ays Eachard, "of innumerable spectators, who had a more
than ordinary curiosity to see the sight."

CHAPTER XIX.

London under Charles II.--Condition and appearance of the
thoroughfares.--Coffee is first drunk in the capital.--Taverns and
their frequenters.--The city by night.--Wicked people do creep
about.--Companies of young gentlemen.--The Duke of Monmouth kills
a beadle.--Sir Charles Sedley's frolic.--Stately houses of the
nobility.--St. James's Park.--Amusement of the town.--At Bartholomew
Fair.--Bull, bear, and dog fights.--Some quaint sports.

During the first six years of the merry monarch's reign, London town,
east of Temple Bar, consisted of narrow and tortuous streets of quaintly
gabled houses, pitched roofed and plaster fronted. Scarce four years had
passed after the devastating fire which laid this portion of the capital
in ashes, when a new and stately city rose upon the ruins of the old.
Thoroughfares lying close by the Thames, which were wont to suffer from
inundations, were raised; those which from limited breadth had caused
inconvenience and bred pestilence were made wide; warehouses and
dwellings of solid brick and carved stone, with doors, window-frames,
and breastsummers of stout oak, replaced irregular though not
unpicturesque habitations; whilst the halls of companies, eminent
taverns, and abodes of great merchants, were now built "with fair
courtyards before them, and pleasant gardens behind them, and fair
spacious rooms and galleries in them, little inferior to some princes'
palaces." Moreover, churches designed by the genius of Christopher Wren,
adorned with spires, steeples, and minarets, intersected the capital at
all points.

This new, handsome, and populous city presented an animated, ever
changing, and merry scene. From "the high street which is called the
Strand," far eastwards, great painted signs, emblazoned with heraldic
arms, or ornamented with pictures of grotesque birds and animals,
swung above shop-doors and taverns. Stalls laden with wares of every
description, "set out with decorations as valuable as those of the
stage," extended into the thoroughfares. In the new Exchange, built by
the worshipful company of mercers at a cost of eight thousand pounds,
and adorned by a fair statue of King Charles II. in the habit of a Roman
emperor, were galleries containing rows of very rich shops, displaying
manufactures and ornaments of rare description, served by young me