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46
or twice a week, and wheaten bread rarely, if ever. Thus in
two centuries the general prosperity has been such as to allow
the wage-earning class to share it, not only in the form of
larger wages, but a reduction in price of many commodities
of first necessity.
And while it is satisfactory to note the material progress of
the bulk of the population, it is no less pleasing to find that
owing to the spread of education and increased facilities for
travelling, the ordinary artisan of to-day is the superior in
mental culture of many of the landed gentry of 1685, for it is
stated to have been then no uncommon thing for the literary
attainments of a Justice of the Peace to be confined to the
signing of his name to a mittimus.
Turning to the domestic concerns of the Metropolis, it is
difficult to imagine the then existing conditions of life. To
quote once more from Macaulay, only the nucleus of the
capital then existed. The town did not, as now, fade by
imperceptible degrees into the country. 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
buildings which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was
in existence; and Chelsea was a quiet country village with
about a thousand inhabitants. On the north, cattle fed and
sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns over the site of the
Borough of Marylebone; and Islington was a solitude.
The streets were practically unpaved at the west-end of the
town until the passing of the Westminster Paving Act in
1762, unless the inhabitants chose from pride, wealth, or
caprice, to pave the space in front of their own door, in which
case they were free to indulge their personal tastes without
restraint. In a few cases, however, small districts were
paved; for example, in the year 1662, an Act of Parliament
was passed providing for the paving of Pall Mall, the Hay-