_Piccadilly_ was named after a hall called _Piccadilla-hall_, a place of
sale for _Piccadillies_, or _turn-overs_; a part of the fashionable
dress which appeared about 1614. It has preserved its name uncorrupted;
for Barnabe Rice, in his "Honestie of the Age," has this passage on "the
body-makers that do swarm through all parts, both of London and about
London. The body is still pampered up in the very dropsy of excess. He
that some fortie years sithens should have asked after a _Pickadilly_, I
wonder who would have understood him; or could have told what a
_Pickcadilly_ had been, either fish or flesh."[120]

Strype notices that in the liberties of Saint Catharine is a place
called _Hangmen's-gains_; the traders of _Hammes_ and _Guynes_, in
France, anciently resorted there; thence the strange corruption.

_Smithfield_ is a corruption of _Smoothfield_; smith signifies smooth,
from the Saxon smeeth. An antiquarian friend has seen it designated in a
deed as _campus planus_, which confirms the original meaning. It is
described in Fitz Stephen's account of London, written before the
twelfth century, as a plain field, both in reality and name, where
"every Friday there is a celebrated rendezvous of fine horses, brought
hither to be sold. Thither come to look or buy a great number of earls,
barons, knights, and a swarm of citizens. It is a pleasing sight to
behold the ambling nags and generous colts, proudly prancing." This
ancient writer continues a minute description, and, perhaps, gives the
earliest one of a horse-race in this country. It is remarkable that
_Smithfield_ should have continued as a market for cattle for more than
six centuries, with only the change of its vowels.

This is sufficient to show how the names of our streets require either
to be corrected, or explained by their historian. The French, among the
numerous projects for the moral improvement of civilised man, had one,
which, had it not been polluted by a horrid faction, might have been
directed to a noble end. It was to name streets after eminent men. This
would at least preserve them from the corruption of the people, and
exhibit a perpetual monument of moral feeling and of glory, to the
rising genius of every age. With what excitement and delight may the
young contemplatist, who first studies at Gray's Inn, be reminded of
_Verulam_-buildings!

The names of streets will often be found connected with some singular
event, or the character of some per