Louis; and they got their collective name because the bulk of them were supposed to have come from the Palatinate of the Rhine. We find them defined in a minute of the Privy Council issuing a proclamation enjoining a general collection to be made on behalf of "several thousand Germans of the Protestant religion, who, being oppressed and ruined by the great exactions of the French on the frontiers, and otherwise distressed upon account of their religion, have fled for refuge into this kingdom."1 They seem to have been directed towards England by a gregarious influence, speaking in their misery of the wealth and kindness of the Protestant English. The French Huguenots had found an asylum there, and it might be open to the German victims of the great tyrant. Perhaps they knew also that Britain, excluded from the traditional mechanical trades and mysteries of the Continental nations, cultivated those who were adepts in them as welcome visitors. We learn that, in June 1709, "they were increased to 6520 men, women, and children, among whom were schoolmasters, husbandmen, vine-dressers, herdsmen, wheelwrights, smiths, weavers, carpenters, masons, bakers, coopers, brewers, and other handicraftsmen." 2 The queen taking compassion on the poor wanderers, the humane example naturally spread. They were so destitute of preparation for planting themselves in a foreign land, that they were housed in tents taken from the military stores in the Tower and pitched on Blackheath and other open districts near London; and they were dependent on charity 1 29th June 1709; Minutes, P. C. MS. 2 Rapin and Tindal, iv. 109. for their daily bread. Their numbers increased rapidly and alarmingly, and their apparition was the immediate impulse to the repeal of the Act, mentioned elsewhere, for the naturalisation of foreign Protestants. A considerable body of these strangers seem to have been absorbed in England; but gangs of them were sent to the American colonies, and there was an emphatic removal of a portion of them to Ireland. To plant starving people in a starving country may seem at first thought neither logical nor humane. But there was another serious misfortune not common to both the Irish were idle, and, on the other hand, the Palatines were signally industrious. It may be noted, parenthetically, that this virtue had not so much influence in the project of planting them in Ireland as their religion had. They were Protestants; and seeing the difficulty ever felt by the British Government in ruling Ireland with its vast preponderance of a religion as disproportionately overbalanced in the other parts of the empire, there was a strong temptation to induce them permanently to reside in Ireland. The wanderers passed to the new home, where they were to be permanently domesticated, with a letter of introduction, in the shape of a minute of the Privy Council, issuing a proclamation "that the mayors, justices of peace, and other magistrates be aiding and assisting to them, so that they may be kindly entertained and civilly used in the several places on the road."1 The arrangement was profitable at all hands. The great curse of Ireland 1 8th Aug. 1709; Minutes, P. C. MS. was the disease of idleness, that left the resources of abundance ungathered. The frugal industrious Palatines, gradually by hard work acquiring available means, became, in their cultivated holdings, a peculiar people, living in frugal comfort in the unhappy land their misfortunes and not their misconduct had compelled them to inhabit. CHAPTER XVIII. London. THE TWO GREAT CAPITALS OPPOSITE EACH OTHER SECURITY FROM ATTACK DIFFICULT NAVIGATION OF THE THAMES QUEEN ELIZABETH'S LONDON, AND QUEEN ANNE'S-THE WALLS STREETS AND GATES In A GLANCE at the map of Europe will readily convince any one who looks at France and England and recalls their common history, that inevitably, through political forces acting on geographical conditions, London and Paris must have arisen where they now are. times when, although there was little travelling by land there was still less by sea, a highway from Britain through Europe naturally took the Straits of Dover as the shortest sea-passage. This would create a seaport on either side of the Channel: and so we have Calais and Dover. But the vast commerce and intercourse for other purposes exchanged from either side would bring together in each country a centre of accumulation for population and wealth. If this had been in either instance on the sea-shore, the city so created must have been exposed to risk in time of war. In either case, therefore, without avowed design, but by the counter-pressure of facil ities and difficulties, a capital arose as near to the sea-shore as seemed to be consistent with safety to the citizens and the wealth accumulating within its walls. London, with the larger river, is especially unapproachable by water-though once in the course of history, the Dutch, who were then endeavouring to grasp the dominion of the ocean, made their cannon heard at Whitehall. The navigation of the Thames below the London docks is extremely capricious and difficult; and in times of panic about an invasion of the island, and a sacking of London, terrors have been appeased by those who knew what they were saying, assuring their friends that if the lighthouses, beacons, and buoys of the lower Thames were removed, the most skilful sailor in the world could not guide a fleet within cannon-shot of London. There is a map of London as it stood in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in one of the many collections of maps and representations of towns and eminent buildings published by the Jansens of Amsterdam.1 This 1 'Illustriorum principumque urbium septentrionalium Europæ Tabulæ. Amstelodami; ex officino Joannis Jansonii.' Of several copies of this work, I have never seen two with exactly the same in what they contain. Both the Elzevirs and Jansens seem to have had large collections of maps and architectural engravings, and to have selected out of them from time to time a parcel for publication. The title given above is in my own copy; but in it there is another title-page, later in date, and profusely decorated with figures, mythical and real -among the realities, a finely engraved full-length portrait of our King James and his favourite Buckingham. The title of this copy is, "Theatrum præcipuarum urbium positarum ad septentrionalem Europæ Plagam,' yet the greater part of it is devoted to Italy. The method of rendering the edifices in these maps is signally useful and interesting for historical purposes, though it is not perhaps justified by canons either of art or geographical science. All the buildings are represented in a composite method of elevation and ground-plan. This enables one acquainted with the present state and the past history of any town to decide whether it is accurately represented by the artists who assisted |