him, and marvelled at the countless buildings he beheld, that, ere fifteen months had elapsed, the whole mass, together with the mighty fabric on which he stood, would be swept away by a tremendous conflagration.  Unable to foresee this direful event, and lamenting only that so fair a city should be a prey to an exterminating pestilence, he turned towards the north, and suffered his gaze to wander over Finsbury-fields, and the hilly ground beyond them—­over Smithfield and Clerkenwell, and the beautiful open country adjoining Gray’s-inn-lane.

So smiling and beautiful did these districts appear, that ha could scarcely fancy they were the chief haunts of the horrible distemper.  But he could not blind himself to the fact that in Finsbury-fields, as well as in the open country to the north of Holborn, plague-pits had been digged and pest-houses erected; and this consideration threw such a gloom over the prospect, that, in order to dispel the effect, he changed the scene by looking towards the west.  Here his view embraced all the proudest mansions of the capital, and tracing the Strand to Charing Cross, long since robbed of the beautiful structure from which it derived its name, and noticing its numerous noble habitations, his eye finally rested upon Whitehall:  and he heaved a sigh as he thought that the palace of the sovereign was infected by as foul a moral taint as the hideous disease that ravaged the dwellings of his subjects.

At the time that Leonard Holt gazed upon the capital, its picturesque beauties were nearly at their close.  In a little more than a year and a quarter afterwards, the greater part of the old city was consumed by fire; and though it was rebuilt, and in many respects improved, its original and picturesque character was entirely destroyed.

It seems scarcely possible to conceive a finer view than can be gained from the dome of the modern cathedral at sunrise on a May morning, when the prospect is not dimmed by the smoke of a hundred thousand chimneys—­when the river is just beginning to stir with its numerous craft, or when they are sleeping on its glistening bosom—­when every individual house, court, church, square, or theatre, can be discerned—­when the eye can range over the whole city on each side, and calculate its vast extent.  It seems scarcely possible, we say, to suppose at any previous time it could be more striking; and yet, at the period under consideration, it was incomparably more so.  Then, every house was picturesque, and every street a collection of picturesque objects.  Then, that which was objectionable in itself, and contributed to the insalubrity of the city, namely, the extreme narrowness of the streets, and overhanging stories of the houses, was the main source of their beauty.  Then, the huge projecting signs with their fantastical iron-work—­the conduits—­the crosses (where crosses remained)—­the maypoles—­all were picturesque; and as superior to what can now be seen, as the attire of Charles the Second’s age is to the ugly and disfiguring costume of our own day.