This history of an old city opens many views into the realms of the past, crowded with the picturesque, the romantic, and the religious—with what is beautiful in intellect, sublime in feeling, noble in character—and with much, too, the reverse of all this. Buildings dingy and dilapidated, or tastelessly modernized, in which great geniuses were born, or lived, or died, become, in connection with the event, transformed into poetic bowers; and narrow dirty streets, where they are known often to hav

London was hugely growing and swelling on all sides when Elizabeth was on the throne, as may be seen from John Stow, from royal orders and municipal regulations. Desperately frightened were our fathers lest the population should increase beyond the means of support, lest it should breed pestilence or cause famine. But their efforts to repress the size of the then infant leviathan, so far as they took effect, only kept crowded together, within far too narrow limits, the ever-increasing number of

Charles I. unfurled his standard at Nottingham, in the month of August, 1642, and staked his crown and life on the issue of battle; a high wind beat down the flag, an evil omen, as it was deemed by some who saw it, and a symbol, as it proved, of the result of the unnatural conflict. Sadly was England's royal standard stained before the fighting ended. London took part at the beginning with the parliament. Its Puritan tendencies; its awakened indignation at the assaults made by misguided monarchs

Terrific pestilence had often visited London, and swept into the eternal world multitudes of victims; but no calamity of this kind that ever befel the inhabitants can be compared with the awful visitation of the great plague year. It broke out in Drury-lane, in the month of December, 1664. For some time it had been raging in Holland, and apprehensions of its approach to the shores of England had for months agitated the minds of the people. Remarkable appearances in the heavens were construed int

"One woe is past, another woe cometh quickly." Just a year after the plague was at its height, the great fire of London occurred. On Sunday, September 3d, 1666, soon after midnight, the house of Farryner the king's baker, near London-bridge, was discovered to be in flames. Before breakfast time no less than three hundred houses were consumed. Such a rapid conflagration struck dismay throughout the neighborhood, and unnerved those who, in the first instance, by prompt measures might have stayed t

Great as was the consternation described in the foregoing chapter, scarcely less terror was produced in the minds of the citizens by the apprehension of a Dutch invasion about the same time. In 1666, even before the fire, this feeling was excited. The ships of France and Holland approached the Thames, and engaged with the English fleet. "After dinner," says Lady Warwick, whose entry in her journal, under date, July 29, brings the occurrence home to us—"after dinner came the news of hearing the g

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

"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 b