which glimmered feebly before one house in ten during
a small part of one night in three. But such was not the feeling of his
contemporaries. His scheme was enthusiastically applauded, and furiously
attacked. The friends of improvement extolled him as the greatest of
all the benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boasted
inventions of Archimedes, when compared with the achievement of the man
who had turned the nocturnal shades into noon-day? In spite of these
eloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not left undefended. There
were fools in that age who opposed the introduction of what was called
the new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the
introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as the
fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history doubtless opposed the
introduction of the plough and of alphabetical writing. Many years after
the date of Heming's patent there were extensive districts in which no
lamp was seen. [125]

We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the state of
the quarters of London which were peopled by the outcasts of society.
Among those quarters one had attained a scandalous preeminence. On the
confines of the City and the Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth
century, a House of Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white
hoods. The precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been a
sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of protecting
debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to be found in every
dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a large proportion were
knaves and libertines, and were followed to their asylum by women more
abandoned than themselves. The civil power was unable to keep order in a
district swarming with such inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became the
favourite resort of all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints
of the law. Though the immunities legally belonging to the place
extended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and
highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desperate no
peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue," bullies
with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks,
poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was fortunate if he escaped
back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pumped upon. Even the
warrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed without
the