replaced the old coach, with its perforated sides for windows. No one thought it a scandal that the watermen on the river should exchange language which in these days would drive every decent man or woman from the boats for ever. It was natural that rough and coarse men, like the watermen, should use rough and coarse language. The ladies of Charles the Second’s time heard coarseness unparalleled from these fellows with much the same air with which ladies of our own time pass a group of working-men energetically strengthening every assertion with the universal adjective. They hear, but they do not hear. [Illustration: S^t. Ethelburga. _within Bishopsgate_. From a contemporary print.] As we already know, shooting London Bridge was a dangerous feat except at high and low water. Some of the boats were tilt boats, covered, that is, with a tilt or awning of canvas to keep off the rain; they were a kind of omnibus, and ran between Greenwich and London, with other lines. Most of them, however, were wherries of the kind which still survive, though they are now little used. It is melancholy to look at the river of to-day above Bridge and to compare its silence and loneliness with the animation and bustle of two hundred years ago, when it was covered with boats taking passengers up and down the river, barges with parties, stately barges of the Mayor and the Companies, Royal barges, cargo-freighted barges, boats with anglers moored in mid stream, tilt boats, sailing boats, and every conceivable kind of small craft. When the Queen came down from Hampton Court ten thousand boats accompanied her. [Illustration: SPECIMEN OF ARMORIAL ARCHITECTURE FROM A HOUSE IN HART STREET, CRUCHED FRIARS, TAKEN DOWN IN 1803 From a print drawn and etched in 1792 by J. T. Smith.] We read a great deal about the insanitary condition of the City, the narrow lanes, the projecting storeys nearly meeting at the top, the laystalls and the stinking heaps of offal and refuse, which were not abolished by the Fire but only burnt up. No doubt these things were bad; probably they contributed to the spread of the Plague. However, the City was as healthy as any town in the world, as cities then went; it stood upon a broad tidal river which swept up a fresh wind with every tide—twice a day; the City was less than half a mile in breadth, and on all sides it was surrounded by open spaces and broad moorland. Fresh pure air on every side, without a town to speak of for twenty miles around. Moreover it stood upon a hill, or many hills; the ground sloped to the river and to the two streams; the climate had always been rainy, and the rain washed the streets and carried away the decaying matter.