ing which they thought incredibly great appears not to have
exceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third
of the whole tonnage of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of
the tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of the
steam vessels of the Thames.

The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred and
thirty thousand pounds a year. In our time the net duty paid annually,
at the same place, exceeds ten millions. [104]

Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards the
close of the reign of Charles the Second will see that only the nucleus
of the present capital then existed. The town did not, as now, fade
by imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas,
embowered in lilacs and laburnums, extended from the great centre of
wealth and civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far
into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense
line of warehouses and artificial lakes which now stretches from the
Tower to Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one
of those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble and
wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than
forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with about
a thousand inhabitants. [105] On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen
wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the borough of Marylebone,
and over far the greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs
of Finsbury and of the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude;
and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and
turmoil of the monster London. [106] On the south the capital is
now connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior in
magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685,
a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy
houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of
Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the
river.

Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the most important
division. At the time of the Restoration it had been built, for the most
part, of wood and plaster; the few bricks that were used were ill baked;
the booths where goods were exposed to sale projected far into the
streets, and were overhung by the upper stories. A few specimens