the difference of the extent of these two

rivals, the Abbé de la Grive's Plan of Paris, and that of London by J. Rocque, have been divided into equal squares, where London contains 39, and Paris but 29, so that the superfice of London is to that of Paris as 39 to 29, or as 5455 acres to 4028. London therefore exceeds Paris by 1427 acres, the former being 84 square miles, and Paris only 63. By J. Rocque, chorographer to his Majesty, in the Strand, London, 1762, with new improvements to the year 1766.

The latter part in italics was an addition to the original plate. The map is dedicated to the Duke of Montague.

The extreme length of London, representing a dense mass of inhabited houses, unseparated by fields, was, at this time, contained within Whitechapel and Hyde Park. At the river side it was somewhat longer, reaching to a line parallel to Stepney at one end, and to Tothill Fields on the other. On the Surrey side, it extended from Rotherhithe to the then projected bridge of Blackfriars; the road from which to St. George's Fields was planned but not yet executed. There were a few houses at the foot of Westminster Bridge, but Lambeth and Vauxhall were as yet outlying villages. The width varied: north of the Thames a few hamlets were approached,-Hoxton, Bethnal Green, and Spitalfields; and Mile End Road, on the north side, was built on continuously, but Hackney, Homerton, Newington, Dalston, were scattered villages, or hamlets, contiguous, but not yet united to each other, and in the midst of fields and gardens. Islington was equally detached, and formed a long street of dwellings, reaching from the Angel Inn to Canonbury House; and extending about half that distance down the branch called the "Lower Road." Between this and Hackney was an undisturbed range of fields, and gardens, a mile and three quarters across in a direct line. Islington has now a population nearer to 100,000; but in a Gazette, published in 1751, it is stated to have contained nearly 700 houses, including the Upper and Lower Holloway, three sides of Newington Green, and part of Kingsland, on the road to Ware." There could therefore scarcely have been more than 5000 inhabitants. The City Road is marked out, but not built

on; there are fields on each side. It was projected in 1756 and opened for traffic in 1761. The New Road appears as in consequence of an Act of Parliament an addition on the map; it was formed passed in 1756, to unite Islington to Paddington, and was violently opposed by the Duke of Bedford, who thought it came too near to his house. But, with exception of a few habitations at Bagnigge Wells and about River Head, a line drawn from the near end of the City Road to Middlesex Hospital, formed the extreme boundary of the houses. All north were fields; known by the name of Lamb's Conduit, and White Conduit Fields, the Foundling Hospital standing alone within the former. Two aristocratic mansions, Montague House and Bedford House, with their gardens, formed the boundary at this part. The former of these was then the residence of the nobleman to whom the map is dedicated, and its high gables spoke of the era of Louis XIV. It was in fact constructed by an architect sent from France-the former mansion having been destroyed by fire. This noble mansion, known so well as the British Museum, has now passed away like its former tenants, but its name is preserved by the adjoining street.

Taking the line of Oxford Street from the corner of Tottenham Court Road, we find a tolerably compact mass of dwellings reaching to Marylebone Lane, and the village of that name is connected with it. A few houses are also clustered about the corner of Tottenham Court and Hampstead Roads. One of these was the old manor-house of Tottenham Court, which gave name to the locality, an indication of which is yet preserved in two massive imposts of stone, the remains of an entrance. Here also was the Adam and Eve public house, and the scene of Hogarth's "March to Finchley." But beyond were nothing but fields all the way to Hampstead; and the "Mother Red Cap" was a solitary house of resort for cockney excursionists, at a junction of the road leading to Kentish Town. It is now entirely surrounded by a dense mass of buildings, and retains very faint traces of ever having been honoured as a suburban retreat. The following account of the walk from Oxford-street to Tottenham

Court, written just fifty years ago by Joseph Moser, esq. (which, we think, has escaped the researches of the author of the Hand-book of London,) is graphic, and not a little interesting:

Rathbone Place was built soon after Soho Square. I can still remember when the street terminated where the old buildings now end. At this place there were rails and iron gates, beyond which was a large pond surrounded with walks, a good deal resembling the reservoir in the Green Park; at the upper end of which was the same kind of sluice. Fronting this, a house much celebrated for the manufacture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, which was connected, by a row of large and venerable elms, to another famous for conviviality, called the Cock and Pye; from which ingenious combination, the idea of which was originally Gallic,* the back fields had their dominination. In the garden of this mansion the busts of the fighting-men, cast in plaster of Paris, and curiously coloured, were exhibited. I do not mean those of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, and such kind of fellows, but persons considerably more innocent, as they only hurt each other, viz. George Taylor, Broughton, Slack, and a long train of their satellites, who displayed their skill in the adjacent booth-I believe I should call it amphitheatre-at Tottenham Court.

These walks were a very pleasant promenade for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, &c. as they were planted with trees and gravelled. On their sides, particularly on the east, a very large space of ground was laid out in gardens adorned in the rus in urbe style, with Chinese and other summerhouses, tents, leaden Mercuries, wooden Venuses, cockle-shell walks, fish-ponds, &c. according to the taste and opulence of their tenants. These delightful retreats, in which after the toils of

traffic or mechanical exertions our ancestors reposed, or rather luxuriated, were divided by lanes and allies, the intricate meanders of which it almost required the skill of Dædalus, or the clue of Queen Eleanor, to develope.

However, one way this labyrinth brought you to Tottenham Court Road, and the other to a field in which was a pond much celebrated for duck-hunting, and other metropolitan aquatic sports, which had the appellation of the Little Sea. This, I think, was the very spot whereon Whitefield's Tabernacle now stands. A very few

* Il est là comme un coq en pâte.

Returning to Oxford Street, and pursuing our course westward, we find that, in 1766, the north side, from Marylebone Lane to Edgware Road, had just been built on; but behind, all are fields up to the village of Paddington. The map, however, marks a very significant indication of the change about to take place, the word "kiln" being found immediately in the rear of these houses.

Pursuing our imaginary walk round the metropolis 100 years ago, we will cross the Park from Tyburn to Knightsbridge; and we observe, that the latter hamlet is hardly united to the end of Piccadilly, and that Brompton, Kensington and Chelsea, are hamlets and townships, divided from each other by fields, but as yet in no way united to the mass forming London. Crossing the river to Battersea, we find ourselves upwards of three miles, in a direct line, from the nearest of those suburban hamlets, connecting with London by the Borough of Southwark. This is Newington, but between this, however, lie, by the water-side, Vauxhall and South Lambeth. A few scattered houses are on the roads between them. Walworth and Newington join each other; but Camberwell and Peckham are distant suburbs, quite encircled with pleasant fields and gardens; whilst Deptford, and Greenwich, are towns at a distance sufficient to be pronounced perfectly distinct from London.

Before I enter into a minute consideration of the changes that have taken place, and which are presented in the modern map of London and its environs, I cannot refrain from pointing out an indication of the social condition of the metropolis 100 years ago as exemplified in the map before me.

The insecurity of the roads about the metropolis, previous to the introduction of a more efficient system of police, and of the brilliant gas-lights

although now a matter of tradition, was to our fathers and mothers, and still more to a previous generation, a painful and very annoying fact. But the mounted highwayman has so long disappeared that it is only by history, or from the narratives of grey-headed octogenarians, we are acquainted with the exploits of Dick Turpin or of Jerry Abershaw. Legislation has been long too fond of the in terrorem principle, but in 1766 our map tells us, that the approaches to London were fortified by gallows, the sites of which I will point out, as they are drawn on the plan in question. At the meeting of the Edgware Road with Oxford Street was the celebrated "Tyburn Tree," a structure of triangular form, probably for extensive accommodation in case of a run of business. Casting our eyes up the Edgware Road, at Cricklewood, just over Shoot-up Hill, a little beyond Kilburn, in a vacant space by the roadside, are two gallows. One appears to have a projecting arm to it, similar to what the old ale-house signs display by a country roadside; the other is in the form of a cross, and, it may be observed, each has its tenant; but this of course was introduced by the draughtsman to shew its purpose. We will now return again to Tyburn, and pursue our course to Shepherd's Bush. Here, at the point of the green, are two precisely similar to those just described. It must be remembered these were both on important roads from the metropolis, having considerable traffic, and crossing many lonely commons. I may here mention, that there was another, not indicated in this map; it was erected in 1759, a little beyond Islington, on the road to Holloway; but it may have been removed at the time of our map. On the other side of the Thames, Kennington Common was the place of public execution, and the gallows is in form of a cross. At the corner of Richmond Park, nearest Kingston, is one of triangular form; the spot is called Gallows Hill, and was doubtless for the felons convicted at the county assizes at that town. All the other roads seem to be free from these disgusting memorials of a bar barous legislation; but for the instruction of seamen, a conspicuous and projecting point of the Isle of Dogs has

was

one of these dreary appendages hanging over the river side. This questionless for those convicted of murder and piracy on the high seas.

We will now consider the changes that have taken place on the north of London, between the boundaries formed by the New River and Edgeware Road, as it comprises the most important part of the additions for the accommodation of the population. There are those, still living, who remember a clear vista across fields to Hampstead from Nicholson's distillery in John Street, Clerkenwell; and a very large portion of the enormous extension of Islington has been made within the last twenty years. That part, which slopes down the hill to the valley of the Fleet River, by Bagnigge Wells Road, is one of the most recent. Pentonville takes its name from the proprietor, and is a district of great extent, which was commenced at the close of the eighteenth century. But it is to the present generation, that the credit of seizing upon such large tracts of green fields belongs. White Conduit House, one of the former suburban places of entertainment, which were generally in green fields, has but very recently lost the last vestige of its former character, and its grounds have been covered with small tenements. The remains of the conduit, to which it owed its name, were visible twenty years ago, on a bare space of ground opposite; and here, on a Sunday afternoon, was an unbroken line of holiday makers, going or returning, across the fields to Copenhagen House, another rural place of entertainment, which then stood quite alone, a long way distant from the march of bricks and mortar; but which has, in its turn, recently passed away, and its neighbouring fields are appropriated for the new cattle market which is to take the place of Smithfield.

We will return again in the direction of White Conduit House, but keeping a little to the north of it, directing our steps to a row of tall elms on the side of the rising ground. It was close by this spot, that a well-defined Roman encampment, with deep valla, was to be seen. It was a parallelogram, and the fosse was from 10 to 12 feet deep, and about 20 feet in width. Specula