hat London of Rocque's famous map
of 1746, when "cits" had their country-boxes and "gazebos" at Islington
and Hackney, and fine gentlemen their villas at _Marybone_ and
_Chelsey_; when duels were fought in the "fields" behind the British
Museum, and there was a windmill at the bottom of Rathbone Place. We
should find the Thames swarming with noisy watermen, and the streets
with thick-calved Irish chairmen; we should see the old dusky oil-lamps
lighted feebly with the oil that dribbled on the Rake when he went to
Court; and the great creaking sign-boards that obscured the sky, and
occasionally toppled on the heads of his Majesty's lieges beneath. We
should note the sluggish kennels and the ill-paved streets; and rejoice
in the additional facilities afforded for foot-passengers at the "new
Buildings near _Hanover_ Square." We might watch King George II. yawning
in his Chapel Royal of St. James's, or follow Queen Caroline of Anspach
in her walk on Constitution Hill. Or we might turn into the Mall, which
is filled on summer evenings with a _Beau-Monde_ of cinnamon-coloured
coats and pink _negliges_. But the tour of Covent Garden (with its
column and dial in the centre) would take at least a chapter, and the
pilgrimage of Leicester Fields another. We should certainly assist at
the Lord Mayor's Show; and we might, like better folks before us, be
hopelessly engulfed in that westward-faring crowd, which, after due
warning from the belfry of St. Sepulchre's, swept down the old Tyburn
Road on "Execution Day" to see the last of Laurence Shirley, Earl
Ferrers, or the highwayman James M'Lean. It is well, perhaps, that our
limits are definitely restricted.

Moreover, much that we could do imperfectly with the pen, Hogarth has
done imperishably with the graver. Essentially metropolitan in his
tastes, there is little notable in the London of his day of which he has
not left us some pictorial idea. He has painted the Green Park, the
Mall, and Rosamond's Pond. He has shown us Covent Garden and St. James's
Street; Cheapside and Charing Cross; Tottenham-Court Road and Hog-Lane,
St. Giles. He has shown us Bridewell, Bedlam, and the Fleet Prison.
Through a window in one print we see the houses on old London Bridge; in
another it is Temple Bar, surmounted by the blackened and ghastly relics
of Jacobite traitors. He takes us to a cock-fight in Bird Cage Walk, to
a dissection in Surgeons' Hall. He gives us reception-rooms in Arlington
Street, c