The Strand
also, along which he rode, was not, as now, a continued street,
although it was beginning already to assume that character. It still
might be considered as an open road, along the south side of which
stood various houses and hotels belonging to the nobility, having
gardens behind them down to the water-side, with stairs to the river,
for the convenience of taking boat; which mansions have bequeathed the
names of their lordly owners to many of the streets leading from the
Strand to the Thames. The north side of the Strand was also a long
line of houses, behind which, as in Saint Martin's Lane, and other
points, buildings, were rapidly arising; but Covent Garden was still a
garden, in the literal sense of the word, or at least but beginning to
be studded with irregular buildings. All that was passing around,
however, marked the rapid increase of a capital which had long enjoyed
peace, wealth, and a regular government. Houses were rising in every
direction; and the shrewd eye of our citizen already saw the period
not distant, which should convert the nearly open highway on which he
travelled, into a connected and regular street, uniting the Court and
the town with the city of London.
He next passed Charing Cross, which was no longer the pleasant
solitary village at which the judges were wont to breakfast on their
way to Westminster Hall, but began to resemble the artery through
which, to use Johnson's expression "pours the full tide of London
population.
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