ugh many metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665,
and called the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure in
the centre, with four passages at the sides, through which the public
could come and go as they pleased. In a later generation the
inhabitants railed the enclosure round, and set in the middle an oval
basin of water, large enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravings
we see people gravely punting about on the quaint little pond. The
fulness of time filled in the pond, and set up King William the Third
instead in the middle of a grassy circle. It would take too long to
enumerate all the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in the
London of his day. Some few, however, are especially worth recording.
He would seek in vain for the "Pikadilly" he knew, with its stately
houses and fair gardens. It was almost a country road to the left of
St. James's Street, between the Green Park and Hyde Park, {68} with
meadows and the distant hills beyond. Going eastward he would find
that a Henrietta Street and a King Street still led into Covent Garden;
but the Covent Garden of his time was an open place, with a column and
a sun-dial in the middle. Handsome dwellings for persons of repute and
quality stood on the north side over those arcades which were fondly
supposed by Inigo Jones, who laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazza
in Venice. Inigo Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen in
the "Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day." This church
was destroyed by fire in 1795, and was rebuilt in its present form by
Hardwick.

[Sidenote: 1714--Anne's London]

Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three streets met; what is
now Trafalgar Square was covered with houses and the royal mews. St.
Martin's Church was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in
1726. Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; Mrs.
Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which we hear so much
from the writers of the time of Anne, was considered to be most
fashionably situated; ambassadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street;
Bolingbroke lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor still
linger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by Sir James
Thornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, and elaborate marble
mantel-pieces, with Corinthian columns and entablatures, still adorn
the interiors of some of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Anne
architecture and