Unknown

“ The history of London is the history of the British constitution and laws. There thicken round it most of the great political conflicts between kings and barons, and lords and commons; between feudalism and modern liberty; between the love of ancient institutions and the spirit of progress, from which, under God, have sprung our civil government and social order.
The history of London is the history of our religion, both in its corrupted and in its purified forms. Early was it a grand seat of Romish worship ”

“ It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politic, jointed and laid together in the most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here, like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. ”

“ So the metropolis of the British empire is the rendezvous of a great military establishment, as well as an emporium of merchandise; but it is to the scenes on the borders of the Thames, to her spacious docks, her crowded shipping, her stores and warehouses, with all the accompaniments of busy commerce, presenting a spectacle which perfectly overpowers the mind with wonder—it is to those scenes that we should take the stranger, to impress him with an idea of the greatness of our chief city. ”

“ Let it be the endeavor, as it is the duty of London citizens, to aid all wise schemes for its physical and intellectual amelioration, but especially such as relate to morals and religion. With a clear eye, a loving heart, a steady hand, and a determined will, each must apply himself to pulling down the evil, and building up the good. The moral health of a city should be the care of all its members. The most precious object amidst the multitude of precious things in the chief city of England is the citizen himself. ”

“ The time is coming—is already come, when, as most intelligent men turn over the pages of the world's history, they award the palm of the noblest civilization to London, a city full of merchants and artisans, rather than to Rome, a city full of soldiers, flushed with the pride of victory, and drunk with the blood of the slain. ”

“ Within these limits, after the fire, there arose a new London, of nobler aspect, and formed for grander destinies than the old one, relieved by that very fire, under the blessing of Divine Providence, from liability to the recurrence of the dreadful plague, which had from time to time recruited its death-dealing energy from the filth of old crowded streets, with all their noxious exhalations. ”

“ On taking a longer reach of comparison, an amount of wonder is inspired not to be adequately expressed. Had some sage in the Roman senate, two thousand years ago, proclaimed that the day would come, when an obscure town, situated on the Thames, a river scarcely known then to the Latin geographer, would vie with the city in which they were assembled on the Tiber, nay, eclipse it, and wax in glory while the other waned, that prediction would have strangely crossed their pride, and would have been indignantly pronounced incredible. ”

“ What changeful scenes has many a dwelling witnessed!—families have come and gone, people have been born and have died, obedient to the great law—"the fashion of this world passeth away." Those rooms have witnessed the birth and departure of many, the death of the guilty sinner or pardoned believer, the gay wedding and the gloomy funeral, the welcome meeting of Christmas groups around the bright fireside, and the sad parting of loved ones called to separate into widely divergent paths. ”

“ While the shades of night rendered him invisible to his audience, his clear voice—which could be heard distinctly at the distance of a mile, passing through a marvelous variety of intonations, in which the very soul of the speaker seemed to burst out in gushes of terror or love—must, as it sounded over the park, and fell upon the eager listening thousands, have seemed to them like the utterance of some impalpable and unseen spirit, who, with unearthly powers of address, had come down from heaven to warn and invite. ”

“ London was hugely growing and swelling on all sides when Elizabeth was on the throne, as may be seen from John Stow, from royal orders and municipal regulations. Desperately frightened were our fathers lest the population should increase beyond the means of support, lest it should breed pestilence or cause famine. But their efforts to repress the size of the then infant leviathan, so far as they took effect, only kept crowded together, within far too narrow limits, the ever-increasing number of the inhabitants of the city, thus promoting disease, one of the greatest evils they wished to check. ”

“ It is the mighty rendezvous of nobility, gentry, courtiers, divines, lawyers, physicians, merchants, seamen, and all kinds of excellent artificers of the most refined arts, and most excellent beauties; for it is observed, that in most families of England, if there be any son or daughter that excels the rest in beauty or wit, or perhaps courage or industry, or any other rare quality, London is their north star, and they are never at rest till they point directly thither. ”

“ No doubt men of all kinds thronged old St. Paul's to hear the Puritan preach on the king's return; and on reading over his wonderfully earnest and conscience-searching sermon, one cannot help feeling how many there must have been there to whom his warnings were as appropriate as they still are to multitudes in our own day, perhaps even to some person now perusing this sketch of the history of London. "Were your joy," said he, "but reasonable, I would not discourage it. But a madman's laughter is no very lovely spectacle to yourselves. ”

“ Probably it was in his house in Barbican—the queer old barbican of that day, with a portion of the Barbican, or tower, still standing, and picturesquely gabled and carved dwellings crowded close against it—that Milton, musing on his native city, wrote some of his most stirring political tracts. He was the representative of a large class of London citizens, who, without taking up arms on either side, earnestly entered into the great struggle, and thought and talked, and worked and wrote, as men agitated and in travail for the restoration and welfare of their distracted and bleeding country. ”

“ Their varied architecture and style, the different circumstances under which they were built, the various motives and diversified purposes which led to their erection, are symbols and illustrations of the innumerable forms, the many colored hues, the strange gradations of men's condition, character, habits, tastes, and feelings. Each house has its own history—a history which in some cases has been running on since an era when civilization wore a different aspect from what it does now. ”

“ It is very true that the love of war has not lost its hold entirely on the public mind; that there are many who still pant for the conflict, and for the honors and prizes which successful warfare brings; but, we repeat it, the spirit of the nineteenth century is not there expressed, but it finds its exponent in the earnest activity which is ever witnessed round the neighborhood of London-bridge and the Exchange. ”

“ How fearful people were thirty or forty, if not a hundred miles from London, of anything they brought from mercers' or drapers' shops, or of goods that were brought to them, or of any persons who came to their houses. How they would shut their doors against their friends; and if a man passed over the fields, how one would avoid another, how every man was a terror to another. O, how sinfully unthankful are we for our quiet societies, habitations, and health! ”

“ Paul's Churchyard are inseparably associated with the Reformation. The principles proclaimed from the stone pulpit of the one could not be destroyed by the fires that blazed round the stakes of the other. The history of the Protestant Establishment ever since is involved in that of our city; places connected with its grand events, its advocates, and its ornaments, are dear to the hearts of its attached children; while other spots in London, little known to fame, are linked to the memory of the Puritans, and while reverently traced out by those who love them, are regarded as hallowed ground. ”

“ The richest forms of modern civilization in London are founded on our religion. The elevation of woman to her proper rank, the improved character of the judicial code, the extinction of domestic slavery, the elevation of serfs of the soil to freemen having an estate in their own labor, the value set on life, the philanthropic institutions which abound—are all the results of evangelical light and principle. ”

“ Having made wonderful attainments in science, he had devoted himself with enthusiasm to the study of architecture, and now, in the wide space in which at once a full-grown city was to appear, a field presented itself worthy of the exercise of the greatest powers of art—a field, indeed, which could rarely in the world's history be looked for. ”

“ A great fire is a most sublime, as well as appalling spectacle, and generally presents some features of the picturesquely terrible. Guildhall, built of oak, too solid and old to blaze, became so much red-hot charcoal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a building of burnished brass. ”

“ We look with intense interest to the young men of London. With pain, such as we cannot describe, we regard the gay, the dissolute, the intemperate—those who drown the higher faculties of the soul in sensual indulgence, who degrade their mental, moral, and spiritual nature, and, forgetting their relationship to angels, sink to the level of the brutes that perish. ”

“ Clubs were formed of a more than questionable description, of which we remember to have received an illustrative anecdote from a citizen of London, now gray-headed, but then in the flower of his youth. Invited by a person of about his own age to attend a meeting, held in some obscure street, he was surprised on entrance to find a number of men, ranged on either side a room, sitting beside long tables, with one at the upper end, where sat the president for the evening. ”

“ The most striking feature in the history of London in the reign of George I., was the extraordinary spirit of speculation which then existed. The moderate gains of trade and commerce did not satisfy the cupidity of the human breast, which then, as it has done since, burst out into a fever, that consumed all reason, prudence, and principle. Men made haste to be rich, and consequently fell into temptation and a snare. In 1717, an unprecedented excitement pervaded the money market. ”

“ A walk along some of the more quiet and retired streets at the west end of the metropolis, which were scenes of fashion and gayety a hundred years ago, awaken in the mind, when it is in certain moods, trains of solemn and healthful reflection. We think of the generations that once, with light or heavy hearts, passed and repassed along those ways, too many of them, we fear, however burdened with earthly solicitudes, sadly heedless of the high interests of the everlasting future. ”

“ During the melancholy time that the civil war raged in England, the London companies were much oppressed, and spoiled of their resources by the arbitrary exactions made by those in power; but they seem to have enjoyed a better condition under the protectorate, when a season of comparative rest and quietude returned.
Cromwell's state residence in London was Whitehall. With much less of splendor and show than had been exhibited by the former occupants of that palace, the protector maintained a degree of magnificence and dignity befitting the chief ruler of a great country. ”

“ Sympathy with the principles of these Puritan sufferers pervaded, to a great extent, the population of London. Side by side with, but in stern contrast to, the gay merry-makings and pageants of the Stuart age, there lay a deep, earnest, religious spirit at work, mingling with political excitement, and strengthening it. The Puritan preachers of a former age had been popular in London. Their sentiments had tended greatly to mould into a corresponding form the opinions, habits, and feelings of a subsequent generation. ”

“ And I appeal to all the reason in the world, whether it be reasonable for a man to live in mirth that is yet unregenerate and under the curse and wrath of God, and can never say, in the midst of his greatest pomp and pleasure, that he is sure to be an hour out of hell, and may be sure he shall be there forever, if he die before he have a new, a holy, and a heavenly nature, though he should die with laughter in his face, or with a jest in his mouth, or in the boldest presumption that he shall be saved ”

“ Charles was fond of walking in the parks, which he did with such rapidity, and for such a length of time as to wear out his courtiers. He once said to prince George of Denmark, who was corpulent, "Walk with me, and hunt with my brother, and you will not long be distressed with growing fat." Playing with dogs, feeding ducks, and chatting with people, were occupations the king was much addicted to, and were thought by his subjects to be so condescending, familiar, and kind, that they tended much to promote his personal popularity with the London citizens and others. ”

“ Striking contrasts abound between the outward material aspect and the inward moral scenery of those habitations. In this house, perhaps, which catches the passenger's eye by its splendor, through whose windows there flashes the gorgeous light of patrician luxury, at whose door lines of proud equipages drive up, on whose steps are marshaled obsequious footmen in gilded liveries, there are hearts pining away with ambition, envy, jealousy, fear, remorse, and agony. ”