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.