London, where Wesley first entered upon the duties of his sacred office, was, comparatively speaking, a small, dirty, ill-built town. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes, which now spreads from the Tower to Blackwall, had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of those stately piles of building, which are inhabited by the noble and the wealthy, was in existence; and Chelsea, now peopled by tens of thousands of human beings, was then a quiet country village. On the north cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns over the site of the borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude; and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and turmoil of the monster London. On the south, the capital was connected with its suburbs by a single line of irregular arches, impeding the navigation of the river, and overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses. In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, and cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. The centre of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields was an open space, where the rabble congregated every evening to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. St James’s Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, and for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. The pavement of London was detestable, and the drainage so bad that, in rainy weather, the gutters soon became torrents. The houses were not numbered. The shops were distinguished by painted signs, gay and grotesque. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens’ Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs. When the evening closed in, garret windows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who walked on the path below. Most of the streets were left in profound darkness, where thieves plied their trade with impunity, and dissolute young gents broke windows, upset sedans, beat quiet men, and offered rude caresses to pretty women. Nothing like the London daily newspaper of our time existed, or could exist. Both the necessary capital and the necessary skill were wanting. No newspaper was published oftener than twice a week; and none exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the _Times_. There were no provincial newspapers whatever. Indeed, except in the capital and at the two universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom; and the only printing press in England, north of the river Trent, appears to have been at York.