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to the public methods of raising money by Lotteries, BenefitSocieties, &c. are next introduced; and these are succeeded by a view of the religious and popular passions of the cominunity, as manifested, too fatally in general, by commotion and tumult. Amusements and dress afford ample materials for a distinct article. Domestic Architecture, with its internal conveniences, arrangements, and plans, is treated by our author, with a succinctness not justified by its real importance in life; and, indeed, all the chapters on the arts, and their pro gress, are much less copious than we should have expected from the hand of an artist. To have done justice indeed to these subjects, would perhaps have demanded an inconve. nient expence of plates; that consideration, however, does not restrain us from suggesting this opinion on the concluding divisions of his work. There are also many subjects on which Mr. M.'s. attention might have been very properly employed, and which he has entirely neglected. We should have thought the progress of learning, and the novelties in the trade of books, during the last century, well intitled to some regard; and, as Mr. M. has been indebted to his worthy friend Mr. Nichols for the inspection of his matchless collection of periodical publications, from which great part of his materials have been selected," we wonder not a little how the very institution of periodical publications could escape his notice. If he had not enlarged on the history of the Tatler and Spectator and of their innumerable and now forgotten imitators, the name of Cave must surely have struck him; and anecdotes" of Sylvanus Urban, to whom we are obliged for a new class of works, and for the diffusion of literature in a great measure effected by their influence, would have been truly in character from a narrator of London events. The same century which saw these convenient vehicles of periodical information rise into utility and importance, unhappily witnessed their perversion into chronicles of defamation and panders to vice. Perhaps Mr. M. did not know that the voracity of the public for scandal demanded four editions, comprising nineteen thousand copies, of "the Town and Country Magazine," on its first appearance; and that the plate to the first number was beat up at the coppersmith's, to enable it to perform so severe a duty. Less still, perhaps, could he penetrate into the mysteries of management as then practised in the trade, and have told his readers, that the " Lady G." of a certain plate became the "Countess of D." with only the alteration of the inscription. The history of what are technically called " Number Works," is certainly attached to the last century, notwithstanding Fielding's witty remark that Homer was the first who published in numbers: and by the

bye, this plan is unquestionably of English origin, valé though the practice has been adopted by every nation in Eu rope.

There is also another description of periodical publications of which the last century witnessed an almost incredible increase, we mean the newspapers. In the early part of that period, four or five were considered as sufficient to supply the town for a week now forty is nearer to the weekly number; and the list of country papers has increased till it fills a large folio page, and is still rapidly increasing.

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Mr. M. was certainly at liberty to select his instances from among the mass of information to which he had access ;-but, how could he overlook that notorious instance of civic trepidation, the alarm occasioned in London by the prediction of Bell the grenadier, that the day of judgement was at hand, and that a certain not distant day was the destined term of all earthly existences? The wags of the time inform us that the works of some who affected to believe this prediction, did not correspond with their faith; they refused to sell their estates. to those who offered seven years purchase, though positive that they had not seven months to continue. Others were brought to shrift, who had not consulted their consciences for many years, and stolen goods, it is said, were in some instances restored to their owners. Those who did not credit the prophecy in all its parts, yet regarded it as a particular warning to London, and not a few quitted the city the week before the time appointed, lest they should be swallowed up in the overthrow. The prophet lived many years afterwards, in the city, and was well known under the name of "Day of Judgement Bell." Mr. M. has also omitted a judgement of a different description, executed without either prediction or warning, that of the sailors on the houses of ill fame; rendered notorious by the conviction and execution of the unfortunate Bosavern Penlez, whose case excited great anxiety in the public mind. Another case of equal notoriety, that of Bet Canning and Mother Squires the gypsey, very famous in its day, has equally escaped Mr. M., although he could hardly be ignorant that the justice of the city of London was implicated in both these affairs. The last century also beheld a singular energy of religious zeal, which certainly forms a striking feature in the character of the city of London, and therefore should have found its place in this volume; we mean the exertions of Messrs. Whitfield and Wesley, with the rise and establishment of the Methodists. Mr. M. must have known that a considerable part of the population of the city, not less than thirty thousand persons, often attended Mr. Whitfield at Kennington Common. As the institutions, established by these re

formers, remain and flourish, we are the more surprised at Mr. M.'s inattention to this subject.

The changes that have taken place in the private manners of the citizens of London are less obvious. Posterity ought to be informed, that at the beginning of the century there were many very great taverns, and in high repute, which, before the close of it, were shut up without the substitution of others. We have heard them estimated, and enough of them enumerated to justify the estimate, at upwards of forty. In fact, very many gentlemen spent more of their time at the tavern than at home; they drank much wine, and the tavern keeper who did not retire with a fortune in a few years was a bad manager. It is we believe in a great measure owing to a better education bestowed on the female sex, that the social board is less forsaken than formerly, by men of certain ranks in life ; home has more charms; and sobriety is more respected; at least intoxication is less a habit, and less general. As a small counterbalance, coffee houses have increased; but the consumption of inebriating liquors in these establishments bears. no proportion to what was customary in the great houses to which we allude. If the immense increase of the town, its prodigiously augmented population, and the resort to it of all characters from all parts be taken into the account, this may pass for one proof, among others, of some improvement in the public morals. Perhaps we shall be reminded that the industrious class of citizens have relinquished the frugal manners of former times, and indulge themselves in a splendour of appearance unknown to their ancestors. We find it difficult to admit or deny this charge. Conditions of life are so fluctuating, personal manners are so equivocal, ranks or stations in a mercantile country are so little subject to estimate or comparison, that a decisive judgement can hardly be formed. 'I'hat a citizen does not now do exactly as his fa ther did, may be no reproach, unless we knew correctly the respective circumstances of the father and the son. The probability is that the father is now represented in the station he occupied, by some other family; and the frugality which he found to be the way to wealth is practised by another with the same views and principles, rather than by his own son.

A notice, and even a statement of the increased trade of the City of London, to which such changes of domestic economy are greatly owing, would not have dishonoured Mr. Malcolm's pen; and the extensive premises, now necessary to accommodate it, might have furnished him a plate as well as an ar ticle. The buildings at the Bank, the Stock Exchange, the Wet Docks, and the circumjacent and rapidly increasing suburbs,

that almost stifle the metropolis, are remarkable consequencesof the augmented wealth and enterprise of its inhabitants.

If the manners of the court did not come immediately into Mr. M.'s contemplation, yet his readers would willingly have endured a description of some of them, to which the present reign has afforded no counterparts. In the days of George II, the public hours of courtly devours were late in the evening: and the beauties of the British drawing room adapted their splendor to candlelight. His present majesty has not, we believe, ever countenanced the custom of dining in public, as his grandfather did; nor is this the only instance in which discretion and morals have occasion to rejoice in the abrogation of customs" more honoured in the breach than the observance."

From the mention of these omissions, our readers will not expect to find Mr. M.'s volume a complete picture of London and its manners, during the last century: nevertheless, it presents some of the principal features of the times, and will afford amusement and knowledge to the present generation, and still more to future generations who cannot by recollection compare the portrait with the original.

Mr. M's first chapter treats on the persons of the Londoners: yet be omits the evident infrequency of deformed, or humpbacked persons, compared with the number that formerly were seen in our streets. We attribute this favourable change to a better mode of treating children in their infancy, and to the absence of many constraints that formerly irritated the constitution and counteracted its natural tendencies.

Mr. M. gives an account of the frost fair held on the Thames in the month of January 1716. It is very surprising that he should omit that of 1739-40, which was at least equally remarkable, and of which we have seen memorials (as he might have done) in the red letter names of the parties who had them printed there. But much more wonderful is his ridiculous information that "an enthusiastic Methodist preached to a motley congregation on the mighty waters, with a zeal fiery enough to have thawed himself through the ice, had it been susceptible of religious, warmth." The term Methodist was unknown in a religious sense, till the days of Messrs. Wesley and Whitfield at Oxford.

Fairs of a much worse description, because annually returning, were Southwark fair, and Bartholomew fair, which then lasted three weeks. The former is now wholly suppressed; and the latter, though still a disgraceful nuisance, is reduced to three days. There were many similar fairs in London, which are now nearly forgotten; and humanity is no longer violated by the brutal sports and female pugilism at

Hockley in the Hole. Our highly refined nobility and gentry, however, have of late revived the almost obsolete barbarities of prize-fighting.

It is a natural transition from the bear garden to the theatres; a large portion of the book is occupied with a history of these establishments, of which Mr. M.'s information, though far from complete, is much more extensive than we should have thought necessary.

Such instances as the following, of penuriousness, approaching to insanity, recur almost every week; we do not however perceive that Mr. M. has recorded the oddities of Mr. Elwes.

In the month of November 1700, an old gentleman was found lifeless on the floor of his apartment in Dartmouth-street by his landlady, who had been alarmed by hearing him fall. He died intestate, and worth 6007. per annum; but his manner of living was penurious to the most extravagant degree, allowing nature barely four-pence worth of boiled meat and broth per day, When he went from home he was under the necessity of hiring a boy for a penny to lead him across the Park, as he was nearsighted; but this was almost the only intercourse he had with mankind, except to receive his rents, which may be imagined from the state of his cloathing as he lay dead; the body had seven shirts on it, each dreadfully soiled, and that next the skin actually decayed; and his other cloathing was tied on with cords, that had even lacerated the flesh.' p. 225.

We hope nothing like the next instance of eccentricity is to be heard of now.

The pastor of the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft had differed with a female of his flock to a very violent degree; in consequence, the lady. renounced his spiritual governance while living, and solemnly declared her corpse should not receive the rites of burial from his lips when dead. This resolution was communicated by the executors to the undertaker, who provided a Clergyman to officiate at the funeral. As the, Priest of the parish had notice of this strange proceeding, he determined to prevent the intruded Priest from performing the ceremony; but the latter, equally tenacious, insisted on his right, in compliance with the lady's will. A violent dispute succeeded, which terminated by both parties reading the burial service.

After this shameful scene of impiety, the Parish Priest retired to the Vestry-room, and enquired of the Clerk whether he had provided him at ticket for hat-bands and gloves, as usual. The Clerk replying in a surly nanner that he had not, the Priest wreaked dire vengeance on his body by a thorough beating*. p. 236.

Personal appearance was studied to a singular excess, and with strange uncouthness, during the last century;-the richness of the silk dresses, which then flaunted at the drawing room, or in the park, defies description: a very faint notion of them may be obtained from the anecdotes collected by Mr. M

*This affair is mentioned in all the Newspapers of the day.

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