EPSOM CHURCH, SURRY. Published by Asperne, at the Bible, Crown & Constitution. Cornhill, December 1.1807. which the period above alluded to really possessed in the minds of our ancestors, that we congratulate ourselves upon our escape from the reign of tyranny and fanaticism, and hail the revival of lovalty and good sense. The poet has given so strong, and, at the same time, so correct, a picture of the effect of a mild government operating upon the minds of a grateful people, and rendering them too extravagantly sensible of the change, that it would be in the highest degree presumptuous to attempt in any respect to enlarge upon it: we shall, therefore, only use it as an index to point to the distinguishing features of those times, which, it is probable, may occasionally become the subjects of subsequent observation, and, where it is deserved, of reprehension. But before we further allude to their milder traits, the refinement of manners and the blandishments of civil life, we deem it necessary to investigate the source from which the opulence that stimulated them was derived, and, consequently, briefly to contemplate, in the commercial state of the metropolis, the broad foundation upon which the superstructure of the arts, of lettered case, and domestic elegance, was erected. It has, by many writers upon the state of civic improvement or decline, been observed, that they are, in every instance, the surest criterions from which an estimate can be made of the flourishing or declining state of national traffic. This was obvious in all the Europ. Mag. Vol. LII. Nov. 1807. cities of the ancient, and has been, and still is, in many of the modern world: but in none is it more conspicuous than in the comparison which it has, among other objects, been the business of this work to trace, betwixt ANCIENT and MODERN LONDON. In the extension or suspension of the buildings of our august metropolis, may be accurately observed the expansion or contraction of commerce. Among other elegant and useful plans, it has been said, that, under the patronage of his royal master, CHARLES, Inigo Jones had contemplated great civic improvements, of which the Banquetting House, Whitehall, and the Church and Piazza of Covent Garden, still remain as specimens. The unnatural and horrid rebellion at once deranged those elegant designs, and the suspension of commerce counteracted every idea of even metropolitan convenience. At the dawn of better times, it * By an act of parliament [13 & 14 Car. II. c. 2. 1661] for repairing the highways and sewers, and keeping clean the streets in and about London and Westminster, &c. &c. it appears, that many new streets (begun in the reign of Charles I.) were then scarcely finished, in the parish of St. James, and its vicinity. The street or way from the end of Petty France to St. James's House; (a) a street from St. James's House up to the highway (now St. James's-street); a street in St. James's fields, now called the Pallmall; and also a street extending from the (a) It is not in the smallest degree clear where this street or way could have been, for there is no such avenue at present. Though the inquiry is not one of the first importance, it is yet suficiently curious to have engaged the attention of many. If we were allowed to hazard a conjecture upon the subject, we should, looking at the date 1661, be led to suppose, that before the Park was walled, or the caual made, it was a direct road cross the said Park, then an open field, which, like many about the metropolis, was made for the convenience of the inhabitants of Westminster, but which, in consequence of the subsequent improvements by Le Notre, was taken into the Park. This seems the more probable, because, in digging in the same direction, a line of what is terned made ground was formerly discovered this communication was then so obvious, and crossing the marsh. The convenience of has now become so necessary, that we have understood it was some years since in contemplation to restore it, by throwing a BRIDGE cross the canal... X x ject was again attended to; and although, so much is the great contiguity of London altered, that many places would now be difficult to be traced, it renders the allusion to them still more curious, as it indicates, from authentic documents, the former state of the city and its environs. It is not our intention to assert, that there had not been many attempts made, during the revolutionary times, to assist and to revive commerce; if it were, the lowering of legal interest from eight to six per cent. and the Navigation Act, would at once confule our position; all that we mean to advance, and this we do with considerable confidence, is, that the form of government from which the nation had so lately escaped had been inimical to its general operation. This had suffered a depression from which, notwithstanding the mercantile efforts, it did not very speedily recover, as appears, alas! too evident, from the report of Dr. Charles D'Avenant, inspector-general of the customs; which paper states, that Mews to Piccadilly (now the Haymarket), and from thence towards the stone bridge to the furthermost building near the BULL, the corner of Air-street, were hereby directed to be paved, out from the houses or garden walls to the middle of the highway, at the expense of the proprietors of the houses, &c.****Candles, or lights in lanterns, are also directed to be hung out by every householder fronting the streets in London, Westminster, and suburbs, from Michaelmas to Lady-day, and from its being dark until nine in the evening. The following streets and narrow passages are also (by the same act) directed to be widened, viz. the street or passage near the STOCKS, in London; the street or passage from FLEET CONDUITOST. PAUL'S CHURCH; the passage from the White Hart Inn in the Strand into Covent Garden; the street and passage by and near Exeter House and the Savoy, being obstructed by a rail and aneven ground; the passage of Field-lane, commonly called Jackanapes-lane, going betwixt Chancery-lane and Lincoln's-inn-fields; the passage and gate-house of Cheapside, going into St. Paul's Church-yard; the passage against St. Dunstan's in the West; and the passage of Temple-bar. All these were deemed very incommodious to coaches, carts, and passengers, and prejudicial to comanerce and trading; which shews how in elegant, as well as inconvenient, a great part of the city of London was at that time, and how rapidly the liberty of Westminster increased with the new reign. A most melancholy burthen, more especially, as we may reasonably sup pose this statement, coming from so able a calculator, who possessed the office we have mentioned in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne, to be correct: yet that it was in the course of less than forty years turned in our favour to an immense amount, shews at once the energy of the people, the adventurous spirit of our merchants, and, at length, resolves itself into the grand principle upon which commercial operations are founded, is the stabi lity of government. But notwithstanding the discouraging aspect of affairs with respect to our commercial transactions with foreign countries, during the five years immedi ately subsequent to the Restoration, still it appears, that although the tide of transmarine traffic was turned against us, and our manufactures wanted that stimulus which they always derive from exportation, yet the revival of the arts gave a spur to ingenuity, and the introduction of taste into articles depend *The great national loss above stated, and a still greater which is known to have marked the year 1668, are said to have arisen from our unrestricted trade with France; which being afterward prohibited, the general balance was turned so far in out favour, in 1699, as 1,147,6601. 10s. 9d. and the particular gain by having no trade with France 3,280,5251, 8s. 9d. which favourable balance was, in 1703, increased to 2,117,5231. 3. 104d, upon a general calculation, and the total gained by us from our having no trade with France in 1703, 4,250,338). 18. 1018, A most interesting consideration at all times, and particularly so at the present awful and interesting period. During the reign of Charles II. it is sald, "the laudable English fashions of formet times began to alter in favour of France: the women's HATS" (of wool woven and of felt) "were turned into HOODS made of French silk, whereby every maid-servant in England became a standing revenue to the French king of half her wages. Many bats for men were also brought from France, which also supplied Italy with woollen goods run to them in return for Italian silk, which the French manufactured and sold to England to pay for that wool."-(British Merchant, vol. ii. p. 315. ed. 1715.) ! ant upon fashion, increased the do- If the soldier breathed the gallan try of France," the courtier equally delighted in her ingenuity; and although many works in silk, jewellery, plate, &c. were imported, a far greater number were imitated, new modes of mechanical operation were practised, new manufactories were established, the metropolis exhibited a continued scene of gayety and splendor, and the reign of taste and genius seemed to have com-, menced under the happiest auspices. To the theatres it is necessary for a moment to turn, as to mirrors reflecting the manners of the people; and in this point of view, we shall behold the avidity with which the inhabitants of the metropolis crowded to partake of dramatic entertainments, toward which their long fast had given them the keen est appetites, and to which, indeed, they had an additional stimulus, from animprovement in the personation, that reduced almost half of the incongruity and extravagance of fiction to the standard of truth and nature. Before the Restoration, no actresses had ever been seen upon the English stage:* therefore it is easy to conceive It is a matter of some doubt, whether, in the performances of the minstrels, females were introduced: we rather think that they were not, but that the whole of those itinerant companies were of the masculine gender, because in the vestiges of them which we have seen, viz, the stage-players, as they were termed, (b) and the morris-dancers, all the performers, from the Princess of Cappadocia to Maid Marian were males. It has been conjectured, that the custom of having only actors arose from the performances which were exhibited by the different monastic orders from very early times down to the eve of the Reformation. But although those exhibitions fell with the religion that engen dered them, the custom of confining all stage characters to men continued, as we have seen, till the year 1660, notwithstanding the examples afforded by the masks of Johnson and Jones, in which ANNE of DENMARK and her ladies performed, which were court ab. berrations from this general rule, and the mask of Comus, in which the female characters were performed by the ladies of the family of the lord president of Wales, and although women had been introduced upon the stage at Paris, and other places on the continent, near a century before. (b) From playing on high-erected stages at the gates of inns, &c. the effect which the introduction of elegant and beautiful women must have had upon the audience. But this was not the whole of the advantage derived from them; for they realized the ideas of the poets, and gave a warmth and animation to theatrical colouring, an enthusiastic glow to poetic language, and an intrinsical importance to the effu sions both of the tragic and comic Muses, that had never before been experienced; at the same time that dramatic entertainments diffused a life and gayety into the metropolis which they had never until then excited. Whether the stage, as it was conducted at this period, was of much advantage to the morals of the people, we shall not at present inquire, because, as the poet says, while "In those gay times, when all was love and sport, And willing Muses were debauch'd at court," two events happened, which, for a time, suspended every pleasurable idea, and spread consternation, affliction, and devastation around. The first of these, the great pestilence, we shall merely mention in the text, as its effects have been so often recorded, that they are indelibly marked on the mind of every one: no words of ours, therefore, can add to the horror of this visitation, no reasoning upon the subject can do away the idea so properly prevalent, that, although it might probably proceed from natural causes, it was, by Providence, decreed as a scourge to the vices of the people.* When we contemplate the pestilential visitations that have, at different periods from the year 1379 (for it is useless to go higher with respect to antiquity), prevailed in London, we cannot help feeling the greatest astonishment that no endeavours were used to repress a disease which, from the then contracted population within the civic walls, carried off more than 30,000 persons: from this plague it is conjectured that CHAUCER, (c) like MILTON, on a similar occa sion, retreated to the country, and stayed un til its virulence was, in some degree, abated. In 1407, we find the metropolis again infected, when, it is said, more of its inha bitants were destroyed than in fifteen years of active warfare. After a period of seventy years had elapsed, viz. 1477, London agein suffered, under its influence, a loss of more than 30,000 of her inhabitants. Again, in 1499, 1548, and in 1594, plagues aroše; (c) Vide Godwin's Life of Chaucer, vol. i p. 258. |