When the Corporation of London had determined in 1766 to remove many of the inconveniences and obstructions then common in the City of London, it appeared in evidence that the Streets were generally badly paved, very dirty, and not sufficiently lighted; and that the Signs prevented a free circulation of the air and view of the Streets, while the Posts contributed to impede the passenger. Nor were the Penthouses less injurious; those, loaded with flower-pots, often occasioned dangerous hurts by the fall of the latter; and the watering of the plants in them contributed, with the projecting spouts, in rainy weather, to sluice the Citizen, who at the same time steered his undulating or zig-zag way through wheelbarrows and bawling owners. Another comfort peculiar to this period was the ambition of Shop-keepers, who encroached upon the footways by bow-windows. When an example was set, the whole fraternity, fired with emulation, thrust each new one beyond his neighbour. Such were the impediments to walking so recently as 1766! The reader may imagine how a Londoner must have felt during a high wind and shower; a thousand signs swinging on rusty hinges above him, threatening ruin to his person at every step, and a thousand spouts pouring cascades at his luckless head. The extravagant use of Signs had been complained of early in the century, when they were described as very large, very fine with gilding and carving, and very absurd. _Golden_ perriwigs, saws, axes, razors, trees, lancets, knives, salmon, cheese, blacks' heads with gilt hair, half-moons, sugar-loaves, and Westphalia hams, were repeated without mercy from the Borough to Clerkenwell, and from Whitechapel to the Haymarket; but a person who knew what they were much better than myself thus described them under the signature of A. B. in one of the newspapers of 1764: "In the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. the inhabitants of the City of Paris were ever complaining how sick the City was, and how fast they died: upon which, Louis consulted the Medical people what could be the cause of it: and they all agreed, that it was owing to the largeness of the Signs, which choaked up the free circulating air, which ever administers to health; upon which an edict was published, that no Sign should be more than 18 inches by 12, and all the iron perhaps may weigh four or five pounds; and I do suppose that some of the Sign-irons in London weigh four or five hundred, and some a great deal more. Soon after this edict was published, it was declared by the inhabitants, that they found a sensible difference in their healths. The general run of their streets are a little wider than Paternoster-row; a few much wider, and a great many not so wide.