LONDON (GENERAL DESCRIPTION). 



523 



thousands of the citizens assembled daily as to a fair. 

 The reign of George III. witnessed a great extension 

 of the splendour, comforts and elegances of social 

 life in London. The north of the metropolis became 

 covered with spacious streets, squares, churches and 

 public edifices. The thoroughfares were rendered 

 safe and clean; the enormous signs and protruding 

 incumbrances of the shops were removed. Black- 

 friars, Southwark and Waterloo bridges, Somerset 

 house, Manchester, and other squares, at the West 

 End, were erected, and the vast parish of Marylebone 

 almost covered with buildings, In 1780, an insurrec- 

 tion, headed by Lord George Gordon, but composed 

 of the lowest rabble, threatened very alarming conse- 

 quences to the peace of the city. The insurrection 

 arose from a petition of the Protestant Association 

 against the Roman Catholics. The prisons of New- 

 gate, the King's bench, and the Fleet, besides some 

 Catholic chapels, were burned, and military interfer- 

 ence was necessary to quell the disturbances. In 

 1794, a dreadful fire broke out in Ratcliffe highway, 

 and consumed 700 houses. The jubilee of George 

 Ill's, accession was commemorated on the 25th Oct. 

 1809, and the grand civic festival to the emperor of 

 Russia, king of Prussia, and other distinguished 

 foreigners, was given, by the corporation of London, 

 in Guildhall, at an expense of 20,000, in the year 

 1814, the winter of which was memorable for a frost 

 of six week's continuance and extreme intensity. 

 During the regency and reign of George IV., the 

 grand avenue of Regent Street, the unfinished palace 

 of Buckingham house, the splendid terraces on the 

 site of Carlton gardens, the widenings of Charing 

 cross, Pall Mall, and the Strand, wrought a great 

 change in the West End of the metropolis. Much 

 curious information regarding London will be found 

 in the works of Stowe and Maitland, in Pennant's 

 "Some Account of London," and in the work of 

 Brayley, Brewster, and Nightingale, entitled " Lon- 

 don, Westminster and Middlesex described." See 

 also the Supplement to Leigh Hunt's "London Jour- 

 nal," for very interesting literary details regarding 

 the streets of the metropolis. 



General Description London is intersected by 

 two grand lines which cross each other near the spot 

 which seems to have been regarded as the centre, 

 since from this point, the standard in Cornhill, the 

 distances of various places were calculated. One 

 of these lines of streets extends from Stoke Newing- 

 ton and Kingsland, on the north, through Shoreditch, 

 Norton Falgate, Bishopsgate Street, Gracechurch 

 Street, Fish Street Hill, High Street, Southwark, and 

 Blackman Street, to Newington Butts, Walworth, 

 and Camberwell on the south; and the other from 

 Mile End on the east, through Whitechapel, Aldgate, 

 Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, the Poultry, to the west 

 end of Cheapside, where the line diverges into two 

 branches, one proceeding on the north, through New- 

 gate Street, Skinner Street, Holborn, High Street St 

 Giles's, and Oxford Street, to its termination in the 

 Uxbridge Road; and that on the south passing by St 

 Paul's Churchyard, Ludgate Street, Fleet Street, the 

 Strand, Pall Mall East, the Haymarket, and Picca- 

 dilly, towards Knightsbridge, and Kensington, on the 

 grand western road. The streets eastward of the 

 city require no particular notice; but the Commercial 

 Road, from Whitechapel to Blackwall, may, proba- 

 bly, at no distant period become a very handsome and 

 extensive street. The principal or more remarkable 

 streets in the city, besides those mentioned above, 

 are Thames Street, Fenchuroh Street, Eastcheap, and 

 Watling Street, the two last chiefly on account of the 

 recollections of times of yore, connected with them, 

 Lombard Street, formerly the principal residence of 

 goldsmiths and now of bankers, Broad Street, Al- 



dersgate Street, Bridge Street, Blackfriars, and Far- 

 ringdon Street. Northward of the city are several 

 good streets, together with Finsbury Circus, and 

 Finsbury Square. In that district which has been 

 termed the northern suburb, between Gray's Inn 

 Lane and Tottenham Court Road, are various hand- 

 some modern streets and squares; among the latter 

 are Bloomsbury Square, and Russell Square. At the 

 west end of the town is Regent Street, consisting of 

 splendid ranges of buildings, reaching from Waterloo 

 Place, Pall Mall, to Langham Place, north of Oxford 

 Street, whence it is continued by Portland Place to 

 Park Crescent, on the south side of the Regent's 

 Park. In this part of the metropolis also are Pall 

 Mall, St James's Street, Arlington Street, Albemarle 

 Street, Bond Street, Harley Street, Wimpole Street, 

 Stratford Place, Baker Street, Gloucester Place, and 

 Connaught Place, with several noble squares, among 

 which are Hanover Square, Grosvenor Square, Cav- 

 endish Square, and Portman Square. There are also 

 some handsome ranges of buildings on both sides of 

 the New Road from Islington to Paddington; and on 

 the north of that road is the Regent's Park, so named 

 in honour of the Prince Regent, aftenvards George 

 IV. It is tastefully laid out, with a canal, plantations, 

 and roads, and comprises, besides detached villas and 

 other edifices, various magnificent ranges of build- 

 ings, denominated from the titles of members of the 

 royal family, as the terraces of Ulster, York, Corn- 

 wall, Clarence, Hanover, Chester, Cumberland, and 

 Cambridge, and Sussex Place. Hyde Park, extend- 

 ing from the western border of the metropolis to Ken- 

 sington Gardens, is a noble enclosure, which became 

 the property of the crown in the reign of Henry VIII.: 

 it has a canal, called the Serpentine River, formed 

 by order of Queen Caroline, in 1730; and great 

 improvements have recently been made in it, by the 

 erection of a bridge over this piece of water, by the 

 substitution of iron rails for the dead wall by which 

 the park was partly encompassed, and by building 

 handsome lodges at the entrances. The Green Park, 

 on the south side of Piccadilly, is bordered on the east 

 by several noble mansions. St James's Park, com- 

 municating with the preceding, was enclosed and 

 planted by Henry VIII., but greatly improved in the 

 reign of Charles II., when the trees were planted, 

 which form the grand avenues on each side of the 

 canal; and under George IV. beautiful plantations 

 were formed by Mr Nash. London contains about 

 9000 streets, lanes, terraces, &c.; eighty squares, 

 twenty-four market-places, and more than 180,000 

 houses. The buildings were formerly composed 

 chiefly of wood-work and plaster, a mode of construc- 

 tion still observable in a tew ancient houses remain- 

 ing in some of the suburbs, and which must, when 

 generally practised, have contributed in no small 

 degree to occasion those destructive fires which are 

 recorded in the annals of the metropolis. Such dis- 

 asters have given rise to legislative enactments for 

 the prevention of their recurrence. But notwith- 

 standing all precautions, fires are of by no means 

 unfrequent occurrence, and sometimes cause extensive 

 damage. The buildings of London are now princi- 

 pally of brick, often, however, ornamented with stuc- 

 coed fronts, in imitation of stone. Hence there is 

 much more apparent solidity than real strength in 

 these structures; and those who have watched the pro- 

 gressive elevation of ranges of handsome shops and 

 dwellings, must have frequently remarked the inse- 

 cure appearance of the naked walls and pillars, which 

 when finished, present a widely different aspect. 

 This mode of building must be attributed chiefly to 

 the nature of this kind of property, houses being 

 generally erected on ground taken on building leases, 

 for terms varying from sixty to ninety-nine years, and 



