181 



SECOND STAGE OF STREET ARRANGEMENTS. 



Wagons gradually took the place of pack-trains in the distribu- 

 tion of goods through the country, and, as one man could manage a 

 heavy load, when it was once stowed, as well as a light one, the 

 wagons were made very large and strong, and required the employ- 

 ment of many horses. 



In comparatively few town streets could two of these wheeled 

 merchantmen, with the enormous hamper they carried on each side, 

 pass each other. The seats and hucksteries of slight wood- work, 

 with which the streets had been lined, were swept away ; but, as the 

 population rapidly increased, while the house accommodation was so 

 limited that its density, in the city of London, for instance, was 

 probably three times as great as at present, any attempt to further 

 widen the streets for the convenience of the wagoners had to en- 

 counter the strongest resistance from the householders. 



Thus, without any material enlargement, the character of the 

 streets was much changed. They frequently became quite unfit to 

 walk in, the more so because they were used as the common place of 

 deposit for all manner of rubbish and filth thrown out of the houses 

 which was not systematically removed from them. 



Although London then occupied not a fiftieth part of the ground 

 which it does now, and green fields remained which had been care- 

 fully preserved for the practice of archery within a comparatively 

 short distance of its central parts, to which the inhabitants much re- 

 sorted for fresh air on summer evenings ; although the river still 

 ran clear, and there was much pleasure boating upon it, the greater 

 part of the inhabitants were so much confined in dark, ill-ventilated, 

 and noisome quarters, that they were literally decimated by disease 

 as often as once in every two years, while at intervals fearful epi- 

 demics raged, at which times the mortality was much greater. 

 During one of these, four thousand deaths occurred in a single night, 

 and many streets were completely depopulated. All who could 

 by any means do so fled from the town, so that in a short time its 

 population was reduced more than fifty per cent. It had not yet 

 filled up after this calamity, when a fire occurred which raged un- 

 checked during four days, and destroyed the houses and places of 

 business of two hundred thousand of the citizens. Its progress was 

 at length stayed by the widening of the streets across which it would 

 have advanced if the buildings which lined them had not been re- 

 moved by the military. 



Five-sixths of the area occupied by the old city was still covered 



