you may scramble through the mud, as fast as you can make your way among the eager crowd, perpetually driving up and down Fish-street hill; cross the street, when there's a momentary interval in the continual drive of carriages, thwarting each other in every direction; dodge the opponent that will be sure to meet you full butt at the corner; and bless your stars that you are safe in Lombard-street, a damp and gloomy passage in which the principal bankers of London are often in winter obliged to light candles at noonday.

But as it often happens to the hurried passenger, who has enough to do in London to take care of himself, we have passed the Monument, without notice, though a doric column two hundred feet high, erected a hundred yards down this hill, to mark the spot where the great fire broke out in 1666.

In Lombard-street the footways are just wide enough for one person to pass at a time, and necessity has dictated the salutary regulation that the right hand takes the wall; but you presently open upon the Mansion-house, or residence of the lord mayor, a massy edifice of freestone, with a portico of six or eight Corinthian columns, toward Threadneedle-street; along which you see the front of the Bank, presenting a small center, and two richly ornamented wings, run out as a screen to the extensive offices within. Almost directly before it stands the Exchange, an old square edifice of no great beauty, eclipsed by the new front of the India-house, at some distance further down.

You are now in the Poultry, a narrow passage of two or three hundred yards in length, between Cheapside and Cornhill, continuations, of different dimensions, and under different names, of the principal or rather of the sole regular avenue of communication between the city, properly so called, and the west end of the town. Here accordingly, a constant tide of coaches sets in every morning, and out every afternoon, independent of counter currents, and sometimes eddies, whirling round sharp corners, and now and then damming up the channel, so that coaches, carts, and all are wedged up together in inextricable confusion, a circumstance in street language expressively called a jam.

As you advance, the open shops, particularly those of goldsmiths, mercers, and printsellers, attract your notice, and in

duce the unwary to stop every now and then before a brilliant bow window, shining with all the fashionable elegancies of the day, disposed in the most fascinating style, and exhibited with a degree of neatness peculiar to London; at the imminent risk of being elbowed to the right and left; pilfered by a pick pocket; importuned by a beggar; or knocked down by a sturdy porter, with a huge burden upon his head, crying "by your leave!" in a tone of vexation, irritated by continual obstacles, that indicates in plain English, get out of the way!

You now find yourself immersed, and as it were carried along in a current of foot passengers, on the half run, toward the west end of the town; so scarcely noticing Guildhall, a Gothic edifice at the end of a dingy street on the right, you are soon turned to the left by the butt end of Paternoster-row, apparently blocking up the street; and through a narrow opening, of which you were not aware, you are suddenly struck with astonishment at the enormous mass of St. Paul's, seen transversely in its whole length of five hundred feet.

Persons on foot take along the right side of the edifice, those in carriages are obliged to drive round to the left, and both meet again in front, after some minutes, to go down Ludgate hill, a slippery descent, opening on the right, by an unnoticed passage, to the gloomy purlieus of Newgate and the Old Baily.

At the foot of the hill you cross the spacious avenue of Blackfriars-bridge, a noble structure of freestone eleven hundred feet long, which is seen on the left, proudly vaulting over the Thames, upon nine arches, the central one of which is a hundred feet wide.

Here, it is worth while to turn aside to take a view of the city, which is no where better seen than from the footways of this bridge, substantially guarded by stone balustrades. The river Thames, about as wide as the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, crowded with boats and barges, winds under you to the right and left, through London bridge on one side, and Westminster bridge on the other, lined on both hands for miles together, with brick houses and stone steeples; among which you distinguish, through a mist of smoke, the slender column of the monument on one side, and the towers of Westminster abbey, with their Gothic pinnacles on the other; between which, and near enough

to be distinctly seen, the west front of St. Paul's rises fifty feet above the adjacent houses to a square battlement, ornamented with pediments and statues, while on each side of a Corinthian portico of coupled columns, two airy turrets or belfrys contrast, by their spiral shape and open structure, with the massy elevation of the dome.

Up the river you see the grand arcade and terrace over which is built Somerset-house, a prodigious national structure, designed to concentrate a number of the public offices, and at a distance, observed in fog and smoke, the immense roof of Westminster hall.

But to return to the foot of Ludgate-hill by a noted stand of hackney coaches (which are here obliged to keep the middle of the street,) and go on through Fleet-street to Temple-bar. This was formerly a gateway, but it is now a useless incumbrance, only marking the bounds of the city before its western suburb exceeded it in beauty and extent. The present structure was erected by one of the Stuarts, and has been disgraced within half a century by the savage exhibition of the heads of the Scotch lords, who were executed for treason after the last rebellion: but you have no time for this, or any other reflection, being pressed forward by the crowd behind; and jostling through its narrow passages, you pick your way in the mud by the walls of two churches that stand here in the middle of the street, compressing the torrent of passengers into a narrower channel than usual.

Here if you have been so lucky in your first excursion as not to have been hustled for a ninny, in the throng of a boxing-match, a puppet-shew, or a troop of dancing bears, you can hardly promise yourself to escape the privileged shove of a chimney-sweeper, or a mealman, and the humorous, or malicious exertions of. the hackney-coachmen to splash a passenger that is too well drest to appear on foot.

The narrow street now widens into the Strand, and on your right opens the arcade of Somerset-house; under which you enter the apartments of the Royal Academy for painting and sculpture; where, if it happens to be the time of the annual exhibition, the street will be blocked up with coaches.

By this time you will be struck with the frequent repetition of the royal arms, elegantly executed in bronze or stucco, over the door of every tradesman who has ever had the honour to serve any branch of the royal family with his wares; and perhaps your admiration will be excited to risibility on beholding the insignia of royalty, accompanied with the ridiculous pretension of "bug-destroyer to his majesty," "needlemaker to the queen," or "inventor of a shining blackball, patronised by his royal highness the prince of Wales."

A long way further on, you reach the gateway and screen before Northumberland-house near which three leading streets intersect each other; and here in the days of popery there was a Gothic structure surmounted with a cross, from whence the name Charing-Cross. In its place there now stands an equestrian statue of Charles I, elegantly executed in bronze, by a French artist of that age.

Here a spacious avenue opens to the left, which leads to the lodges of the horse-guards (at the principal entrance to the royal palaces), to the treasury, Westminster-hall, the two houses of parliament, Westminster abbey, &c. another turns to the right, which leads to the theatres, the palace of St. James's, and all the beautiful streets and squares of the court end of London, terminating in the Green-park, in which is the royal residence called Buckingham-house.

In this part of the town the streets are wide, and the buildings every where neat and substantial, though nowhere magnificent: every now and then opening into public squares, ornamented with grass-plots and shrubbery; yet even here convenience is more studied than shew, and the town houses of the first nobility are rarely distinguishable from those of their opulent neighbours, either by size or splendour. The rich in England seem to have discovered, with national sagacity, that it is impossible for wealth or power to push the accommodations of domestic life beyond the limits that ingenuity has here devised for a comfortable winter residence; and the examples of Burlington-house, the palaces of the dukes of Montague, Bedford, and Northumberland, and other gloomy edifices, erected in the last century, upon the French model, secluding and secluded

from public view are no longer imitated or admired. The royal family itself inhabits a modern house, and only visits the palace of St. James's to attend the ceremonies of the chapel, or the parade of the levee.

By the time you can have ranged through the elegant rows of Piccadilly, taken a peep at Hyde-park, and attempted to estimate the throng of coaches

Running at the ring of pleasure,

with one or two (sometimes three) footmen, according to the opulence or vanity of their masters, balancing behind them, in splendid liveries, with umbrellas or gold-headed canes in their hands, it will be almost dark; and whether you return through Oxford-street, by Holborn and Snow-hill, or descend St. James's street to Pall-Mall, and go back the way you came, you will find every avenue lighted up with rows of lamps, not twenty yards asunder, and every shop illuminated with reverberating mirrors; elegant equipages, often lighted with flambeaux, rattling at full speed along the streets, or across the corners; and hackney-coaches rumbling heavily on to Vauxhall, Ranelagh, the theatres, and other places of polite dissipation, which are all at this end of the town.

But if the night be drizzly (as it probably will) and you can't get a coach, take care you don't slip down upon the smooth and slimy pavement, while you guard your pockets from an apparently accidental jostle; but never stand to pick your way at a corner, for it is better to step over shoe tops in mud than to be knocked down and run over. If a solitary female accosts you from a dark corner, turn a deaf ear; and only think yourself safe from open or covert dangers, when you shelter yourself in the temporary home, whether tavern, boarding-house, or furnished lodging, that London readily affords to innumerable strangers, adapted to every disposition, and graduated to every purse.

Yet even here the first night will be haunted with real, or imaginary terrors; your lingering slumbers will be broken with apprehensions of sudden fire, or secret assassination; and, in the hour of darkness, as you listen to the hollow murmur that perpetually rises from the surrounding streets, you tremble at the