Chapter 9 THE STRAND, ADELPHI, AND COVENT-GARDEN MARKET.

E have now quitted the City and entered the Strand; before us stands the Church of St. Clement Danes, on the right of which an archway opens into Clement's Inn; beyond that is the old Angel Inn, from which Bishop Hooper was taken before he suffered martyrdom at Gloucester three centuries ago.

Justice Shallow says: "I was once of Clement's Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet;" and no sooner is his back turned than Falstaff says: "I do remember him at Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring;" * * * "he was for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife."

Of the early church that occupied the site of the present one but little is really known. Stowe tells us that it was "so called, because Harold, a Danish king, and other Danes, were buried there." There is a doubt whether Harold, who ascended the throne after Canute, was in any way related to the latter; his pretended mother, Algigiva, was never married to Canute, and it is recorded that she never had a child, but that Harold, who passed for her son, had no higher origin than a poor cobbler for his father. Harold was buried at Westminster; but when Hardicanute (the legitimate son of Canute) came to England, he ordered the body of Harold to be disinterred, decapitated, and thrown into the Thames. The body was taken out of the river by some Danish fishermen, and again interred in a cemetery in London, where only the Danes buried their dead. We have not entered into the reign of Harold at all; these few facts are all that history records of the origin of St. Clement Danes. The present church was built by Pierce under the guidance of Wren. The old church was pulled down in 1660. Dr. Johnson had a sitting in the present church. The interior is heavily decorated with festoons and drops, and contains two tolerable statues of Moses and Aaron. Facing this church stands the office of the far-famed Illustrated London News, in the columns of which paper the greater portion of these sketches originally appeared.

You still hear a few of the old London cries in the by-streets that branch out of this busy neighbourhood, though many, which the "oldest inhabitants" can just remember, are heard no more.

The cry of "green boughs" to deck the summer parlours, and "green rushes" to strew upon the floors, has long since ceased. The fire-place is no more adorned with bunches of the blossoming hawthorn, branches of sweetbrier, and huge pots filled with the fragrant and trailing honeysuckle: art, with its paper ornaments, has driven away these beautiful products of nature, and the less healthy carpet has carried off the meadow-like smell of the rushes. "Cherry ripe" we occasionally hear, sung out as clear and silvery as when Herrick composed his inimitable little song, though Ben Jonson, by the way, wrote one long before Herrick, on the same subject. "Watercresses," though no longer borne by a nymph, who paused every now and then to throw aside the long hair which fell over her nut-brown and weather-stained cheeks, is a cry we still hear; but the figure that conjured up Sabrina and the "glassy cool translucent wave" has long since departed. Lemons and oranges are cried by the wandering race, whose dark-haired mothers, in ancient days, poured forth their songs in the land of Israel. The primroses and violets of spring are still sold in these streets, but the cry of "Come buy my pretty bow-pots" is now rarely heard. The apple-stall, with its roasted chestnuts, the oyster-stall (a simple trestle), and the pieman who is ever ready to try his luck at pitch-and-toss, still haunt the corners of a few of our obscure streets, as they did in bygone days. The grinder and the tinker, and those who yet follow many a primitive old calling, and who set up their workshops in every open street where they can find a job, have been driven, with their quaint cries, into the suburbs, and the men themselves are but shadows of the jolly tinkers and merry pedlars who figure in our ancient ballad lore. The rattle, and roll, and thunder of our modern vehicles have drowned their old-fashioned cries in the great thoroughfares of Fleet-street and the Strand.

But though many of these old cries are heard no more, there is still many a poetical association thrown around this busy neighbourhood.

Who has not heard of the May-pole that stood in the Strand, how it was removed by command of the stern protector Cromwell, and how, at the restoration of Charles, a new one was erected, amid the beating of drums and loud-sounding music, and the cheers of assembled thousands, who were weary of the puritanic gloom which had so long hung over merry England? What a buzzing there would be in that neighbourhood on the occasion, while May-garlands hung across the streets, as we have often seen them in our day, in a few out-of-the-way old fashioned towns, where the manners and customs of the people have undergone but little change during the last two centuries.

In an old volume printed before the Great Fire of London, entitled, The Citie's Loyalty displayed, we find the following account of the May-pole that stood in the Strand.

"This tree was a most choice and remarkable piece (134 feet high): it was made below bridge, and brought in two parts up to Scotland-yard, and from thence it was conveyed, April 14th, to the Strand to be erected. It was brought with a streamer flourishing before it, drums beating all the way, and other sorts of music. It was supposed to be so long, that landsmen could not possibly raise it. Prince James, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England, commanded twelve seamen off aboard to come and officiate the business; whereupon they came, and brought their cables, pullies, and other tacklins, with six great anchors. The May-pole then being joined together, and hooped about with bands of iron, the crown and vane, with the king's arms richly gilded, was placed on the head of it, [and] a large top like a balcony was about the middle of it; this being done, the trumpets did sound, and in four hours space it was advanced upright." [Four hours to draw up a May-pole! a slow age, my masters; they could not have built Hungerford Suspension-Bridge in those days, which is a toy compared to that now stretched across the Menai Straits. But to proceed with our extract.] "After which, being established fast in the ground, six drums did beat, and the trumpets did sound: again great shouts and acclamation the people gave, that it did ring throughout all the Strand. * * * * It is placed as near at hand as they could guess in the very same pit where the former stood, but far more glorious, bigger, and higher than ever any one that stood before it. * * * Little children did much rejoice, and ancient people did clap their hands, saying, 'Golden days begin to appear.' " This was in 1661. Whether a May-pole was erected after the one given to Sir Isaac Newton, it "being old and decayed," we have not discovered. The one given to Newton was afterwards used for raising a telescope at Wansted in Essex.

Cleveland, the bold cavalier colonel under Charles I., has a few spirited lines on the May-pole, but which are scarcely quotable, so hard does he hit the puritanical Tabithas and Obadiahs; we quote a few lines:

"Whether it be a pole painted, or wrought

Far otherwise than from the wood 'twas brought,

Whose head the idol-maker's hand doth crop,

Where a profane bird, towering on the top,

Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose root

The unyoked youth doth exercise his foot:

* * * *

How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complain

That Baal's worshipp'd in his groves again?"

The last line might have been uttered by some crop-eared holder-forth, who fought as well as preached under Cromwell. The church of St. Mary-le-Strand stands on the spot where the May-pole was formerly erected. It was built by Gibbs (1717), whose portico of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields remains unrivalled for its beauty. The old church stood nearer the river, and was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, 1549, who used the materials for building Somerset-place, but was beheaded before he had completed it. We forget in what old work we found a long account attempting to prove that he lost his head through destroying the church of St. Mary and the Innocents, as the old church was called.

SOMERSET HOUSE.

Passing the present Somerset House (which is now used as Government offices, and of which we merely give an engraving) and Waterloo Bridge, both of which are deserving of a separate article, we will turn down to the left and glance at the old church of St. Mary-le-Savoy, which is all that now remains of the once famous Savoy Palace, first built above six hundred years ago, but destroyed by Wat Tyler and his rebels; after which it lay in ruins for above a century and a half. The present chapel, as it is called, was built in 1505. Our engravings represent the exterior and a portion of the interior. It contains several old monuments and crosses.

CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-SAVOY.

We now reach the Adelphi, a mass of large dwelling-houses and warehouses, built by the brothers Adam about 1770, on such a labyrinth of arches as startle a stranger who enters them for the first time.

Those noble streets which open into the Strand, now known as the Adelphi, are built above the ground formerly occupied by Durham House and its princely gardens, from whence Lady Jane Grey, the "nine days' queen" (as our old chroniclers call her), was led, with loud acclaim, to the Tower, and then-in tears, to the scaffold. The ground itself on which she walked, and meditated, and saw her garden-flowers blow, is at noonday overhung with midnight darkness, excepting where, here and there, a gaslight throws its dim rays, and feebly illumines the cavernous gloom: where her youth and beauty once threw their sunshine a melancholy blackness now reigns. To us this dark land is filled with sad associations; and, though the grave hath long since closed over those who placed the crown upon her head, and then left her to bleed upon the block, we never walk through these sounding arches without thinking of their treachery.

INTERIOR OF THE SAVOY CHURCH.

Thousands who pass along the Strand never dream of the shadowy region which lies between them and the river-the black-browed arches that span right and left, before and behind, covering many a rood of ground on which the rain never beats nor the sunbeam rests, and at the entrance of which the wind only seems to howl and whine, as if afraid of venturing farther into the darkness. Many of our readers will no doubt conclude that such a dreary place as this must be deserted and tenantless: such is not the case. Here many of those strong horses which the countryman who visits London looks upon with wonder and envy, are stabled-huge, broad-chested steeds, such as may be seen dragging the heavily-laden coal-wagons up those steep passages which lead into the Strand, and which seem "to the manner born."

Cows are also kept here, which, rumour says, never saw any other light beyond that of the gas which gleams through their prison-bars, or, by way of change, the cheering rays from a lantern, when they are milked or fed: that here many of them were calved, and have lived on, giving milk to a good old age-buried like the main-pipe that supplies us with water, and finding its way into our houses, without our once inquiring how. We have often pitied the London cows, which we have seen driven up one street and down another, and have fancied that what little milk they had must have been churned into indifferent butter, as they ran on, to escape the stones thrown after them by boys, while mongrels were ever sallying out, and either biting or barking at their heels; but we had not then seen those which are doomed to dwell in the unbroken darkness of the Adelphi arches, without ever breathing any other than the sepulchral air which stagnates in this murky purgatory. Assuredly, they ought to be taken out for a little fresh air now and then, and be led by the horns to

"Fresh fields and pastures new;"

for we can readily conceive how pleased and patiently they would go "blinking" along compared to those horned blackguards who come with a butt and a "a boo" at us as they return from Smithfield, and, before we have time to say "Now, stupid!" pitch us over the battlements of one of the bridges, and leave us to sink or swim.

The Adelphi arches form a little subterranean city; there is nothing like it in London: in some places you catch a glimpse of the river; a small loop-hole then lets in the light like the end of a railway-tunnel, yet seeming to diminish more than these tunnels, on account of the steep descent, until one of the steamers, in passing, appears to fill up the opening like a half-closed door. Beside these arches, there are narrow passages which go dipping down to the water-side, where on either hand houses stand looking at one another in the openings between the darkness. There is a dismal and solitary look about these tall imprisoned houses; you cannot conceive how they are entered, for there appears to be no way to them, and you conclude that they are empty. Or, if they are inhabited, you wonder if the people ever look out of these dim, dirt-ditched windows at the dead-looking walls opposite. We have turned back, and hunted up and down looking from below, but nowhere could we obtain a view of the entrance to those murderous-looking houses. We once saw a butterfly which had lost its way, and got into the little light which had stolen out to look at the entrance of these arches: it went up and down, and hither and thither, seeming to become feebler every moment, as if it had given up all hope of ever swinging with folded wings, like a peabloom, on the flowers again, and we doubted not but that it found a grave amid the green decay of some rotten water-butt.

There was a time when the great thoroughfare between Westminster and Temple Bar was all but impassable, when a petition was presented for the repairing of the highway, in which the petitioners complained that the foot-road was so overgrown with thickets and bushes that the wayfarer had difficulty to get along. Besides the brambly and thorny footpath, there were three old bridges to cross between Temple Bar and the village of Charing, which spanned the sweet streams that came tinkling all the way from Highgate-hill, passing along and edging the velvet green of many a pleasant meadow, like braids of silver, before they sent their sailing foam-bells into the bosom of the Thames. Ivy Bridge-lane and Strand Bridge-lane still mark the sites of two of these old bridges. The third was only discovered a few years ago; and, as it was but eleven feet long, every ancient stone might have been preserved and built up again over the Lee or some narrow water-course, so that we might have had another relic of bygone days to have looked upon, a bridge over which conqueror and captive had passed-tears and triumphs-from the Tower to Westminster, and from thence to the Tower again. Bolingbroke weeping-the hero of Agincourt-what a chapter could we have written on that old bridge, which was discovered while making a sewer near the church of St. Clement the Dane! It had been buried so long that not an antiquary mentions it-nowhere is it recorded by our old historians. When it was discovered, it was broken up, removed, and no one seems to know what became of the fragments. Perhaps Alfred himself might have crossed that ancient bridge when he pursued the daring Sea-King Haestings; perhaps-- But it is gone; and we should like to know the name of the surveyor who allowed it to be destroyed; in these pages he should have a "local habitation and a name" such as he deserves.

There are still standing in Holywell and Wych-street a few houses which bring before the eye the old London our forefathers inhabited-when Bluff Hal beheaded a wife before he breakfasted; and Queen Elizabeth measured not her words to her ministers if they offended her, and thought nothing of striking a nobleman, as she did the Earl of Essex, when not in a loving mood. In her endearing moments, we often picture her like a grim lioness at play with the king of the forest. We often wonder where Shakspeare was during the Sunday Essex broke out, and locked up the queen's officers. We dare wager a silver groat, that he looked on that stormy scene in the Strand, and that, were he here to answer, we could point our pen to passages in his works which were suggested by what he either saw or heard on that memorable day.

How the warlike old barons would stare in wonderment, if it were possible that they could again "revisit the glimpses of the moon," and see the rent-roll produced from the ground on which their towered and loop-holed palaces stood; could peep at the productions exhibited at the Society of Arts, in the Adelphi, and look back again upon the days when a flexible gauntlet, that could guard the hand yet give freedom to the grasp, or a visor through which they could see yet with the bars so tempered as to resist the point of a lance, were considered as the greatest wonders of art! How they would rub their dim old eyes at the sight of an express-train; stare at a steamer, and think what a smash and crash a couple would have made, to have run into each other at their water-quintains! Then, to send a message from Tilbury Fort to Kenilworth by the electric telegraph, where the amorous old queen was coquetting with Leicester, and she ignorant of such an invention, to tell her that the Spanish Armada was coming, would have consigned the messenger who came from the station to something like the Spanish inquisition, if not a stake at Smithfield. Oh, that we had a photographic portrait of the dear old lady, with all those nicely marked shadows, to which she had so great an objection, down to the "cunning wrinkles round her eyes!"

But we will cross over the way, and visit Covent-Garden Market, the ever-open flower-show of London. Here, when "the wind and rain beat dark December," the costly chrysanthemum may be purchased, with which beauty decks her waving ringlets, as she shoots the arrows of love from her eyes, regardless on whom they may alight. In spring, summer, autumn, or winter, the choicest treasures of the floral world are here collected; from the conservatory and the humble cottage-garden, flowers of all hues are gathered to grace the Covent-Garden colonnades. Few places surprise a stranger more than when he emerges suddenly from that great, crowded, and noisy thoroughfare, the Strand, and finds himself all at once in this little world of flowers. In this spot are to be found the first offerings of spring; the snow-drop that comes "like an unbidden guest," violets and primroses which have been gathered in many a far-off dell and sunny dingle, come to tell us the progress that Nature is making in the green and out-of-door world. Many a sad and many a pleasing thought must have been awakened in the bosoms of thousands who have long been in-dwellers in this mighty city, by walking through the ranks of flowers which are here placed. They must have recalled the image of some old home far away, and probably never again to be visited by them-the porch, over which the woodbine or jasmine trailed, and the garden-fence, along which the clustering moss-roses hung. Many a flower is thus borne away and treasured for the old memories it awakens, for the tender recollections it recals-feelings to which the heart had long been a stranger. For Byron has shewn how small a key can open the human heart-how slight a chord may be struck, and some slumbering affection be in a moment aroused:

"It may but be a sound-

A tone of music-summer's eve-or spring-

A flower-striking the electric chain."

Here are purchased the cut flowers that decorate the banquet and ball-room-the posy which the blushing bride bears with downcast look in her hand-the bouquet which is rained down at the feet of our favourite actresses; and here also affection comes for its last tribute to place beside the pale face of the beloved dead, or plant around the grave in the cemetery. The house of mirth and the house of mourning are both supplied from the same common store. Pride, love, interest, fame, and death come here to select their garlands.

Here the young lover purchases for his fair one the blue forget-me-not; the graceful acacia, emblem of elegance; the myrtle, the old Grecian symbol of love; pansies-"that's for thoughts;" the red-streaked woodbine, which denotes devoted affection; the lily, that ancient representative of purity of heart; the rose, the queen of beauty, and for the earliest of which five or ten shillings is no unusual sum to pay; with every flower that makes up the great alphabet of love.

The epicure may here feast his eyes with delight; and, if he is wealthy enough, purchase the natural produce of April or May while the snows of February are whitening the ground; for so has science triumphed over nature, by the aid of heat and manures, that there is scarcely any thing too difficult for your forcing-gardeners to accomplish. New potatoes, peas, and fruit of almost every description, are here to be found, fresh gathered, before spring has hung out a single leaf upon the oak. Green April is made to produce green gooseberries; and marrow-fats come in with the blossoms of May. Here conservatories are also formed over the colonnades; and the choicest and most delicate flowers that ever bloomed in kingly gardens may be found as healthy and beautiful amid London smoke as if flourishing a hundred miles away in the country.

Those itinerant dealers who make the streets of London ring with the pleasant spring-cry of "All a-blowing, all a-growing!" as they move along with barrow, basket, and cart, are generally supplied from this market; and few would credit the many hundreds of pounds expended in the metropolis for the purchase of flower-roots, to be re-planted in the little back-yards called gardens, which are a peculiar feature in most of the London streets beyond the city boundaries. Places which, to pass in front, a stranger would think no green thing had ever grown for years near such a neighbourhood; yet in the rear they contain choice wall-flowers, sweet-williams, carnations, Canterbury-bells, hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and fancy dahlias, which have been grown within a mile or so of the bridges, and have been sent forth to "dispute the prize" at a flower-show. Many a poor man has often expended his shilling when he could ill spare it, to purchase a choice tulip or dahlia, which he treasured as the pride of his garden; and this is one amongst other pleasing sights to witness in this market. The artisan here finds enjoyment as well as the wealthy citizen, or the aristocratic lady, who treads with "mincing gait" through the arcade, attended by John the page, and all his "eruption of buttons." Fine specimens of English beauty are often met with here-faces that look not unlike our own island roses; the fine blue-eyed Saxon cast of countenance, and the long fair hair, such as centuries ago drooped about the brow of Rowena, and were the cause of King Vortigern losing his kingdom and his life.

In contrast to these are our Covent-Garden portresses-sturdy daughters of Erin, clad in almost manly attire, and, with scarcely an exception, every soul a smoker and drinker of neat gin. Wonderful are the loads which these "juvenile antiques" carry; they would make the neck of a strong man, unused to bearing such burdens, ache again, were he only to carry one a moderate distance. Their faithfulness and honesty are deserving of the highest praise: no matter how valuable the load may be that you purchase, or how great the distance it has to be borne into the suburbs, you have but to pay the trifle agreed upon, furnish the right address, and when you return home, there you will find every bud and blossom uninjured, for Biddy may be trusted with uncounted gold. They are all a sturdy, short-necked race; moving caryatides, strong enough to support a temple, although such forms never mingled with the dreams of our ancient sculptors. Beside a good-natured, it requires a strong-armed man to help to replace the load upon their heads when they have rested; and few gentlemen, we hope, resist the appeal of "Will your honour plase to lend a lift to the basket?"

At a very early hour in the morning, and while the rest of London-excepting in the markets-seem wrapt in sleep, the whole of the streets which open into Covent Garden are thronged with vehicles, and buyers and sellers; for either the greengrocer or his man must be here early, if our dinner-table is to be supplied with first-rate vegetables; and from the most remote street of the suburbs the greengrocers are compelled to come either to the Borough, to Farringdon, or Covent-Garden markets, for their stock; for these, with the exception of Spitalfields, which is celebrated for potatoes, are the only garden-markets. From one or other of these places have all those tempting shows of flowers, fruit, and vegetables, which give such a country-look to the greengrocers' shops, been brought at an early hour.

Here an imaginative lover of good living may feed his fancy, and feast his eyes with the first rhubarb-pie of the season-conjure up the roast shoulder of lamb that is to accompany the asparagus-match the new potatoes with the brown veal cutlet-see a couple of ducks lying prostrate beside a dish of green peas-run streaks of fanciful pastry between the rich lines of raspberries-thrust bundles of sage and onions inside some stubble-fed goose, or call up the plump leg of mutton that is to be boiled along with those lily-white turnips; while cauliflowers, spinach, brocoli, and greens of every description may be found to match with the finest joints that either Leadenhall or Newgate markets can produce; for here they are to be seen "thick as leaves that strew the Vale of Vallambrosa."

The poet may also ramble here, and call up visions of the Garden of Eden, where our first mother stood "half-spied, so thick the blushing roses round about her blowed;" or the golden fields of Enna and Proserpina, and her nymphs; and the wheels of that gloomy chariot, which ploughed up the waving flowers,-of Cupid and Psyche; and the beautiful vale of Arcady, and Venus mourning over her beloved Adonis, from whose blood there sprang a rich array of peerless blossoms.

But, independent of these associations, Covent Garden has an interest of its own. Above six hundred years ago it bore the name of Convent Garden, and originally belonged to Westminster Abbey. A pleasant walk must it have been, a few centuries ago, from that grave and venerable pile to the garden, before even the village of Charing existed, and when probably the whole line of road from the Abbey consisted of avenues of trees and open fields, where the daisies blowed and the skylark built and sang. We can picture those early fathers of the Church, with the rich missals in their hands, wiling away the hours in pleasant meditation, as they sauntered leisurely along between the Abbey and the Covent Garden, "in cope and stole arrayed." Within the last three hundred years it was walled round, and covered with trees, whose blossoms waved white and beautiful in the breezes of spring, and in summer displayed a rich array of trembling green; while half a dozen thatched cottages and a convent were the only habitations that then heaved up in this small neighbourhood. A few noblemen's mansions were all that at this time stood beside the river from Temple Bar to the Abbey; and these, with their beautiful gardens, sloped down by the edge of the water. Only a few years ago Covent Garden consisted of a mass of unsightly wooden sheds and open standing-places, inferior to the market of many a common country town; and it was not until about 1828 that this mass of rubbish began to be swept away, and the present market to be built. The foundations of the old convent, from which no doubt this place takes its name, are not yet wholly swept away, a considerable portion being at present enclosed within the house occupied by Mr. Bohn, the bookseller, in York-street. Here two or three bulky piles of masonry, no doubt containing the remains of the early fathers, who wandered about this ancient neighbourhood, while, with the exception of the convent, it was all one garden-ground, may still be seen. This convent, if we remember rightly, has escaped the notice of several of the London historians, who, because it was built on land belonging to the Abbey, seem to have lost sight of it as a separate structure.

It was not until the time of Charles I. that any material improvement commenced in this neighbourhood. The name of Inigo Jones is connected with the first advances architecture made in this direction, through the spirited exertions of the fourth Earl of Bedford. A few of the princely mansions which rise up in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn are fine specimens of the buildings which were erected about this period.

What an uncomfortable place must the old City have been, with its little poking market in Honey-lane, now covered by the City of London School and the Stocks Market, long since removed, and with only one bridge leading into this large London, which was then rapidly bursting its ancient barriers and shooting out far beyond its weather-beaten walls, while all propositions for improvement were considered as death-blows aimed at its old and barbarous privileges. Our forefathers never knew, nor needed, such places as the present Covent Garden Market.

We read, in old plays, of the apple-woman at the corner of the street, and the vendor of herbs who passed through those ancient thoroughfares; but of the greengrocers, like those of our own day, we find no mention, for they had no predecessors; and, excepting the cabbage and the parsnip, peas and beans, and the radish mentioned by Izaak Walton, there seems but to have been a scanty supply of vegetables. The potato is of comparatively modern introduction, while fruit-trees appear to have been grown in England from time immemorial; even as far back as the days of the Saxons, we find the vine cultivated in the gardens of the monasteries, and that the monks made their own wine. Their vegetable diet was very limited; and we need no further proof than the quantity of cattle slaughtered for the winter consumption, and salted for the sole purpose of saving the food they would require. Indeed, with the exception of beans, peas, wheat, barley, and a kind of cabbage called kale, we scarcely find any other mention of the vegetables used by our Saxon ancestors. Even in the time of Elizabeth, according to old Tusser, a supper of bacon broth was not to be despised, and a breakfast off the same substance cold, with the addition of a piece of cabbage in its cold state, and a lump of barley-bread, formed the chief diet of the English farmer, washed down, no doubt, by a draught of beer.

Still the Londoners seem always to have been a flower-loving people, and although the stern Puritans banished their May-poles and Whitsuntide games, they were revived again at the Restoration, and continued, but with little alteration, until the middle of the last century. Even chatty old Pepys allowed his wife to go down into the neighbourhood of Greenwich, so that she might rise early and wash her face in May-dew; and bluff Hal, attended by his queen and nobles, went out to "do observance to the May" at Shooter's Hill. We cannot help marvelling, while such a love for the beauties of nature prevailed, that no such thing as a regular flower-market should exist. It is true the dramatists mention the smell that pervaded Bucklersbury; and no doubt a few centuries back this was the chief spot where the country-people assembled and sold the flowers and fruits they brought from the country. That thitherward they came, streaming from the wild woods of Hampstead and Highgate, or from the wilder wastes on which Norwood now stands, each bearing their burden into "Bucklersbury at simple-time," when only one bridge spanned across the Thames.

Yet it must have been a merry London when, to quote the words of an old chronicler, "the king himself rose early in the morning to fetch May or green boughs-he fresh and richly appareled; and all his knights, squires, and gentlemen clothed in white satin; his guards and yeomen of the crown in white sarsenet. And so went every man with his bow and arrows, shooting to the wood; and so repaired again to the court, every man with a green bough in his cap." This was the time when, although London was without its Covent Garden Market, in May, according to Herrick's description:

"Each field became a street-each street a park,

Made green, and trimm'd with trees.

Devotion gave each house a bough, a branch;

Each porch and door

With white-thorn neatly was inwove,

As if they were the cooler shades of love."

In the first volume of the Illustrated London News we find the following description of the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

"When Francis Duke of Bedford, in the reign of the first Charles, proposed to erect a place of worship for his tenantry in the then thinly populated locality of the Covent Garden, he called to his councils the celebrated Inigo Jones, suggesting, as we find it recorded, that 'any thing-a barn would do;' an expression sounding more of the prudence than of the piety of the said Francis. The architect took the hint; and thence arose, in 1640, the Palladian structure of which we now behold a duplicate; the original building having been destroyed in 1795, through the carelessness of some workmen engaged in its repair. The contemplation of this edifice has given rise to a shrewd suspicion in our mind, that the above venerable anecdote relating to its origin may have been the after-thought of some architectural critic, whose admiration for the designer of Whitehall was stronger than his respect for the memory of the duke. Be that as it may, the structure, for several years, was merely known as the Chapel of Ease to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, until 1645, when it was erected into a separate living, and, in the year of the Restoration (1660), the patronage was vested in the Duke of Bedford; the whilom chapelry becoming known as the church and parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

"St. Paul's, Covent Garden, has some peculiarities in its structure. The Tuscan portico, with its prazzi, being placed in the rear instead of the front of the edifice, which latter stands in the quiet by-way of Belford-street. Hence the back of the altar is (to use a palpable Hibernicism) the front, the lantern and principal entrance being at the western extremity of the church. Popularly speaking it is right; for this is the elevation which has looked down on the many glorious rows, cracked crowns, and mêlées consequent upon each recurrence of a Westminster election, the hustings-hammering high bailiff of that ancient borough and city having made this spot memorable as 'the field of a thousand fights,' by here fixing the polling-place for the return of members to represent it in Parliament. Here, then, were the tag-rag and bob-tail of this ancient and radical borough wont to disport themselves in fighting, roaring, drinking, and swearing, during the fourteen days saturnalia of each contested election. But these scenes are no more; the Reform bill, by dividing the constituencies and the erection of district polling-booths, has destroyed the glorious anarchy, the rude liberty of the Westminster canaille; and we may look with equal success for the May-pole in the Strand or the Standard on Cornhill, as for an election-mob, such as in the days of Fox, Burdett, Hobhouse, Maxwell, or Sheridan, crowded the front of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. But if the history of the hustings of Covent Garden would be the history of political party for the last hundred years, not less would the history of the hotels and coffee-houses, which occupy two sides of the quadrangle, comprise the anecdotal annals of the last century, and the earlier portion of the present. The early companions of George IV. here revelled; and a host of buried talent, senatorial, literary, forensic, and dramatic, has the 'venue' of its brightest witticisms and most brilliant sallies laid in the hotels of 'the Garden'-in the Bedford, the Russell, the Piazza, Offley's, Mother Butler's, and the rest.

"All around the subject of our article has experienced its full share of change. There is a painting by Hogarth, from which an etching has been published, representing Covent Garden in 1745. There stands the predecessor of the present church, alike in every respect (except the illuminated clock in the pediment); but here the resemblance ceases. The area now occupied by the handsome market, with its granite columns, plate-glass windows, covered arcades and conservatories, is in Hogarth's picture an uneven space divided by posts and chains, with a pump in its centre. Here and there a market-woman, with looped-up petticoats and exposed neck, presides over heaps of vegetables scattered on the ground, while among mounds of turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strut several formal figures in the uncouth head-dresses, pinched stomachers, and stiff diamond-quilted skirts of a century ago, accompanied by puppy-dogs, and beaux as precise and quaint in attire as themselves. But to return. The design both of church and piazza of the present building is said to have been borrowed from a place built by Cosmo de Medicis at Leghorn. The bold projecting cornice outside, and the eight Corinthian columns of the altar-piece within, have found many admirers among the cognoscenti. In conclusion, we must add, that the inimitable author of Hudibras is also buried here, and no less a humorist than Dr. Walcot, the well-known 'Peter Pindar:' their monuments ought to be preserved."