
"One sultry Sunday, when no cooling breeze
Was borne on Zephyr's wing to fan the trees;
One sultry Sunday, when the torrid ray
O'er nature beam'd intolerable day;