London

In other words, it was dearer in 1678 than it is in 1890, and that when the purchasing power of money was four times what it is now. Now it may be reckoned that in a house where there are children the average consumption of bread is at this day ten pounds weight a head. In this household of seven the average consumption was no more than eight pounds altogether. Setting aside the servants, the family had no more than two pounds of bread apiece every week, or four and a half ounces a day, which is one slice not too thick. Oat cake, however, they used in good quantity, so that the bread would be considered as a luxury.

The old vice of the English in eating vast quantities of meat to very little bread or vegetable could no longer be a reproach to them. By this time there was abundance of vegetables of every kind. We are especially told that in the serving of the boiled beef great quantities of vegetables, carrots, parsnips, cauliflowers, cabbage, spinach, beans, peas, etc., were served with it, and so also with other meat. There is no mention of potatoes, though one had always thought that they were firmly established in the country by this time. Their own garden was not able to furnish them with enough fruit or vegetables, which they have to buy constantly. They also buy nosegays in the summer.

The prices of things in the time of Charles the Second, may be found interesting. In considering them, remember, as stated above, that the general purchasing power of money was then four times that of the present time. A leg of mutton generally costs two-and-sixpence; a shoulder, two shillings; a hand of pork, eighteenpence; "a cheese"—they had one every week, but it is not stated how much it weighed—varies from one-and-twopence to one-and-eightpence. Butter is eight or nine pence a pound; they used about a pound a week. Sugar is sixpence a pound. They bought their flour by sixpennyworths, and their coals in small quantities for eighteenpence each week during the winter, so that their fires must have been principally kept going with wood. Once a month the washer-woman is called in, and sheets are washed; therefore, the washing was all done at home. Raisins and currants at twopence a pound, eggs, nutmegs, ginger, mace, rice, suet, etc., proclaim the pudding. It was made in fifty different ways, but the ingredients were always the same, and in this family they evidently had pudding every day. Cakes, also, they had, and pies, both fruit pies and meat pies, and open tarts. These were all sent to the bake-house to be baked at one penny each, so that the kitchen contained no oven. Candles were fivepence a pound, but the entries of candles are so irregular that one suspects the accounts to be imperfect. Herrings were bought nearly every week, and sometimes ling—"a pole of ling." Bacon was sevenpence a pound. Rice was also sevenpence a pound. Oranges came in about December; cherries in their season were twopence a pound; gooseberries, fourpence, sold, I suppose, by the measure; pease, sixpence a peck; beans, fourpence a quart; asparagus ("sparragrasse") was in April excessively dear—we find them giving six shillings and twopence, a most extravagant expenditure for a single dish; two weeks later it has gone down to eighteenpence for two hundred. But how could so careful a housewife spend six and twopence on a single dish? A "sallet"—that is, a lettuce—is one penny. Once in six weeks or so we find mention of "earbs"—that is, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc.—for twopence. "Cowcumbers" are a penny apiece, and a favorite vegetable. Radishes, carrots, turnips, French beans are also bought. In the spring cream-cheese appears. Sweet brier is bought every year, one knows not for what, and roses by the bushel, evidently for rose-water. This is the only allusion to the still-room, which undoubtedly formed part of the ménage. Nothing is said of preserved fruits, home-made wines, distilled waters, or pickles, which then formed a great part of house-keeping. They pickled everything: walnuts, gherkins, asparagus, peaches, cauliflowers, plums, nectarines, onions, lemons, barberries, mushrooms, nasturtium buds, lime-tree buds, oysters, samphire, elder roots. They distilled rose-buds and rose-leaves, lavender, walnut-water, and cherry-water. They always had plague-water handy, hysterical-water, and other sovereign remedies. They "jarred" cherries, quinces, hops, apricots, damsons, and peaches. They made syrups in many pleasing varieties. They knew how to keep green pease, green gooseberries, asparagus, and damsons till Christmas. They made wine out of all the fruits in their season; the art still survives, though the club-man of the town turns up his nose at the delicate cowslip, the robust ginger, and the dainty raspberry—a dessert wine. They potted everything, from pigeon to venison. Nothing is said of these things in the account-books. But the large quantity of vinegar bought every week shows the activity of the pickling department. Only once is there any appearance of spirits. It is when a bottle of brandy is bought, at one shilling and twopence. Perhaps that was used to fortify the raspberry and the currant wines. Very little milk is bought. Sometimes for many months there is no mention of milk. This may have been because their own dairy supplied them. Perhaps, however, milk was only occasionally used in the house. The food of very young children, infants after they were weaned, was not then milk but pap, which I suppose to have been some compound of flour and sugar. There is no mention in the accounts at all of tea, coffee, or chocolate. Tea was already a fashionable drink, but at this time it was sixty shillings a pound—a price which placed it quite beyond the reach of the ordinary household. Coffee was much cheaper; at the coffee-houses it was sold at a penny a cup, but it had not yet got into private houses.

Turning to other things besides food. Schooling "for E. J." was twopence a week. His shoes were one shilling and ninepence the pair. The cobbler who made them was Goodman Archer; Goody Archer was his wife. A letter cost twopence or fourpence; everything bought or ordered was brought by the carrier, which greatly increased the expense; a lady's gloves cost two shillings a pair; her silk stockings, ten shillings, and ordinary stockings, six shillings a pair; her shoes, three shillings; her mask, one shilling; her pattens for muddy weather were two shillings a pair; her knitting-needles cost a penny apiece; her steel bodkin, twopence; her needles, eightpence the half-hundred; her pins, ninepence a thousand; her ribbons, threepence a yard. As for the little things required for the house, they were far dearer than now, considering especially the value of money. For instance, a mop cost a shilling; a pitcher, fivepence; glasses, one shilling and eightpence each; an earthenware pan, fourpence; a broom, sixpence; a mustard-pot, one shilling and sixpence; a padlock, tenpence; a mouse-trap, tenpence; eleven shillings were given for a pair of candlesticks, probably of brass. Holland was two shillings a yard; a "newsbook" cost a penny. On one occasion—only once—it is recorded that the family bought a book. Only one, and then it was so expensive that they could never afford to buy another. This is the entry: "Paid a gentleman for a book, £3 10s. 0d." What book, one asks in wonder, could be worth seventy shillings in the year 1678—that is, about £15 of present money—to a man who was neither a scholar nor a collector?

The servants were up and took their breakfast at six in the winter and at five in the summer. The family breakfasted at eight. They had, for the most part, cold meat and beer with oat-cake. Pepys tells us of a breakfast of cold turkey-pie and goose—imagine a poor, weak creature of this generation making a breakfast of turkey-pie and goose, or of goose alone, with small beer! At another time he had bread and butter, sweetmeats, and strong drinks. And on another occasion he sat down to a table spread with oysters, anchovies, and neats' tongues, with wine "of all sort."

At two o'clock dinner was served. If it was boiled-beef day, the broth was served in porringers, bread or oat-cake being crumbled into it with herbs. When it was not boiled-beef day, they had fresh meat or poultry (the latter only seldom), and, in season, what are called in the accounts "pateridges"—it really matters little how a bird is spelled, provided it is well cooked and ready to be eaten. The invariable rule of the house was to have two joints a week, mutton, veal, pork, or poultry. This provided four dinners, or perhaps five. The other two or three dinners were consecrated to boiled beef. Calf's head and bacon was (deservedly) a favorite dish; they did not disdain tripe; black puddings were regarded with affection; a hog's cheek was reckoned a toothsome kickshaw; anchovies, prawns, and lobsters are also mentioned with commendation. On most days they had a pudding—the good old English pudding, boiled or baked, with raisins and "currance" in it, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, mace, ginger, suet, and sometimes milk—a famous pudding of which no one was ever tired.

The menu of a dinner where there was company is preserved in Pepys. Everything was served at once. They had marrow-bones, a leg of mutton, three pullets, and a dozen larks in one dish, a tart, a neat's tongue, anchovies, and a dish of prawns, and cheese. This was for thirteen persons.

The dishes were served in pewter, as they are still for the students in the hall of Lincoln's Inn. The supper, of which very little is said, was like the breakfast, but not quite so solid. Cheese played a large part in the supper, and in summer "a sallet"—cost, one penny—or a dish of "redishes" helped out the cold meat. After supper a cool tankard of ale—not small beer—stood within the master's reach while he took his pipe of tobacco. In the winter there was a posset or a toasted crab in the jug.

One is sorry to part with this interesting family, but, unfortunately, further information is lacking; I could give the inventory of the master's linen and that of his wife, but these details want general interest. So they disappear, the master, the mistress, Mr. Arthur, and the baby. Let us hope that they all enjoyed a long life and prospered exceedingly. After pondering so long over their account-books, one seems to know them so well. They have become personal friends. They sit on the green cloth chairs in the room with the green carpet and the green curtains and the fine tapestry. The chairs are high and straight in the back. Madam has her knitting in her lap. The master and Mr. Arthur sit on opposite sides of the fire, their heads adorned with beautiful flowing perriwigs of brown hair, their own color, which they have curled every week at an expense of twopence. They are sipping hot spiced ale and talking of last Sunday morning's sermon. They are grave and responsible people, rather fat in the cheeks because they take so little exercise and so much beer. In the window stands a row of books. Among them was Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Herrick's Hesperides, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Braithwaite's Arcadian Princess, Milton's Paradise Lost, the first edition in ten books; a Book of Husbandry, a Prophetical Almanack—that of Montelion—and I suppose, if we only knew it, the book for which they paid the "gentleman" £3 10s.—was it a Bible, illustrated? It is only seventeen years since the commonwealth; there are Puritans still; their talk chiefly turns on godly matters; the clamor and the scandal of the Court hardly so much as reaches their ears. The clouds roll over; they are gone. Oh, world of change and fleeting shadows! Whither do they go, the flying shadows, the ghosts, the groups and pictures of the men and women that flit before our eyes when we raise the wizard's wand and conjure up the spirits of the past?

IX

GEORGE THE SECOND

There was little communication between town and town or between town and country. The rustic never left his native village unless he enlisted. Then he never returned. The mechanic lived out his life over his work on the spot where he was born and where he was brought up. The London shopkeeper never went farther afield than Hampstead, and generally found sufficient change of air at Bagnigge Wells or in Moorfields. If wealth and trade increased, which they did by leaps and bounds, it was still on the old lines: the City jealous of its rights, the masters keeping the wealth for themselves, and the men remaining in silence and submission.

One important change may, however, be noted. The City had by this time ceased altogether to attract the younger sons of the country gentry; the old connection, therefore, between London and the counties was severed. The chief reason was that the continual wars of the century found employment and a career for all the younger sons in the services, and that the value of land went up enormously. Trade was no longer recruited from the better sort, class distinctions were deepened and more sharply defined even among the middle class: a barrister looked down upon a merchant, and would not shake hands with an attorney, while a simple clergyman would not associate with a man in business. Sydney Smith, for instance, refused to stay a night at a country-house because its owner was a banker and a tradesman. The real extent of the contempt with which trade was regarded, and the width of the breach between the court and the City, was illustrated when the corporation entertained the Queen on her accession at Guildhall, when the Lord Mayor and the corporation, the givers of the feast, were actually set down at a lower table separate from the Queen their guest! Think of that other great dinner chronicled above, where the mayor entertained four kings and played cards with them after dinner!

In the picture of London just before the present age we will confine ourselves as much as possible to the life of the bourgeois. For the court, for the life of the aristocracy, the statesmen, the poets, the scholars, the artists—they are sufficiently written about elsewhere. Here we will keep as much as we can to the great mass of the London citizens who know nothing of court and noble, but are sober, hard-working, honest folk, their chief care being to pay their way, avoid bankruptcy, and amass a certain sum of money before they die; their chief subject of admiration being the man who leaves behind him a great fortune made in trade; their chief pleasures being those of the table.

First, for the extent of the City.

London in 1750 was spreading, but not yet rapidly. East and west it spread, not north and south. Eastward the City had thrown out a long arm by the river-side. St. Katherine's Precinct was crowded; streets, two or three deep, stretched along the river-bank as far as Limehouse, but no farther. These were inhabited by the people who made their living on the river. Immediately north of these streets stretched a great expanse of market-gardens and fields. Whitechapel was already a crowded suburb, filled with working-men. This was one of the quarters where the London mob was born and bred, and free from interference of clergy or rich folk. Clerkenwell, with the parts about Smithfield, was another district dear to thieves, pickpockets, and rowdies. Within its boundaries the City was well and carefully ordered. Unfortunately, this order did not extend beyond the walls. Outside there were no companies, no small parishes, no rich merchants, no charities, schools, or endowments, and practically it was without churches.

On the north side, Moorfields still remained an open space; beyond lay Hoxton Fields, White Conduit Fields, Lamb's Conduit Fields, and Marylebone Fields. The suburb of Bloomsbury was beginning. A crowded suburb had sprung up north of the Strand. Westminster was a great city by itself. Southwark, now a borough with half a million people, as great as Liverpool, occupied then a little strip of marshy land not half a mile broad at its widest. East and west, to Lambeth on the one side and to Redriff on the other, was a narrow strip of river-side, dotted with houses and hamlets.

The walls of the City were never formally pulled down. They disappeared bit by bit. Houses were built close to them and upon them: they were covered up. Excavations constantly bring to light some of the foundations. When a church-yard was placed against the wall, as at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and at St. Alphege, London Wall, some portions were allowed to remain. The course of the wall is perfectly well known, and has often been mapped. It is strange, however, that the corporation should have been so careless as to make no attempt at all to preserve some portions of this most interesting monument.

The gates still stood, and were closed at sunset, until the year 1760. Then they were all pulled down, and the materials sold. Temple Bar, which was never a City gate, properly speaking, remained until the other day. The gates were, I suppose, an obstruction to traffic, yet one regrets their disappearance. They were not old, but they had a character of their own, and they preserved the memory of ancient sites. I wish they could have been preserved to this day. A statue of Queen Elizabeth, which formerly stood on the west front of Lud Gate, is, I believe, the only part of a City gate not destroyed. It is now placed on the south wall of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, where thousands pass by every day, regardless of this monument of London before the fire!

I have found, in a pamphlet written (1754) to advocate certain improvements in the City, glimpses of things too petty for the dignity of history, yet not without interest to one who wishes to reconstruct the life of the time. For instance, the streets were not cleaned, except in certain thoroughfares; at the back of the Royal Exchange, for instance, was a scandalous accumulation of filth suffered to remain, and the posterns of the City gates were equally neglected and abused. The rubbish shot into the streets was not cleared away; think of the streets all discharging the duty of the dust-bin! Cellar doors and windows were left open carelessly; stone steps projected from the houses far across the foot-path. Where pavement had been laid down it was suffered to become broken and ruinous, and so left. Houses that had fallen down or been burned down were left unbuilt, an ugly hole in the line of the street. Sheds for shops were placed against the walls of churches, as at St. Antholin's, Budge Row, and at St. Ethelburga's, where they still remain, transformed into houses. Sheds for shops have been built out in the street before the houses in certain places. Houses rebuilt are pushed forward into the street. Live bullocks driven through the streets are a constant danger; mad dogs are another danger—why is there no tax on dogs? Beggars and vagrants swarm in every street. The common people practise habitually a profaneness of speech which is shocking. These are some of the things complained of by my pamphleteer. He next advocates certain improvements. He would establish a public Mercantile Library—we now have it at the Guildhall. He complains that the City gates have been encroached upon and defaced—six years later they were taken down. He shows us that while within the City itself there were oil-lamps set up at regular intervals in all the streets, there were none outside the Freedom. At that time beyond St. Martin's le Grand, and in the district of St. Bartholomew's, the streets were left in darkness absolute. This was shortly afterwards remedied. He wants stronger and stouter men for the City watch, and would have some stationed in different parts of the City in the daytime. That, too, was done, after many years. We must consider that the old theory was that the citizens should in the daytime keep order for themselves. He asks why no wheel carriages are permitted on the north side of St. Paul's. He might ask the same question still, and the answer would be that it is a very great happiness to be able to keep one, if only one, street in London free from carts and omnibuses.

He then proceeds to propose the erection of equestrian statues in various parts of the City. This has now been accomplished, but yet we are not wholly satisfied. He would put up piazzas, porticos, and triumphal arches here and there; he would remove the bars and chains of Holborn, Smithfield, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, and Whitechapel, and would put up stone piers with the City arms upon them. We have almost forgotten those bars and chains. He proposes a new stone bridge across the river at the mouth of Fleet Ditch. Blackfriars Bridge has been erected there. It is a most instructive pamphlet, written, it is evident, by a man much in advance of his age.

The best description of London about this time is certainly Gay's "Trivia." Witness the following lines on Thames Street:

If you were to ask any person specially interested in the Church of England—not necessarily a clergyman of that Church—which was the deadest and lowest and feeblest period in the history of the Anglican Church, he would, without the least hesitation, reply that the reign of George the Second covered that period. This is universally accepted. I think, however, that one may show, without much trouble, that this belief is not based upon inquiry into the facts of the time. The Church of George the Second did not, it is true, greatly resemble that of this generation: it had its own customs, and it had its own life. It is certain that the churches were what is commonly called "ugly"—that is to say, they were built by Wren, or were imitations of his style, and had nothing to do with Early English, or Decorated, or even Perpendicular. Also, it is certain that the congregations sat in pews, each family by itself; that there were some few pews of greater dignity than others, where sat my Lord Mayor, or the aldermen, or the sheriffs, or the masters of City companies. It is also certain that all the churches had galleries; that the services were performed from a "three-decker;" that the sermon was preached in a black gown, and that the clergyman called himself a minister, and not a priest. All these things are abominations to some of us in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There were also pluralists; the poor were left very much to themselves, and the parish was not "worked" according to modern ideas. There were no mothers' meetings, no day in the country, no lectures and tea-meetings; no activity; no "working," in fact, at all. But was it quite a dead time? Let us see.

There were at that time a hundred and nine parish churches in London and Westminster. At forty-four of these there was daily service—surely this is a recognized indication of some religious activity—at one of these there were three daily services; at all of them—the whole hundred and nine—there were services every Wednesday and Friday, and on all holy days and saints' days. There were endowments for occasional sermons in nearly every church. So much of the Puritan spirit remained that the sermon was still considered the most important part of Church service; in other words, sound doctrine being then held to be essential to salvation, instruction in doctrine was considered of far greater importance than prayer or praise; a fact which quite sufficiently accounts for the slovenly character of Church services down to thirty or forty years ago. The singing, observe, might be deplorable, but the sermon—the essential—was sound.

Sound doctrine. That was the one thing needful. It trampled on everything else. Of commercial morality, of the duties and responsibilities of masters towards servants, of any rights possessed by the producers either in their produce or in their government, or in their power to better their position, not one word was ever said. The same men who would gravely and earnestly and with fervent prayers discuss the meaning of a text, would take a share in a slaver bound for the Guinea Coast and Jamaica, or go out to watch the flogging of a wretch at the cart-tail, or the hanging of a poor woman for stealing a loaf of bread, without a thought that they were doing or witnessing anything but what was right and laudable. The same men would cheerfully pay their servants wages just enough to live upon and make tenfold, twentyfold profit to themselves, and think they were doing God service. So far the religious life of the century was low and feeble. But the science of morals advances; it has very little indeed to do with sound doctrine, but a great deal with human brotherhood; could we look into the middle of the next century we should perhaps shudder to discover how we ourselves will be regarded as inhuman sweaters and oppressors of the poor. Let us, therefore, cease to speak of our forefathers with contempt. They had their religion; it differed from ours; we have ours, and our grandchildren's will differ from that.

There were no Sunday-schools. These came in towards the end of the century; still there were schools in almost every parish in the City. At these schools the children were instructed in the rudiments of the Christian faith. Why, the free-schools of the City, without counting the great grammar-schools of St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Charter House, Christ's Hospital, the Mercers', St. Olave's, and St. Saviour's, gave instruction to five thousand boys and half that number of girls. There was not a poor boy of respectable parents in the whole City, I believe, who could not receive a sound education—quite as good as he would now get at a Board School, and on Sunday he had to go to church and was duly catechised.

The theory of parish organization in the last century was very simple, yet it was effective. The parishes were small—some of them tiny in their dimensions—so that, although they were densely populated, the rector or vicar knew every soul that belonged to his church. The affairs of the people—the care of the poor—were provided for by the companies. The children were taught at the free-schools or the grammar-schools. At fourteen a boy was made a prentice, and entered some livery. Once in a company, his whole life was assured. He would get regular work; he would have the wages due; he would marry; his children would be cared for as he had been. He would be looked after not by the Church—that was not the function of the Church—but by his company, in sickness and in age, as well as in time of strength and work. Every Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, and holy day there were services, with sermons; but we need not suppose that the working-man considered it his duty to flock to the week-day services. On Sunday, of course, he went, because the whole parish was expected to be in church. They did attend. Station and order were preserved within the church as without. The rich merchants and the masters sat in the most beautiful pews possible to conceive, richly carved with blazoned shields and figures in white and gold, with high backs, above which the tops of the wigs proudly nodded. These pews were gathered about the pulpit, which was itself a miracle of carved work, though perhaps it was only a box stuck onto the wall. The altar, the walls, the galleries were all adorned with wood-carvings. Under the galleries and in the aisles, on plain benches, sat the folk who worked for wages, the bedesmen and bedeswomen, and the charity children. The retail people, who kept the shops, had less eligible pews behind their betters. They left the church in order, the great people first, then the lesser, and then the least. No order and rank—all to be equal—in the house of the Lord? Nonsense! How could that be allowed when He has ordained that they shall be unequal outside His house? The notion of equality in the Church is quite a modern idea. It is not yet accepted, though here and there it is tolerated. It is, in fact, revolutionary; it is subversive of rank. Are we to understand that it is as easy for a pauper to get into the kingdom of heaven as a prince? We may say so, but, my friends, no prince will ever be got to believe it.

An excellent example of a last-century church is to be seen in Thames Street. It is the Church of All Hallows the Great. The building is a square room, with no beauty except that of proportion; it is rich in wood-carvings; the pulpit, lavishly adorned with precious work, ought to belong to some great cathedral; it has got a screen of carved wood right across the church which is most beautiful. The old arrangement of the last century is still preserved; the pulpit is placed against the middle of the wall; the pews of the merchants are gathered about, while the pews of the common people are those nearest to the communion table. Formerly the latter were appropriated to the watermen's apprentices. These youths, once the hope of the Thames, sat with their backs to the table, and have left the record of their presence in their initials carved with dates on the sloping book-stand. There they are, "J. F. 1710," "B. R. 1734," with a rude carving of a ship, showing how they beguiled the tedium of the sermon. The arrangement of the pews illustrates the importance in which the sermon was held. The people, as at Paul's Cross, gathered about the preacher. The modern impatience with which the sermon is received is mainly owing to the fact that we no longer feel so strongly the importance of sound doctrine; we have come to think, more or less clearly, that the future of a man cannot possibly depend upon the question whether he has at any time expressed assent or consent to certain doctrines which he is wholly incapable of understanding. We see around us so many forms of creed that we have grown careless, or tolerant, or contemptuous, or charitable concerning doctrine.

There were penalties for absence from service. A man who stayed away was liable to the censure of the Church, with a fine of one shilling for every offence. He was called upon to prove where he had been to church, because it was not thought possible that anybody should stay away from service altogether. If a person harbored in his house one who did not attend the parish church, he was liable to a fine of £20 a month; the third part of the fine being given to the informer. I do not suppose that these laws were ever rigidly enforced; otherwise the Nonconformists would have cried out oftener and louder. But their spirit remained. During the week, the parish, save for the services, was left to take care of itself. There were no visits, no concerts, no magic lanterns, no Bible classes, no missionary meeting—nothing—everybody attended to his own business. The men worked all day long; the women looked after the house all day long; in the evenings the taverns were crowded; there were clubs of all kinds; everybody took his tobacco and his glass at a tavern or a club, and no harm was thought of it.

For the old people there were almshouses, and there was the bounty of the companies. And since there must be always poor people among us, there were doles in every parish. Special cases were provided for as they arose by the merchants themselves. Finally, if one was sick or dying, the clergyman went to read the office appointed for the sick; and when one died, he read the office appointed for the dead.

All this is simple and intelligible. The Church provided instruction in doctrine for old and young, forms of prayer, consolation in sickness, baptism, communion, and burial for all; some churches had charitable endowments; the rest was left to the parishioners themselves. This is not quite the modern idea of the parish, but it seems to have worked as well as our own practice. Their clergyman was a divine, and nothing more; ours undertakes the care of the poor first of all; he is the administrator of charity; he is, next, the director of schools, the organizer of amusements, the leader of athletics, the trainer of the choir, the president of musical societies, the founder of working-lad's institutes; he also reads the service at church, and he preaches a short sermon every Sunday; but the latter functions are not much regarded by his people. Their clergyman was a divine; he was therefore a scholar. Therein lies the whole difference. We have no divines now, and very few scholars among the parish clergy, or even among the bishops. Here and there one or two divines are found upon the Episcopal bench, and one or two at Oxford and Cambridge; in the parish churches, none. We do not ask for divines, or even for preachers; we want organizers, administrators, athletes, and singers. And the only reason for calling the time of George the Second a dead time for the Church seems to be that its clergy were not like our own.

Let us walk abroad and view the streets. They are changed, indeed, since Stow led us from St. Andrew's Undershaft to St. Paul's. The old gabled houses are all gone, except in the narrow limits of that part spared by the fire; in their places are tall houses with large sash windows and flat façade. Within, they are wainscoted, the fashion of tapestry having completely gone out. Foot-passengers are protected by rows of posts at intervals of four or five feet. Flat paving-stones are not in general use, and those that have been laid down are small and insecure. The shops are small, and there is little pretence at displaying the goods; they have, however, all got windows in front. A single candle, or two at the most, illuminate the wares in the evening or the short afternoons of winter. A sign hangs out over every door. The drawing of St. Dunstan's in the West shows that part of Fleet Street before the paving-stones were laid down. The only pavement both for the road and the footway consisted of large, round pebbles, over which the rolling of the vehicles made the most dreadful noise. In the year 1762, however, an improvement was introduced in Westminster, followed by the City of London in 1766. The roads were paved with squares of Scotch granite laid in gravel; the posts were removed; a curb was laid down; gutters provided, and the footway paved with flat stones. About the same time the corporation took down the overhanging signs, removed the City gates, covered over Fleet Ditch, and broadened numerous narrow passages. The drawing here reproduced of the Monument and the beginning of London Bridge dates between 1757 and 1766; for the houses are already down in the bridge—this was done in 1757, and the posts and signs are not yet removed from the street. The view gives an excellent idea of a London street of that time. The posts were by no means all removed. The drawing of Temple Bar from Butcher Row, taken as late as 1796, in which they are still standing, shows this. It also shows the kind of houses in the lower streets. Butcher Row, though it stood in the Strand at the back of St. Clement's Church, a highly respectable quarter, was one of the most disreputable places in the whole of London—given over to crimps, flash lodging-houses, and people of the baser sort.

We who now object to the noise of a barrel-organ in the street, or a cry of milk, or a distant German band, would be driven mad by a single day of George the Second's London streets. Hogarth has touched the subject, but only touched it. No one could do more in a picture than indicate the mere fringe of this vast subject. Even on the printed page we can do little more than the painter. For instance, here were some of the more common and every-day and all-day-long noises. Many of the shopkeepers still kept up the custom of having a prentice outside bawling an invitation to buy—buy—buy. To this day, butchers at Clare Market cry out at the stalls, all day long, "Rally up, ladies! Rally up! Buy! Buy! Buy!" In the streets of private houses there passed a never-ending procession of those who bawled things for sale. Here were a few of the things they bawled—I am conscious that it is a very imperfect list. There were those who offered to do things—mend chairs, grind knives, solder pots and pans, buy rags or kitchen stuff, rabbit skins, hair, or rusty swords, exchange old clothes or wigs, mend old china, cut wires—this excruciating, rasping operation was apparently done in the open—or cooper casks. There were, next, the multitude of those who carried wares to sell—as things to eat and drink—saloop, barley broth, rice, milk, furmity, Shrewsbury cakes, eggs, lily-white vinegar, hot peascods, rabbits, birds, pullets, gingerbread, oysters, honey, cherry ripe, Chaney oranges, hot codlins, pippins, fruit of all kinds, fish taffity tarts, fresh-water, tripe, tansy, greens, mustard, salt, gray pease, water-cresses, shrimps, rosemary, lavender, milk, elder-buds; or things of domestic use—lace, ribbons, almanacs, ink, small coal, sealing-wax, wood to cleave, earthen-ware, spigots, combs, buckles, leghorns, pewter pots, brooms in exchange for old shoes, things of horn, Holland socks, woollen socks and wrappers, brimstone matches, flint and steel, shoelaces, scissors and tools, straps, and the thousand-and-one things which are now sold in shops. The bearward came along with his animal and his dogs and his drum, the sweep shouted from the house-top, the ballad-singer bawled in the road, the tumbler and the dancing-girl set up their pitch with pipe and drum. Nobody minded how much noise was made. In the smaller streets the good-wives sat with open doors, running in and out, gossiping over their work; they liked the noise, they liked this perambulating market—it made the street lively, it brought the neighbors out to look, and it pleased the baby. Then the wagons went ponderously grinding over the round stones of the road, the carts rumbled, the brewers' sledges growled, the chariot rattled, the drivers quarrelled, cursed, and fought. A great American, now, alas! gone from us, spoke of the continual murmur of London as of Niagara afar off. A hundred years ago he would have spoken of the continual roar.

At this time the wealth and trade of London had reached a point which surprised and even terrified those who considered the present compared with the past and looked forward to the future. "On a general view," writes Northouck in 1772, "of our national circumstances it is but too probable that the height of our prosperity is now producing our ruin." He hears the cry of the discontented; it means, he thinks, ruin. Well, there were to be mighty changes, and still more mighty changes of which he suspects nothing. Yet not ruin. For, whatever happens, the energy and the spirit of the people will remain. Besides, Northouck and those of his time did not understand that the world is always growing wider.

The great merchants of the City still lived within the old boundaries: they had their country-houses, but they spent most of their time in town, where their houses were stately and commodious, but no longer palaces like those of their predecessors. Two or three of them remain, but they are rapidly disappearing. One of these, destroyed about six years ago, illustrated the house of a merchant at a time when his offices and his residence were one. The rooms for his clerks were on the ground floor; the merchant's private room looked out upon a garden at the back. In the basement was his strong-room, constructed of stone, in a deep recess. On the first floor were the living-rooms. The garden was not large, but it contained a stone terrace fine enough for a garden of much larger dimensions, a mulberry-tree, and a vine.

There were no palaces left in the City; no noblemen lived there any longer. The Lord Mayor's Mansion, built in 1750, was the only palace unless we count Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, Gresham College, and the Halls of the Companies. But in every street except those given up entirely to trade, such as Cheapside, stood the substantial house of the City Fathers.

Never before had the City been so wealthy. Despite the continual wars of the eighteenth century, nothing could check the prosperity of the country. French privateers scoured the ocean in chase of our merchantmen; every East Indiaman had to run the gantlet all the way from Madeira to Plymouth; the supremacy of the sea was obstinately disputed by France; yet more ships escaped than were taken. Our Indiamen fought the privateer and sank him; our fleets retaliated; our frigates protected the merchantmen, and when, as happened sometimes, we had the pleasure of fighting Spain as well as France, the balance of captures was greatly in our favor. "Sir," said Lord Nelson to the King, when Spain declared war against us, "this makes all the difference. It promised to be a poor war; it will now be a rich war."

This was written by the Water Poet, John Taylor, a little later. The river was the most convenient and the most rapid road from one end of London to the other, at a time when the roads were miry and full of holes, and when there were no coaches. And long after coaches became numerous, the watermen continued to flourish. There were only two bridges over the river; many places of amusement—the Paris Gardens, Cupid Gardens, St. George's Fields, and Vauxhall—lay on the south side: it was pleasant and quiet on the water, save for the quarrels and the cursing of the watermen. The air was fresh: the view of the City was noble: the river was covered with barges and pleasure-boats furnished with banners and streamers of silk; flocks of swans swimming about—little wonder if the citizens continued to prefer the river to their muddy lanes and noisy streets. Even in the last century, too, the watermen had not ceased to sing as they rowed. They still sang—with a "Heave and hoe, rumbelow"—their old ballad of "Row the boat, Norman, to thy leman," made, it was said, on John Norman, first of the mayors who was rowed to Westminster by water instead of riding, as had been the previous custom.

Those who have read Professor Seeley's book on the Extension of Britain know how our conquests, our power, and our trade increased during that long struggle with France. We had losses; we made an enemy beyond the Atlantic who should have been our firmest friend and ally; we were hampered with continental possessions; we were continually suffering enormous drains of money and of men; we were throwing away our lusty youth by hundreds of thousands; yet we continued to grow stronger and richer every year. The wars advanced trade; the wars pushed forward our territories; our increased trade paid for the wars; the wars provided occupation for younger sons.