London appears similar to London in the world in its streets and districts, but not similar as regards its houses and dwellings. The dissimilarity is not apparent, however, because everyone there dwells in a section of it and in a house corresponding to his affection and consequent thought. The center of the city is where the Exchange* is. To the right, there, lives the governor,** and in the surrounding area his officials. The central thoroughfare of the city is Holborn.*** Ahead, there, is the east; behind, extending in the direction of Wapping, is the west.**** The south lies to the right of that street, and the north to its left. In the eastern section, which stretches far and extends for a considerable distance outside the city, live the best of the inhabitants. They worship the Lord there. To the south live those who are intelligent, in an area extending almost to Islington.***** They also hold assemblies there. In addition, those who live in that area are prudent in their speaking and writing. To the north live those who are uneducated and who take the greatest liberty in speaking freely, which they love to do. In the west are those who possess a vague affection for good. The inhabitants there are afraid of revealing their thoughts. To the south of them in and around the piece of ground where Moorfields is located****** is a dissolute throng. All who incline to evils are banished from the city to that locale, and therefore those people are from time to time cast out, and this continually. By that process the city is constantly purged, and those who are led away from there are never seen again. [269.] The inhabitants sometimes see in and about the center of the city a certain malicious person sitting on a chair in a pulpit, calling the them and bidding them to assemble in one place or another. Those who go over and listen are taken to a place leading out to where the dissolute throng is, and they are, as we said, sent out by ways leading to it. (Every society is purged. This is the method of purging employed there.) The inhabitants' houses, like their clothes, and also their foodstuffs, are the same as in the world. I asked about the availability of wines, liquors, ales, chocolate, tea, and the like. They said that they had the same ones. I asked also about the beverage called punch. They said that they have that beverage, too, but that it is given only to honest and at the same time hard-working people. They do not tolerate in the city any ruler who would impose on them or dictate to them what they are to do. They wish to be in complete freedom. * Counterpart of the Royal Exchange in the center of London in the world, a large structure housing in the late 17th century, in addition to grand art work and statuary, some two hundred shops, but serving by the mid-18th century as a commercial exchange for wholesale buyers and sellers, domestic and foreign, and for brokers of stock, and accommodating on its upper level, among other enterprises, the Royal Exchange Assurance Office for the assuring of houses and other buildings, goods, wares and merchandise against loss due to fire. ** In a counterpart, no doubt, to Mansion House in the center of London in the world, the official residence of the Lord Mayor, which lies to the right of the Exchange as one faces east. *** Holborn never extended far enough to be the central thoroughfare of London in the world, but the writer may have thought of it as extending further into and through the city than it did, so as to include as well Newgate Street, Cheapside, Cornhill, Leaden Hall, and White Chappell, streets extending one after another in a more or less direct line from west to east through the center of the city. ****The geographic orientation here and from this point on seems to be the converse of that existing in the world. In the world, Wapping was in the mid-18th century a district of London situated on the north bank of the Thames in the eastern portion of the city. ***** In the world, Islington was, in the mid-18th century, a large village on the north side of London. ****** In the world, Moorfields was in the mid-18th century a large piece of ground to the north of central London, lying on the north side of London wall, which contained Bethlem Hospital on the south side, shops to the east of that, and large open fields, cultivated in the southern section, and uncultivated in the northern two sections.