London in Modern Times: or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.Unknown
History
London in Modern Times: or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Unknown
London (England) -- History -- 17th century; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
apprentices and others, and contributions of all kinds for raising
parliament armies, measures were adopted for the permanent defence of
London. The city walls were repaired and mounted with artillery; the
sheds and buildings which had clustered about the outside of the city
boundaries in time of peace were swept away. All avenues, except five,
were shut up, and these were guarded with military works the most
approved. The first entrance, near the windmill, Whitechapel-road, was
protected by a hornwork; two redoubts with four flanks were raised
beside the second entrance, at Shoreditch; a battery and breastwork
were placed at the third entrance, in St. John's street; a two-flanked
redoubt and a small fort stood by the fourth entrance, at the end of
Tyburn, St. Giles's Fields; and a large fort with bulwarks overlooked
the fifth entrance, at Hyde Park Corner. Other fortifications were
situated here and there by the walls, so as to fit the city to stand a
long siege. A deep enthusiasm moved at least a considerable party in
the performance of these works. They were not left to engineers or
artillerymen and the paid artificers, who in ordinary times raise
bastions and the like. "The example of gentlemen of the best quality,"
says May, "knights and ladies going out with drums beating, and spades
and mattocks in their hands, to assist in the work, put life into the
drooping people." While warlike harangues, enlistments, contributions,
and the building of fortifications, were going on, and the bustle and
music of military marches were heard in the street, while the walls and
gates bristled with cannons and soldiery, there were those within that
war-girdled city who sympathized indeed in the popular cause, but who
were far differently employed in its defence and promotion.
There was at this time residing in London one
"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Who had a voice whose sound was like the sea."
His place of abode was in Aldersgate-street, in an humble house, with a
small garden--"the muses' bower," as he called it; and there his
marvelous mind was searching out the foundations of laws and
governments, breathing after liberty, civil and religious, and
picturing an ideal commonwealth of justice, order, truth, purity, and
love, which he longed and hoped to see reduced to a reality in his own
native land; he was preparing, also, for some high work, which should
be "of power to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of
public virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the
mind, and set the affections in right tune--a work not to be raised
from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine, nor to be obtained by
the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters, but by devout
prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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