Whatever the scene -- social, political, financial or literary --
London was the centre. From London went forth men who con-
trolled the trade of the world, men who directed the govern-
ment of great countries. There was no other city comparable
to London -- especially to an Englishman. London did one-third
of the business of the kingdom. To it came artists, actors, writ-
ers, men of finance, men of all business not only from the island
but from all parts of the widely scattered Empire.

Many writers began to find their subjects in the life of the city,
especially its low life -- Tom Brown, Swift, John Gay in his
Trivia, Defoe and the novelists, especially Fielding and Smol-
lett, and perhaps best of all, the painter Hogarth; the names of
great authors of Eighteenth-Century England -- Pope, Addison,
Steele, Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, Sheridan -- were so closely
associated with the social, political and literary life of the city
that to know them is to know London; and finally it was a
golden age for the theatre and the profession of acting, repre-
sented by such popular actors as Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, the
Kembles, Kean, Fanny Kelly, Elliston, Mathews, Munden and
many others.

In 1775, the year of Lamb's birth, London contained about
three-fourths of a million people in a community of almost fifty
villages, loosely held together. It was a queer composition of old
and new houses. After the Great Plague and Great Fire of the
preceding century, many sections had been rebuilt but there
were still innumerable old structures which were on the point
of falling to pieces. Records of the time abound in references to
buildings which of their own weight collapsed, often with tragic
consequences. The fine old houses of which there were so many
in the early years of the century were rapidly disappearing, for
example, Craven, Clarendon, Bedford, Burlington, Bucking-
ham, some of them torn down to be replaced by finer buildings.
Along with the houses went the handsome gardens which had

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