In London, too, have flourished many of the excellent of the earth; men who, amidst the engrossing cares and distracting tumults of a large metropolis, have, like Enoch, walked with God, and leavened, by virtue of their piety and prayers, the masses around them. Here also have flourished, and still flourish, those great religious institutions, which have made known to the remotest parts of the earth the glad tidings of the gospel, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"--truths more precious than the merchandise of silver, and the gain whereof is greater than pure gold. Some of the early chapters of London history we have already written;[1] we have given some sketches of its scenes and fortunes, from the time when it was founded by the Romans to what are called, with more of fiction's coloring than history's faithfulness, "the golden days of good queen Bess." We now resume the story, and proceed to give some account of London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [1] See "London in the Olden Time," No. 492 Youth's Library. CHAPTER I. LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY. London was hugely growing and swelling on all sides when Elizabeth was on the throne, as may be seen from John Stow, from royal orders and municipal regulations. Desperately frightened were our fathers lest the population should increase beyond the means of support, lest it should breed pestilence or cause famine. But their efforts to repress the size of the then infant leviathan, so far as they took effect, only kept crowded together, within far too narrow limits, the ever-increasing number of the inhabitants of the city, thus promoting disease, one of the greatest evils they wished to check. In spite of all restrictions, however, the growth of population, together with the impulses of industry and enterprize, would have their own way, and building went on in the outskirts in all directions. James imitated Elizabeth in her prohibitions, and the people imitated their predecessors in the disregard of them. The king was soon obliged to give way, so far as to extend the liberties of the city; and in the fifth year of his reign he granted a new charter, embracing within the municipal circuit and jurisdiction the extra-mural parishes of Trinity, near Aldgate-street, St. Bartholomew, Little St. Bartholomew, Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and Cold Harbor, Thames-street. These grants were confirmed by Charles I., whose charter also enclosed within the city boundaries both Moorfields and Smithfield. These places rapidly lost more and more of their rural appearance, and became covered in the immediate vicinity of the old walls with a network of streets. But London as it appears on the map of that day, was still a little affair, compared with its subsequent enormous bulk. Pancras, Holloway, Islington, Kentish Town, Hampstead, St.