The book was probably intended for the use of the Moravian bands and other religious societies’ meetings in London, with which Wesley was more or less connected. It contains seventy psalms and hymns; but it is a remarkable fact that not one of them seems to have been written by Wesley’s brother Charles. One each is contributed by Addison, Dryden, and Lord Roscommon. One is from the Church liturgy, and one anonymous. Three are by Bishop Ken; four by Norris; six by Herbert; thirteen by Tate and Brady; thirty-three by Watts; and six are translations by Wesley himself. The book was never reprinted; but it formed the basis of another hymn-book, published three years after, in which exactly one-half of its psalms and hymns were embodied.[270] It was the first[271] of about forty hymnologies published by the two brothers during the next half-century, and which, as priceless gems, were scattered broadcast among the first Methodists. With Wesley’s first hymn-book we close the first section of his history. PART II. 1739. [Sidenote: 1739 Age 36] London in 1739 was widely different from what it is at present. The population, including Westminster and all the parishes within the Bills of Mortality, was about 600,000, or a fifth of the population now. London Bridge was the only highway across the majestic Thames that the Londoners possessed; and that was covered with antique houses, from end to end, forming a sort of picturesque extension of Gracechurch Street, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore,—a narrow, darksome, and dangerous thoroughfare with an arched gateway at each end of it, generally bristling with spikes, and often adorned with the heads of traitors. The site of the present Mansion House was a fruit market, having on one side of it a row of shady trees and on the other a conduit, surmounted by an equestrian statue of King Charles II. Islington, Hoxton, Hackney, and Bethnal Green were country villages. On the Surrey side, all beyond the King’s Bench prison was fields and open country. The Elephant and Castle stands where the small hamlet of Newington then stood. Walworth, Camberwell, Brixton, Peckham, and Clapham were rural haunts, far from the hum and noise of the great city. Even Lambeth was a vast conglomerated garden, extending from Kennington Common to what is now Westminster Bridge. Eastward—Blackwall, Poplar, Bow, and Stepney were somewhat distant collections of scattered houses, surrounded respectively by fields and gardens. Westward—Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Marylebone, and Tottenham Court were all in open country. Even Belgravia was a farm of arable and pasture land; while all the space, between Westminster and what is now Vauxhall Bridge, was a dreary tract of stunted, dusty, trodden grass, the resort of badgerbaiters and other rampant blackguards, and known by the name of Tothill Fields.