The London of Queen Anne's reign was not the huge overgrown London of
our own day. But it was a notable city, and to George Fairburn and his
contemporaries the grandest city in the world. The Great Fire had
taken place but twenty years before George was born, yet already the
city had risen from its ashes, with wider and nobler streets, and with
a multitude of handsome churches which Wren had built. The new and
magnificent St. Paul's, the great architect's proudest work, was
rapidly approaching completion. George's father had witnessed the
opening for worship of a portion of the cathedral five years before,
and soon the stupendous dome, which was beginning to tower high above
the city, would be finished. Sir Thomas Gresham's Exchange, the centre
of the business life of the city, had been replaced by another and not
less noble edifice. The great capital contained a population of well
over half a million souls, a number that seemed incredible to those
who knew only Bristol, and York, and Norwich, the English cities next
in size. The houses stretched continuously from the city boundary to
Westminster, and soon the two would be but one vast town. George had
heard much of London Bridge, with its shops and its incessant stream
of passengers and vehicles, and he hoped to visit the pleasant
villages of Kensington and Islington, and many another that lay within
a walk of great London.
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