The population of these islands at the close of the reign of Queen Anne was probably not more than one-fifth of its present amount. It is not easy to arrive at a precise knowledge with regard to the number of the inhabitants of England at that time, because there was no census taken until 1801. We have, therefore, to be content with calculations founded on the number of houses that paid certain taxes, and on the register of deaths. This is of course not a very exact way of getting at the result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair general estimate. According to these calculations, then, the population of England and Wales together was something like five millions and a half; the population of Ireland at the same time appears to have been about two millions; that of Scotland little more than one. But the distribution of the population of these countries was very different then from that of the present day. Now the great cities and towns form the numerical strength of England and Scotland at least, but at that time the agricultural districts had a much larger proportion of the population than the towns could boast of. London was then considered a vast and enormous city, but it was only a hamlet when compared with the London which we know. Even then it absorbed more than one-tenth of the whole population of England and Wales. At the beginning of the reign of King George the First, London had a population of about seven hundred thousand, and it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly as the {64} population of England has grown between that time and this, the growth of the metropolis has been even greater in proportion. The City and Westminster were, at the beginning of George's reign, and for long after, two distinct and separate towns; between them still lay many wide spaces on which men were only beginning to build houses. Fashion was already moving westward in the metropolis, obeying that curious impulse which seems to prevail in all modern cities, and which makes the West End as eagerly sought after in Paris, in Edinburgh, and in New York, as in London. The life of London centred in St. Paul's and the Exchange; that of Westminster in the Court and the Houses of Parliament. All around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes, squares, streets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces and broad thoroughfares with which we are familiar. Between Parliament Buildings and the two churches of St. Peter and St. Margaret ran a narrow, densely crowded street, known as St. Margaret's Lane. The spot where Parliament Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of an uninterrupted row of houses running down to the water-gate by the river. The market-house of the old Woollen Market stood just where Westminster Bridge begins. The Parliament Houses themselves are as much changed as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occupies the site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons used to sit.