PICTURESQUE
S K E T C H E S O F L O N D O N.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.

PICTURESQUE
S K E T C H E S O F L O N D O N,
Past and Present.

PICTURESQUE
S K E T C H E S O F L O N D O N,
Past and Present.

By T H O M A S M I L L E R,
AUTHOR OF A “HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS,” “LADY JANE GREY,”
“FAIR ROSAMOND,” “PICTURES OF COUNTRY LIFE,” &c.
WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS
OF
CHURCHES, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, ANTIQUITIES, STREET VIEWS, &c.

LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE greater portion of the following work originally appeared in the columns of the Illustrated London News. The beauty of the sketches, and the permanent interest attached to them, led the proprietors of the National Illustrated Library to believe that a reprint of them would form a valuable and welcome addition to that series of illustrated works. The various articles have accordingly been carefully revised by the author; many additions have been made, and curious extracts from rare old works have been introduced, more completely to illustrate the various scenes and objects described.

The engravings, which consist chiefly of views of churches and other public buildings, of antiquities, views of streets and markets, sketches of street scenes, &c., have been carefully executed from original drawings.

The work is not to be considered as a guide-book, but as a series of sketches in “poetic prose” of various parts of London, in which, while perfect accuracy is preserved, the dulness of a mere itinerary is avoided; in which London of the present is sketched from constant personal observation, and London of the past from the rich historical and legendary lore that exists regarding it, and in which the thoughts that arise in “a free mind and loving heart,” from a contemplation of the various objects and scenes described, are expressed in eloquent and forcible language.

Nor must the work be considered as exhaustive of the subject. The places and scenes chosen for “Picturesque Sketches” are chiefly in the eastern or older part of London. To have included the whole of the metropolis would have required not one volume, but many. Nevertheless, it will be found that the subjects to which chapters are devoted are the most interesting in London, and that though the work is not complete as regards the whole of this mighty city, yet each chapter is complete as far as regards its individual subject.

227 Strand, July 1, 1852.

PICTURESQUE SKETCHES
OF
L O N D O N.

Ancient London.

“Almost every historian has set out by regretting how little is known of the early inhabitants of Great Britain and its metropolis—a loss which only the lovers of hoar antiquity deplore, since, from all we can with certainty glean from the pages of contemporary history, we should find but little more to interest us than if we possessed written records of the remotest origin of the Red Indians; for both would alike but be the history of an unlettered and uncivilised race. The same dim obscurity, with scarcely an exception, hangs over the primeval inhabitants of every other country; and if we lift up the mysterious curtain which has so long fallen over and concealed the past, we only obtain glimpses of obscure hieroglyphics; and, from the unmeaning fables of monsters and giants, to which the rudest nations trace their origin, we but glance backward and backward, to find that civilised Rome and classic Greece can produce no better authorities than old undated traditions, teeming with fabulous accounts of heathen gods and goddesses. What we can see of the remote past through the half-darkened twilight of time, is as of a great and unknown sea, on which some solitary ship is afloat, whose course we cannot trace through the shadows which every where deepen around her, nor tell what strange land lies beyond the dim horizon to which she seems bound. The dark night of mystery has for ever settled down upon the early history of our island, and the first dawning which throws the shadow of man upon the scene, reveals a rude hunter clad in the skins of beasts of the chase, whose path is disputed by the maned and shaggy bison, whose rude hut in the forest fastnesses is pitched beside the lair of the hungry wolf, and whose first conquest is the extirpation of these formidable animals. And so, in as few words, might the early history of any other country be written. The shores of Time are thickly strewn with the remains of extinct animals, which, when living, the eye of man never looked upon, as if from the deep sea of Eternity had heaved up one wave, which washed over and blotted out for ever all that was coeval with her silent and ancient reign, leaving a monument upon the confines of this old and obliterated world, for man in a future day to read, on which stands ever engraven the solemn sentence, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: beyond this boundary all is mine!’

“Neither does this mystery end here; for around the monuments which were reared by the earliest inhabitants of Great Britain there still reigns a deep darkness; we know not what hands piled together the rude remains of Stonehenge; we have but few records of the manners, the customs, or the religion of the early Britons: here and there a colossal barrow heaves up above the dead; we look within, and find a few bones, a few rude weapons, either used in war or the chase, and these are all; and we linger in wonderment around such remains! Who those ancient voyagers were that first called England the ‘Country of Sea Cliffs,’ we know not; and while we sit and brood over the rude fragments of the Welsh Triads, we become so entangled in doubt and mystery as to look upon the son of Aedd the Great, and the Island of Honey to which he sailed, and wherein he found no man alive, as the pleasing dream of some old and forgotten poet; and we set out again with no more success to discover who were the earliest inhabitants of England, leaving the ancient Cymri and the country of Summer behind, and the tall, silent cliffs to stand, as they had done for ages, looking over a wide and mastless sea.

“We then look among the ancient names of the headlands, and harbours, and mountains, and hills, and valleys, and endeavour to trace a resemblance to the language spoken by some neighbouring nation; and we only glean up a few scattered words, which leave us still in doubt, like a confusion of echoes, one breaking in upon the other; a minglement of Celtic, Pictish, Gaulish, and Saxon sounds; where, if for a moment but one is audible and distinct, it is drowned by other successive clamours which come panting up with a still louder claim; and in very despair we are compelled to step back again into the old primeval silence. There we find geology looking daringly into the formation of the early world, and boldly proclaiming that there was a period of time when our island heaved up bare and desolate amid the silence of the surrounding ocean—when on its ancient promontories and grey granite peaks not a green branch waved nor a blade of grass grew; and no living thing, saving the tiny corals, as they piled dome upon dome above the naked foundations of this early world, stirred in the ‘deep profound’ which reigned over those sleeping seas. Onward they go, boldly discoursing of undated centuries that have passed away, during which they tell us the ocean swarmed with huge monstrous forms; and that all those countless ages have left to record their flight are but the remains of a few extinct reptiles and fishes, whose living likenesses never again appeared in the world. To another measureless period are we fearlessly carried—so long as to be only numbered in the account of time which eternity keeps—and other forms, we are told, moved over the floors of dried-up oceans—vast animals which no human eye ever looked upon alive; these, they say, also were swept away, and their ponderous remains had long mingled with and enriched the earth; but man had not as yet appeared, nor in any corner of the whole wide world do they discover, in the deep-buried layers of the earth, a single vestige of the remains of the human race.

“What historian, then, while such proofs as these are before his eyes, will not hesitate ere he ventures to assert who were the first inhabitants of any country, whence they came, or at what period of time that country was first peopled? As well might he attempt a description of the scenery over which the mornings of the early world first broke,—of summit and peak which, ages ago, have been hurled down, and ground and powdered into atoms. What matters it about the date when such things once were, or at what time or place they first appeared? We can gaze upon the gigantic remains of the mastodon or mammoth, or on the grey silent ruins of Stonehenge; but at what period of time the one roamed over our island, or in what year the other was first reared, will for ever remain a mystery. The earth beneath our feet is lettered over with proofs that there was an age in which these extinct monsters existed, and that period is unmarked by any proof of the existence of man in our island. And during those not improbable periods, when oceans were emptied and dried amid the heaving up and burying of rocks and mountains,—when volcanoes reddened the dark midnights of the world, when the “earth was without form and void,”—what mind can picture aught but His Spirit “moving upon the face of the waters?”—what mortal eye could have looked upon the rocking and reeling of those chaotic ruins when their rude forms first heaved up into the light? Is not such a world stamped with the imprint of the Omnipotent—from when He first paved its foundation with enduring granite, and roofed it over with the soft blue of heaven, and lighted it by day with the glorious sun, and hung out the moon and stars to gladden the night, until at last He fashioned a world beautiful enough for the abode of his “own image” to dwell in: then He created man. And what matters it whether or not we believe in all these mighty epochs? Surely it is enough for us to discover throughout every change of time the loving-kindness of God for mankind: we see how fitting this globe was at last made for man’s dwelling-place; that before the great Architect had put his last finish to his mighty work, instead of leaving us to starve amid the Silurian sterility, He prepared the world for man, and in place of the naked granite, spread out a rich carpet of verdure for him to tread upon, then flung upon it a profusion of the sweetest flowers. Let us not, then, daringly stand by, and say thus it was fashioned, and so it was formed; but by our silence acknowledge that it never yet entered the heart of man to conceive how the Almighty Creator laid the foundation of the world.

“To his great works must we ever come with reverential knee, and before them lowly bow; for the grey rocks, and the high mountain summits, and the wide-spreading plains, and the ever-sounding seas, are stamped with the image of Eternity; a mighty shadow ever hangs over them. The grey and weather-beaten headlands still look over the sea, and the solemn mountains still slumber under their old midnight shadows; but what human ear first heard the murmur of the waves upon the beaten beach, or what human foot first climbed up those high-piled summits, we can never know.

“What would it benefit us could we discover the date when our island was buried beneath the ocean; when what was dry land in one age became the sea in another; when volcanoes glowed angrily under the dark skies of the early world, and huge extinct monsters bellowed and roamed through the old forests and swam in the ancient rivers, which have perhaps ages ago been swept away? What could we find more to interest us were we in possession of the names, the ages, and the numbers of the first adventurers who were perchance driven by some storm upon our sea-beaten coast, than what is said in the ancient Triad before alluded to? “There were no more men alive, nor any thing but bears, wolves, beavers, and the oxen with the high prominence,” when Aedd landed upon the shores of England. What few traces we have of the religious rites of the early inhabitants of Great Britain vary but little from such as have been brought to light by modern travellers who have landed in newly-discovered countries in our own age. They worshipped idols, and had no knowledge of the true God; and, saving in those lands where the early patriarchs dwelt, the same Egyptian darkness settled over the whole world. The ancient Greeks and Romans considered all nations, except themselves, barbarians; nor do the Chinese of the present day look upon us in a more favourable light; while we, acknowledging their antiquity as a nation, scarcely number them amongst such as are civilised. We have yet to learn by what hands the round towers of Ireland were reared, and by what race the few ancient British monuments that still remain were piled together, ere we can enter those mysterious gates which open upon the history of the past. We find the footprint of man there, but who he was, or whence he came, we know not; he lived and died, and whether or not posterity would ever think of the rude monuments he left behind concerned him not; whether the stones would mark the temple in which he worshipped, or tumble down and cover his grave, concerned not his creed; with his hatchet of stone, and spear-head of flint, he hewed his way from the cradle to the tomb; and under the steep barrow he knew that he should sleep his last sleep, and, with his arms folded upon his breast, he left the dead past to bury its dead: he lived not for us.”

At what remote period of time the spot on which London now stands was first peopled can never be known. A few rude huts peering perchance through the forest-trees, with grassy openings that went sloping downwards to the edge of the Thames, where the ancient Briton embarked in his rude coracle, or boat made of wicker and covered with the hides of oxen,—a pile of rugged stones on the summit of the hill which marked the cromlech, or druidical altar, and probably stood on the spot now occupied by St. Paul’s, and which nearly two thousand years ago was removed to make room for the Roman temple dedicated to Victory—was, from all we know of other ancient British towns, the appearance of London soon after the period when the old Cymri first landed in England, and called it the “Country of Sea-Cliffs.”

We next see it through the dim twilight of time occupied by the Romans. Triumphal arches and pillared temples and obelisks look down upon the streets of the Roman city. Then comes Boadicea thundering at the head of her revengeful Britons in her war-chariot: we hear the tramp of horses and the dealing of heavy blows; see the tesselated pavement stained with blood; behold pale faces upturned in the grim repose of death; then many a night of darkness again settles upon the streets of the old city.

But deep down it is rich in Roman remains; far below the invading legions tramped, upheaving the victorious eagles above the dim old tesselated pavements; for London has its Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unnumbered generations have trampled into dust its splendour, even as our own glory may one day be mingled in the urn that holds the ashes of empires. Crushed Samian ware, a rusted demi-god, a headless hero, whose very memory has perished; the coins of conquerors, whose features time and decay have corroded, and whose mere names (without a good or evil deed to tell how they came there,) are just catalogued in the “lots” of history; these are the mouldering remains of conquest, lying as far beneath our feet as we in intellectual arts have towered above their former possessors. We belong to the future, as they do to the present; and when we perish, our glory will be found lettered in every corner of the rounded globe. The finger of the shattered giant will be picked up in the remotest continent, and unborn generations will sigh, as they exclaim, “Here lies a fragment of the once mighty England that gave us life.”

Westward of London we turn backward, and endeavour to obtain a view of that ancient neighbourhood as it looked when the Roman city stood upon the hill; and the Strand, as it is still called, was a low, waste, and reedy shore, over which the tide came and went, and rocked the tufted reeds which waved over many a surrounding acre. Something like what it was in ancient days may yet be seen in those reedy and willowy inlets above the Red House at Battersea; and could we have stood and looked across the river while the spot on which Westminster now stands was an island, covered with thorns, and down to the water edged with green flags and rushes, we should have seen, far below what was called the Long Ditch (where the river divided, beside a low, lonely shore, on which the waves went lapping and surging, as they still do about those dreary bends that skirt the marshes of Woolwich), the fisherman in his coracle, the only figure that moved beside the sedgy margin of that mastless river, over which the piping of the tufted plover might then have been heard.

Turning to the ancient city, Erkenwin the Saxon first appears with his boasted descent from Wodin, the terrible god of battle, conquers the remnant of the ancient Britons, tramples upon their standard of the red dragon, and plants the banner of the white horse upon the rude fortifications of their capital. After many convulsions we see the kingdoms of the Octarchy overturned by Egbert, the first king of all the Saxons; and in some old hall, with its low stunted pillars and heavy vaulted roof (centuries ago levelled to the earth), we behold him seated gravely with his witenagemot, or assembly of wise men, deliberating upon the best means of repelling the incursions of the Danes. Under the reign of Ethelwulf the city is plundered by the stormy sea-kings and their fearless followers. We next see the army of Alfred hovering between the outskirts of the city and the foot of Highgate-hill, and protecting the old Londoners while they gather in their harvest; for Hastings, with his ivory horn swung to his baldric, was encamped with his Danish army beside the river Lea, and Alfred had thrown himself like a shield between the city and its enemies. We behold Etheldred the Unready escape into Normandy, and Sweyn, king of Denmark, passes the low-browed archway which leads into the capital. The old grey wall which stretched beside the Thames, where wharves and warehouses now stand, is defended by Edmund Ironside and his followers against Canute the Dane, and ships bearing the banner of the black raven are moving below the rude bridge, which at that early period stretched over into Southwark. Harold, the last king of the Saxons, next crosses that old bridge, in the sunset of an autumnal evening, on his way to the fatal field of Hastings; and when we again look upon those ancient streets they are filled with Norman soldiers, and echoing to the bray of Norman trumpets, for William the Conqueror is passing through the city to take possession of the remains of the old Roman Tower.

We next glance at that ancient bridge, covered with houses, which spanned across the Thames, part of which stood even a few years ago, and had, after much patching and repairing, endured the wear and tear of time, with all the assaults of wind, water, war, and fire, for above six hundred years. Even until within the last half century the wheels of the great water-works first erected by Peter the Dutchman continued to moan and groan, and splash and dash, just as they had done for many a weary year,—for those ever-moving water-wheels seemed like the living spirit of the old bridge; and when they stopped, the ancient fabric, which had so long tottered to its crazy foundations, was soon swept away and numbered amongst the things that have been. Narrow, dark, and dangerous was the gloomy old street that, hung between the water and the sky, went stretching across the broad bosom of the Thames. Great darksome gables spanned overhead every way; and if you looked up in the twilight of those past days, you saw grinning above you, and looking down from the battlements, the ghastly and gory heads of murdered men, which were stuck upon spikes and left to bleach in the sun, wind, rain, and darkness, day after day and night after night. When you looked down, you still seemed to see them, as if they moved side by side with you, past the windows of the old chapel, underneath the low-browed arches, beside the ancient shops; and ever below went the mad waters, gibbering and groaning and hissing; and in the deep midnight, when the old piers echoed back every footfall, you almost fancied that all those bodiless heads had leaped off the battlements, and, with their gory locks streaming out, were at your heels, hallooing and shrieking above and below the bridge, and “mopping and mowing” from every overhanging gable you hurried under.

When the wind was high, it ever went singing through those old houses and that silent chapel all night long; and the crazy old water-works sent out a thousand strange supernatural sounds; while all the rickety casements chattered again like a thousand teeth that have no power over the bitter blast which set them in motion. Then, too, the old swing-signs, which the least wind shook, swung and groaned upon their rusty hinges, one against the other; and what with the creaking of the signs, the whistling and moaning of the wind, that went booming with a hollow and unearthly sound under and over the vaulted street, mingled with the rush of the waters, and the cries for help from those beneath, who had run foul against the jutting sterlings, you wonder how any one could ever get a wink of sleep in those high old houses. That ancient bridge was the only highway into Kent and Surrey, and many a time had it been crossed by the conqueror and the conquered—one day a kingly procession, the next a train of prisoners in chains. It was alternately shaken by the shouts of Wat Tyler and his rebels, then by the acclaim which greeted some heroic king from the throats of the assembled citizens. And sometimes the drawbridge was raised, and the inhabitants of Southwark left to defend themselves as they could, while the citizens on the Middlesex side were safe, for between them there yawned an impassable gulf.

Below the Tower we find a few old churches and ancient mansions, which stood long before the Great Fire went reddening and blackening through the streets of the old City. The row of picturesque shops at the entrance of Whitechapel will recall the period when this was the court end of London. The second house, with the projecting bay-windows, is rich in ornamental details. The Prince of Wales’s feathers, the arms of Westminster, the fleur de lis of France, and thistle of Scotland are still standing on the front of this ancient mansion; and it is just possible that the house was once the residence of Prince Henry, son of James I., as the monogram, yet visible, bears the initials H.S., surmounted with plumes, which, very probably, stand for Henry Stuart. The Earls of Northumberland, the Throgmortons, and many noble families and wealthy merchants, in former days, resided in this neighbourhood; for, beside the Tower, there was Crosby-place at no great distance, where the Protector, afterwards Richard III., held his court.

How changed is this ancient neighbourhood! The very house in which the Black Prince lodged when he resided in the City had long before Stowe’s time been turned into an hostel, and the apartments in which grave councils were held, and where many a glorious victory was planned, even then echoed back the voice of some Francis, as, amid “the clinking of pewter,” he exclaimed, “Anon, anon, sir;” or, “Score a pint of bastard in the Half-Moon.” The citizens had at that early period turned into bowling-alleys the quaintly laid-out gardens in which the Percies of old Northumbria “took their pleasure;” and where some pretty Kate, shewing her pearly teeth, had no doubt threatened to “break the little finger” of her fiery Hotspur, who was too eager to leave her dainty bower and hasten to the wars.

He also has long since vanished—the haughty Prior of the Holy Trinity, who, with “jingling bridle” in hand, bestrode his prancing palfrey, and rode “second to none” amongst the rich aldermen of London, proud of his broad domains, which in those days extended to the margin of the Thames, and over many rich acres beside those on which Whitechapel now stands. No Earl of Salisbury now goes “sounding” through the City streets, with his long train of five hundred mounted followers, clad in his household livery, and causing the old shopkeepers to cease their cry of “What do you lack?” while they watched the gay cavalcade until it was lost under the low-browed archway that stood before his ancient City mansion by Dowgate.

Baynard Castle, where Henry VII. received his ambassadors, and in which the crafty Cecil plotted against Lady Jane Grey, almost before the ink was dry with which he had solemnly registered his name to serve her, has long ago been numbered amongst the things that were; and seldom do the “silver snarling trumpets,” with their loud acclaim, disturb the deep sleep of the old City, to announce the in-coming or the out-going of royalty. The archers of Mile-end, with their chains of gold, have departed. The spot on which the tent stood where bluff Hal regaled himself after having witnessed their sports, is now covered with mean-looking houses: the poetry of ancient London is dead. The voice of the stream is for ever hushed that went murmuring before the dwellings of our forefathers, along Aldgate and down Fenchurch-street, and past the door of Sir Thomas Gresham’s house in Lombard street, until it doubled round by the Mansion House and emptied itself into the river. There is still a sound of waters by the wharf at London Bridge; but, oh, how different from the “brawling brook” of former days is the evil odour that now arises from the poisonous sewer which there empties itself into the Thames!

Remains of ancient London are still to be found in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. The courts and alleys about Cloth Fair, and behind Long-lane, are perfect labyrinths, and so full of ins and outs, that they astonish the stranger who ventures to thread his way through them. Bartholomew’s Church is also one of the very oldest in the City; and we never look upon its weather-beaten tower without recalling the scenes which have taken place in the vast area which stretches out before it.

There is no spot in London richer in historical associations than Smithfield. There the marshal of England presided over the lists; and there also the mitred bishops congregated to gaze upon the poor martyr who was burnt at the stake: that old church-tower has many a time glared redly as it was lit up by the blaze of those consuming fires; its vaulted roof has echoed back the clang of arms, when battle-axe and sword clashed against helmet and shield, while scarcely a murmur arose from the lips of the mighty multitude that stood silent and breathless around the combatants.

Shakspeare and Ben Jonson have doubtless passed through those old narrow courts which still surround Bartholomew’s Church. It was to Smithfield Bardolph went to buy a horse, which we know he would steal if once allowed to get astride, and that, if any inquiries were made after it at the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, Falstaff would avouch for Bardolph’s honesty. To us the whole neighbourhood is hallowed by a thousand poetical associations, and we never journey through it without feeling as if we were living again amid the past. As for Bartholomew Fair, though it now only lives in name, it will be remembered for ever in the works of rare Ben Jonson. To the thoughtful man it is a land of pleasant and solemn memories.

Then the streets of ancient London, what must they have been? In the west the roads were in such a state that the king could not open parliament in wet weather, unless faggots were first thrown into the deep pits and ruts. Foot and carriage-way had no other distinction than a row of posts; and if the passenger missed running his head against the low pent-house-lids, which here and there projected over the way, ten to one he came to some opening where a grim-headed and grinning spout sent down its torrents of water from the old-fashioned gabled building, and drenched him to the very skin. If he rushed out into the road, there

“Laden carts with thundering wagons meet,
Wheels clash’d with wheels, and barr’d the narrow street.”

The roads of London were full of pits and hollows even in William and Anne’s time; and the coach-box was then a box indeed—a regular coach-repairer’s shop on a small scale; for to get through a long street in bad weather without either sticking fast, breaking down, turning over, or being turned over by some reckless carman, was something to boast about in those days. The coachman had then need to be a good hand at repairs, and was oftener seen tinkering up his vehicle than mounted on his box, which in time was covered with the hammer-cloth, to conceal the materials and implements which almost every hour were called into use. What a night-journey was in those old unpaved streets may be readily imagined, when it is known that there were not more than a thousand lamps to light the whole City—that these were only kept burning until midnight during one-half of the year, and the remainder of the season were never once lighted. Such was the London we now live in, a hundred years ago. Little link-boys then generally lay in wait at the corner of every street, either ready for a few pence to light the benighted wanderer home, or more probably to lead him astray, and extinguish the light at some dangerous spot, where the thieves he was associated with were in waiting.

Over thousands of troubles and trials rolled the rapid years; then the “Great Fire” broke out, and nearly every ancient landmark was destroyed; and now we have to grope our way through the twilight of dim records and a few rudely executed prints, to catch a glimpse of the old London in which our forefathers lived. This we shall endeavour to do as we thread our way through city and suburb; now glancing at the London of the present day, then turning the eye of the imagination to the ancient metropolis, which Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman have in succession traversed.

The old highway to London is that which the daring sea-kings poetically called “the road of the swans”—the broad bosom of the sea,—and then along the majestic river which leads to her grey old fortress, the Tower. But the railroad has ploughed up the country, and this ancient “silver pathway” is abandoned to commerce and pleasure-parties; so rapid is the transit from every point of the coast, that few care to thread the winding river when they can reach London by the railroads almost as direct as “the crow flies.” Such remains of ancient London as fall in our way we shall again glance at; and shall now commence our “Picturesque Sketches of London” by describing the most prominent landmark in the City—St. Paul’s Cathedral, together with a few of the most interesting objects in the neighbourhood.

CHAPTER II.
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL—DOCTORS’ COMMONS—THE OLD CITY STREETS.

No stranger can say that he has seen the vastness of London until he has mounted the hundreds of steps which lead to the Golden Gallery, and looked out upon the outstretched city and suburbs below. It is a sight never to be forgotten; the passengers underneath scarcely appear a foot high, and the omnibuses so diminished, that you fancy you could take one under your arm and walk off with it easily. But it is the immense range of country which the eye commands that astonishes the stranger. Here railroads branch out, there the noble river seems narrowed by distance to an insignificant brook; while weary miles of houses spread out every way, and the largest edifices of the metropolis are dwarfed beneath the lofty height from which you gaze. There are hills before and hills behind: to the right, a dim country, lost in purple haze; to the left, thousands of masts, which look like reeds, while the hulls of the ships seem to have dwindled to the smallness of boats.

Never did that cathedral appear to us more holy than when we visited it last summer during the Anniversary Meeting of the Charity Children; never did the sunbeams which occasionally streamed through the vaulted dome seem so much like the golden ladder on which the “angels of God ascended and descended” in the dream of the patriarch of old, as when they shone for a few moments upon the heads of those thousands of children who were congregated beneath. We seemed to picture Charity herself newly alighted from heaven, and standing in the midst overshadowing them with her white wings, while her angelic smile lighted up the holy fabric, as she stood with her finger pointing to the sky. It was a sight that went home to every heart, and made an Englishman proud of the land of his birth, to know that thousands of those children, who were fatherless and motherless, were watched over and tended by the angel of charity; and that hundreds who waited to do her bidding, with willing hearts and open hands, were assembled in the temple which her overpowering presence then hallowed. Then to know that so vast a multitude formed but a portion of the numbers which English charity clothed, fed, and educated; and that, if all could have been assembled tier above tier, as they then sat, they would have reached to the very summit of the dome itself, extending, as it were, to heaven, and with folded hands and meek supplicating faces seeming to plead in our behalf before the footstool of God.

It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see those thousands of clean and neatly clad children ranged one above another, to the height of

twenty feet, beneath the huge overshadowing dome; to see the girls at the beginning or ending of a prayer (as if touched by the wand of some magician) raise or drop their thousands of snow-white aprons at the self-same instant of time, was like the sudden opening and folding of innumerable wings, which almost made the beholder start, as if he had stepped suddenly upon the threshold of another world. The gaudiest gardens that figure in oriental romance, with all their imaginary colouring, never approached in beauty the rich and variegated hues which that great group of children presented. Here the eye rested upon thousands of little faces that peeped out from the pink trimmings of their neat caps; there the pretty head-gear was ornamented with blue ribands, looking like blue-bells and white lilies blended together; farther on the high range of heads stood like sheeted May-blossoms, while the crimson baise which covered the seats looked in the distance as if the roses of June were peeping in between the openings of the branches. The pale pearled lilac softened into a primrose-coloured border, which was overhung by the darker drapery of the boys, upon whom the shadows of the arches settled. Ever and anon there was a sparkling as of gold and silver, as the light fell upon the glittering badges which numbers of the children wore, or revealed the hundreds of nosegays which they held in their little hands, or wore proudly in their bosoms. High above this vast amphitheatre of youthful heads, the outspreading banners of blue, and crimson, and purple, emblazoned with gold, were ranged, all filled with

“Stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings.”

And when the sunlight at intervals fell upon the hair or the innocent faces of some snow-white group of girls, they seemed surrounded with

“A glory like a saint’s.
They look’d like splendid angels newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven.”—Keats.

Eastward the organ rose with its sloping gallery of choristers, selected from Westminster, the Royal Chapel, and St. Mark’s; and from thence the full choir burst, and the sounds were caught up and joined by thousands of voices, until the huge building seemed to throb again beneath that mighty utterance. The eye fairly ached as it rested on the vast plane of human faces, which inclined from the west end of the cathedral, and came dipping down almost to the very foot of the choir, so chequered was the richly-coloured field it fell upon.

As the anthem stole upon the ear, we seemed borne away to another state, to that heaven of which we catch glimpses in our sweetest dreams, when all those childish voices joined in the thrilling chorus; when we beheld thousands of childish faces in the ever-shifting light, we could almost fancy that we stood amid those ranks “who veil their faces with their wings” before the blinding glory of heaven. Over all pealed the full-voiced organ, sounding like music that belongs not to earth, now high, now low, near or remote, as the reverberated sound rose to the dome or traversed the aisles, coming in and out like wavering light between the pillars and shadowy recesses, spots in which old echoes seem to sleep, old voices to linger, which only broke forth at intervals to join in the solemn anthem that rose up and floated away, and would only become indistinct when it reached the star-paved courts above.

There was something pleasing in the countenances of many of the girls, something meek and patient in the expression they wore, especially in the little ones. You could almost fancy you could distinguish those who were orphans, by their looking timidly round, as if seeking among the spectators for some one to love them.

From such a scene our mind naturally turned to the huge amphitheatres of old, when the populace of ancient cities congregated to see some gladiator die, or to witness the struggle between man and the savage beast, while the air was rent with applauding shouts, as the combatants bled beneath each other’s swords, or were torn by the tusks of infuriated animals. How great the contrast! Instead of the shouts of the heathen multitude, here the solemn anthem was chanted by thousands of childish voices, while every heart seemed uplifted in silent prayer to God. Here we saw the youthful aspirants of heaven tuning their notes like young birds, dim, half-heard melodies, which can only burst forth in perfect music when they reach that immortal land where “one eternal summer ever reigns;” and we sighed as we thought how many thousands still uncared for were scattered through the streets and alleys of London, and left to live as they best could amid ignorance, rags, and hunger, with no one to teach them that, outcasts as they are on earth, they have still a Father in heaven who careth for them. Charitably disposed as England is to her poor children, she has yet much to do before her great work is perfected; she has yet to bring together her homeless thousands who have neither food nor raiment, nor any place at night where they can lay their weary and aching heads. The time will come when she will be convinced that she must do more than save a remnant, when there will be none left in hunger and ignorance to hang about her great cathedral, as we saw them then, envying the thousands of clean and healthy-looking children, who, more fortunate than they, were under the care of charitable guardians. All these her protecting arms will in time encircle in one warm motherly embrace, without distinction. God send that the time may be near at hand!

Many a “rapt soul” looked out with moistened eyes from that assemblage, which, when this earthly pilgrimage is ended, shall hear the voice of the great Master whom they have served exclaim: “For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” Such we could distinguish, who felt no greater pleasure than in sharing their wealth amongst the poor and needy; on whose brow benevolence had set her seal; who do good by stealth, and “blush to find it fame.” Such as these feel an innate pleasure which the miser never experienced while gloating over his hoarded gold; and when the Angel of Death comes, he will bear them away gently; and in the soft beating of his dark wings they will hear again the sweet voices of those dear children singing a little way before, as if they had but to shew their faces, when the gates of Paradise would

“Wide on their golden hinges swing;”

while outstretched arms would be seen through the surrounding halo, holding forth the crowns of glory which had been prepared for them “from the foundation of the world.”

Glancing at the building, we must state that, from the base to the top of the cross, which overlooks the dome, the height is 400 feet; and that of the campanile towers, which front Ludgate-hill, 220 feet; the length of the building, from east to west, is 500 feet; and the breadth 100 feet; while the ground enclosed by the palisade measures upwards of two acres. As all the world knows, the architect was Sir Christopher Wren, whose grave is in the crypt below, and whose monument is the building itself; such a pile as no monarch ever erected to his own memory. The choir is enriched by the beautiful carving of Grinling Gibbons, who ought to have slept beside the great architect of St. Paul’s in the vault beneath. The sculpture on the west front is by Bird, and the beholder will be struck by the colossal size of the figures, if he pauses to look out as he ascends the dome. They are, Paul preaching to the Romans, his Conversion, &c.; while those at the sides represent the Evangelists. The minute-hand of the clock measures eight feet, and the dial is fifty-seven feet in circumference; while the great bell, which strikes the hour, weighs between four and five tons. It is only tolled at the deaths and burials of the royal family, and a few others, who may have been connected with the cathedral.

The Whispering-gallery, the Clock-room, the Library, and Model-room, have been so often described, that we shall pass them by, and briefly glance at the monuments.

The monument to Nelson, by Flaxman, interests us all the more through knowing that the remains of the hero of Trafalgar, encased in a portion of the mainmast of L’Orient, repose below. The memorial to Abercrombie, by one stroke of genius, carries the mind to Egypt, while gazing on the symbols which are introduced. There are statues or monuments to Lord Cornwallis, Sir John Moore, Lord Heathfield, Collingwood, St. Vincent, Howe, Rodney, Ponsonby, and Picton, and many other naval and military heroes. John Saunders, in Knight’s London, says, “There must be something shocking to a pure and devout mind filled with the spirit of Him who came to preach ‘peace on earth, good will among men,’ to find the records of deeds of violence and slaughter intruded upon his notice in the very temples where he might least expect to find such associations, ... to make every pier, and window, and recess in our chief cathedral repeat the same melancholy story of war, war, still every where war. There are now about forty-eight monuments in St. Paul’s, of which there are but seven devoted to other than naval and military men ... ‘paragraphs of military gazettes,’ to use Flaxman’s phrase.” The other monuments are to Howard the philanthropist, Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Jones, Bishop Heber, Babington, Middleton, and Sir Astley Cooper.

The paintings by Sir James Thornhill look dim and faded, and can scarcely be seen at all except through a few chinks in the dome, which you cannot peep down through without feeling dizzy, such a depth yawns beneath. This door, or trap, or whatever it is called, that opens above the dome, is for the convenience of hoisting up great and celebrated visitors, who are too distinguished and too lazy to climb the 600 steps which lead to the summit of St. Paul’s. Speaking of the summit recals to our recollection that, when we looked from it in the afternoon sunshine, the shadow of St. Paul’s extended to the Bank, while the dome threw all the houses on the left of Cheapside into the shade, and its rounded shoulder darkened the crowded buildings far behind, thus depriving hundreds of the citizens of sunshine.

In conclusion, we have only to add that Divine service commences at a quarter past ten in the morning, and a quarter to three in the afternoon; and that to see the whole of the building, above and below, the visitor must submit to pay the sum of 4s. 4d.; “which,” as gossiping old Pepys says, “is pretty to observe”—we mean, the amount.

There is but little to detain us in the streets behind Ludgate-hill, running into Upper Thames-street and Earl-street, beyond the mere mention of Apothecaries’ Hall, which stands in the Broadway, that unites with Water-lane, and which was built soon after the Fire of London. There is a portrait of James I., and a statue of Delware, at whose intercession James granted a charter of incorporation. The controversy between this Company and the College of Physicians called forth Garth’s poem entitled “The Dispensary,” which was very popular at that period, and is still worthy of perusal.

The Times Office, in Printing-house-square, is the great lion of this neighbourhood; and the same spot was occupied by the king’s printers at least as far back as the reign of Charles II. A description of this mighty lever of the “fourth estate” does not come within the compass of our light pages.

Neither St. Andrew’s-hill nor Addle-hill requires much notice, though the former contains one of Wren’s churches, called St. Andrew by the Wardrobe; also a beautiful monument to the Rev. W. Romaine. Paul’s Chain and Bennet-hill bring us back again to St. Paul’s; and here our readers will consider that we make a fair start eastward, with the intention of describing the principal objects of interest that lie between the nearest great thoroughfare and the river on the south side of the way, while a few of the principal objects in the streets on the north will arrest our attention as we return on our journey westward.

Paul’s Chain took its name from the chain thrown across the road during the time of Divine service; a duty now performed by policemen, who, although they do not bar up the way, caution the drivers to go on slowly during service-time.

We have now arrived at Doctors’ Commons, and our engraving over-leaf represents the Prerogative Court, one of the chambers in which the wills of the dead are deposited. Through those doors many a beating and anxious heart enters to return disappointed, or half delirious with delight, through dreaming of the many pleasures which riches will procure. What thousands of human beings, fluttering between hope and fear, have passed through the shadow of that arched gateway which opens into St. Paul’s Churchyard; many to repass the possessors of riches, but never again to find that sweet sleep which hard-handed industry brought, and which moderate competency had never before heaved a sigh for! Legacies left, which proved a curse instead of a comfort, by arousing ambitious thoughts to soar amid airy speculations, where hundreds of captivating bubbles floated, tinged with the richest hues, until all in a moment burst, and left but a naked desolation behind—a hideous barrenness—never seen while those painted vapours danced before the eye. Wealth, over which Care ever after kept watch with sleepless eyes and furrowed brow, uncertain into which stream of enjoyment he should launch with his freight, and so pondered until old age and then death came, and instead of the castle he had so long contemplated purchasing, he was installed without a tear into the narrow coffin, and borne without a sigh to the grave. Others, again, raised from enduring and patient poverty to undreamed-of comfort, because he who would not have advanced them a shilling, would it have saved them from starvation and death, was now powerless; his greatest agony, when he passed away, being the thought that he could not carry his unforgiving vengeance beyond the grave; that he had not power to disinherit the child whom he spurned and hated. We have gazed on those dark-bound volumes in the Prerogative Will-Office, and thought that if the dead were permitted to return again, what ghastly forms would enter that room, shrieking aloud names once beloved, and blotting out for ever such as they had in their blind passion inserted. One stroke of the pen, and she who sits weeping and plying her needle in one of the neighbouring attics (her children crying around her for bread) might have been trailing the roses around the trellised porch of some beautiful cottage, while they were playing on the green lawn, strangers to sorrow and hunger.

Let us pause for a few moments and examine the attitudes and countenances of those who are perusing the wills. See how that woman’s hand shakes as she turns over the leaves; look at the working of the muscles of that young man’s face; behold the play of light over the wrinkled features of that old lady; see how she clasps her hands together and is looking upward; and you may tell what each has discovered as clearly as if you knew them, had stood beside them, and had read every line which they have been reading. That low sound, falling on the ear like the faint dropping of the summer rain on the leaves, is caused by the tears shed by that pale young lady in deep mourning; they fall quicker and quicker on the pages, and she rests her head on her hand, for she can no longer see to read through those blinding tears. The old objects of a once happy home are floating before the eye of her imagination; it may be that they are all there enumerated; that she has in fancy been passing from room to room, looking into the mirror that threw back her image in happy childhood, leaning from the window where stood the box of mignonette which she watered in the dewy morning, while her shadow fell upon the sunshine which slept on the chamber-floor. Old faces and old voices have again been before and around her; and she weeps not at finding that she is forgotten, but because those she so fondly loved are either no more or far away, and refuse to countenance her for marrying the object of her love, a man rejected by all her family only

because he was poor. In that great mustering-ground beyond the grave, who would not rather occupy the place of that sufferer than stand ranged amid the ranks of those who have thus neglected her? Contrast her deportment with that of the young man at the end of the desk; his fists are clenched, the nails of his fingers are embedded in the palms of his hands, his teeth set, his eyebrows knit; he strikes his hat as he places it on his head, closes the door with a loud slam, and curses the memory of a dead man, because he has left a reckless spendthrift just enough to live on all his life without working, yet so bequeathed it that he can but draw a given sum monthly. He is savage because he cannot have the whole legacy at once in his possession. If he could, he would be likely enough to squander it all away in a single night at some notorious gambling-house.

On another countenance you behold utter amazement slowly changing into the expression of contempt, disgust; and at last it settles down into black and sullen hatred. She, whose features have in a few moments undergone so many sudden alterations, finds that all her deeply-laid schemes and subtle plans have been of no avail, but that the poor relative, whose character she was ever disparaging in the eyes of the old man, and whom she kept from his bedside by the falsehoods she uttered to both, is now the possessor of all his riches. She is gnawing the end of her glove through sheer vexation: all he has left her is a book, an old volume, entitled, The Value of true Sincerity. The hypocrite is justly rebuked in his last will and testament. She departs burning red through shame and anger, and would give the world could she but leave her conscience behind her.

Watch that old man tottering on the very verge of the grave, and with hardly strength enough to lift the volume which he so eagerly scans: although he could already bury himself in gold, and leave the yellow lucre piled high above his narrow bed, he still covets more. He who has neither appetite nor taste for any rational enjoyment, who is compelled to sit up half the night because he cannot rest, is still eager to increase his riches. For what? the love of money alone. If he lends it, he never considers for what object; it may be good or evil, that concerns him not; all he looks to is the security, and the interest he is to receive on his capital: it may be to bring waste lands into cultivation, to aid a poor and industrious people; but one per cent more, and he would supply any armed tyrant with funds to destroy the whole peaceful populace, to leave their homes a mass of burning ruins, and the furrows of their fields running red with blood.

Here is the last Will and Testament of the immortal Shakspeare; the very handwriting of the mighty bard “who was not for an age, but for all time.” On that document his far-seeing eyes looked, on that page his hand rested; the same hand which obeyed the influence of his high-piled thoughts while he drew Hamlet, and Lear, and Macbeth, Desdemona, Ophelia, Perdita, and Imogen, held the pen which traced the very lines we now look upon. But for such old home-touches as these, we should almost doubt whether that god-like spirit ever descended to the common duties of this hard work-a-day world. But here we find him

“Not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food.”

But for proofs like these, we might fancy that such a soul had but mistaken its way while wandering from the abodes of the gods, and brought with it to the earth all the wisdom and poetry which it had taken an immortality to gather; that when he returned to his native home, the gates of heaven closed not suddenly enough upon him to shut out the undying echoes of his golden utterance; but that for ever the winds of heaven were chartered to repeat them—to blow them abroad into every corner of the earth—nor cease their mission until the language he spoke shall be uttered by “every nation, kindred, and tongue.” Such a deed as this alone proves his mortality; for the creations of his genius carry him as far away from the common standard of men as heaven is from earth.

What records have we here of old families long since passed away!—their very names forgotten in the places where they once enjoyed

“A little rule—a little sway,
A sunbeam on a winter’s day,
Between the cradle and the grave.”—Dyer.

Perhaps the last of the race perished a pauper in some obscure poorhouse; it may be, the one which his ancestors founded a century or two ago.

Another visits the Will-Office, who gained information of the death of some near and wealthy relative by chance—perhaps through the scrap of an old newspaper which formed the wrapper of the pennyworth of butter or cheese purchased at the little huckster’s shop at the corner of the filthy court in which for years the poor family have resided,—spots in which misery clings to misery for companionship. Letter after letter had they written, but received no answer; no one would take the trouble to reply. Then they sank lower and lower, and removed from place to place, until, at last, one single room in an undrained and breathless alley held all their cares and all their heart-aches; and there they tried to forget their wealthy relatives—to bury the remembrance of what they once were.

Meantime, he who had long been dead had remembered them on his deathbed; letters had been written and advertisements had appeared, announcing “something to their advantage,” but they had fallen amongst the very poor, who, though living in the heart of London, concerned not themselves with matters foreign to their own wretched neighbourhood, unless it were some execution or low spectacle, suited to their depraved tastes. Poverty had long ago prostrated all their finer feelings. Even such as these have we seen enter the doors of the Prerogative Court, after they had with difficulty raised the shilling which they were compelled to pay before searching for the will, and come out exultingly the possessors of thousands.

A strange place is that Prerogative Court, a fine picture of the great out-of-door world; for there Hope and Despair stand sentinels at the doors, and the living seem to jostle the dead in their eager hurry to hunt after what those in the grave have left them. There is a smell as of death about the place, as if grey old departed spirits lurked in the musty folios, and had scattered their ashes amid the yellow and unearthly-looking parchments, which rise up again in clouds of dust, while you turn over the mouldy and crackling leaves, making you sneeze again, while a hundred old echoes take up the sound, until every volume seems to shake and laugh and mock you, as if the grim old dead found it a rare spot to make merry in—to “mop and mow,” and play off a thousand devilish antics upon the living. That court is the great mart of merriment and misery, and its open doors too often lead to madness; groaning and moaning, when they open or shut, as if the spirits within wailed over those who come in search of wealth, to return disappointed. Beauty, Virtue, and Innocence also enter there, preceded by Pity; while Hope, with downcast eyes, leads them gently by the hand—her smile subdued, and her sweet countenance sorrowful. But these are angel visitants, who are compelled to appear in that court—who come in tears, and, when their duty is done, pass away for ever. There is a sound of sighs within those walls—a smell of green, stagnant tears: if you listen, you seem to hear the dead rustling among the old parchments: they move like black-beetles, and murmur to one another in an old Saxon language. Wickedness and Wrong have also their lurking-places there—where they lie concealed, and laugh at Right and Justice amid a pile of black-lettered laws, beneath which you find injured Poverty mourning unpitied. The grim judge, who has sat here for hundreds of years, is deaf and blind: he acts but for the dead—the living he can neither hear nor see—but ever sits with his elbow resting on a pile of musty volumes, mute as a marble image. It is a place filled with solemn associations—the ante-room of Life-in-Death.

Knowing fellows are the porters who hang about this neighbourhood; you can tell that they have not plied there for years without picking up “a thing or two;” they appear almost as “ ’cute” as the learned proctors themselves; and should you find yourself the possessor of a fat legacy, and be so ignorant as to apply to these white-aproned messengers as to the best way of getting it at once, they will undertake to introduce you to a gentleman, who, from what you hear, you almost believe to be so clever that he could whip your name into a will if he chose, and obtain for you a fortune, if even you had no legal claim to a single shilling. “God bless you, sir, we knows plenty of people what’s got thousands as never expected to have a blessed mag whatsomdever.” And green countrymen follow these plump images of Hope, and treat them to whatever they please to take.

Besides the Prerogative Will-Office, Doctors’ Commons contains the Court of Arches, a name well known to all the readers of newspapers; the Court of Faculties and Dispensation, having a good deal to do with marriage-licenses, and many other less lawful matters; the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London, and the High Court of Admiralty, so that “all is fish” which falls into the net of these courts—from a lady running away from her husband, to one ship running down another. A captive of Cupid’s or a capture in war, is all the same to these able practitioners, where either the owner or the husband of the Nancy Dawson may find redress—for either ship or spouse come alike to advocate or proctor.

Here we have, also, the Heralds’ College, well worthy of notice, as it contains many curious rolls and valuable manuscripts.

At the bottom of Bennet’s-hill stood Paul’s-wharf—a famous landing-place before the Great Fire; the church still bears the name of St. Bennet, Paul’s-wharf. Here Knightrider-street and Carter-lane extend in the line of the river. Carter-lane has become classic ground, through one Richard Quyney having directed a letter from the Bell Inn, which formerly stood there, to Shakspeare. Little did Quyney dream how much the handwriting of the poet he was then addressing would one day be valued—of the hundreds of pilgrims who would visit the adjoining Court to see the will of Shakspeare. The society which bears his name are doing “good service” by hunting up and publishing such records as these, for they throw a charm around the old poetical neighbourhood of Blackfriars Bridge, and give to such places as Carter-lane an interest which they never before possessed;

“For there is link’d unto a poet’s name
A spell that can command the voice of fame.”

Knightrider-street, Stowe tells us, derived its name from the knights of old riding through it on their way from the Tower to Smithfield to hold their jousts and tournaments. It was in Knightrider-street that the mace was found which was stolen from the Lord Chancellor’s closet, in Great Queen-street, on Tuesday night, February 6th, 1676. A small quarto pamphlet, of eight pages, published in 1676, bears the following title:—“A perfect Narrative of the Apprehension, Trial, and Confession of the five several persons who were confederates in stealing the Mace and the two Privy Purses from the Lord High Chancellor of England, as it was attested at the Sessions held at Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey, the seventh and eighth of March, anno 1676.” The following extract is curious, as a picture of the old London thieves, and also of the lodging-house keepers, many of whom still inherit the gift of “opening the lock with a knife,” or any thing that first comes to hand:—“The manner of their apprehension was thus: some of the head of the gang had taken a lodging in Knightrider-street, near Doctors’ Commons, and there, in a closet, they had lodged the mace and purses. The woman’s daughter of the house going up in their absence to make the bed, saw some silver spangles, or some odd ends of silver, scattered about the chamber, which she with no small diligence picked up, not knowing from whence such riches should proceed. In this admiration she paused awhile, and it was not long before her fancy led her, like the rest of her sex, to pry into and search the furthermost point of this new and strange apparition; and directing her course to the closet-door, she through the keyhole could discern something that was not commonly represented to her view, which was the upper end of the mace, but knew not what it was; however, she thought it could not be amiss to acquaint her beloved mother with what she had beheld; and with this resolve she hastens down stairs, and with a voice betwixt fear and joy she cries out, ‘O mother, mother! yonder is the king’s crown in the closet. Pray, mother, come along with me and see it.’

“The admiring mother being something surprised at her daughter’s report, as also having no good opinion of her new lodgers, makes haste, good woman, and goes to the closet-door, and opening the lock with a knife, she entered into the closet, where she soon discerned it was not a crown but a mace, and having heard that such a thing was lost, sends immediately away to acquaint my Lord Chancellor that the mace was in her house; upon which information a warrant was soon granted, and officers sent to Mr. Thomas Northy, constable of Queenhithe ward, who, with a sufficient assistance, went into Knightrider-street to their lodging, and very luckily found them, being five in number, and of both sexes, viz. three men and two women, whom they carried before the Right Worshipful Sir William Turner, who, after examination, according to justice, committed them to the common jail of Newgate.”

It was only five years before that Colonel Blood had attempted to steal the crown from the Tower, but he—more fortunate than Sadler—escaped with his life, while the latter was hanged at Tyburn; the only one, we believe, who was executed for stealing the Lord Chancellor’s mace and purses.

What melancholy processions passed through Knightrider-street, as prisoners to the Tower, the old historian Stowe mentions not: like many another ancient street, it was often the highway of merriment and misery.

St. Paul’s School was founded by the venerable Dean Colet about the year 1500, who made the Company of Mercers his trustees. The present building was erected in 1824. At the commencement of June, when Anne Boleyn passed through the City on her way from the Tower to Westminster, to be crowned, we find, in Hall’s Chronicle, that “at St. Paul’s School, on a scaffold, stood two hundred children, well appareled, who recited various English versions of the ancient poets, to the honour of the king and queen, which her grace highly commended.”

To the church of St. Austin, or Augustin, Old Change and Watling-street, was united that of St. Faith under St. Paul’s, after the Fire. The present church was built by Wren. The church of St. Faith stood in the crypt of old St. Paul’s, beneath the choir. Fuller called it the “babe of old St. Paul’s.” The author of the Ingoldsby Legends, who has never been surpassed in the art of grafting modern incident on the stem of old ballad lore, was the rector of St. Augustin’s.

To see this closely-crowded neighbourhood thoroughly would require many “ups and downs.” Old Fish-street was formerly the great fish-market of London, when Queenhithe rivalled Billingsgate, and was the greatest landing quay in the City; the church of St. Mary Somerset, built by Wren, stands here. The former church was called St. Mary’s Mounthaut, or Mounthaw, as I find it spelt in an old pamphlet, which states that Mr. Thrall was “sequestered and shamefully abused” when the clergymen of London had to make room for the Puritans. Old Fish-street-hill had then two churches, but after the Great Fire that of St. Mary’s Mounthaw was not rebuilt. This is the old Saxon name of the berry of the hawthorn, and there was a time when Old Fish-street-hill was celebrated for its hawthorns, when it was called Hagthorn-hill or Mounthaw, long before old St. Mary’s was built upon it. The pamphlet I have alluded to was printed in 1661, and is entitled, “A general Bill of the Mortality of the Clergy of London, or a brief Martyrology and Catalogue of the learned, grave, religious, and painful Ministers of the City of London, who have been imprisoned, plundered, and barbarously used, and deprived of all livelihood for themselves and their families, in the late Rebellion, for their constancy in the Protestant religion established in this kingdom, and their loyalty to the king under that grand Persecution. London: printed against Bartholom’ Day.” This pamphlet, as the date shews, was issued soon after the restoration of Charles II., no doubt with the view of giving him a broad hint that their loyalty and sufferings ought not to be forgotten in the then “good time coming.” Whether or not any thing was done for them by the “Merry Monarch,” we have no means of ascertaining. We shall occasionally refer to this curious list, to shew the sufferings of the clergy during the period of the Commonwealth.

Stowe tells us that the monuments of the old church of St. Mary Somerset were defaced; but whether by time or sacrilegious hands, he says not, nor can we now know, for the Great Fire destroyed all the traces that time had so long spared. We would rather the old church with the poetical name had been rebuilt on the ancient Hawthorn Mount than this. Stowe thinks that the old name of St. Mary Somerset was Summer Hithe. Summer and hawthorns! how we love the memory of the old historian for calling up these pleasant associations! We may be wrong in the name, but, for the sake of the poetry, we must picture the pretty Saxon maids, before London was a city, wandering down Mounthaw to Summer-wharf between long lines of hawthorn hedges, to see their lovers return from fishing in the Thames, or to watch the arrival of some corn-barque lower down the bank by Queenhithe. In Fish-street we have still a portion of the old burial-ground that belonged to St. Mary’s Mounthaw.

St. Nicholas’s Cold Abbey stands at the corner of Old Fish-street-hill, and is one of the first churches completed after the Fire. There is nothing either remarkable about this church or the neighbouring one called St. Mary’s Magdalen in Old Fish-street, except that both were rebuilt by Wren. In the pamphlet before alluded to I find the following entry: “St. Maudlin, Old Fish-street, Dr. Griffith sequestered, plundered; wife and children turned out of doors; his wife dead with grief. Mr. Weld, his curate, assaulted, beaten in the church, and turned out.” Rather rough handling of the old royalist clergymen in the stormy times of Cromwell. What talk there must have been amongst the parishioners of old St. Mary’s Magdalen, or Maudlin, when the Ironsides walked into the ancient City churches, and thus dragged out and beat the venerable pastors. These brief entries bespeak volumes; and yet we wish the details were more fully given. Some of the worthy citizens no doubt dealt a blow or two in defence of their ministers. Poor Mr. Chestlin seems to have made his escape for a time only to be recaptured. “St. Matthew’s, Friday-street, Mr. Chestlin sequestered, plundered, and imprisoned in Newgate, whence being let out, he was forced to fly, and since imprisoned again in Peter House.”

Peter House stood in Aldersgate-street, and was used by Cromwell as a prison at this period, as were also several other celebrated houses.

Friday-street was famous in former times for its taverns. Our engraving represents the Saracen’s Head, which was taken down about seven years ago.

The stone beside the door in the wall of Allhallow’s, Bread-street, and in Watling-street, tells us that here John Milton was baptised on the 20th of December, 1608—that is, in the old church before the Fire. The well-known lines, commencing “Three poets in three distant ages born,” &c., are engraved on the same stone that records the date of Milton’s baptism. We wish that all the City churches had their names engraved on some stone, like that of Allhallow’s, Bread-street. We shall scarcely be believed, when we say, that in one or two instances the people living next the church did not know its name. When we consider how many churches are crowded together here, on the space of a few acres of ground, we think it would be of service to strangers visiting London, and to thousands who reside in the City and suburbs, to have the names either legibly engraved or painted on each building. Lower down is the church of St. Mildred, also built by Wren. The interior is rather pleasing, and there is some beautiful work about the pulpit; but we know nothing of any interest connected with the church or the street, beyond that Milton was born in it, which, to dreamers like ourselves, makes Bread-street hallowed ground, although the Fire has swept away every trace of the building in which the God-gifted poet first saw the light. That this, the spot on which the great poet was born, was classic ground long centuries ago, the portion of the Roman wall, and the ancient lamp (which we have engraved), and which were discovered in Bread-street about five years ago, fully prove. Who can tell what foot, renowned in Roman history, may have trampled on the spot where the author of Paradise Lost was born?

Bread-street formerly contained a famous tavern and a prison. The Mermaid is mentioned by Ben Jonson. There seems to have been a celebrated tavern here long before the time of Stowe, for he mentions Gerrarde’s Hall in his days as a hostelry for travellers, and, in his gossiping way, gives us an old-world story about the old building, which stood above the ancient crypt, which we have here engraved (as one of the vestiges of the London of our forefathers, doomed to be sacrificed to modern improvement), and in it he gives us a giant, and a long pole, which this son of Anak is said to have wielded in the wars. We have heard that this Gerrarde the giant was buried under the ancient crypt, which to this day sounds hollow to the tread. But the good old historian, with his simple and child-like belief, and love for all undated traditions, shall “tell the tale.”

“On the north side of Basing-lane is one great house of old time, built upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought from Caen in Normandy, the same is now [about 1600] a common hostelry [inn] for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerrarde’s Hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house some time stood a large fir-pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the wars to run with [away?]. There stood also a ladder of the same length, which (as they say) served to ascend to the top of the staff. Of later years this hall is altered, and divers rooms are made in it. [Alas, then, as now, they would improve; and cared not for their home antiquities even in good old Stowe’s time!] Notwithstanding, the pole is removed to one corner of the hall, and the ladder hanged broken upon a wall in the yard. The hostelar of that house said to me, ‘The pole lacketh half a foot of forty in length.’ I measured the compass thereof, and found it fifteen inches. Reasons of the pole could the master of the hostelry give me none; but bade me read the ‘great’ Chronicles, for there he heard of it. [Our hosts were reading men we see in the time of Elizabeth; and we love the epithet ‘great’ before Chronicles, for we believe it was the host’s word and not Stowe’s.] I will now note what myself have observed concerning that house. I read that John Gisors, Mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof [it might have been old then, for Stowe does not say that the mayor built it]; and that Sir John Gisors, constable of the Tower, 1311, and divers others of that name and family since that time owned it. [The Gisors must have been men of eminence for one to have become constable of the Tower in that jealous age, when the Normans ruled with an iron hand.] So it appeareth that this Gisors’ Hall of late time, by corruption, hath been called Gerrardes’ Hall for Gisors’ Hall. The pole in the hall might be used of old time [as then the custom was in every parish] to be set up in the summer, as a May-pole. The ladder served [serving?] for the decking of the May-pole and roof of the hall.”—Stowe.

Surely this crypt ought to be spared for the sake of Stowe, and Gerard the giant, and the May-pole—the compass of which the honest old historian measured. What a picture it would make—Stowe, the host, and the ostler, with the old building and the broken ladder! what rich material for a chapter in an historical romance! If we live, we will do it some day. Of course the old hall was swept away in the Great Fire, and Gerard the giant (which we have here engraved) grew up after the flames had died out; though they went roaring and reddening above the ancient crypt, over which the generations of six centuries have trampled. The vaults are of great antiquity—at least as old as the building mentioned by Stowe—the date of which he does not give, although he mentions John Gisors, Mayor of London, as a resident there in 1245, that is, more than 600 years ago.

In Little Trinity-street we have Painter-Stainers’ Hall, well worth a visit, although it is so badly lighted, that it is difficult to see the portraits. The principal pictures it contains are, Camden, Charles II. and his queen, William of Orange, by Kneller, and Queen Anne. The company also possesses a curious cup left by the celebrated antiquary Camden, and which is still used at their anniversary dinners. The church of the Holy Trinity was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt: a small chapel, of which we know nothing, stands on the site of the old church.

The church of St. Michael, Queenhithe, is remarkable for nothing except some carving at the east end, and the vane, which resembles a ship, and is said to be large enough to hold a bushel of corn.

The dues derived from the quay of Queenhithe belonged to the queens of England from a very early period, probably ever since the Norman conquest. Mention is made of Eleanor, so famous in our old ballad lore as the rival and poisoner of Fair Rosamond, as possessing all the dues obtained from this royal landing-place. Raising the old drawbridge of London Bridge every time a ship went under, with all the trouble and stoppage of vehicles, when this was the only bridge leading into London, did, no doubt, as much for increasing the traffic of Billingsgate as if a law had been passed to make it a royal quay.

At the foot of Southwark Bridge stands Vintners’ Hall. We can readily imagine that the old company of Vintners have ever been “right royal,” and great advocates for processions; that, when the City conduits ran wine, a great portion of the cost found its way into their coffers. Pepys tells us that, when Charles II. rode through the City the day before his coronation, “Wadlow the vintner, at the sign of the Devil, in Fleet-street, did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely men, in white doublets;” and we now find in the hall portraits of Charles II., James II., and others. That prince of rough wits, Tom Brown, in a bantering letter “from a vintner in the City to a young vintner in Covent Garden,” says, “You desire to know whether a vintner may take an advantage of people when they are in their cups, and reckon more than they have had? To which I answer in the affirmative, that you may, provided it be done in the way of trade, and not for any sinister end. This case has been so adjudged, many years ago, in Vintners’ Hall, and you may depend upon it.”

Bow-lane is the only place to obtain a good view of the beautiful tower of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, one of the finest, in our opinion, in the City. This is another of Wren’s edifices, erected after the Fire. It is said to be a model of the former building, and that the great architect was compelled to adopt the style through the conditions of a bequest, according to Malcolm’s statement, of “Henry Rogers, Esq., who, influenced by sincere motives of piety, and affected with the almost irreparable loss of religious buildings, left the sum of 5000l. to rebuild a church in the City of London.” He died before the building was commenced, and left his lady executrix of his will; and so the present church was erected after the model of the one built by Henry Kebles, it is said, who died at the commencement of the fifteenth century. Stowe says it was called Aldermary, because it was the oldest church in the City dedicated to St. Mary. It is said that the crypt of the old church still remains under two of the houses now standing in Bow-lane. The tower, as seen from Bow-lane, is splendid, but little of the church is visible from Watling-street; nor have we any thing further to notice in this old Roman highway, for such, no doubt, it formerly was, saving the church of St. Anthony, or Antholin, rebuilt by Wren, the dome of which is supported by columns. The early prayers at St. Antholin’s are alluded to by our old dramatists. Here we have only to turn up a court, a little farther on, and we are at once in Bow Churchyard, and under the very shadow of the tower in which swing the far-famed bells. Our engraving is a view of Bow Church as seen from Cheapside, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole City of London. Old Bow Church would of itself form a history, but, as we have not even described old St. Paul’s, and as we wish to make our readers acquainted with the London of to-day as well as the old City, which never arose again from its ruins, we shall glance briefly at the present neighbourhood, and pass on our way eastward.

Bow-bells have become a by-word, more probably through those who were born within the sound of their peal being called true cockneys, than for the superior quality of their music. The steeple is very beautiful; from the ground to the nave there is a harmony about it, and a lightness in the pillars, which seem as if they only required the air to rest upon. The form of the galleries is by some considered a beauty, by others a blot, as destroying the effect of the interior. The present church is built on a fine old crypt, perhaps as ancient as any remains to be found in the City, as the original Bow Church seems to have been the first that was built on stone arches. It is mentioned as far back as the time of William the Conqueror, and from it the Court of Arches takes its name. The old church suffered from tempest, fire, and siege. Murder was at last committed in it, and then it was pronounced unholy, and its doors and windows were filled with thorns, for

“Something ail’d it then,—
The place was curst.”

In former times it contained a balcony, from which the royal processions and civic parades were viewed, though, in comparatively modern times, these processions were seen from the houses opposite Bow Church. 1681: “Soon after twelve, their majesties arrived at a house in Cheapside, opposite Bow Church, and were there diverted by the pageant,” or Lord Mayor’s show. So, again, with King William and Mary, in 1689. Queen Anne also witnessed the procession in 1702; and in 1761, George III. and the royal family, “from the house of Mr. Barclay, opposite Bow Church.” Before the Fire, these old City splendours were witnessed from a stone building called a “seldam, or shed;” which Stowe says, stood “without the north side of Bow Church, and greatly darkened the windows and doors.”

About the meeting of the dragon on Bow Church steeple, and the grasshopper on the Royal Exchange, there are many quaint old-world prophecies in existence, which would be of but little interest to our readers. Here we must close this section of our work, having now reached Queen-street, Cheapside, and the cast-iron bridge of Southwark, and described all that lies within the compass of the heading to the present chapter.

CHAPTER III.
CHEAPSIDE AND LOMBARD STREET.

The splendid shops must strike a stranger with amazement, although far inferior to many which have lately been built at “the West End:” at every two or three strides we take along the frontage, we pass houses for which two or three hundred a year rent is paid; half-a-dozen houses produce yearly nearly double the income of numbers of the foreign nobles, and many an old lady and gentleman live retired in the quiet suburbs on the rent derived from a single house which stands in this costly thoroughfare. Nearly every floor is a separate department of commerce. Up every flight of stairs which you climb there are attendants in waiting to receive you. Temptation follows temptation—each door but opens into richer scenes; each room is hung with costlier articles; and you stand bewildered, as if entangled amid the mazes of those splendid palaces which figure in the dreams of oriental romance. Silks from almost every land in the sunny south, shawls woven in the rainbow looms of India, are mingled with the products of flowery Cashmere, and blended with the gaudy plumage of birds of paradise; and vases, emblazoned with the dazzling dyes of China, that glitter amid piles of purple and green and crimson velvets hemmed with silver and gold, and hangings which might have swept their costly fringes upon the cedar floors of Haroun al Raschid, while the weight of gold and silver seems heavy enough to bow down the windows.

Let the uninitiated be careful how they stand, whilst loitering and looking in through those costly plate-glass windows upon such gorgeous productions, for upward and downward, all day long, the rapid current of human life is ever rolling in living eddies, from east to west, and jostling, in its mighty strength, every idle object it meets with on its way; and, in this ever-moving ocean, each human wave has its allotted mission, each tiny ripple “its destined end and aim.”

How different from the London of the present day—from the splendid streets and shops which stretch from Temple-Bar to Whitechapel, and westward from those ancient City gates to a land of theatres, squares, and palace-like buildings—were the old narrow streets, with their high houses and overhanging gables, that rose tier above tier, their huge projecting signs, even at noon-day making a dim dreamy kind of twilight; while the cry of “What do you lack?” drawled forth by either master or apprentice, as they paced to and fro before their open-fronted and booth-like shops, gave a drowsy kind of murmur to the close ancient neighbourhood of the old City. How different from what we now see!

To the quays, stations, halls, houses of business, and courts of justice, which abound in this mighty city, are thousands by unforeseen circumstances yearly driven; and those who have never seen each other since the days of their youth, are sometimes jostled together unexpectedly in this great human tide. The old citizen is suddenly summoned from the suburban retreat, where he had resolved quietly to spend the remainder of his days, and never again to “smell the smoke of London;” for his house has been broken into, the property is discovered, the thief is in custody, and the old man once more elbows his way through the crowd of London, in wonderment at the many changes which have taken place since he first retired from business. Another hears that he has not been fairly dealt with, and has come many a long mile that he may with his own eyes examine the will which is deposited in the Court of Doctors’ Commons. The invalid loiters with feeble step, halting every now and then to peep into the attractive windows, before he embarks in the vessel which lies in waiting to carry him to a more congenial climate. You see the ruddy-faced, top-booted countryman, who is either attending a committee, or summoned as a witness upon a trial, waiting patiently to cross the street, and marvelling in his own mind what strange procession it can be that is made up of such a long train of all varieties of vehicles! You can at a glance detect the man of business from the man of pleasure, by the hurried and earnest manner of the one, and the idle and easy gait of the other. The down-looking thief is dragged along by the policeman almost unheeded, except by the lazy rabble of boys who follow their heels, with the poor woman on whose features crime and anguish have placed their stamp, and who exchanges a few low words with the culprit as he is hurried onward to prison. The undertaker rushes past, wrapt up in calculating the profits he shall derive from the funeral he has just received the order “to perform;” he sees not the sweet face of the intended bride, who, leaning upon her lover’s arm, is gazing with smiling looks upon the richly-decorated window, and making choice of her wedding jewels. The porter, with his load, runs against the “exquisite” in full-dress, and disarranges either his carefully-twirled ringlets or jauntily-set hat; a curse or a growl is exchanged on both sides, and they again pass on. The dandy goes by brandishing his light cane, followed by the stout and sturdy citizen, the very tapping of whose stick denotes him to be a man of substance; while the broad-built country bumpkin, with a fair cousin on each arm, occupies the whole breadth of the foot-way, and seems astonished at the rudeness of the “Lunnuners,” who jeer him as they pass. So rolls on this mighty river, with its six currents, bearing onwards those who pass and re-pass on each side of its shorelike pavement, and the rapid vehicles which glide swift as full-sailed vessels through its mid-channel.

All at once there is a stoppage; some heavily-laden wagon has broken down, and the long line of carriages of every description is suddenly brought to a stand-still—all are motionless. You see the old thorough-bred London cabman—who has promised to take his fare either east or west, as the case may be, in a given number of minutes—dodge in and out for a few seconds, through such narrow openings as no one except a real Jehu born on the stand would ever venture to move in, until he comes to the entrance of some narrow street, the ins and outs of which are only known to a few like himself, when, crack, bang! and he has vanished, giving one of his own peculiar leers at parting at the long line he has left stationary.

Now there is a slow movement, and the procession proceeds at a funeral pace. The donkey-cart laden with firewood heralds the way, and is followed by the beautiful carriage with its armorial bearings. Behind comes the heavy dray with its load of beer-barrels; the snail-paced omnibus follows; the high-piled wagon that rocks and reels beneath its heavy load next succeeds, and you marvel that it does not topple over, extinguish some dozen or so of foot-passengers, and smash in the gorgeous shop-front. The wreck which left the street so silent for a few minutes is now drawn aside, and all is again noise and motion. The police-van rolls on with its freight of crime, and is followed by the magistrate’s cabriolet, as he hurries off to a West-end dinner;

“And all goes merry as a marriage-bell.”

Queen-street is in a direct line with Guildhall and Southwark Bridge, and is remarkable for the loftiness of many of the warehouses at the Thames-street end. It was formerly called Soper-lane, and is frequently mentioned in the old processions; for, facing the end of Guildhall, no doubt some of the finest arches were erected there when royalty paraded the City. In an old pamphlet, printed by Richard Tothill about 1558, entitled “The Passage of our most drad Soveraigne Ladye Queene Elyzabeth through the Citie of London to Westminster, the Day before her Coronation,” we have the following allusion to Soper-lane, now Queen-street: “At Soper-lane end was another pageant of three open gates; above the centre of which, on three stages, sat eight children, explained by this inscription:

The eight Beatitudes, expressed in the V. chapter of the Gospel of
Saint Mathew applyed to our Soveraigne Ladye Queen Elyzabeth.

The Three Cranes in the Vintry was formerly a celebrated tavern in this street; and near to where the bridge now stands were the old watering stairs, from whence the Lord Mayor embarked on his way to Westminster Hall. The old burying-ground of St. Thomas the Apostle is in this street; but the church was not rebuilt after the Fire.

Southwark Bridge here spans the river. It consists of three cast-iron arches, the centre one wide enough for the Monument to float through cross-ways, and then leave a space of more than thirty feet. The weight of iron employed in its construction was nearly 6000 tons. To look up at the arches from the river, when underneath, recals the chambers built by the old enchanters; so many gloomy cells branch out and run into each other, that they appear marvellous, and compel you to respect the inventive genius of John Rennie, the architect of this wonderful structure, which was erected when railroads were unknown, and a tubular bridge across the Menai Straits undreamed of. These things ought to be borne in mind while looking at the cast-iron bridge of Southwark.

College-hill appears to have derived its name from a college founded on it by the famous Whittington, who lived in the time of Chaucer, and who was so many times Lord Mayor of London. The last Duke of Buckingham resided on this hill, but at what period we have not been able to discover. There does not appear to us the remains of any house sufficiently imposing enough to have been his residence, nor any thing extant beyond a court-yard, which is said to have belonged to his princely mansion. Strype says he resided here “upon a particular humour;” and we cannot contradict him, though to us it seems very strange, knowing that the City had at this time ceased, with but few exceptions, to be occupied by the nobility. We know that he sold his house in the Strand in 1672, and it is just probable that he may have resided here about this time; if so, it must then have been a new house, for the Great Fire occurred in 1666; and how such a mansion came to be taken down, and when and for what purpose, we cannot explain.

Here we have the Mercers’ School, which formerly stood beside the hall and chapel of this ancient company in Cheapside. It is said to be one of the oldest endowed schools in London, and to occupy the ground on which formerly stood “God’s Hospital,” founded by Whittington, now removed to Highgate, a great improvement on the original situation, considering that there is no longer any “flower-show” in Bucklesbury, and that the old Stocks Market has been removed to make room for the present Mansion House. St. Michael’s, College-hill, was rebuilt by Wren; it contains an altar-piece by Hilton, and is remarkable for nothing save that it was made a collegiate church by Whittington’s executors, and that the far-famed Lord Mayor is buried here—not forgetting an old poet (Cleveland), of whom we have in another work made honourable mention, for he was the first who called the bee “Nature’s confectioner.” His description of the ruins of “Old St. Paul’s” after the Fire ought to be better known. His hatred of the Roundheads was “right royal.”

Facing St. Pancras-lane, and running into Cheapside or the Poultry, is Bucklesbury, alluded to by Shakspeare, who makes Falstaff compare the dandies of his day to “lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklesbury in simple time.” It seems to have been principally inhabited by apothecaries in former times; and, as we know the faith our forefathers had in herbs, which they distilled and took in all kinds of forms as medicine, we can readily imagine what an aroma there was about the shops of these ancient herbalists.

Walbrook is so called from a brook which formerly flowed from the City wall into the Thames, but in Stowe’s time was built over and “hidden under ground, and thereby hardly known.” We have here the beautiful church of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. “This church,” says Mr. Godwin in his work entitled The Churches of London, “is

certainly more worthy of admiration in respect to its general arrangement, which displays great skill, than of the details, for they are in many respects faulty. The body of the church, which is nearly a parallelogram, is divided into five unequal aisles (the centre being the largest, and those next the walls on either side the smallest,) by four rows of Corinthian columns. Within one intercolumniation from the east end, two columns from each of the two centre rows are omitted, and the area thus formed is covered by an enriched cupola supported on eight arches which rise from the entablature of the columns. By the distribution of the columns and their entablature (as may be observed in the engraving) a cruciform arrangement is given to this part of the church, and an effect of great elegance is produced, although marred in some degree by the want of connexion which exists between the square area formed by the columns and their entablature, and the cupola which covers it. The columns are raised on plinths of the same height as the pewing. The spandrils of the arches bearing the cupola present panels containing shields and foliage of uncertain and unmeaning form, perfectly French in style; and of the same character are the brackets against the side walls, in the shape of enriched capitals introduced to receive the ends of the entablature in the place of pilasters. At the chancel end pilasters are introduced, and serve to shew more plainly the impropriety of omitting them elsewhere. The enrichments of the entablature—itself meagre and imperfect—are clumsily executed. Above it is a clerestory, containing windows of mean form and construction. The cupola, around which runs a circular dentil cornice, just above the arches, is divided into panels ornamented with palm-branches and roses, and is terminated at the apex by a circular lantern light: the whole is elegant in outline, and is much more in design than are other portions of the church just now alluded to.” St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, is considered, in spite of Mr. Godwin’s architectural criticism, one of the most beautiful of all Wren’s churches, and for a comparatively modern building, is the gem of the City. Outside there is nothing to admire; but within it wears, in our eyes, a sweet cathedral-like look, so gracefully does the light stream down, so artistically do the shadows slumber. When the great architect planned this building, he must have been blessed with one of those happy thoughts which sometimes come upon a poet unaware, and for which he can no more account than he can for the fragrance that floats upon the summer breeze. The grace of those pillars, the beauty of that airy dome, haunt the memory long after they have been seen; and when far away, come upon the mind like pleasant recollections. The altar-piece by West finds many admirers; but the greatest charm is the eloquence of the rector, the Rev. Dr. Croly, whose literary works stand “second to none” of the many highly-gifted poets of the day; for the author of Salathiel has won himself a name which will never be forgotten while the language in which he clothed the “Angel of the World” is uttered.

Nearly bordering upon the ancient crypt in Basing-lane, at the depth of 12 feet 6 inches below the surface, some workmen recently came upon a Roman tesselated pavement, a space of which comprising about 27 feet was exposed. This pavement, which is composed of the common red tesseræ, without pattern, is embedded in a thin layer of cement and pounded brick, underneath which is a thick

stratum of coarse sand cement. A cutting contiguous to the site of the pavement exhibits a section of chalk foundation, with layers of Roman tile, over which, supporting part of a brick building now in course of demolition, are the remains of a strong chalk wall, about 10 feet high and 4 feet in thickness. About 18 feet from the Roman pavement is a circular shaft, similar to that discovered near Billingsgate in connexion with Roman pavements and other remains on the site of the present Coal Exchange. This shaft is composed of chalk, and lined with hard stone. A chalk-built vault had been demolished by the workmen before it could be properly examined. Fragments of the fine red pottery called Samian ware, some of them bearing an elegant pattern, were found at a depth of nearly 20 feet; of these we give engravings. In other parts of the excavation, and in the face of the cutting, about 4 feet below the pavement, were picked out bits of the same kind of pottery, and fragments from a large mass of carbonised wood imbedded in the clay, and seemingly one of the piles which had served to support the Roman edifice formerly occupying the spot, in like manner with those discovered near Billingsgate. It is worthy of remark that the site of these discoveries is, as nearly as can be ascertained, that formerly occupied by the fortress of Tower Royal, being just about the same distance east of Queen-street as the line once known as Tower Royal-street, so designated to mark the locality of the ancient royal fortress; and it seems not improbable that the chalk superstructure above described may have appertained to the walls of this edifice. Tower Royal stood in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, in Watling-street, and came down to the Thames with its gardens, stables, &c.

In Cannon-street, beside the church of St. Swithin, the old saint who, in the country, is still believed to have a good deal to do with fair or rainy weather, stands the far-famed London Stone, of which we give an engraving: it is “let into” the wall of this church. The stone appears to have stood on the opposite side of Cannon-street in Stowe’s time, and to have been “fixed in the ground very deep, and fastened with bars of iron so strongly set, that if the carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken, and the stone itself

unshaken.” The cause why this stone was set there, the time when, or other memory hereof, is none.” Camden believes it to have been one of the old Roman milestones; but this, we think, is doubtful, as others would have been found in some of the old towns which the Romans inhabited. Every reader of Shakspeare will remember Jack Cade sitting upon this stone and proclaiming himself lord of London. The Mansion House was built about the year 1753: before this period, the Lord Mayor was compelled to reside in his own house, or to give his entertainment in some of the City halls. In the Egyptian Hall, the Lord Mayor entertains his guests in such a style as few cities saving London can afford, for the plate used on these occasions is alone valued at 20,000l. Few princes live in greater state than the Lord Mayor of London; for he has his sword-bearer, his chaplain, mace-bearer, sergeant-at-arms, carver, esquires, bailiffs, and we know not who beside. To support this dignity, he is allowed 8000l. a year during his mayoralty, which sum, if he is liberal, finds him comparatively in little more than salt and servants; for the good citizens soon begin to cry out if he does not “cook” pretty often, and invite them to the banquet.

The sword of the Lord Mayor, which was presented to the Corporation by Elizabeth, is four feet long; the handle is gold, richly chased, and the scabbard set with beautiful pearls. The mace was the gift of one of the Charleses, but whether the first or second we have not been able to ascertain. In the Illustrated London News of 1844, we find the following description of the collar and jewel: “The collar and jewel are badges of great beauty; the former is formed of pure gold, and is composed of a series of links, each one formed of the letter S, which formerly signified squire or gentleman, a united York and Lancaster, or Henry VII. rose, and a massive knot. The ends of the chain are formed by the portcullis, the celebrated badge of Henry VII.; and from the points of it, suspended by a ring of diamonds, hangs the jewel. The entire collar contains 28 S’s, 14 roses, and 14 knots, and measures 64 inches. The jewel contains in the centre the City arms cut in cameo of a delicate blue on an olive ground. Surrounding this is a garter of bright blue, edged with white and gold, bearing the City motto, ‘Domine dirige nos,’ in gold letters. The whole is encircled with a costly border of gold S’s alternating with rosettes of diamonds set in silver.” On ordinary occasions the Lord Mayor wears a black silk robe, and in the courts of Common Council one of blue; when on the bench, or on the occasion of a royal visit, he has other robes of scarlet and crimson.

The Mansion House stands on the site of the old Stocks Market, where a pair of stocks formerly stood, which were the terror of those who dealt in stale fish or otherwise offended. A little more than a century ago, the market was removed to opposite the Fleet Prison, and is still held there, under the name of Farringdon Market.

In Suffolk-lane stands the Merchant Taylors’ School, built on the site of a mansion that formerly belonged to the Suffolk family; hence the next turning is called “Duck’s-foot-lane”—no doubt a corruption of “Duke.” The present building was erected a few years after the Great Fire, although there have been additions made to it as recently as twenty years ago. Many very eminent men have been educated at this school; amongst them James Shirley, the dramatist, and author of that beautiful poem commencing with—

“The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows—not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate—
Death lays his icy hand on kings.”

In Thames-street, we have still a building bearing the name of Steelyard or Stilliard, an old name still in use in the country for the beam balance on which the portions of a pound are notched on the one side, with figures giving the number of pounds, and a hanging and sliding weight. It is principally used by butchers, and is known by no other name than that of stilliards in the north of England: hence, no doubt, the name of this ancient haunt of the Hanse merchants. The last church on the west side of London Bridge, in Upper Thames-street, is called Allhallows-the-Great; it was built by Wren, and contains a carved screen, presented by the Hanse merchants, who obtained a settlement in England a century or two after the Norman Conquest. At the Old Swan Pier, or Swan stairs, timid passengers were wont to land who had not courage enough to remain with the waterman in his wherry, and shoot the dangerous arches of old London Bridge, but generally walked on to some other landing-place below the bridge, where they again embarked.

New London Bridge is built of granite; and was first opened by William IV. and the good Queen Adelaide, in 1831. It cost nearly two millions sterling.

In King William-street stands the statue of King William IV., by Nixon, looking towards London Bridge. This statue, which is of granite, cost upwards of 2000l., of which 1600l. was voted by the Common Council of London. It is considered an admirable likeness; and the folds of the cloak are beautifully arranged, while the coil of rope reminds us of the “Sailor King.” The width and beauty of King William-street is very striking, especially after emerging from the narrow streets and hilly lanes which we have just described.

The churches of St. Michael and St. Peter, Cornhill, were both built by Wren, except the tower of the former, which escaped the Great Fire, but was rebuilt some fifty years after that terrible event. St. Peter’s possesses a rood-screen, a great rarity, and seldom found except in our old country churches. From the pamphlet which records the doings of the Puritans, and which we have before mentioned, we find the rector of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, “Dr. Brough, sequestered, plundered; wife and children turned out of doors; his

wife dead with grief; Mr. Weld, his curate, assaulted, beaten in the church, and turned out.” At St. Peter’s, Cornhill. “Dr. Fairfax, sequestered, plundered; imprisoned in Ely House and the ships; his wife and children turned out of doors.” One of the first Christian churches built in England is supposed to have been St. Peter’s, Cornhill. The present church contains an ancient tablet which bears the following inscription: “Be it known unto all men that the year of Lord God. C.lxxix., Lucius, the first Christian king of this land, then called Britain, founded the first church in London, that is to say, the church of St. Peter, upon Cornhill,” &c. &c. The inscription runs on to the coming of Augustine, and the making of Milletus bishop of London, &c.

We give an engraving of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, the tower of which is a copy of the one that escaped the fire; the upper portion is very beautiful—pity it is hidden by the houses in St. Michael’s-alley.

As we are now in busy Lombard-street, so proverbial for its wealth, we will pause a few moments, and look at it through the dim haze of former years, how different from what it is now! As we gaze through the twilight of past centuries, we catch glimpses of the objects and echoes of the sounds that moved and floated over this ancient neighbourhood nearly three centuries before the Diamond let off her steam, or the Rob Roy omnibus carried thirteen “insides:” glimpses of vaulters, and dancers, and bear-wards, and leaders of apes, crossing and crowding where now the bank clerks hurry to clear out, carrying thousands of pounds in their bill-cases; still, however, reminding you that the old “rogueries” of London have not vanished, by the strong steel chains with which they secure their banking books. What a roaring and barking there must have been in that narrow thoroughfare in bygone days, when the bear was followed by all the dogs “from some four parishes,” as Ben Jonson has narrated! What a stir there was on that merry morning when Kemp set out from the house of the Lord Mayor to dance all the way to Norwich, accompanied by his taborer, Thomas Sly; or when Banks (the Ducrow of the Elizabethan period) exhibited his wonderful horse, named Morocco, in the London streets, and many of the simple citizens believed that both he and his marvellous steed had dealings with the old gentleman who manages the fire-office below! What cramming and jamming there would be about the Exchange on the day Queen Elizabeth ordered it to be opened by sound of trumpet; what motions and raree-shows, and antics of wooden puppets, such as Hogarth has preserved in his picture of “Southwark Fair,” and Jonson has called “a civil company” who live in baskets! Add to these all the “street-cries,” the balancers of straws and feathers, and all other out-of-door amusements, not forgetting the hares that played on tabors; the buzz also of the bearded merchants, who took up no small space with their ample trunk-hose: then you have, in the mind’s eye, the whole of this ancient panorama, moving in that high narrow street, with half the houses sleeping in shadow, while the other half caught the full sunshine. Seated at those carven and diamond-shaped lattices, which went bowing out far over the ill-paved pathway, were the wives and pretty daughters of these “gray forefathers” of commerce; while below, many an apprentice sat sighing over his desk, wishing it were Sunday again, and he carrying the large clasped Bible behind his handsome young mistress, while thinking more about the neat foot and ankle she displayed than the sermon that was to be preached at St. Peter’s or St. Michael’s; or, as he passed some richly-sculptured conduit, wondering when it would again run with wine; or, if he walked that way, turning a longing look as he passed towards the apple-trees that grew around St. Martin’s Church, in Ironmonger-lane, and thinking how he should like to make a party to rob that City orchard. Such were the picturesque features of the London of this period in the streets.

How different were the old ordinaries from the quiet chop-houses we now find in every court and alley that runs into Lombard-street! In those days, ten to one you had to fight your man after having finished your dinner; for swash-bucklers abounded in every tavern. Still there were merry doings; and Queen Bess’s ruff at last bristled out with anger at the tidings of the quantity of venison those “fat and greasy citizens” consumed, and then the Lord Mayor and aldermen were called upon to interfere.

Now merchants whose autographs to a cheque would load the bearer with gold lunch in the neighbouring alleys on their humble chop and steak; and gentlemen worth thousands turn up their cuffs and peel their own potatoes—then hurry off by the train, or omnibus, or steamer, to their snug suburban residences to dinner, except on rare occasions. They no longer retire to the ancient hostels to smoke tobacco, which was sold for its weight in silver, and to purchase which they looked out their newest crowns and shillings to place in the opposite scale. Smoking then was a different thing from “burning” tobacco as we do now; yet there were men in those days who, no doubt, “blew a cloud” with Sir Walter Raleigh and Ben Jonson; and even Shakspeare himself must have sat in the society of these early smokers.

How the bankers of England sprang from goldsmiths and lenders of money on plate and other pledges, is already matter of history; and were King John now alive, he would hesitate before he dared to venture on a little dental surgery to fill his exchequer; the bench would get judgment signed a thousand times over with much more pleasure than he affixed his signature to the Great Charter. Even the fiery daughter of Henry VIII. would, under the existing state of things, pause before commanding the citizens to take back the money she had borrowed of them, without interest, in loan for which she demanded seven per cent should be paid, and all their gold and silver

plate deposited with her as security for the payment—a most original and profitable way of “paying them back in their own coin.”

There is something very beautiful and almost poetical in the domestic history of these early bankers, telling us that their honesty and honour were upheld by a rigid adherence to pure morality, which is confirmed by the many marriages which took place between the apprentices and their masters’ daughters. Day after day, and year after year, did these youthful citizens live under the same roof, and under the strong control of the same strict masters, practising every kind of self-denial for her sake, whom they perhaps saw but once a day, or it might be at each meal-time; or, in strict establishments, only once a week, when they walked behind her to St. Mary’s Woolnoth, which stood on the site of the modern church our engraving represents. Through the dim light of bygone years we are enabled to see a face here and an arm there, a faint guarded smile, that would fall like a sunbeam all day long on the heavy ledger, as the youthful lover bent over his desk and sighed for a moment as he thought of his stern task-master; then, like Ferdinand in The Tempest, exclaimed, as he conjured up the image of his beautiful mistress—

“Oh, she is ten times more gentle than her father’s crabbed!”

At the present day there is nothing either grand or striking in this wealthy street. You see, here and there, a name on a common brass plate which, in the commercial world, is “a tower of strength;” except this, there is no visible sign of the “unsunned treasures” that lie within. The houses have a plain, substantial look—a kind of commanding solidity, which seems in accordance with their unostentatious owners. Enter, and you tread the true “Californian” regions, where the gold is ready minted: bring a good cheque, and you need neither spade nor shovel; the “digging and the washing” are not required here. What a staff of clerks! all busily engaged. What a number of ledgers are in use! And after the day’s business is closed, all those account-books are stowed away in a fire-proof room under ground, and brought up again in the morning, and placed in readiness before the banker’s clerks arrive; and in some of these houses expensive machinery has been fitted up, to facilitate the lowering and raising of the bulky ledgers in and out of the fire-proof vaults below. Look at that young man, with his banking-case chained under his arm; the rolls of cheques and notes he holds in his hand probably amount to thousands of pounds; he only catches the eye of one of the clerks, calls out the amount, hands the bulky bundle over the brass railing, and departs, leaving the sum to be counted over at leisure. See how carelessly the cashier handles that heavy bag of gold: he has no time to count it, but thrusts it into the scale as a coal-heaver would a sack of coals—so long as it’s weight, that’s all he cares about; he then shoots it out into his large drawer, and throws the bag aside as if he did not mind a straw whether a sovereign or two stuck inside or not; this done, he begins to shovel it out, and pay away. He counts sovereigns by twos and threes at a time; you feel confident that he must have given you either too many or too few, he appears so negligent: you count, and there they are to one—he never makes a mistake.

Go and pay in a sum of money, or take up a bill, with gold that looks light, and you will see another of his sleight-of-hand tricks. He jerks the one out of the scale without touching it, except with the sovereign he puts in, with such rapidity that you cannot catch the action, cannot see how it is done; the sovereign seems to fly in and out as if by magic. You might try for months and never be able to catch that peculiar jerk. You fancy that he must be weary of counting sovereigns; that a good pile of dirty brown coppers would be a great relief to him, equal at least to a change of diet. You wonder that his countenance is not yellow through bending over such piles of coin, and that, like the buttercups in the meadows steeped in sunshine, his face does not

“Give back gold for gold.”

Sometimes these clerks are kept for hours beyond their usual time to rectify an error of sixpence in the balance, when during the day thousands of pounds have been entered. The mistake rests somewhere, and must be discovered before they quit the banking-house; and column after column is gone over again; that weary array of figures is summed up and up, and compared and called over until the mistake is righted. They would gladly pay the amount twenty times over to get away; but that would be the ruin of a system the very stability of which rests upon its being correct to the “uttermost farthing.”

The following picture of an old-fashioned banker we select from a recent work on Banks and Bankers: “He bore little resemblance to his modern successor: he was a man of serious manners, plain apparel, the steadiest conduct, and a rigid observer of formalities. As you looked in his face, you could read, in intelligible characters, that the ruling maxim of his life, the one to which he turned all his thoughts, and by which he shaped all his actions, was, that he who would be trusted with the money of other men, should look as if he deserved the trust, and be an ostensible pattern to society of probity, exactness, frugality, and decorum. He lived the greater part of the year at his banking-house, was punctual to the hours of business, and always to be found at his desk.”

We have, in our opening article, made mention of Sir Thomas Gresham, the greatest of our old “merchant-princes,” and have now only to notice the three churches in Lombard-street, one of which, St. Mary’s Woolnoth, we have shewn in our engraving, and have but to add, that it was built by a pupil of Wren’s about 130 years ago. The following entry occurs in the old pamphlet we have before quoted from: “St. Mary’s Woolnoth: Mr. Shuite molested and vexed to death, and denied a funeral sermon to be preached by Dr. Holdsworth, as he desired.” The church of Allhallows, Lombard-street, partially escaped the Fire, but was not considered, after careful examination, to be secure enough to stand, even when the body of the old church had been coped with “straw and lime.” The present building is by Wren, and contains nothing remarkable. The other church, St. Edward the King, is worth a visit, on account of one or two pictures it contains, together with some beautiful modern specimens of stained glass. Externally, we see nothing striking in the building.

Birchin-lane was in former times the Holywell-street of London, so far as regarded the sale of second-hand garments. The church of St. Mary’s, in Abchurch-lane (that portion on the opposite side of King William-street), is mentioned, as follows, in the old pamphlet: “Mr. Stone plundered, sent prisoner, by sea, to Plymouth, and sequestered.” It was built by Wren, contains some excellent carving by Gibbons, and the cupola is painted by the artist who decorated the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Clement’s, in Clement’s-lane, is another of Wren’s churches; and the living appears to have been held by the same Mr. Stone who held that of St. Mary’s, Abchurch, at the commencement of the Civil War; for under the name of the last-mentioned church we find the same entry, with the addition that “Mr. Stone was shamefully abused.”

With Gracechurch-street and Fish-street-hill we close this section of our work. Gracechurch-street, with its conduit, is often mentioned in the old processions. In 1501, when Catherine of Spain entered the city by London-bridge, a pageant was erected in the broadest part of “Grasschurch-street, in the middle of the street, where the water runneth into the channel”—a primitive way of draining the street. In the time of Elizabeth, it was changed from Grasschurch-street to Gracious-street; and Dekker, in describing a royal procession in 1604, says, “it was never worthy of that name (Gracious-street) it carries till this houre.” It is a great mustering-ground for omnibuses, especially such as come from the Surrey side of the river.

The church at the end of Fenchurch-street is called St. Bennet’s: it was built by Wren. William Harrison was “minister” of Grace Church, and one who signed his name to the following remonstrance, headed, “The Dissenting Ministers’ Vindication of themselves from the horrid and detestable Murder of King Charles the First, of glorious memory:” London, 1648. Calamy also signed the “Vindication.” In no instance is the saint’s name affixed by them to the churches; some sign themselves “pastor,” one “minister of the word,” another “preacher.” We must do these old Puritans the justice to state, that this remonstrance was signed before the execution of King Charles, and during the time of his trial, namely, January 28, 1648, that is, two days before the ill-starred monarch was beheaded. We give the following spirited extract from this old pamphlet, the whole of which only consists of six pages: “We hold ourselves bound in duty to God, religion, the King, parliament, and kingdom, to profess before God, angels, and men, that we verily believe that which is so much feared to be now in agitation—the taking away the life of the King, in the present way of tryal—is not only not agreeable to any word of God, the principles of the Protestant religion (never yet stained with the least drop of the blood of a king), or the fundamental constitution and government of this kingdom, but contrary to them, as also to the oath of allegiance, the protestation of May 5th, 1641, and the solemn ‘League and Covenant;’ from all or any of which engagements, we know not any power on earth able to absolve us or others.”

The Monument on Fish-street-hill, which was designed by Wren, is about 200 feet high, and stands as many feet distant from the spot where the Fire first commenced on that awful Sunday, September 2, 1666, in Pudding-lane. The ascent is by 345 steps up a spiral staircase, lighted by what we might term, in old castellated architecture, arrow-slits. The interior of the column is nine feet wide. Several persons have committed suicide, by throwing themselves off the Monument; and it is now covered in with a kind of cage-work, to prevent such awful self-destruction. The view from the summit is not to be compared with that from St. Paul’s; and we should advise all sight-lovers to ascend the Monument first, on that account, and peep at the “wilderness of shipping,” and the thousands of house-roofs that rise in ridging disorder, as if some dark sea had suddenly been struck motionless, and so left silent with all its edged waves. On one side of the base is the following inscription of the destruction caused by the Great Fire, according to the translation of Maitland: “Eighty-nine churches, the city gates, Guildhall (not totally), many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries; a vast number of stately edifices, 13,500 dwelling-houses, 400 streets; of twenty-six wards it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt. The ruins of the city were 436 acres, from the Tower by the Thames side to the Temple Church, and from the north-east gate along the city wall to Holborn-bridge. To the estates and fortunes of the citizens it was merciless, but to their lives very favourable (only eight being lost).” One poet of the period, in be-rhyming the praiseworthy conduct of King Charles at the Great Fire, compares him to Cæsar, coming “with buckets in his eyes.” Pepys gives an interesting account of the Great Fire. Dryden also describes it in his Annus Mirabilis, commencing at verse 212.

CHAPTER IV.
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF BILLINGSGATE, NEW COAL EXCHANGE, AND TOWER OF LONDON.

The church at the entrance of this wharf is called St. Magnus, and was rebuilt by Wren. Miles Coverdale, whose name is associated with the earliest printed version of the holy Bible, was rector of St. Magnus above 300 years ago. He was buried in the church of St. Bartholomew, by the Exchange; and when that building was taken down to enlarge the space for the new Royal Exchange, his remains were removed to the present church, and re-interred on the spot which he had hallowed by his pious labours. But few who look at the projecting clock, as they await the arrival or departure of the steamboats, are aware that the remains of Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, and one among the first translators of the Bible, rest so near the stir and traffic of that busy wharf.

The first turning on the opposite side of the way, behind the Monument, is Pudding-lane, in which the Great Fire that destroyed nearly the whole of the City first broke out. It now contains nothing worthy of our notice: the same may be said of Botolph lane, so called from the church which was destroyed in the Fire and never rebuilt.

On St. Mary’s-hill stands a church partly built by Wren, and called St. Mary’s-at-Hill. On the 29th of May 1533, according to Hall’s Chronicle, “the mayor and his brethren, all in scarlet, such as were knights having collars of SS, and the remainder gold chains, and the council of the City with them, assembled at St. Mary’s-hill, and at one o’clock took barge. The barges of the companies amounted in number to fifty, and set forth in the following order: First, at a good distance before the mayor’s barge, was a foist or wafter, full of ordnance, having in the midst a dragon, continually moving and casting wild fire, and round about it terrible monsters and wild men casting fire and making hideous noises.” This procession, that embarked at the foot of St. Mary’s-hill, above 300 years ago, was “commanded” by Henry VIII. to go to Greenwich and bring Queen Anne Boleyn to London, to be crowned in Westminster Hall.

It is on record that the old ports or quays of Billingsgate and Queenhithe were the cause of as many squabbles in ancient days as were ever witnessed in our own times by any two rival companies struggling for pre-eminence; for when the customs derived from the latter furnished the queen of Henry III. with pin-money, a sharp look-out was kept on the river, and fines frequently inflicted on masters of vessels who landed their fish at Billingsgate instead of the royal quay. But great London soon burst through all these restraints: the old merchants were proof against even royal mandates; they objected to passing through the dangerous arches of the crazy old bridge—so at last obtained the privilege of landing goods at whichever quay they pleased.

Those ancient fishmongers must have been able to muster together a goodly company; for, hearing of the victory Edward I. had obtained over the Scots, they paraded the City with above a thousand horsemen, trumpets sounding and banners streaming, on which were emblazoned their quaint old arms, and followed by all the pride of their honourable guild.

What a stir there must have been about Fish-street and Fish-street-hill, and all along the line of those streets which we have already described, when that famous fishmonger Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, slew Wat Tyler in Smithfield, and thus at one blow cut off the “head and front” of the great rebellion! What a running to and fro and shaking of hands there must have been! What talking along the quays about privileges which would be extended to their own company, and which none other would be allowed to share! And what disappointment must have been depicted on their countenances when they found that all the reward the City was to receive was an addition to its arms! If true, it was like giving the chaff to him that had separated it from the wheat.

Those who were purveyors to the court had, in former times, the first pickings of the market; not a single fish was allowed to be sold until they had been served. We can picture the swagger with which the officers of the royal household entered the fish-market in those days, when a banquet was about to be given in the Tower. What pushing and cramming would there be to obtain a nod of recognition! now recommending the quality of some fish, then inquiring when the next execution would take place—their conversation shifting from salmon to the scaffold—from oysters, which, in those primitive times, sold for twopence a bushel, to the means of obtaining the best place when the next nobleman was to be beheaded.

There was a struggle for free-trade in those high narrow streets five hundred years ago: from Billingsgate to Queenhithe all was a scene of commotion; for the great fishmongers were aiming at monopoly, but the poor hawkers who picked up their living, as they do in our day, by crying fish in the streets, rose in a body, and so far carried the day that they were allowed to hawk fish, but not to keep a stall, nor stay in any of the streets a moment longer than while supplying their chance customers; for there was a strict police ever on the look-out after the poor hawkers, and the command of “Now then, move on there,” is nothing new. Nor were the fishmongers themselves free from “most biting laws;” for they were only allowed, at one period, to take a penny profit in every shilling, not to offer the same fish for sale (as fresh) a second day, nor to water their fish more than twice a day. If they did, and were found out, there stood the stocks ever in readiness, and up went the beam, and in went their legs; and there they were compelled to sit out the given time, no doubt to the great merriment of many of the bystanders. Their stalls in these primitive times were only boards placed beside the pavement. From these they got to erecting little sheds, then shops and high houses. But the fronts of these were ordered to be left open, and the fish exposed. They would not allow sales to take place in dark and obscure spots; all must be done in the open noon of day, or heavy penalties be paid for offending against the laws.

In remote times, long before the Norman invasion, frequent mention is made of the English fisheries. To three plough-lands in Kent, a fishery on the Thames is added. Ethelstan gave a piece of land for the use of taking fish, and forty acres were given with fishing, on the condition of every year receiving fifty salmon. The rent of land was frequently paid in eels; and in Elphit’s Dialogues, written for the instruction of the Saxon youths, we find that the implements used were nets, rods, lines, and baited hooks, which varied but little from those of the present time.

Those who have once reached the Monument, may “smell” their way to Billingsgate; for there is an old monastic odour about the shops, recalling Lent and stock-fish, and telling you that you are hemmed in with smoked haddock and salted herrings—which, when nothing else could be had, it must have been a heavy penance to have lived upon, and caused the poor sinner to have made many a wry face while devouring such dry and thirsty food. Once in Lower Thames-street, and you are in a land of danger. You come in contact with big men bending beneath bulky boxes; huge hogsheads swing high above you, and make you tremble as you look up, while treading the slippery pavement; and you know that if the crane-chain were to slip, or the hooks to which the ponderous packages are affixed to give way, you must be crushed like an egg which an elephant tramples upon; for danger ever dangles in the air about Billingsgate. The pavement is often blocked up by barrels of oranges and herrings, and hampers of dried sprats, the latter crammed together as close as white-bait in the stomach of an alderman when he has just dined at Lovegrove’s. Sometimes the atmosphere is so impregnated with the smell of shrimps, that you almost fancy it has been raining shrimp sauce.

You are now, as it were, in the very manufactory, where fish are brought and emptied out to be sold; where there is no attempt at show; but, rough and shining as when they flapped about on the ocean sand, or were thrown from the first hand ashore, so do you see them here in the early morning, rough and fresh as potatoes just dug out of the mould. There is none of that clean blue twilight look which gleams and plays about the shops of the West-End fishmongers, and is sometimes enlivened by the sunny flash of the gold-fishes that float about the silver-looking globes, which give such a picturesque appearance to the shops in that more refined neighbourhood. Here all is of “the fish, fishy.”

To this “rough and ready” market, those who wish to see how matters are managed must come early; for a minute or two before five o’clock the wholesale dealers are seated in their stalls, or recesses; while at the end of the market, nearest the river, the porters are drawn up in a row, each ready with his first load of fish, each standing within the allotted line, like hounds eager to spring from the leash. The clock strikes, and off they rush, helter skelter, every man Jack putting his best leg foremost, each eager to be the first to reach the stall of his employer. Slap goes the skate out of the baskets—they shoot out cod like coke, pitching the plaice wherever they can find room; and off they run for another load at the same rapid pace, nor cease until the salesman has received the whole of his stock.

Then the sale commences, the seller fixing his price, and the buyer offering what he considers to be the value; sometimes they “meet each other halfway,” as it is called, one lowering and the other advancing. The fish are generally sold in lots without being weighed, and it requires good judgment on both sides to reach the right mark. Although there are so many salesmen, and generally such ample choice, the prices vary much, as fish brought from one part of the coast are often superior to what come from another.

But the fun of the market commences with the hawkers, when they come to see what has been left by the large retail dealers: then you may hear a little of what is called “Billingsgate;” though, instead of the old renowned blackguardism, it is generally most good-natured “chaff.”

“Fresh do you call these?” says one, who finds the price too high for him. “Look how they rolls up the whites of their eyes, as if they vanted a little rain. I should say they hasn’t had a blessed smell of water for this week past.”

“Think I’ve been robbing somebody?” says another. “Vy, bless you, all the whole bilin’ of my customers hasn’t got so much amongst them as would buy the lot—no, not if they sold their toothpicks!”

Billingsgate is more like a wholesale warehouse than a fish-market, although you may purchase a single mackerel in it. The hundreds of carts which are drawn up in Thames-street, proclaim how far and wide the produce of river and ocean is dispersed. From the next street to the most remote suburb are the loads of fish borne, to be washed and laid out temptingly in the thousands of shops which abound in London and the surrounding suburbs. Nor is the supply limited to this circle; the rapid trains carry off tons of fish to the distant towns, where they arrive in time enough for dinner; thus sending

into the country the turbot and salmon as fresh as we receive it in the metropolis; for what are a hundred miles on the great railways?

Old Billingsgate is now pulled down; the muddy dock, where so many fishing-smacks have been harboured is filled up; and, instead of the old-fashioned market which illustrates this chapter, a pile is erected more befitting the greatest city in the world, and more like the noble edifice—the New Coal Exchange—that faces it.

Eels cannot be brought to Billingsgate in such perfection as they formerly were. We have now before us a Parliamentary report, given in above twenty years ago, complaining of the poisonous state of the Thames. The following evidence of Mr. Butcher, a fish-salesman, and agent for Dutch vessels, will be interesting at this moment, while the Thames is made the great sewer of London:

“Eight Dutch vessels arrived at Gravesend with full cargoes of healthy eels in July 1827, and the following is the state in which they reached the London market:

And so on in proportion, but little more than a fourth of the cargo being marketed alive.”

Mr. Butcher stated to the commissioners, that in 1815 (or twelve years before), “one of these vessels seldom lost more than thirty pounds weight of eels in a night in coming up the river; but that the water had become so bad, that as it flowed through the wells in the bottom of the vessels it poisoned the eels, and the quantity which died was more than three times the quantity marketed.”