Ralph Ugga; it shows the
same main arteries as exist to-day--the Strand, "Chepe," and Fleet. In a
later map of 1610, London and Westminster appear as small neighbouring
towns with fields around them; Totten Court, a country village; Kensington
and Marylebone secluded hamlets; Clerkenwell and St. Gyllis quite isolated
from the main city while Chelsey was quite in the wilds.

Even the great devastating fires did not destroy the line of the public
highways. After that of 1666 Sir Christopher Wren wished to remodel the
town and make it regular, symmetrical, and convenient; but, although he
was the prevailing spirit in the rebuilding of London city, and no
important building during forty years was erected without his judgment,
his plan for regulating and straightening the streets did not take effect.
Much of the picturesque quality of the city is owing to its irregularity
and the remains of its past. Wren rebuilt no less than sixty churches, all
showing great variety of design. St. Paul's, the third Christian church
since early Saxon times on the same site, was his masterpiece.

Of his immediate predecessor, Inigo Jones, the Banqueting House in
Whitehall, now used as a museum, remains a fragment of the splendid palace
designed by him for James I. The classical revival began with Gibbs, when
he built St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whose Greek portico is the best and
most perfect Greek example in London, if we except the caryatides of St.
Pancras. The brothers Adam also flourished at this time, and introduced
grace of line and much artistic skill in domestic establishments which
they built in "The Adelphi" and elsewhere. Chambers with Somerset House,
and Sir John Soane with the Bank of England, continued the classical
traditions, but its full force came with Nash, "the apostle of plaster,"
who planned the Quadrant and Regent Street, from Carlton House to Regent's
Park, and the terraces in that locality, in the tawdry pseudo-classic
stuccoed style, applied indiscriminately to churches, shops, and what
not. Not till the middle of the nineteenth century did the Gothic revival
flourish. Pugin, Britton, and Sir John Barry then became prominent. The
last named built the Houses of Parliament.

The demand for originality in street architecture is to be seen in the
tall, important blocks of residential flats and new hotels now rising up
in every quarter. Not beautiful and in many cases not even intelligible,
they are unmistakable signs