London in Modern Times

d 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

nd 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. Ge

nknown, 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 la

ork 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

rved 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

ommoners, 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

dneedle-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 Thre

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racterized 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 ma

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. Covetousnes

nd 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 th

n 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

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 a

iour 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

ous 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 th

ct 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

truth is everyw

rth by povert

ing 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

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

ers, 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 th

e royal family played at cards, and all persons properly dressed were admitted. After the demise of the queen in 1737, they were held

ound 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.

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

uated 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 fo