37 



tance of its central parts, f<> which the inhabitants much resorted 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 in- 

 habitants were so much confined in dark, ill-ventilated and noisome 

 quarters, thai they were literally decimated by disease as often as once 

 in every two years, while at intervals fearful epidemics raged, at which 

 times the mortality was mueli greater. During one of these, four 

 thousand deaths occurred in a single night, and many streets were com- 

 pletely 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 

 percent. It had not yet filled Up alter this calamity, when a fire oc- 

 curred which raged unchecked during tour 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 it' the buildings which lined them had 

 not been removed by the military. 



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

 smoking embers when the most distinguished architect of the age 

 seized the opportunity to urge a project for laying out the street system 

 of a new town upon the same site. The most novel feature of this plan 

 was the introduction of certain main channel streets, ninety feet wide, 

 in which several wagons could hi' driven abreast upon straight courses 

 from one end of the city to the other. It was also proposed that there 

 should be a series of parallel and intersecting streets sixty feet wide, 

 with intermediate lanes of thirty feet. The enormous ad wantages of 

 such a system of streets over any others then in use in the large towns 

 of Europe were readily demonstrated; it obtained the approval of the 

 king himself, and would have been adopted but for the incredible short- 

 sightedness of the merchants and real estate owners. These obsti- 

 nately refused to give themselves any concern about the sacrifice of 

 general inconvenience or the future advantages to their city, which it 

 was shown that a disregard of Wren's suggestions' would involve, but 

 proceeded at once, as fasl as possible, without any concert of action, to 

 build anew, each man for himself, upon the ruins of his old warehouse. 

 There can be little question, that had the property-owners, at this time, 

 been wise enough to act as a body in reference to their common inter- 

 ests, and to have allowed Wren to devise and carry out a complete 

 street system, intelligently adapted to the requirements which he would 

 have been certain to anticipate; as well as those which were already 

 pressing, it would have relieved the city of London of an incalculable 

 expenditure which has since been required to mend its street arrange- 

 ments ; would have greatly lessened the weight of taxation, which soon 

 afterwards rose to b3 higher than in any other town of the kingdom, 



