xceedingly
beautiful, for instance, St. Stephen's, Walbrook, while nearly all are
enriched with woodwork of a beautiful description. It was the custom in
the last century to attend frequent church services, and to hear many
sermons. The parish church entered into the daily life much more under
George the Second's reign than it does now, in spite of our improved
services and our multiplication of services. In forty-four City churches
there was service, sometimes twice, sometimes once, every day. In all
of them there were evening services on Wednesday and Fridays: in many
there were endowed lectureships, which gave an additional sermon once a
week, or at stated times. Fast days were commonly observed, though it
was not customary to close shops or suspend business on Good Friday or
Ash Wednesday: not more than half of the City churches possessed an
organ: on Sunday afternoons the children were duly catechised: if boys
misbehaved, the beadle or sexton caned them in the churchyard: the laws
were still in force which fined the parishioners for absence from church
and for harbouring in their houses people who did not go to church.
Except for Sunday services, sermons, and visitations of the sick, the
clergy had nothing to do. What is now considered the work of the parish
clergy--the work that occupies all their time--is entirely modern.
Formerly this kind of work was not done at all; the people were left to
themselves: the clergy were not the organisers of mothers' meetings,
country jaunts, athletics, boys' clubs, and amusements. The
Nonconformists still formed an important part of the City. They had many
chapels, but their social influence in London, which was very great at
the beginning of the century, declined steadily, until thirty or forty
years ago it stood at a very low ebb indeed.

In the streets the roads were paved with round pebbles--they were
'cobbled': the footway was protected by posts placed at intervals: the
paving stones, which only existed in the principal streets before the
year 1766, were small, and badly laid: after a shower they splashed up
mud and water when one stepped upon them. The signs which we have seen
on the Elizabethan houses still hung out from every shop and every
house: they had grown bigger: they were set in immense frames of
ironwork, which creaked noisily, and sometimes tore out the front of a
house by their enormous weight. The shop windows were now glazed with
small panes, mostly oblong,