rror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On
the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane,
Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement,
suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing
four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however,
till 1761 (George III.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to
be placed flat against the walls of the houses.

When Dr. Johnson said, "Come and let us take a walk down Fleet Street,"
he proposed a no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in
London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable
gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches
of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians
who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were
awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the
wall. In 1766, when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and put
up at that humble hostelry the "White Horse," in Fetter Lane, he
describes coming home from Drury Lane with his brother in a sedan.
Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, some rough fellows pushed
against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pass
first. Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post
he passed was cured in 1766, by the laying down of side-pavements. On
that occasion it is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet that
they would pave more in a day than four Scotchmen could. By three
o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a
public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work,
won the wager.

In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the
centre of Fleet Street, in ridicule of Lord Bute; but a more serious
affray took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy Wilkites closed
the Bar, to stop a procession of 600 loyal citizens _en route_ to St.
James's to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition
and uproot the constitution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and
the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud.
Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in "Nando's Coffee House."
About 150 of the frightened citizens, passing up Chancery Lane, got to
the palace by a devious way, a hearse with two white horses and two
bla