xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOLUME II. Frontispiece Old Palace of Whitehall, from the River. Temp. The Theatre in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Printing Press at which Franklin worked Craven House, Drury Lane, 1800 - Page 3 17 44 46 57 112 Entrance Front of Old Drury Lane Theatre in Brydges Entrance to Old Covent Garden Theatre, 1794 after Paul Sandby Old Gate of Whitehall Palace, designed by Holbein. The Banqueting House, Whitehall St. James's Palace, 1650, from a print by Hollar 139 180 182 207 246 271 292 The INITIAL LETTERS and Tail-pieces designed by J. W. ARCHER and C. T. THOMPSON. (The Initial Letter to Chapter XII. represents the Conduit at St. James's.) The COVER designed by W. HARRY ROGERS. THE TOWN. INTRODUCTION. Different impressions of London on different passengers and minds. Extendibility of its interest to all. London before the Deluge! Its origin according to the fabulous writers and poets. First historical mention of it. Its names. British, Roman, Saxon, and Norman London. General progress of the city and of civilisation. Range of the Metropolis as it existed in the time of Shakspeare and Bacon. Growth of the streets and suburbs during the later reigns. "Merry London" and "Merry England." Curious assertion respecting trees in the city. IN one of those children's books which contain reading fit for the manliest, and which we have known to interest very grave and even great men, there is a pleasant chapter entitled Eyes and no Eyes, or the Art of Seeing.* The two heroes of it come home successively from a walk in the same road, one of them having seen only a heath and a hill, and the meadows by the water-side, and therefore having seen nothing, the other expatiating on his delightful ramble, because the heath presented him with curious birds, and the hill with the remains of a camp, and the meadows with reeds, and rats, and herons, and king-fishers, and seashells, and a man catching eels, and a glorious sunset. In like manner people may walk through a crowded city, and see nothing but the crowd. A man may go from Bond Street to Blackwall, and unless he has the luck to witness an accident, or get a knock from a porter's * See Evenings at Home, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld. B 2 DIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS ON burthen, may be conscious, when he has returned, of nothing but the names of those two places, and of the mud through which he has passed. Nor is this to be attributed to dulness. He may, indeed, be dull. The eyes of his understanding may be like bad spectacles, which no brightening would enable to see much. But he may be only inattentive. Circumstances may have induced a want of curiosity, to which imagination itself shall contribute, if it has not been taught to use its eyes. This is particularly observable in childhood, when the love of novelty is strongest. A boy at the Charter-House, or Christ-Hospital, probably cares nothing for his neighbourhood, though stocked with a great deal that might entertain him. He has been too much accustomed to identify it with his school-room. We remember the time ourselves when the only thought we had in going through the metropolis was how to get out of it; how to arrive, with our best speed, at the beautiful vista of home and a pudding, which awaited us in the distance. And long after this we saw nothing in London, but the book-shops which have taught us better. "I have often," says Boswell, with the inspiration of his great London-loving friend upon him, "amused myself with thinking how different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it merely as the seat of government in its different departments; a grazier as a vast market for cattle; a mercantile man as a place where a prodigious deal of business is done upon 'Change; a dramatic enthusiast as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments; a man of pleasure as an assemblage of taverns, &c. &c.; but the intellectual man is struck with it as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible." It does not follow that the other persons whom Boswell speaks of are not, by nature, intelligent. The want of DIFFERENT PASSENGERS AND MINDS. 3 curiosity, in some, may be owing even to their affections and anxiety. They may think themselves bound to be occupied solely in what they are about. They have not been taught how to invigorate as well as divert the mind, by taking a reasonable interest in the varieties of this astonishing world, of which the most artificial portions are still works of nature as well as art, and evidences of the hand of Him that made the soul and its endeavours. Boswell himself, with all his friend's assistance, and that of the tavern to boot, probably saw nothing in London of the times gone by,—of all that rich aggregate of the past, which is one of the great treasures of knowledge; and yet, by the same principle on which Boswell admired Dr. Johnson, he might have delighted in calling to mind the metropolis of the wits of Queen Anne's time, and of the poets of Elizabeth; might have longed to sit over their canary in Cornhill with Beaumont and Ben Jonson, and have thought that Surrey Street and Shire Lane had their merits, as well as the illustrious obscurity of Bolt Court. In Surrey Street lived Congreve; and Shire Lane, though nobody would think so to see it now, is eminent for the origin of the Kit-Kat Club, (a host of wits and statesmen,) and for the recreations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., of Tatler celebrity, at his contubernium, the Trumpet. It may be said that the past is not in our possession; that we are sure only of what we can realise, and that the present and future afford enough contemplation for any man. But those who argue thus, argue against their better instinct. We take an interest in all that we understand; and in proportion as we enlarge our knowledge, enlarge, ad infinitum, the sphere of our sympathies. Tell the grazier, whom Boswell mentions, of a great grazier who lived before him,—of Bakewell, who had an animal that produced him in one season the sum of eight hundred guineas; or Fowler, whose horned cattle sold for a value 4 EXTENDIBILITY OF ITS INTEREST. equal to that of the fee-simple of his farm; or Elwes the miser, who, after spending thousands at the gaming-table, would haggle for a shilling at Smithfield; and he will be curious to hear as much as you have to relate. Tell the mercantile man, in like manner, of Gresham, or Crisp, or the foundation of the Charter House by a merchant, and he will be equally attentive. And tell the man, par excellence, of anything that concerns humanity, and he will be pleased to hear of Bakewell, or Crisp, or Boswell, or Boswell's ancestor. Bakewell himself was a man of this sort. Boswell was proud of his ancestors, like most men that know who they were, whether their ancestors were persons to be proud of or not. The mere length of line flatters the brevity of existence. We must take care how we are proud of those who may not be fit to render us so ; but we may be allowed to be anxious to live as long as we can, whether in prospect or retrospect. Besides, the human mind, being a thing infinitely greater than the circumstances which confine and cabin it in its present mode of existence, seeks to extend itself on all sides, past, present, and to come. If it puts on wings angelical, and pitches itself into the grand obscurity of the future, it runs back also on the more visible line of the past. Even the present, which is the great business of life, is chiefly great, inasmuch as it regards the interests of the many who are to come, and is built up of the experiences of those who have gone by. The past is the heir-loom of the world. Now in no shape is any part of this treasure more visible to us, or more striking, than in that of a great metropolis. The present is nowhere so present: we see the latest marks of its hand. The past is nowhere so traceable: we discover, step by step, the successive abodes of its generations. The links that are wanting are supplied by history; nor perhaps is there a single spot in London in which the past is not visibly present to us, either in the |