As the commencement of a series of sketches of the Churches of the Metropolis, we cannot select one more worthy of the exertion of the artist, or the gratification of the reader, than the one of which a view is given at the head of the present article—St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. We need not speculate on the years that have elapsed since that portion of its name which was given it as a distinction became a complete misnomer. We are not particularly disposed “to babble of green fields,” to sigh over the growth and spread of that mighty city which, if it usurps something on nature yet speaks of the irrepressible energies of man. There is a balance of good in all things; and it may be questioned whether the conversion of country to town has not created more human happiness than would have existed had it remained country still. Bricks and mortar form but a dingy combination; chimneys are less picturesque than waving branches; and hard flagstones are less pleasant to the tread than a green turf enamelled with daisies; and, as a whole, our common street and domestic architecture is about the ugliest and most repulsive on the face of the earth. Yet in spite of all regrets, utility predominates, and use and necessity banish the beautiful. It is a matter in which society obeys its own impulses, as careless of the regrets of poetry as if they were but the echoes of the pipings of Arcadia; and society is right.

Of the thousands who daily pass by this sacred edifice which divides the vast stream of life flowing from east to west, like a rock in some river which resteth not nor stays its course, “but flows, and as it flows, for ever will flow on,” few are they who ever dream that they are passing one of the most interesting spots in London – the place where the emblem of its old amusements lingered the longest and departed the last; where the poetry of its out-door life flourished in its youth, and died unwilling in age, even when it was compelled to give way before what is called the march of modern improvement.

The Church of St. George’s, Hanover Square, is probably better known, by name, throughout England, and beyond its shores, wherever English newspapers penetrate, than any other church of the Metropolis, with the exception of st. Paul’s. This celebrity does not arise from its antiquity-for it is a modern structure; nor from the historical associations connected with it—for it has none of these. Our fair readers will probably be the first to guess to what the true cause of the renown of St. George’s is to be attributed. Its name is a necessary part of those paragraphs in the fashionable journals which so frequently appear during “the season,” headed “Marriages in High Life.” It is the aristocratic temple of Hymen; the torch he carries here has been lit at the chandeliers of Almack’s, and fanned by the breezes of a Chiswick fête; it is here he puts on his brightest array; and though at less distinguished altars the happy knot can be quite as securely tied, it is here he hides the fetters with brilliants, and covers the yoke with a wreath of orange blossom. It is here he delighteth to have a bishop for his minister, and troops of the noble and titled to say amen to the blessing. In short, the account of a fashionable marriage would read tamely and imperfectly, did it not commence in the usual form—”Yesterday at St. George’s, Hanover Square.”

The names of various places in this city speak of the peculiarities that once distinguished them, though the spots themselves have long since utterly changed their appearance and purpose. The…