Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

ought to be removed and affixed to this figure of the Crusader. The next in date that claims our attention, is the resemblance of a grim warrior, armed from head to heel, after the fashion of the heroes who fought in the days of Edward I. Here we have the long surcoat and rich emblazonry, which is so often mentioned in the wars of Palestine: the prick-spears are of a very primitive form, and worth examining, as is every portion of the armour on this figure; for even what is modern is a strict imitation of what was worn at this period.

The next is a gorgeous specimen of the time of Henry VI., both as regards the armour and the trappings of the figured steed; the skirts and sleeves are splendid specimens of chain-mail, and the fluted gauntlets, "beautiful exceedingly." The breasts and back are made of flexible plates, that is, loose, and put on in pieces; and the helmet, which is a salade, with a vizor or pontlet, has a grand appearance, surmounted as it is with a crest. All these it would require the skill of a Meyrick to describe accurately; for he tells us of sollerets, and tuilettes, vambraces, and rere-braces, camails, cuisses, and greaves, which are difficult to explain, and still more difficult to comprehend, without the aid of engravings. We then come to the reign of Edward IV., and here we find a rich but very singular-looking suit of armour. The angular-shaped helmet strikes the eye as being well adapted to throw off the point of a spear, if struck on the volant piece, which stands out sharp and ridgy as the point of a plough. The vambrace of the lance is very old, and shews how the hand was protected; there is also an addition to the safety of the wearer in the steel guard on the left side of the breast-plate, and also on the elbow, compared to that worn in the preceding reign. Armour of the time of Richard III. is placed on the next figure, very beautiful, being ribbed or plated; and here we have rosettes on the shoulders, which look like little wings or epaulets that have blown loose, and stand erect. This suit was worn by the Marquis of Waterford, when several gentlemen met to play at tournament at Eglintoun. Period of Henry VII.: a warrior dismounted, the armour of German workmanship; the figure remarkable for the change made in the helmet. Next to this another suit of the same age, and the horse majestically armed, especially about the head, neck, and upper parts of the chest. We now come to a suit of what is called Damask armour, and this the great wife-killer, Henry VIII., really wore-better for his fame if he had been killed in it the first day he rode armed; but we have "said our say" in a novel called Lady Jane Grey, and will pass on to mention that there is another suit, said to have been presented to him by Ferdinand, on his marriage with his daughter, Katherine of Arragon; of this suit, Mr. Howitt, in his Tower Armoury, says, "The badges of this king and queen, the rose and pomegranate, are engraved on various parts of the armour. On the pins of the genouillères sheaf of arrows, the device adopted by Ferdinand, the father of Katherine, on his conquest of Granada; Henry's badges, the portcullis, the fleur-de-lis, and the red dragon, also appear; and on the edge of the lamboys or skirts are the initials of the royal pair, 'H. K.' united by a true-lover's knot." The red dragon was the figure the ancient Britons bore on their standards in their wars against the Saxons. It is frequently mentioned by the Welsh bards who lived at that period, and also fought in these battles; but we do not think they bore standards before the invasion of the Romans, emblazoned with any devices. Passing by the armour of Edward VI., and that said to have been used by Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, we come to a suit that once covered the stately form of Dudley Earl of Leicester, "the gipsy," as Essex called him, on account of those dark features that Queen Elizabeth loved to look on. A suit, said to have been worn by his once powerful rival, the Earl of Essex, is only divided from Dudley by the armed figure that wears the mail assigned to Sir Henry Lea. Passing by the figures of James I., Sir Maurice de Vere, and the Earl of Arundel, we come to a beautiful suit of armour, made for Henry Prince of Wales, who died young; it is gilt, and enriched with quaint designs of ancient battles and stormy sieges, and other emblems of "grim-visaged war." Then follow suits said to have been worn by the Duke of Buckingham, James's favourite; Charles I., when Prince of Wales; and the unfortunate Earl of Strafford, who was, like his royal master, beheaded. The suit said to have belonged to James II., a curious head-piece, believed to have been worn by Henry the Seventh's jester, and several other curiosities, such as an ancient warder's horn, swords, &c., that were formerly in the possession of Tippoo Saib, together with an old suit of unpolished armour, are things which will be shewn, if the stranger make himself agreeable to the warder.

Quitting this gallery, we enter Queen Elizabeth's Armoury by a staircase, passing by two carved figures called "Gin and Beer," which were brought from the old palace of Greenwich, probably at the time of its destruction. We are again in the White Tower, and tread the very rooms in which Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, for no doubt he had the privilege of stepping beyond what is called his sleeping-room. In the recessed arch at the end of this groined and vaulted apartment, stands the equestrian figure of Queen Elizabeth, in a similar costume to what she wore when she rode to St. Paul's to return thanks for the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It would but make a dry catalogue were we to enumerate the whole of the miscellaneous articles in this Armoury, which consist of shields, swords, bows, blocks, instruments of torture, partisans, poles, match-locks, &c. &c., all hanging on the walls, or standing upright, or huddled together like old iron in a marine-store. There, however, is the axe with which Lady Jane Grey is supposed to have been beheaded, nor can we in a more fitting place, while the mind is filled with horror, which this "heading-axe" and block (the latter comparatively new) call up, describe her execution, which we copy from a work edited by J. G. Nichols, Esq., F.R.S., entitled the Chronicle of Queen Jane, and another scarce pamphlet, called The Ende of Lady Jane Dudley. The heroic spirit she displayed at her execution was long the talk in the streets of old London, when Queen Mary ascended her sanguinary throne.

"By this tyme was ther a scaffolde made apon the grene over agaynst the White Tower, for the saide lady Jane to die apon. Who, with hir husband, was appoynted to have ben put to deathe the fryday before, but was staied tyll then, for what cause is not knowen, unlesse yt were because hir father was not then come into the Tower. The saide ladye being nothing at all abashed, (neither with feare of her owne deathe, which then approached, neither with the sight of the ded carcase of hir husbande, when he was brought in to the chappell,) came forthe, the levetenaunt leding hir, in the same gown wherin she was arrayned, hir countenance nothing abashed, neither hir eyes enything moysted with teares, although her ij. gentylwomen, mistress Elizabeth Tylney and mistress Eleyn, wonderfully wept, with her booke in hir hand, wheron she praied all the way till she cam to the saide scaffolde, wheron when she was mounted, &c."

From the last-named pamphlet the narrative is continued as follows:

"She sayd to the people standing thereabout: 'Good people, I am come hether to die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, indede, against the quenes highnesse was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me; but touching the procurement and desyre therof by me or on my halfe, I doo wash my handes thereof in innocencie, before God and the face of you, good Christian people, this day,' and therewith she wrong hir handes, in which she had hir booke. Then she sayd, 'I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I dye a true Christian woman, and that I looke to be saved by none other meane but only by the mercy of God in the merites of the blood of his only sonne Jesus Christ: and I confesse, when I dyd know the word of God I neglected the same, loved my selfe and the world, and therefore this plague or punyshment is happely and worthely happened unto me for my sins; and yet I thank God of his goodnesse that he hath thus geven me a tyme and respet to repent. And now, good people, while I am alyve, I pray you to assyst me with your prayers.' And then, knelyng downe, she turned to Fecknam, saying, 'Shall I say this psalme?' And he said 'Yea.' Then she said the psalme of Miserere mei, Deus, in English, in most devout manner, to the end. Then she stode up, and gave her maiden, mistress Tylney, her gloves and handkercher, and her booke to maister Bruges, the levetenantes brother; forthwith she untyed her gown. The hangman went to her to help her of therewith; then she desyred him to let her alone, turning towardes her two gentylwomen, who helped her off therwith, and also with her frose past and neckercher, geving to her a fayre handkercher to knytte about her eyes. Then the hangman kneeled downe and asked her forgevenesse, whome she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the strawe; which doing, she sawe the blocke. Then she sayd, 'I pray you dispatch me quickly.' Then she kneeled down, saying, 'Wil you take it (her head) off before I lay me downe?' and the hangman answered her, 'No, madame.' She tyed the kercher about her eys; then feeling for the blocke, saide, 'What shall I do? Where is it?' One of the standers-by guyding her therunto, she layde her heade down upon the blocke, and stretched forth her body, and said, 'Lorde, into thy hands I commende my spirite!' And so she ended."

With a few of the names of the most celebrated persons who have been imprisoned, and some of them beheaded in the Tower and on Tower-hill, together with a slight notice of the chapel in which several of them lie buried, we shall close our description of this ancient fortress. Early in the fourteenth century, Wallace, the hero of Scotland, was prisoner within these walls, from whence he was dragged to Smithfield, fastened to the tails of horses, and there put to death, after enduring the most cruel and horrible tortures. Hither Mortimer was brought from Nottingham, laden with chains, having, we believe, been a prisoner in the Tower before that time, and escaped through making his keepers drunk. Here the brave Earl of Moray was confined for many weary years, unable to raise the extortionate ransom King Edward demanded. The Duke of Orleans was brought prisoner from the field of Agincourt, and long detained in the Tower. The victims of Henry VIII, we pass over, as they have a blood-stained page to themselves in English history. The Earl of Essex, whose death embittered the last moments of Elizabeth, and an account of which we extract verbatim from the scarce work we have so often mentioned, entitled The Life and Reign of Queene Elizabeth; it is as follows: "Wherefore on the same day was the Earle brought out between two diuines, apon the scaffold in the Tower-yard; where sate the Earls of Cumberland and Hartford, Viscount Howard of Bindon, the Lords Howard of Walden, Darcy of Chile, and Compton. There were also present some of the aldermen of London, and some knights, and Sir Walter Rawleigh, to no other end (if we may beleeve him) then to answere him, if at his death he should chance to object any thing to him; although many intrepreted his being there to a worser sence, as though he had done it oneley to feed his eyes with his torments, and to glut his hate with the Earles bloud: wherefore being admonished that hee should not presse on him now he was dying, which was the property of base wilde beasts, he withdrew himselfe, and looked out upon him at the Armoury.

"The Earle as soone as he had mounted the scaffold uncovereth his head, and lifting up his eyes to Heaven, confesseth, that many and greivous were the sins of his youth, for which he earnestly begged pardon of the eternall Majesty of God, through the mediation of Christ, but especeialy for this his sinne, which hee said was a bloudy, crying, and contagious sinne, whereby so many men being seduced, sinned both against God and their Prince. Then he entreated the Queene to pardon him, wishing her a long life, and all prosperity, protesting he never meant ill towards her. He gave God hearty thanks that he never was an Atheist or Papist, but that always he put his trust in Christ's merits. He beseeched God to strengthen him against the terrors of death, And he entreated the standers by to accompany him in a little short prayer, which with a fervent ejacculation and hearty devotion he made to God. Then he forgave his executioner and repeated his Creed, and fitting his neck to the blocke, having repeated the first five verses of the 51 Psalme, he said: 'Lord, I cast my selfe downe humbly and obedeintly to my deserved punishment: Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon thy servant that is cast downe: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.' His head after that was stricken off at the third blow, but the first tooke away both sence and motion."

Against this charge Sir Walter Raleigh defended himself, in his last speech, in the following words: "It is said I was a prosecutor of the death of the Earl of Essex, and stood in a window over against him when he suffered, and puffed out tobacco in disdain of him; but I take God to witness I had no hand in his blood; and was none of those that procured his death. My Lord of Essex did not see my face at the time of his death, for I had retired far off into the Armoury, where I indeed saw him, and shed tears for him."

Sir Walter Raleigh's execution is too closely interwoven with history to dwell upon any of the events of his imprisonment. Of him it may be truly said-

"A little rule, a little sway-

A sunbeam on a winter's day-

Is all the power the mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave."-Dyer.

The night before his execution he wrote the following lines in a leaf of the Bible:

"Even such is time, that takes on trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wander'd all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days."

Russel, Sydney, Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Laud, Davenant, and a score or more of others, whose names are mixed up with the stormy events of the period in which they lived, were prisoners in the Tower. These past away. Then came those who took part with the Pretender; some of whom were executed, a few pardoned; while others, like the Earl of Nithsdale, escaped. Then the names of Gordon, Burdett, and such like, of but little note in the present century, and they end

"This strange eventful history."

The chapel of St. Peter's ad Vincula stands at the north-west corner of the Tower, and must formerly have been very beautiful, though now sadly disfigured by modern innovators, who are cursed with such a taste as ought to be left only to its free indulgence in the walls of Bethlehem or St. Luke's.

Here were interred the headless bodies of Queen Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn, Margaret Countess of Shrewsbury, Lady Jane Grey: beauty, virtue, and talent, each bared her fair neck-the blow was struck, and now,

"After life's fitful fever, they sleep well."

Here also repose Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Seymour the Lord Admiral, and (strange retribution) his brother, the Protector Somerset; Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex-all beheaded. The catalogue may be dismissed in the words of Shakspeare, where he

"Tells sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been deposed; some slain in war;

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd:

All murdered!"

Macaulay, in his History of England, speaking of this chapel, says: "There is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration, and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with every thing that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame."

We conclude with the following extract from the Illustrated London News of January 1843:

"The extent of the Tower within the walls is twelve acres and five roods. The exterior circuit of the ditch-now a garden-surrounding it is 3156 feet. On the river-side is a broad and handsome wharf, or gravelled terrace, separated by the ditch from the fortress, and mounted with sixty pieces of ordnance, which are fired on the royal birthdays, or in celebration of any remarkable event. From the wharf into the Tower is an entrance by a drawbridge. Near it is a cut connecting the river with the ditch, having a water-gate, called Traitors' Gate, state prisoners having been formerly conveyed by this passage from the Tower to Westminster for trial. Over Traitors' Gate is a building containing the water-works that supply the interior with water.

"Within the walls of this fortress are several streets. The principal buildings which it contains are, the White Tower, the ancient chapel, the Ordnance-office, the Record-office, the Jewel-office, the Horse Armoury, the grand Storehouse, and the Small Armoury, besides the houses belonging to the constables and to other officers, the barracks for the garrison, and two suttling-houses, commonly used by the soldiers.

"The principal entrance to the Tower is toward the west. It consists of two gates on the outside of the ditch, a stone bridge built over the ditch, and a gate in the inside. These gates are opened every morning with the following ceremony: the yeoman-porter, with a sergeant and six men, goes to the governor's house for the keys. Having received them, he proceeds to the innermost gate, and passing that, it is again shut. He then opens the three outermost gates, at each of which the guards rest their firelocks while the keys pass and repass. On his return to the innermost gate he calls to the warders on duty to take the Queen's keys, when they open the gate, and the keys are placed in the warders' hall. At night the same formality is used in shutting the gates; and as the yeoman-porter with his guard is returning with the keys to the governor's house, the main-guard, which, with its officers, is under arms, challenges him with 'Who comes there?' he answers, 'The keys,' and the challenger replies, 'Pass, keys.' The guards, by order, rest their firelocks, and the yeoman-porter says 'God save the Queen,' the soldiers all answering, 'Amen.' The bearer of the keys then proceeds to the governor's house, and there leaves them. After they are deposited with the governor, no person can enter or leave the Tower without the watchword for the night. If any person obtains permission to pass, the yeoman-porter attends, and the same ceremony is repeated.

"The Tower is governed by its Constable, at present the Duke of Wellington; at coronations and other state ceremonies this officer has the custody of the crown and other regalia. Under him is a lieutenant, deputy-lieutenant, commonly called governor, fort-major, gentleman-porter, yeoman-porter, gentleman-gaoler, four quarter gunners, and forty warders. The warders' uniform is the same as that of the yeomen of the Queen's guards.

"The Tower is still used as a state prison, and, in general, the prisoners are confined in the warders' houses; but, by application to the Privy Council, they are usually permitted to walk on the inner platform during part of the day, accompanied by a warder.

"The fire which took place towards the winter of 1841 destroyed a great portion of the property in the grand Armoury, and materially altered the exhibitorial features of the edifices. The Armoury, said to have been the largest in Europe, was 345 feet in length, and was formerly used as a storehouse for the artillery train, until the stores were removed to Woolwich. A considerable number of chests filled with arms ready for any emergency were in a portion of the room which was portioned off; and in the other part a variety of arms were arranged in fanciful and elegant devices.

"A fearful destruction of property, at once curious and valuable, took place in this department; but one beautiful piece of workmanship was happily preserved. It consisted of the celebrated brass gun taken from Malta by the French, in 1798, and sent, with eight banners, which hung over the same, to the French Directory by General Buonaparte, in La Sensible, from which it was recaptured by the Seahorse, Captain Foote. The sword and sash which belonged to the late Duke of York were also saved, through the intrepidity of Captain Davies; who, however, severely cut his hands by dashing them through the plate-glass frame in which the sword and sash were enclosed."

Docks, Sailors, and Emigrants.

UR rambles have now brought us to the Docks; but, before describing them, we must glance backward at the scenes which in former years met the eye on the very spots which these vast basins now occupy, for we shall include them all in this chapter.

There are people still living who can remember when Blackwall-Reach had for its landmarks grim gibbet-posts, on which the bodies of pirates bleached and blackened in the storm and sunshine, "making night hideous;" when the whole neighbourhood beyond the Tower, instead of being the home of mighty ships-that seem to sleep after their perilous voyages in the Docks-was a nest of ill-famed streets and dangerous alleys, unsafe even in the open noon of day, and at night trodden with dread by the peaceful passenger; when the Tower Hamlets disgorged their lawless inhabitants to witness an execution on Tower-hill, attack a press-gang, or rescue some sailor from the claws of justice, to be borne in triumph to the nearest tavern, and amid flip, fiddling, and dancing, bid defiance to every 'Charley' that for a mile around drawled out the passing hours. In those days it was not uncommon for the drum to beat an alarm, and a troop or two of soldiers to turn out of the Tower, to quell the brawls which arose between the land-lubbers and the sons of the salt sea; nor were the military always successful in putting down these midnight riots; for whether Jack hunted a Jew or unroofed a crimping house, he would not give in (unless overpowered) until he had chased down the one and demolished the other.

Ned Ward, in his London Spy, describes the sailors he met with in his day in this neighbourhood, and says, "Sometimes we met in the street with a boat's crew just come on shore, in search of those land debaucheries which the sea denies them; looking like such wild, staring, gamesome, uncouth animals, that a litter of squab rhinoceroses drest up in human apparel could not have made a more ungainly appearance.... Every post they came near was in danger of having its head broken; for every one as he passed by gave the senseless block a bang with his cudgel, as if they wished every post they met to be either the boatswain or the purser. The very dogs in the street shunned them with as much fear as a loitering vagrant would a gang of press-masters, being so cautioned against their ill usage by the stripes they had formerly received, that, as soon as ever they saw a seaman, away ran the poor curs, with their tails between their legs, to avoid the danger of the approaching evil. I could not forbear reflecting on the 'prudence' (?) of those persons who send their unlucky children to sea to tame and reform them."

Even now, after all the alterations and improvements which have been made, there are places in the neighbourhood of St. Katherine and the London Docks which present almost the same features as they did a century or two ago, and such may be found within five minutes' walk of the Docks we are describing. No contrast can be greater than that between the west and the east end of London; the very houses, dresses, and language of the inhabitants are different; for in the latter their talk is "all of ships." Here, at the shop-doors dangle oil-case nor'-westers, with long fantails behind, telling that, unlike the hats in Bond-street, these are made to keep a billow that breaks over the head out of the nape of the neck; while the rough pilot-coats that hang like skins about the tent of a Russian bear-hunter, proclaim that they were never made to be worn in "a lady's chamber," but to be donned where the winds whistle, and the sea-gulls scream, and the big waves come roaring after each other like a thousand unchained hungry lions. There you see the gaudy handkerchief which Jack loves to leave a little out, that it may be seen from his blue jacket-pocket; those slops, in the whiteness of which he prides himself; and the checked shirt that he delights to throw open about his sun-browned throat, while he leaves the fringed corners of his black neckerchief to flutter like a pennon in the breeze. There is a forecastle-smell about the streets, a minglement of junk and rum, tar and biscuit, casks, ropes, and tobacco, not unpleasant to one who is proud of the wave-washed island on which he was born.

But the grandeur of this locality is its magnificent Docks-watery-squares surrounded with high-piled warehouses, and filled with gigantic shipping, the tall masts of which tower proudly above the loftiest houses. Here you see keels that have ploughed up the stormy Atlantic-sails hanging idly in the breeze that have been filled with the spicy gales of India-figures ahead that have looked down into icy seas, or bent listlessly where the waves of the warm Mediterranean roll, and the arch-backed dolphins tumble. It makes the heart of a true-born Englishman, although he is not worth a groat, beat high when he enters the gates that open upon such a scene of naval grandeur; and we forgive those old sea-kings, while we gaze around, who all but conquered our country, and blended their Danish with our Saxon blood. Warriors of old, who guided their snorting seahorses along the road of the swans, and swept the stormy Baltic to stand face to face with Alfred the Great, and to be at last scattered like the ocean spray by the arm of the Island King. Peace to their manes! they were the first who taught our grey forefathers that England's wooden walls are its safest bulwarks.

Many a house had to be levelled with the earth, and many an old graveyard to be dug up, before these mighty Docks could be made; even the ancient hospital founded by Queen Matilda seven centuries ago was demolished; and where oft the Sabbath-bell had tolled, and the old Londoners paused to glance at the "narrow beds" where their fathers slept, or wore the stones hollow with their passing feet-all were doomed to be swept away, to make room for the "guardian giants that prowl around our coasts." From this, good came; living London had not room enough for her dead, and the green hills that look down upon her glory were then turned into sepulchres; rural cemeteries sprang up, and thither her departed sons and daughters were borne; instead of pent-up city churchyards, our metropolis became surrounded with great gardens of graves, which look like true resting-places. Over such, a poet might fancy their peaceful spirits would linger, and look beyond to where the vast city gradually grows in length and breadth from year to year, until, as is not improbable, it may at last extend its foot to the edge of the open ocean.

St. Katherine's, and the two adjoining London Docks-which alone cover a space of more than a hundred acres-will contain six hundred ships, and near half a million tons of goods. In the West India Docks, which lie nearer Blackwall, merchandise valued at twenty millions of money has at one time been deposited on the wharfs, in the warehouses, and in the vaults below. The wealth of London lies not in her gaudy shops: beyond the Tower stand her great storehouses. A stranger who passes on the river on his way to Greenwich or Gravesend sees but little of these enormous treasuries-the

MAST-HOUSE, BLACKWALL.

tops of the tall masts alone point out their "whereabouts." These Docks are surrounded by high strong-built walls, so lofty, that it would be a puzzle to a most expert thief to scale them, on account of the finish of the coping; and if even this were accomplished, a greater difficulty would remain in getting over the bulky goods which are stored within. The walls which encircle the two London Docks were erected at a cost of sixty-five thousand pounds; and no less a sum than four millions was expended in completing this vast establishment. The East India Docks are at Blackwall, and our engraving is a view of the old Mast-House in the Export-Dock-one of the most prominent objects in the landscape, when the eye is turned in that direction, either from the summit of One-tree-hill in Greenwich Park, or as seen from the right of the Observatory.

It will be readily imagined that such improvements as these were not made without meeting with much opposition, for it is on record that the cargo of a large vessel often took up five or six weeks before it was delivered: for before the Docks were made, goods were put into lighters at Blackwall, and carried to the old-fashioned quays near London Bridge, and after a long delay, occasioned even by the Custom House authorities themselves, they were finally removed to the different warehouses in the City. In these good old times river robbery was a thriving trade; and we have more than rumour for asserting that many a fortune was made by this systematic plunder. No marvel that when the first inroad was made on these old vested rights, a clamour was raised by carmen, porters, lightermen, and all the shoal of waterside labourers, who benefited more or less by the very difficulties which attended the removal of merchandise, and that from Wapping to Westminster the whole aquatic populace raised their voices against the dock crusades. Even the Trinity House itself murmured about an invasion of interests, and contended that the Royal Dock at Deptford would be ruined. City limits and city privileges were all in all to these sticklers for old rights; nor have matters altered much even up to the present day, when a proposed improvement in the sewerage of the City seems to create as much alarm as if all its charters and privileges were about to be undermined and swallowed up. All these claims and demands had to be bought up, and thousands were expended in silencing their clamours before the Docks were commenced; for there were legal quays beside the river, and moorages within, and landing-places, that time out of mind had their little perquisites. And when all the Joneses, Smiths, and Tomkinses were satisfied, the mighty work began to proceed; and thus in time spread out and rose up these broad city basins and high-piled warehouses, which are the pride of England and the envy of so many surrounding nations.

But it is not the removal and storing of merchandise, in which as many as five thousand men are sometimes employed, that alone engrosses the eye of the observant stranger when he visits the Docks. There are other scenes of painful or pleasurable interest, which fall upon the eye and heart according to the humour of the man. One of those it is our province to portray. About a year ago we dined on board a large vessel in St. Katherine's Docks which had been chartered to carry out emigrants to America; it was a few days before the ship was announced to sail. The owner was a worthy gentleman; the party who had hired the ship, needy adventurers, whose references had blinded all inquiries, and who were only found out when interference was of no legal avail. For days "hired vagabonds" had been "touting" at every wharf and public-house in the neighbourhood; and the call, although not so openly made as that of an omnibus conductor, only varied inasmuch as "America" was substituted for "Charing-cross" or "Paddington." They took passengers for almost whatever they could get, paying no regard as to whether or not they had stores to last the voyage, or would starve before they were half over the Atlantic. "It was a sorry sight," and the law had no power beyond that of making a few arrangements that would contribute to the comforts of the poor passengers.

We went down the hold, which was fitted up with berths-if such a name may be given to the tiers of unplaned deal boards, which resembled large hen-coops piled one above another; and stretched on mattresses upon these wooden gridirons we saw many of the emigrants waiting wearily for the appointed hour that was fixed for sailing. It made the heart sicken to picture that hold, when out at sea with the hatches battened down, and the vessel driving through a storm. There were then little children running about, and playing at hide and seek among the bales and casks-fair-haired, red-cheeked, blue-eyed beauties, whose sun-burnt arms and necks told that they had had the run of the open village-green; and such we found had been the case when we inquired. Both father and mother were fine specimens of English peasantry: the grandfather and grandmother were also there. They had fixed up the very clock in the hold, which had for years ticked in the old familiar cottage, and brought a few choice flowers in pots, which they hoped to plant about their new home in a foreign land. An antique oak table, that had been in the family for many generations, was also doomed to bear them company in their long voyage. The old grandfather, whose countenance would have enraptured an artist, sat in a deep Rembrandt-like shadow at one corner of the hold, with the family Bible upon his knee. They appeared to be well provided for the voyage, and were full of "heart and hope."

Another corner was occupied by a wretched-looking Irish family. All excepting the old countryman and his family seemed to regard this miserable group with an eye of suspicion more than of pity; for it was whispered that a few biscuits and a little oatmeal were all the provisions they had made for the voyage. The captain, however, who had had some experience, considered that they were amply provided, and he made the strictest inquiry. A bag of coarse bread, which had been cut into slices and then browned in the oven, had that morning, he said, been sent on board to assist them-it was the gift of a few poor Irish people who lived in the borough of Southwark. This bread, he said, with a little suet, would make excellent puddings; and he promised that Pat should not lack the latter ingredient. It appeared that there were many little things which a willing hand might do on board a ship, and, as he said, "We never yet allowed one to starve; but this is a queer lot." If we remember rightly, the number of passengers was not sufficient to call for the interference of the Emigration Commissioners. The ship had been chartered to carry a cargo, a part of which, from some cause or other, was withheld; so the speculators endeavoured to make up the loss by passengers. Our attention was too much engrossed in conversation with those who were about to quit their native country, it might be for ever, to enter fully into these legal matters, although we believe the number at last became sufficient to call for this interference.

To our feelings there was something very revolting in married and single, young and old, being thus placed together in the hold of a ship, which was never intended for the accommodation of passengers; and we think that government might be worse employed than in applying a remedy to these evils. We fear that many who leave our shores with refined and delicate feelings, who, however humble may be their station in life, are gifted with that innate love of modesty which in no country has a more natural growth than in our own,-that many such are doomed to quit England, and through circumstances over which they have no control, land great losers in this never-to-be-recovered gift.

A voyage to America in the hold of a vessel fitted up temporarily as we have described, is a scene not likely to fall under the eye of a popular author: it can only be sketched by getting the information from some unfortunate fellow who has been bumped and thumped against those huge beams which run inside the berths, and rolled about like a barrel, and has been lucky enough to outlive all such pitching and tossing. A state-cabin, in the roughest gale, must be a palace compared with such a place in a moderate calm; and a common steerage, rendered as comfortable as circumstances will permit, a perfect elysium. Picture those who have never in all their lives encountered a stronger gale than needed a safe hand to keep on the hat, turning all sorts of imaginable somersaults, and who never heard any noise louder over their heads than when some relative fell down drunk upon the chamber-floor at a feast-time, first listening to the tramp, and thunder, and hurly-burly on deck, when the ship is struck by a heavy sea, and every timber groans again in its deep agony. No regular steward to assist-no servant to attend-berth moaning to berth-child squealing against child-one praying here, another cursing there-the hold all but dark, and where a glimmering of light is seen, the sea rushing in like a cataract-and over all, the wind howling like a raging demon, and every wave knocking at the ship's side, and demanding admittance; and if such is not a picture of a certain nameless place under the earth, it would convey no bad idea of one upon the sea.

And those dear children nestled together, with their little arms encircling one another in their cheerless berths, their mother incapable of comforting them! It gave one the heart-ache to think of what they were destined to endure. We pictured them in their restless slumber, murmuring like bees-dreaming of their cottage, then far away-or dizzy with the rocking of the ship, recalling the swing which hung between the apple-trees in the garden, and unconscious of the danger with which they were surrounded. Then we remembered Him who "tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb"-

"Who moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

Who plants his footsteps on the sea,

And rides upon the storm."

Wearily over the wilderness of waters would they journey onwards. Like birds with ruffled plumage, that feel themselves strangers when they have alighted upon a new land, the wild waste beside the ocean-shore where they landed would at first be trod with an aching heart; there would not be one old familiar object to comfort them. The Indian who carries the bones of his relatives to the far forest which he is driven into, and there erects a new hut, leaves scarcely an object of regret behind, for his hopes are anchored upon his great hunting-ground beyond the grave. One who soars into higher and purer realms in the dreams of an hereafter, is chained to earth by greater regrets. The very tree in the centre of the village-green wears a new charm when seen through the "mind's eye" from a far distance, and the humblest objects become more endeared to us when they are no longer within our grasp. Brighter and broader landscapes may burst upon the view in a new world beyond the ocean; but never shall we again find those familiar features in the scene which we have left behind: oft

" ... in the stilly night,

When slumber's chain hath bound us,

Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around us."

A far different scene met our eyes not long ago in the East India Docks, when the Canterbury Association sent out their emigrants to New Zealand. What we then witnessed compelled us to take another view of emigration, and to regret that many of our poor needlewomen were not numbered among the comfortable-looking Canterbury colonists.

The scene seemed to carry us back to bygone years, when the Pilgrim Fathers went forth over perilous seas (linked together by one faith) to establish colonies in far-off lands, and build cities in wild wooded wastes which had before borne no imprint but that of beasts of the chase, or the footmark the Indian hunter left behind while pursuing them. Stern men, such as Cromwell selected his Ironsides from, and staid matrons who, during the civil war, laid aside their psalters to load arquebusses, were the unflinching elements out of which our colonies were formed in those stormy old times. Neither gaols nor workhouses were emptied to people these early settlements, but firm, high-souled men and women went out, accompanied by their ministers and grave elders-such as in more ancient days assembled in our Saxon witenagemotes-full of moral resolves, and gave them laws, and established another England, in which they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. They weeded not the garden to transplant its sickly and seedy roots, but (so to speak) took out the very seed and the purest mould, and formed for themselves strong and healthy beds, that produced such fruit as tempted and attracted others to sally forth and cultivate their newly-discovered fields.

Of similar materials to these is the Canterbury Settlement, in New Zealand, to be formed, and more than a million acres to be peopled, by those who are of one faith-members of the English Church-and who are to begin by building schools and erecting places of worship, and thus providing for the intellectual and spiritual wants of the community. Food and raiment and shelter are not all they undertake to supply, but ample provision is to be made for much higher and holier purposes.

None who are really poor and wretched accompany them; such as go out, as servants and labourers, are men and women of good character, and members of the English Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury is at the head of the association, which numbers amongst its members noblemen and gentlemen, and those connected with the Church; in short, we shall not err by calling it a religious community. Hunger, and crime, and sin, and sorrow, and nakedness, and wretchedness they leave behind. Except the working emigrants who accompany them, we believe that nearly the whole of the settlers are large purchasers of land: some few of those who have speculated remaining here. They are also at liberty to establish their own form of government-to be, in fact, free and independent of England. It will be seen that they set out with such wealth, respectability, and numbers, as surpass all that our former colonists ever possessed, but that they take away none of our unemployed and needy poor.

What we witnessed on board the vessel in the East India Docks awakened no painful feelings, for they were not people actually compelled to leave their country because they were unable to obtain a living in it, like the many thousands who covet but the common necessaries of life, and cannot obtain them. We turned from the well-spread tables then before us, and thought of the poverty and wretchedness of those who drag out a miserable existence in our over-crowded London streets; the thousands who stand

"Houseless near a thousand homes,

And near a thousand tables pine for want of food;"

who bring no old memories into the crowded city, in which many of them were born. Home, with all its green boughs rustling above the rippling stream-the murmur of the bee-the shout of the cuckoo, and the mellow song of the golden-billed blackbird, were never to them old familiar sounds; they have nothing to sigh over, to look back upon and regret. The word "Home" to many of them has no charm, has never been surrounded with comfort; it is but a shifting from attic to attic, or from cellar to cellar; it but conjures up unhealthy back-rooms and high dead-walls, and breathless courts, which, when the wind reaches, it only stirs the sleeping poison, and scatters wider the stench of a thousand stagnant sewers. There they sit, in such neighbourhoods as Whitechapel and Bethnal-green, and hear of holidays and merry seasons, in which they have no share. The Christmas bells but ring out to them telling that nights are long and coals dear; and they are compelled to sit and listen to those sounds in the darkness, or by the glimmering of a handful of fire, for they are too poor to purchase even a candle. Spring processions and Whitsun holidays but tell them that there are pleasant places somewhere, which people are rushing out of town to see, though for them the flowers grow not, nor have they ever rested under the cooling shadow of a green tree. All they know of time is by feeling hungry, and struggling against sleep, while "stitch, stiching" for such establishments as Mr. Mayhew has described in his London Labour and London Poor, keeping no other record of the hours but by the number of stitches they take, or how long it will be before they can afford to eat again, while hunger is gnawing within, though the insufficient meal is but just concluded. Their homes were places from which they were many a time turned out because they could not pay the rent, then left to stand shivering and starving in the street, until some one, who numbered as many miseries as they, all but the want of a wretched roof for a covering, invited them in-and they sat crouching beside the fireless grate, thankful that, in addition to hunger, they had not to endure

"The pitiless pelting of the outer storm."

They have nothing to offer one another but sympathy-nothing to give but sigh for sigh, as they mingle tears with tears. What have they to throw a charm over home? Where is the comfortable bed on which to repose when their labour is ended? Behold that heap of rags and straw in the dark corner of the room! Where are their pictures to enliven the walls? their flowers, to tell that spring or summer has come? The imagination must form a landscape where the mortar has broken away-the only white patch in that dirty dwelling; their flowers of summer are dying in that broken jug where the halfpenny nosegay is placed, purchased when hunger needed appeasing, because memory was pining for nourishment, and the heart and eye were weary of those black roofs and tall chimneys, and they wanted to look on something which God had made; for,

"Though man has power to build a town,

He cannot make the thistledown,

Which every wind doth shake."

Mighty England, with all her glory, has but left them heirs to misery. When such as these are borne away to another country, we can almost picture the guardian-angels that would accompany them hiding their faces with their hands as they speed along with their white wings expanded above the vessel, as if weeping for these poor outcast daughters. But Hope, with her "golden hair" streaming out, would herald the way, pointing to other homes beyond the rim of the horizon, far over the sea, and bidding them remember that God is also there; and that there are no crowded courts and starving populace in those lands, where Health would stand with roses in her hands to plant in their pale cheeks, while honest Labour waved his sickle to welcome them to the thatched hut, which, stored with plenty, would send its blue smoke under the green trees, and then in coiling shadows over the golden harvest-field. Alas! these go not out with the Canterbury colonists. We should consider the present emigrants as going before to prepare the way for their feebler or poorer brethren. Their intelligence, capital, and enterprise will, we trust, create such a demand for labour, that they will invite the misery and poverty left at home to join them in the happy land of Canterbury, where we hope plenty will be found for all. May their turn soon come, and may they speedily join those who are now on their way; and, when it does, may the sea on which they will sleep flow around them with a gentle murmur-may the breeze visit them as softly as a mother's breath when she bends over her slumbering infant, and so dream during their long voyage over the ocean! May they at last anchor in a foreign land, where they will find a home such as they have never known!

Here, where there is not even room for their dead, but where the last silent tenant is removed to make room for the next comer, what have they to weep over? Nothing! No one, perhaps, would be by to close their dying eyes, or when they turned their faces to the cold wall, to bid "God bless them!" No friendly hand to lift them down those stairs up which they had so often gone with aching hearts, but be borne by pauper arms, in a pauper's coffin, to a nameless grave, the very hillock of which would be levelled within a month after they had been thrust beneath it, as if there was neither room for them living nor dead. Who would not pray to heaven to send them a prosperous voyage (as those were prayed for who have gone before) as they fly from a shore which brings to memory only misery, where the only hours of happiness they knew were those which went winged over their unconscious childhood, when hunger was scarcely felt while they played, and sorrow only forgotten when they slumbered-when the Angel of Sleep came and carried away the very memory of wretchedness until they awoke again. May the peaceful daisies soon blow about their home in a land where there is plenty and to spare, and human life is not made up of labour, hunger pangs, and short, fitful, moaning snatches of slumber, which is not sleep. May they, like those who are now preceding them, find a home around which to twine their affections, with a few trees and flowers that they can love and call their own, where the sun has room to get near them at morning, and can give them a parting smile before he sets at night, where he comes streaming free as when, first launched from God's almighty hand, he went thundering with a golden trail of glory behind, until the voice of the Omnipotent bade him stop in the immensity of space. May they find verdant valleys over which no board ever looked, threatening the wanderer with imprisonment for trespassing, but where the land is as free as it is to the foot of the bird, and where in time the tall churchspire may rise and the Sabbath-bell ring, and the hum of childish voices be heard coming from beneath the blossoming trees in the orchard where they are at play. When we turn to such a picture as this, and look at the haunts of wretchedness they now inhabit, we are compelled to acknowledge emigration a blessing.

If emigration is too expensive, let us not close our eyes to the fact that there are millions of acres of waste land in England and Ireland which might be brought into cultivation, and enable thousands to live thereon in comfort, or be made to bring in a good rental, so as to support those we cannot send out; and that this could be done at but little more cost than we should have to pay to get rid of them and their labour. Let us look at the quantity of fruit and cattle imported into England every week, and which might be grown and fed in our own country, if these wastes were brought into cultivation by the capital which we are sending abroad; buying in food on the one hand, and on the other, paying those to leave the country who might remain and produce it. A wise king, in a remote and barbarous age, found it cheaper to divide his kingdom with pirates and robbers than to be constantly at war with them, though they were aliens; surely England ought to do for her own children as much as Alfred did for the heathen Danes, if she will not send them to other countries. Labour is the only true wealth that Nature ordained when she provided us with the raw materials. The possessor of millions is compelled to buy labour; his gold will neither clothe nor feed him; with it he calls in hard-handed industry to his aid. These are old truisms which no arguments can overthrow. Have we exhausted all our resources of employment, that we are compelled to drive so many thousands who are willing to labour from the land? This is a question more important than any other, and of a thousand times more consequence than the money even now spent in sending out emigrants. How many little freeholds might be reared in our wastes, with our facilities, with what we are spending annually in emigration? and how much closer would these little spots bind the affections of the occupiers to the soil, and make them struggle proudly to bear their share of the burdens which are necessary to support the state! Let a large portion of these millions of acres be brought into cultivation at any cost; and then, if our busy hive is overstocked, send a swarm abroad. Women are needed in our colonies; let them go-at least, as many as we can safely spare-and spread sweet images of themselves over distant lands,-faces to look upon in after years, which will call up the England their mothers were compelled to leave; such as we see breaking the evening shadows with their smiles, as they play until bed-time on the village-green. Any thing to lessen the vice and wretchedness which is eating like a canker into the heart of our over-crowded cities. Such as these the Canterbury colonists will not take with them; and if we cannot afford to send them abroad, let us see what can be done for them with our waste lands at home, instead of leaving them to pine and die, unwept and uncared for, in our over-crowded cities. This matter forces itself on all thinking men who visit the London Docks during the present high fever of emigration.

LONDON DOCKS-OUTER BASIN.

ITHERTO our course has been eastward; we must now turn our faces towards the west, and describe a few of the objects which lie on our right hand, as we retrace our steps, and journey to where the sun sets. To the point from whence we started at the commencement of our work (the foot of Blackfriars Bridge) we shall find but little to detain us; for the Bank and Exchange are too commercial for our pages, as we have not undertaken to write a Guide-Book, and fear that we have already dwelt too minutely on many of the uninteresting portions of the City which we have already described.

But, up to the Tower, the neighbourhood we have gone over lies like a mere edging on the great skirt of London, compared to the labyrinths of streets that spread north and west-to say nothing of the Surrey side of the Thames. A mere glance at the map of London appals us. We shall therefore select a picturesque object here and there after having quitted the city, just as fancy guides the way.

Turning our back on the Docks, and taking the nearest cut to the Mile-end-road, we will at once dash into Whitechapel; for all behind us belongs to the suburbs, and our present descriptions lie not there.

We have in our opening article, entitled "Ancient London," glanced at the picturesque appearance of this neighbourhood in former years, and now turn to the present to find that these old-world splendours have given place to gin-shops, plate-glass palaces, into which squalor and misery rush, and drown the remembrance of their wretchedness in drowsy and poisonous potations of gin;-splendour and squalor, the very contrast of which makes thinking men pause, but are disregarded by those who contribute to the one and recklessly endure the other.

Our engraving represents the well-known row of butchers' shops; for the Whitechapel butcher still belongs to the old school, taking a delight in his blue livery, and wearing his steel with as much satisfaction as a young ensign does his sword. He neither spurns his worsted leggings nor duck apron; but, with bare muscular arms, and a knife keen enough to sever the ham-string of an old black bull, takes his stand proudly at the front of his shop, and looks "lovingly" on the well-fed joints that dangle above his head. The gutters before his door literally run with blood: pass by whenever you may, there is the crimson current constantly flowing; and the smell the passenger inhales is not such as may be supposed to have floated over "Araby the blest." A "Whitechapel bird" and a "Whitechapel butcher" were once synonymous phrases, used to denote a character the very reverse of a gentleman; but in the manners of the latter we believe there is a very great improvement, and that more than one "knight of the cleaver," who here in the daytime manufactures sheep into mutton-shops, keeps his country-house.

The specimens of viands offered for sale in these streets augur well for the strength of the stomachs of the Whitechapel populace; no gentleman of squeamish appetite would like to run the risk of trying one of those out-of-door dinners, which ever stand ready-dressed. The sheep's trotters look as if they had scarcely had time enough to kick off the dirt before they were potted; and as for the ham, it appears bleached instead of salted; and to look at the sandwiches, you would think they were veal, or any thing except what they are called. As for the fried fish, it resembles coarse red sand-paper; and you would sooner think of purchasing a pennyworth to polish the handle of a cricket-bat or racket than of trying its qualities in any other way. The black puddings resemble great fossil ammonites, cut up lengthwise; for while you gaze on them you cannot help picturing these relics of the early world, and fancying that they must have been found in some sable soil abounding in broken fragments of gypsum, which would account for the fat-like substance inside. What the "faggots" are made of, which form such a popular dish in this neighbourhood, we have yet to learn. We have heard rumours of chopped lights, liver, suet, and onions being used in the manufacturing of these dusky dainties; but he must be a daring man who would convince himself by tasting: for our part, we feel confident that there is a great mystery to be unravelled before the innumerable strata which form these smoking hillocks

will ever be made known. The pork-pies which you see in these windows contain no such effeminate morsels as lean meat, but have the appearance of good substantial bladders of lard shoved into a strong crust, from which there was no chance of escape, then sent to the oven and "done brown." The ham-and-beef houses display the same love of fatness, as if neither pig nor bullock could be overfed that comes to be consumed by the "greasy citizens" of the east end of London.

As for fish! the very oysters gape at you with open mouths, as if they knew how useless it would be to keep closed in such a ravenous-looking neighbourhood. They seem to cast imploring glances at the passers-by, as if begging to be taken out of the hot sun, and devoured as quickly as possible. You see great suspicious-looking whelks, sweltering in little saucers of vinegar; and you cannot help wondering what would be the result if you attempted to eat one; and while you are thus doubting, without "doating," some great broad-shouldered fellow comes up, throws down his penny, and, making but one mouthful of the lot, lifts the saucer to his lips, and drains the last drop of vinegar, then goes, for a finisher, into the nearest gin-shop. Pickled eels, cut up into Whitechapel mouthfuls, are fished up from the bottom of great brown jars, and devoured with avidity. You can never pass along without seeing brewers' drays unloading somewhere in the streets; and you cannot help thinking what hundreds a year Barclay and Perkins might save, in the wear and tear of men and horses, if they laid down pipes all the way from their brewery in the Borough to Whitechapel.

What little taste they display (if we may make use of so classical a phrase in contradistinction to their "palatal" or gastronomic propensities), is shewn in their love of pigeon-keeping; and many of the "fanciers" in this district can boast of possessing both a choice and an extensive stock of these beautiful birds. From this taste arise good results, inasmuch as it leads them into the suburbs, especially on Sundays, when they either carry the pigeons with them in bags or thrust them into their coat-pockets, and so wander for three or four miles out, when they turn the birds loose, both parties thus enjoying the luxury of a little fresh air. They are excellent hands at decoying pigeons, for all the "strays" that alight in the neighbourhood are pretty sure to become "Whitechapel birds." What means they use for entrapping these feathered favourites we have not been able to ascertain, though one knowing fellow told us, with a deep-meaning wink, that "it was the fineness of the climate, and a little hanky-panky' business." We paid a pot of beer for the information, without asking for any clearer definition of the latter phrase.

Having thus become enlightened in the art of pigeon-stealing, we turned up Houndsditch, and visited the real Rag Fair. The price of admission is "von halfpenny," a toll from which neither Jew nor Gentile is exempt. This market or fair for old rubbish of every description is well worth seeing; and to whatever use the trash could be turned that met our eye in every direction, did at first, as old Pepys says, "puzzle us mightily."

Rag Fair is a market consisting of long rows of standing or sitting places, having neither back nor front, but covered in by narrow penthouse roofs, supported on beams, under which the sellers or exchangers take their places: the wind and rain blow and beat through these open sheds, both drenching and sweetening the fusty rags that are exposed for sale. Those who wish to purchase pass up and down the "ragged" alleys. We were detained at the narrow entrance of the first row for several moments by two ancient and bearded children of Israel, who were endeavouring to bargain. The seller had the portions of two pairs of old shoes in his hand; one pair "soleless," the other nearly "upperless."

"How much for these, Mo'?" inquired the purchaser.

"Twopence," answered the other; "they be dirt-cheap."

"Bah!-won't do, Mo'," was the reply, after having examined them; "could not cut off enough to stop up a mouse-hole. Say von penny!"

"Vell, den, three-halfpence!"

We passed on, and did not witness the close of the bargain, our ears being now assailed with such cries of "Who vants three vaist-coats for old coat?" "Who vants old hats for old shoes?" "Two shirts for von pair of strong preeches!" and so on. There we saw the hook-nosed, large-eyed collector of "old clo' " whom we had that very morning stopped to look at while he carried off a whole suit in exchange for two geraniums which looked as if they could not live a week. The very things he was then running down, as he pointed out every thin spot and speck of grease to the little Cinderella he was bargaining with in the Borough, he was now extolling, and vowing that they had but been worn "wery leetle, wery leetle indeed." With keen eye the intended purchaser traversed every inch, examined carefully the knees of the trowsers, the arm-pits, elbows, and sleeves of the coat; then discovering something at last, as he shined it before the light, he pointed to the spot, and looked at the other in silence. "Vell, vot of dat?-Look at the pryshe!" was the reply of the geranium exchanger.

There is an old and mouldy smell about the place, telling that dank and fetid corners have been rummaged out to contribute to the stock of filth there accumulated. And yet, through the dirty mass the eye may here and there detect the trappings of pride. Court-dresses, from which the former owners would now run, exclaiming with Hamlet-

"And smelt so? Pah!"

Small satin slippers which had once been white, but now wore a little of the hue of every foul thing they had come in contact with. The worn-out wedding-dress, now a heap of rags, bundled up beside the thread-bare blackness of the poor widow's cast-off weeds. One might almost fancy that Pride had come here to crawl out of its shabby habiliments, and gone and laid down in some one of the dark alleys in the neighbourhood to die, having "shuffled off" the last vestiges of respectability.

"To what vile uses do we come at last!"

Rags that may have touched a young and beautiful duchess, not now fit for dusters. A remnant of the dress-coat of some young lord, thrown down with disdain by the hunger-bitten jobbing-tailor, because he cannot get a patch out of it large enough to seat the "continuations" of the Whitechapel hawker.

Passing on to Leadenhall-street, and nearly facing the East India House (which we have already described), we come upon two old churches, standing nearly together, that escaped the Great Fire, namely, St. Andrew's Undershaft and St. Catherine Cree. In the first Stowe was buried, and there his monument still stands; and the second (according to the authority of Strype) contains the remains of Hans Holbein, the great painter; also of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton.

Part of the tower is said to be very old, though the body of the church was rebuilt in 1628, and, as it appears, without much disarranging the interior, though one magnificent window has been walled up, as may be seen by looking at it from the adjoining alley. Prynne has left us a splendid piece of half-quizzical and satirical description of the consecration of this church in 1630 by Laud, Bishop of London, which will not seem out of place in this age of Puseyite performances. "When the bishop approached near the communion-table, he bowed, with his nose very near the ground, some six or seven times; then he came to one of the corners of the table, and there bowed himself three times; then to the second, third, and fourth corners, bowing at each corner three times: but when he came to the side of the table where the bread and wine was, he bowed himself seven times; and then, after the reading of many prayers by himself and his two fat chaplains which were with him (and all this while were upon their knees by him, in their surplices, hoods, and tippets), he himself came near the bread, which was cut and laid in a fine napkin, and then he gently lifted up one of the corners of the said napkin, and peeping into it till he saw the bread (like a boy that peeps into a bird's nest in a bush), and presently clapped it down again, and flew back a step or two, and then bowed very low three times towards it and the table. When he beheld the bread, then he came near and opened the napkin again, and bowed as before; then he laid his hand upon the gilt cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it: so soon as he had pulled the cup a little nearer to him, he let the cup go, flew back, and bowed again three times towards it: then he came near again, and lifting up the corner of the cup, peeped into it; and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover on it again, and flew nimbly back and bowed as before. After these and many other apish, antick gestures, he himself received and then gave the sacrament to some three principal men only, they devoutly kneeling near the table; after which, more prayers being said, this scene and interlude ended."

Could the cross, crop-eared old Puritan ever have been like other boys, and gone a bird-nesting? The simile seems to call up such a question, as if in his grim humour he reverted to his youthful days, little dreaming then that he should have to lose his ears and stand in the Westminster pillory. And Laud-he too (after all his pious "anticks," as Prynne calls the ceremony of the consecration of St. Catherine Cree) was beheaded at the Tower. While we stood within this old church, we pictured those two earnest men in that cold January morning-the one religiously performing his duties, with no doubt reverential awe; the other, with a sneer on his lips, leaning, perhaps, near the effigy of the recumbent knight, and scarcely able to suppress the contempt he felt for the ceremonies which such as he and the stern-souled Cromwell despised, with many others who were so soon to shake a throne, and trample on the "divinity of kings," as if it were but dust. But we are forgetting Stowe and the adjoining church of St. Andrew's Undershaft. Why it was so called, the pleasing historian, who has long slept (not undisturbed) within the church, shall tell us in his own sweetly-quaint old language; for though "dead, he yet speaketh," and never hath London before or since had so pleasing a chronicler. He says, "because that of old time every year, on May-day morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there before the south door of the said church." And he had often seen that "long shaft" set up-perhaps in his younger days danced around it, eyeing askance some citizen's pretty daughter: it may be she who outlived him, and at her own expense raised the present monument to his memory; and as she came in after-days to look at it, sighed as she thought of the bygone years when they danced, hand in hand, together around the May-pole, or of their walks in the summer evenings, when he pointed out to her some old surviving landmark that to him was hallowed by its historical associations, little thinking then that to him after-ages would be so much indebted for all that is known of ancient London. Peace to his venerable ashes! his shadow seems to fill the old church, and we think only of him. The ribbed roof and "deep-dyed" window are all we can remember; but what the stained glass represents we cared not to inquire, so much was our mind occupied with Stowe and the merry May-days of old London.

We will now turn up Bishopsgate-street, and glance at Crosby Hall (endeared to us through Shakspeare having made mention of it).

Crosby Hall, or Place, was built by Sir John Crosby; who, according to Stowe, obtained a lease of the ground, in 1466, of Alice Ashfield, prioress of the adjoining convent of St. Helen's, for ninety-nine years, at an annual rent of 11l. 6s. 8d. From grocer and woolman he became alderman of London, and was knighted by Edward IV. in 1471. His monument yet stands in the church of St. Helen.

Sir Thomas More states that it was in Crosby Place where Gloster, afterwards Richard III., planned the murder of the princes in the Tower, and by their removal paved his way to the throne. He says, "By little and little, all folk withdrew from the Tower, and drew to Crosby Place, in Bishopsgate-street, where the Protector kept his household. The Protector had his resort, the king (prince?) in a manner desolate; while some for their business made suit to them who had the doing; some were by their friends secretly warned that it might haply turn them to no good to be too much attendant about the king without the Protector's appointment; who removed also divers of the prince's old servants from him, and set new about him. Thus many things coming together, partly by chance, partly of purpose, caused at length, not common people only, who wave with the wind, but wise men also, and some lords eke, to mask the matter and muse thereon."

Shakspeare makes Gloster appoint the place of meeting with the murderer, after he has given him the warrant, at Crosby Place. Here he also requests the Lady Anne to "repair" while he inters the remains of the king at Chertsey monastery. Marriage and murder were planned under the very roof which we can still look at by that daring duke. It is one of the few remaining places in the City in which the deeds recorded in our history were plotted, and to which afterwards was given an enduring name in the pages of England's greatest poet.

Here the rich Sir John Spencer resided; and when the Tower was the court-end of London, it was frequently the residence of foreign ambassadors. It is said to have been the dwelling of Sir Thomas More at one period; but this assertion is not well authenticated. The hall, at a first glance, appears somewhat narrow for its height-the latter exceeding its width by about 13 feet, while its length is 54 feet. From the depth of the oriel the dimensions appear magnificent, while the innumerable dyes thrown out from the stained glass carry the imagination back to "feast and revelry," when beauty and valour there congregated, and all "went merry as a marriage-bell."

The hall was long used as a packer's warehouse; and during the period it was thus occupied much damage was done to its ornaments. The work of restoration commenced in 1836, and the building was re-opened in 1842. It is now used as a Literary Institution.

The adjoining church of St. Helen was founded in 1216. What alteration it has undergone, it is difficult to point out. It is a rich storehouse of ancient monuments, and perhaps, with the exception of the little church in the Tower, abounds more in these valuable records than any other building in the City that escaped the Great Fire. Here, as we have before stated, the founder of Crosby Hall is interred. The same altar-tomb also contains the recumbent effigy of Ann his wife.

Here Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange, is also buried: he died in 1579. The "rich Spencer," who bought Crosby Hall, and was Lord Mayor in 1594, lies here: he is said to have been worth near a million of money in his day, a sum which, multiplied according to the value of the period, almost throws our Rothschilds into the shades. These are but a few of the many interesting monuments dedicated to the memory of the "grey forefathers" of the City.

On one of the walls stands a richly-sculptured niche, below which runs a row of little open arches, through which the refractory nuns, it is said, were sentenced to hear mass, while they stood in the crypt. These nuns appear to have been an unruly race at times, and must often have caused great anxiety to such worthy prioresses as Alice Ashfield; for it was not safe to entrust them with the "latch-key," according to what is whispered by a dean of St. Paul's, who, it seems, made a few unpleasant inquiries about them in 1439, long before Crosby Hall was built, and when all around the nunnery there stood old-fashioned tenements, full of ins and outs, and which required some "sad (grave) woman and discreet" to "keep the keys of the posterngate."

THE FOUR SWANS' INN YARD.

It may be that many of the citizens' daughters were only sent hither to be educated, and that they were not disciplined as rigidly as those who took the veil and vowed to lead a secluded life; if so, this will account for these little irregularities in those old devout days.

We have in Bishopsgate-street one of those real old-fashioned London inns, with just such a yard and galleries as we may suppose were occupied by our early dramatists, while the stage was in its infancy. Our engraving requires no second glance to confirm the antiquity of the Four Swans Inn-yard.

What merry masques have been played in that old open inn-yard-what beautiful forms have leant over that antique and pillared gallery! Oh, for a volume filled with the names and doings of those who have slept under that sloping roof-who have peeped through the old ancient bannisters of the wooden gallery! What saddling and mounting "in hot haste" must there have been in former times at the doors of those stables! What a tramping of feet on those spacious landing-places! What a staggering of jolly old Englishmen, who, when in their cups, went up those wide old-fashioned staircases.

Or we can picture some newly-imported nun, arriving in her litter, or coming in with a string of pack-horses, staring about her for a few minutes, until carried away by the lady-prioress of St. Helen's from the old inn-yard and across the street, and along the grey weather-beaten cloisters, never, perhaps, to see the green country again from which she had journeyed.

Or we call up the figures of old carriers, such as Shakspeare has described, exclaiming:

"Pease and beans are as dank here as a dog; and that is the way to give poor jades the bots. This house is turned upside down, since Robin died. Poor fellow! never joyed since the price of oats rose: it was the death of him."-Henry IV. act 2.

Higher up the street we find another old house, in which Sir Paul Pindar resided (who contributed so largely towards restoring old St. Paul's): it is now a public-house, still bearing his name. The monument of the worthy knight still remains in the adjoining church of St. Botolph's, though the church has been rebuilt. It stands on the edge of what was the old City moat, "without" the ancient gate which, in former times, opened into the wide waste of fen and moor that lay beyond, and the names of which are still retained in Finsbury and Moorgate. Stowe says, "it continued a waste and unprofitable ground a long time, so that the same was all letten for four marks the year, in the reign of Edward II."

Thomas Falconer, Lord Mayor of London, was the first to break down the old city wall, and to make walks over this fenny ground, so that the citizens might get to the green fields beyond, though it was not until nearly two centuries after this time that the fen was drained. Throughout all these changes the church of St. Botolph stood, escaping storm and fire, until in 1720 it was pronounced unsafe-worn out with age.