ngland has grown between that time and this,
the growth of the metropolis has been even greater in proportion. The
City and Westminster were, at the beginning of George's reign, and for
long after, two distinct and separate towns; between them still lay
many wide spaces on which men were only beginning to build houses.
Fashion was already moving westward in the metropolis, obeying that
curious impulse which seems to prevail in all modern cities, and which
makes the West End as eagerly sought after in Paris, in Edinburgh, and
in New York, as in London. The life of London centred in St. Paul's
and the Exchange; that of Westminster in the Court and the Houses of
Parliament. All around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes,
squares, streets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces and broad
thoroughfares with which we are familiar. Between Parliament Buildings
and the two churches of St. Peter and St. Margaret ran a narrow,
densely crowded street, known as St. Margaret's Lane. The spot where
Parliament Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of an
uninterrupted row of houses running down to the water-gate by the
river. The market-house of the old Woollen Market stood just where
Westminster Bridge begins. The Parliament Houses themselves are as
much changed as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occupies
the site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons used to sit.
Westminster Hall had rows of little shops or booths ranged all along
each wall inside; they had been there for generations, and they
certainly did not add either to the beauty or the safety of the ancient
hall. In the early part of the seventeenth century some of them took
fire and came near to laying in ashes one of the oldest occupied
buildings in the world. Luckily, however, the fire was put out with
slight damage, but the dangerous little shops were suffered to remain
then and for long after.

[Sidenote: 1714--Old London]

The Lesser London of that day lives for us in contemporary engravings,
in the pages of the _Spectator_ and the {65} _Tatler_, in the poems of
Swift and Pope, in the pictures of Hogarth. Hogarth's men and women
belong indeed to a later generation than the generation which
Bolingbroke dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satirized,
and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men and women who are
different; the background remains the same. New actors have taken the
parts; the costumes are somewh