Wm 1 < 5 "j YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LONDON. EDITED BY CHAELES KNIGHT. VOLUME III. [Bouthwarli in the Sixteenth Century.] LONDON ; HENRY G. BOHN. YORK^REET, COVENT GARDEN. 1851. YALEl CONTENTS OF VOLUME IIL WITH THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS OF EACH PAPER. LI.— BERMONDSEY J. Saundbss LII ^MODERN BERMONDSEY G. Dodd LIII.— THE MINT j. Satojdew LIV — THE THAMES TUNNEL „ LV.— THE DOCKS J. C. Piatt LVI.— "WESTMINSTER BRIDGE J. Sauhdeb* LTII— STRAWBERRY HILL.—WALPOLE'S LONDON C. Knight LVIII BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE J. Saumdbbs LIX.— OLERKENWELL G. Dodd LX.— STRAWBERRY HILL.—WALPOLE'S LONDON (eonobidedfrom No. LVIl.") C. Knisbt LXI ^VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTH WARK BRIDGES .... . . J. Saundebs LXII.— BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL .... LXIIL— THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS ... „ LXIV THE ROYAL ACADEMY, No. 1 . . . „ LXV ^THE ROYAL ACADEMY, No. 2 . . . „ LXVI.— LONDON ASTROLOGERS . . • . G. L. Cbaik LXVIL— ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT . . W. Weib LXVIII.— THE POST OFFICE J. C. Platt LXIX.— PALL MALL "W- VrEiR LXX.— THE TEMPLE CHURCH .... J. Saundebs LXXi.— SCOTSMEN IN LONDON .... Anon. LXXir.— THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL ... J. Saundebs LXXIII.— THE CORN EXCHANGE ... . J. C. Platt LXXIV.— ELY PLACE J- Saundebs LXXV GOLDSMITHS' HALL i • Pi.ai 1 17 3349 6581 97 113 129115 161177 193 209225 241 257 273 289 305321337 353369385 a 2 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS OF VOL. 111. LI.-BERMONDSEY. THE ABB£T. The Convent of the Sisfers of Mercy " Profession" of the Sisters of Mercy Interior of the Convent Church . . . Supposed Meaning of the Name of Bermondsey Existing Evidences in Modem Bermondsey of the Old State of Things .... General Aspect of the present Bermondsey Wretched Appearance of the Inhabitants . . Earliest Mention of the Priory of Bermondsey . Mention of the Manor of Bermondsey in the Conqueror's Record ..... The ' Chronjoles of Bermondsey' . Charter of the Priory of St. Pancras, Lewes Introduction of the Cluniac Order into England Foundation of the First Convent of Cluniac Monks ....... Establishment of Cluniacs formed at Bermondsey in 1082 Customs of the Cluniacs ..... Extract from Stevens's Translation of the French History of the Monastic Orders . Wealth and Influence of the House of Cluny Benefactors to the Priory of Bermondsey . Peter first Prior of Bermondsey and his Succes sors ........ Richard Dunton the first English Prior Bermondsey Priory released from its Subjection to Cluny by Richard II Benefits conferred on the Priory by Dunton . Provincial Chapters held at Bermondsey Meeting of the Nobles at Bermondsey in the Reign of Henry III Eminent Persons buried in the Church of the Priory ....... Marriage of Henry V. with Catherine of France Visit of Catherine to Bermondsey Reception of Catherine ..... Pao« 11 22 her of Residence of Queen Catherine at Bermondsey Elizabeth of York . . . ¦ • First Meeting of Edward IV. with Elizabeth Woodville ...¦•¦ Marriage of Edward with Elizabeth Woodville Widowhood of Queen Elizabeth Woodville Elizabeth's Schemes for the Marriage of Daughter ...... Marriage of Henry VII. with the Princess Eliza. beth ....... Arrest of Elizabeth Woodville . Imprisonment of Elizabeth in the Monastery Bermondsey ..... Arrest of the Marquis of Dorset . . Death of Queen Elizabeth Woodville Queen Elizabeth's Will .... Henry VII.'s superstitious Piety Indenture executed between the King and the Abbot of Bermondsey .... The Monastery granted by Henry VIII. to S: Robert Southwell .... The Conventual Church pulled down by Si Thomas Pope ..... Death of the Earl of Sussex at Bermondsey Stow's Account of the Earl of Sussex's Funeral Present Appearance of the Abbey of Bermondsey The Long Walk .... The Grange Walk Ancient Silver Salver kept in the Church of St Mary, Bermondsey Saxon Cross set up at Bermondsey . Verses by Sir David Lindsay on the Idolatrous Worship of " Imagery" Destruction of these " Imageries" by the Pro- testants ..... Degradation of the Rood of Bermondsey fiOt 7 8 ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. 1. Existing Remains of the Conventual Buildings . . . Akcher 2. Queen Elizabeth Woodville ...... Melville 3. Sanctuary, Westmtnster, from a Sketch by Dr. Stukeley, before its Destruction in Vlis .....,» Fairholt 4. Remains of the Eastern Gate-House of the Abbey . . . Archer 5. Remains of the Abbey, from a Drawing made immediately be fore their Demolition ....... Fairholt Engravers. Jackson . Heaviside holloway Jackson . HoLLOWAT 8 9 9 101010 10U11 11 1212 I'! 121313 1313 13 1414IS 15 15 9 14 16 LIT.— MODERN BERMONDSEY. Leather-Manufacturers ..... 17 Features of Modern Bermondsey . . .18 Character of the District from Bermondsey to Deptford 18 Situation and Limits of Berraondiiey . .18 Greenvrich Railway Terminus . . .18 Tooley Street ....... 19 Indications of Commerce in the Neighbourhood of Tooley Street The "Rookery" •...'.'. Jacob's Island •¦¦... Description of Jacob's Island in 'Oliver Twist' . View of Bermondsey in the ' Londina lUustrata' Bermondsey probably a Morass in former Times 19 20 30 20 2121 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. The Neekiiiger Disagreements between the Mill-owner and Tan ners of Bermondsey ..... Rothftrhithe Small Islands round Rotherhiihe . Intermixture of Agricultural and Manufacturing Labour in Bermondsey .... Market Gardens between Bermondsey and the Kent Road ...... Situation of the Bermondsey Convent . , Walks through the Nursery-G ounds of Ber mondsey ....... The Bermondsey Spa ..... Mr. Keyse's Representation of the Siege of Gibraltar ....... Leather and Wool Factories in Bermondsey . Connection between Leather and Wool . . Estimate of the Quantity of Leather curried in Great Britain ...... Page 21 31 2223 2233 2323 24 24 34 3435 Sheep-skins ...,,.. Fellmongers ...... Leather and Skin Market, Bermondsey . . The " Skin Depository " . . Distinction made between Hides and Skins . Difference between the Earlier Operations of the Fellmongers , and Tanners of Bermond sey . . Description of a Tannery in Bermondsey . . Occupation of the Fellmonger Woolstaplers ...... The Leather-dresser's Manufactory . , . Glue Manufactories in Bermondsey . . . Manufacture of Hats in the Districts round Ber mondsey ....... Flourishing State of the Staple Manufacture of Bermondsey ...... The Sack and Bag Women of Bermondsey . Paoi 263626 36 27 'LLUSTRATIONS. 8, New Leather and Skin Market, Bermondsey . 7. Neckinger-Mills Leather Manufactory, Bermondsey 8. Bermondsey Sack and Bag Women, Loudon Bridge Designers. Engravers. Anelay Holloway B. Sly Sears Anelay Roe . 373738 3939 30 303131 17 2832 LIII.— THE MINT. Ampunt of Money coined in the Mint between the years 1816 and 1836 .... Sources of the Supply of Bullion Arri.val in London of the Ransom payable by the Chinese Nation to the British Government . Spanish Vessels intercepted by Captain Moore in 1804 . . . . Arrival of the Waggons with the Treasure of the ** Hermione "...... Descriptiop of the Procession in the ' Gentle man's Magazine ' ..... The Purchase Money of Dunkirk . . . Raymond LuUy, the Alphymist ... Transmutation of the baser Metals into Gold . Faith of Edward III. in Alchymy . . . John Cobbe's Petition to Henry VI. . . Licences of Protection granted by Henry VI. to various Alchymists .... Commission appointed for Inquiring into the Truth of the Art of Alchymy . ... Extract from the Leet Book of the Corporation of Coventry . . . . . Establishment of the Mint In London . . The Mint in the Tower ..... Coins of the ancient Britons, ine Roman British, and the Saxons ...... The Silver Penny . . . . The Styca ........ Deplorable State of the Currency . . . Punishment of the Moneyers in the reign of Edgar Punishment of the Moneyers in the reign of Henry I. ...... . Anecdote of King John aa& Pandulph . 34 363637 3737 383S 3939 39 3939 The Jews the chief Offenders against the King's Coin ....... Reformation of the Mint in the reign of Ed ward I, Improvement in the Coinage .... First English Coinage of Gold ... Prophecy of Merlin ..... New Coins introduced in the reign of Edward III, Distinguishing Features of Henry V.'s Coin from his Father's ....... Speed's Account of an "Odd Stratagem." of Henry V. .i'0j . . , . . . . The Gold Angfl^of the reign of Edward IV. New Coins issued from the Mint iu ths reign of Henry VII 43 The Testoon ....... 43 Corruption of the Coin in the reign of Henry VIII. 43 Sermon of Latimer on the Interference of the Ecclesiastics in the Affairs of Government . Reformation of the Coinage in the reign of Eliza beth ........ Money in the Mint seized by Charles I. . , Coins of the Commonwealth .... Thomas Simon ...... Jests of the Royalists on the Coins of the Com monwealth ...... New Coins struck in the reign of Charles II. Reformation of the Coinage in the reign of Wil liam and Mary ...... Queen Anne's Farthings .... Erection of the Mint on Tower Hill . Description of the Process of Coining . . Trial of the Pix ' Swift's Plan for the Improvement of the British I Coinage ....... 47 3940 40 404040 41 41 42 44 44 4445 45454646 46 4647 41 ILLUSTBATIONS. 9. The Mint 10. Ring Coins ........ 11. Silver Pennies : — William I., Edward I., and Richard II. 12. Silver Groat of Edward III VOL. III. Designers. Engravers SmAllwood Wbago Fairholt Sears »» Slv . 33383840, ANALYTICAL. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 13. Gold Noble of Richard III. 14. Silver Groat of Henry V. . 15. Angel of Edward IV. 16. Sovereign of Henry VII. . 17. Groat or Shilling of Henry VII. 18. Great Noble of Henry VIII. 19. Crown of Edward VI. 20. Milled Sixpence of Elizabeth 21. Three-farthings of Elizabeth 22. Silver Crown of Cromwell 23. Queen Anne's Farthing . 24. Process of Coining . . Designers. En^avers. Page Fa I WHO LT Sly . . . 40 . 41 . 42 ti » . 42 . 43 " . n ' . 43 it . 44 " " . 44 it ft ** . 45 . 46 . 48 LIV.— THE THAMES TUNNEL. Wapping ....... 49 The Shops of Wapping . . . . .50 The London Docks ' . . . . .50 flxecjition Dock ..,,.. 50 Cause of the Building of the first Part of Wapping 51 flarly subaauebu^ Excavations attempted in Eng land ....... Passages beneath the Tyne and Wear . . Proposed Communication between the Towns of North and South Shields .... Tunnel from Gravesend to Tilbury proposed by Mr. Dodd Formation of the Tunnel abandoned as imprac ticable ....... Attempt made to connect Rotherhithe and Lime- house .... . . . Mr. Brunei's proposal for a Tun;iel in 1823 , Origin of Mr. Brunei's ne^v-Plan of Tunnelling , Antiquity of Rotherhithe .... Navy fitted out at Rotherhithe in the I'eign of Edward HI 52 Similarities between Rotherhithe and Wapping 52 Consideration of the Importance of a new Commu nication between Rotherhithe and Wapping . Formation of a Company for carrying Mr. Bru- nfU's Designs. into execution . . . Construction of the Shaft with which the Tunnel was commenced ..... 51 51 5)5151 52 5252 52 S3 53 I'aoe , 54 55 55 Progress and Descent of the Shaft . Cornmencement of the Excavation for Ihe Tunnel Mode of Working the Shield .... Difficulties experienced by Mr, Brunei ^t the com mencement pf his Undertaking , • .56 First irruptjofi gf the W&in ^m'-'^ei by Mr. Beamish ....... 57 Examination of the Effect of the Irruption . 58 Working of the Tunnel recommenced . . ~58 Effect of the Impurity of the Air upon the Work men in the Tunnel . . . . .59 Anecdote of a Workman in the Tunnel . .59 Middle of the River reached in 1828 . . 59 Second Irruption of the Water, iu 1838 . . 59 The Working of the Tunnel suspended . . 60 The Arches of the Tunnel unclosed in 1835 . 61 Progress of the Work for the first Sixty-six weeks ....... 61 Sinking of the Shaft on the Wapping Side . 61 Third Irruption of the Water, in 1837 . . 61 Curious Circumstances connected with the Irrup tion in 1837 61 Last Irruption of the Water, in 1838 '. . 62 Sinking of the S-hore at Wapping in 1840 . 63 Oozing in of Water and Sapd in 1840 . . t3 Completion of the Tunnel . . . .63 Plan for the Constryction of the Carriage-ways . 63 Entire Expense of th.e Thames Tunnel . . 64 ILLUSTRATIONS. 25. View in the Tunnel .....,., 26. plan qf the Thames Tunnel, and its Approaches . 27. Longitudinal Section of the Tunnel, showing the Shield and the Mode of Working it . . . . , . . 28. 'Three Divisions of the Shield of the Thames Tunnpl 29. Relative Positions of tl)e Tuimel and the Thames . IfesignerB. Shepherd B. Slv FairholtSuEPHEiSU ^gravers. MvRDON Crowe Wragg Smyth Slade^ 49 .53 65 5564 LV.— THE POCKS. Three distinct Causes to which the Vastness of London may be traced . . . .65 Portion of London connected with the Port apd Shipping ....... 66 Arrival of the Coal-ships in the phapuel . .66 Employment of Lighteirs in the Channel . . 66 Number of Barges and Craft required for Traffic in 1792 CO Plunder carried on in the Lighters on the River 67 Wharfs appointed as the sole Landing-places for Goods in London . . The SulTerancc Wharfs ...'.'. Increase of the Commerce of London from 1770 to 1795 Value of the Exports and Imports of London in 1700 . . . . ' , Want of Accommodation for ^Ue ii^crg^^ed' Ty ade of London .... 67 6767P8 68 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Inefficient Performance of the Custom House Duties ....... Meetings held by the Merchants in 1793 . Committee appointed for considering the Means of giving greater Accbnlmodalion to the Trading and Shipping Interests " . , . Brunswick Dock constructed .... Plan for providing better Accommodation for the increased Trade, proposed by the Chairman of the Wharfingers . . The "Merchants' Plan" The Merchants' Plan approved of by the Com missioners of Customs Plans of the Authorities of the City Mr. Wyatt's Plan ..." The Southwark Plan Plan submitted by Mr. Spence Mr. Walker's Plan , Plan proposed by Mr. Reaveley Various Objections made to the proposed Docks Bills introduced into Parliament for Improve ments of the Port ..... Plan for rebuilding London Bridge ... Proposed range of Quays and Warehouses from London Bridge to Btackfriars Bridge . . Bill for the West India Docks passed in 1799 , London Dock opened in 1805 ... Page 68 Docks constructed after the West India and London Docks ..... St. Katherine's Docks projected Site selected for the construction of St. Kathe rine's Docks ..... St. Katherine's Um-kc opened iu 1828 Interior of St. Ka«nerine's Docks . Advantages U Sf- Katnerine's over the earlier- constructeri Uooks .... Average time uocu^Jied in discharging Ships at St. Katherine's ..... The London Docks .... The Tobacco Warehouses in the London Docks The Wine and Spirit Vaults . The West India Docks .... The East India Docks .... Number of Persons employed in various Docks Situation of the Four Docks . . Alteration since 1804 in the payment of Duties The Regent's Canal Dock ... Docks on the Southern Banks of the Thames Original Use of the Commercial Docks . Probable Construction of Collier Docks . Increase in the Number of Colliers enteringthi Thames from 1790 to 1841 . . . St. Katherine's Docks not calculated to admit Steamers ...... ILLUSTRATIONS. 30. Map of the Port of London 31. St. Katherine's Docks . 32. West India Docks 33. East Iijdia Iqiport Dock 34. East Iiidia Export Dock Designers. Masters Jarvis 73737474 74 75 75 76 76 76 76 77 78 787979 7979 798080 Engraven. H. Sears . 65 75 Slader . 77 Dubois . 77 F. Smvth . 78 LVI.— WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. Improvements in>, the Streets of London within the last Century , .... 81 Speech of Lord Tyrconnel on the Condition of the Streets of Westminster in 1741 . . 82 Whitehall and Parliament Street a Century ago 82 Holbein's Gate 82 King Street ...... 82 "Thieving Lane .... . . 83 St. Margaret's Lane ..... 83 The Ducking Stool 83 Westminster Hall in 1740 .... 83 Commencement of Westminster Bridge . . 83 Change wrought on the South Side of the -Thames ....... 84 The Ferry from Lambeth Palace to Millbank . 84 Oppositiion ta the Project of building a Bridge over the Thames at Westminster . . 84 Petition from the Londoners against building a Bridge at Westminster .... 84 Opposition of the Company of Watermen to the proposed Bridge ..... 84 Various Petitions presented to the House . 85 Act for building Westminster Bridge passed in 1736 85 Choice of the Site for the proposed Bridge . 85 Removal of the Wool Market from Westminster 85 Continual ChAuge of the Localities of the Wool. staple ....... 85 Money required fo? building Westminster Bridge raised by Lottery . . . . .87 Henry Jernegan and his Silver Cistern . . 87 | The Bridge Commissioners .... Labet}'e, the Architect ..... Publication prepared by Labelye at the request of the Commissioners ¦ . . ¦ . • Errors into which the Writers on Westminster Bridge have fallen ..... Examination of the Bed of the Thames . Labelye's Method of constructing the Foundation of the Piers ...... First Stone of the first Pier laid in January 1739 Completion of the first Pier .... Medal found in excavating the Foundation of the second Pier ...... Intention of the Commissioners to erect a Wooden Bridge ..... The great Frost in 1739-40 .... Destruction of the Piles of Westminster Bridge by the floating Masses of Ice Sanction of the Commissioners to a Bridge of Stone obtained by Labelye Labelye's Mode of constructing the Arches of Westminster Bridge ..... Sinking of the Western Fifteen-foot Pier in 1747 Labelye prevented by the Commissioners from following bis own Plan for repairing the sunken Pier ...... Probable Cause of the Sinking of the Pier in 1747 The serai-octagonal Turrets . . . ^ • Satire of M. Grosley in his ' Tour to London . b 2 8788 88 888889 8919 89 9090 9090 9191 92 9232 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Dangers and Inconveniences of Westminster , Peculiarity of the Recesses on Westminster Bridge mentioned iij ' The Beauties of England and Wales' ...... Completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750 . Public Rejoicing on the Occasion of the Opening of the Bridge ...... Paoe 93 93 93 93 The Abutments of Westminster Bridge . Embankment of the Thames . . . . Quantity of Materials used in the Construction of Westminster Bridge .... Mr. Walker's proposed Line of Embankment along the Thames ..... ILLUSTRATIONS. 35. Westminster Bridge . . 36. Westminster about 1660 . 37. The Building of Westminster Bridge Designers. Tiffin It Fairholt Engravers. Jackson » Slader Paoi 9494 9495 8186 96 LVIL— STRAWBERRY HILL.—WALPOLE'S LONDON. " What has Strawberry Hill to do with Lon don?" 97 The Works of Horace Walpole ... 98 Visit of the Duchess of York to Strawberry Hill in 1793 . 98 Resemblance between Strawberry Hill and Chaucer's " House of Tidings'' ... 99 Walpole's Letters not to be regarded as a Picture of Society in general ..... 100 Character of Horace Walpole . . . 100 London in 1743 100 Fashionable Amusements of the second Half of the last Century ..... 101 Conflict between the Italian and Anglo-German Schools of Music ..... 101 Swift's Epigram, ' On the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini ' ..... 101 The Triumph of the Italian Faction immortalized by Pope 101 Return of Handel to London in 17,42 The Opera in Lincoln's Inn Fields . Garrick's first Appearance .... Walpole's Hatred of Garrick .... Riots at the Theatres ..... Walpole at Drury Lane ..... Walpole's Descriptions of Vauxhall and Rane- lagh 101102102102 102 103103 Walpole at Vauxhall in 1750 . . . .104 Custom of Ladies supping at Taverns in the Time of Walpole 104 Walpole's Anecdote of Lady Coventry . .104 Whist, the Mania in 1742 . . . .105 Anecdote of the Duke of Cumberland . . 106 Swindlers ....... 106 Sir William Burdett and Lord Castledurrow . 106 Walpole's Story of General Wade at a Gaming house ....... 106 Jemmy Lumley and Mrs. Mackenzy . . 106 Earthquakes prophesied in 1750 and 1756 . 107 Reckless Spirit of Gambling in the last Century 107 General Tone of Society in the last Century . 108 Perpetual Restlessness of the Fashionable Class 108 The two Miss Gunnings .... 109 The Cock Lane Ghost 109 Walpole's Visit to Cock Lane . . . 109 George Selwyn, the great Patron of Executions 109 M'Lean, the Highwayman .... 109 The Fleet Parsons 110 The Chapel in May Fair . . . .110 Handsome Tracy and the Butterwoman's Daughter ...... Ill The Duke of Hamilton and Elizabeth Gunning 111 Act against ClandestineMarriages . . . 112 ILLUSTRATIONS. 38. View from the Garden of Strawberry Hill 39. Portrait of Horace Walpole . 40. The Gallery— Strawberry Hill Designers. Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 97 102115 LVIII.— BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. Resolution of the City to build a new Bridge . 1 13 Opposition of the Company of Watermen to the construction of Blackfriars Bridge . .114 Act for building Blackfriars Bridge passed in 1756 114 Reasons which induced the City to construct a new Bridge . . . . . .114 Spot chosen for the Site of Blackfriars Bridge . 1 14 Introduction of the Order of Black Friars into England 115 Erection of a House and Church for the Black Friars 115 Liberality of Edward I. to the Brotherhood of the .Black Friars 115 Eminent Personages buried in the Church of the Black Friars . . . . .115 Trial and Banishment of the Duke of Suffolk . 115 Execution of Suffolk on board a Man of War . 116 Parliament assembled at the Black Friars in the Reign of Henry VIII 116 Wolsey and Sir Thomas More . . .116 Trial of Queen Catherine at Black Friars . 117 Queen Catherine's Address to Henry VIII. . 117 Sentence of Premunire passed against Wolsey at Black Friars . . . . . .118 The House of the Black Friars resigned to the King 118 The Liberties of the Black Friars claimed by the f'ity- • 118 Visit of Queen Elizabeth to Lord Herbert in 1586 .119 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Supper given by Lord Cobham to Queen Eliza beth . , ¦ . . . . . - , , Accident at the House of the French Ambassa dor in Blackfriars ..... The Neighbourhood of Blackfriars in 1756 Pennant's Description of a Fleet Parson . The Surrey Side of the Thames in the Reign of Elizabeth ...... Various Plans for the Construction of Black friars' Bridge laid before the Committee . Samuel Johnson engages in the Controversy raised upon the Merits of the different Kinds of Arches ...... Birth and Education of Mylne, the Architect . Mylne's Plan for the Construction of Blackfriars Bridge ....... Mr. Mylne chosen Surveyor in 1760 . . First Pile driven in on the 7th of May, 1760 . First Stone of Blackfriars Bridge laid on the 31st of October, 1760 Latin Inscription to William Pitt deposited in the Stone . . .. ... . . Blackfriars Bridge completely opened on the 19th of November, 1769 .... Entire Expense of the Bridge ... Notices of the Career of Mylne . . . Mr. Mylne's Discovery of an Apartment at King's Weston ...... Paqe 119 119 120120 120121 121121 121 122122 122 122 123123123123 Destruction of Ludgate Ludgate asserted by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have been erected in the year 66 before Christ Ludgate used as a Prison in the Reign of Rich ard II. . Story of Sir Stephen Foster, as related by Pen nant and Maitland ..... Petition of the Prisoners in Ludgate to Philip of Spain . ... . . , Bridge over Fleet Ditch erected by Sir George Waterman' ..... The Bridewell Degradation of Bridewell from a. Palace to a Prison ....... Bridewell rebuilt for the Reception of the Em peror Charles V. .... . Bridewell converted into a House of Industry and Place of Education for poor Children Bridewell in the time at which Pennant wrote ....... Present Appearance of Bridewell . . . Pictures in the Hall of Bridewell . . . Repairs of Blackfriars Bridge . . . ' . Method by which the decayed Arch-stones were replaced . . ..... Improvements of Blackfriars Bridge completed in November, 1840 ..... Paoi 124 124 124124 124124 125 12S 12S 125125125 126 126 126127 ILLUSTRATIONS. 41. Blackfriars Bridge, 1842 . . - . 42. Trial of .Queen Catherine ...... 43. Plan of the Cutwater restored ..... 44. Method of inserting Stories in the Reparation of the Arches 45. Blackfriars Bridge, 1839 . . .... Designers. Tiffin Smirke Tiffin Engravers. Jackson . 113 Slader . 117 ij • . 127 If • . 127 Jackson . 128 LIX.— CLERKENWELL. Changes in the topographical Features of the Country ...... Islington in 1780 .... District to which the Name of Clerkenwell was attached in past Times . . . Present Limits of Clerkenwell Clerkenwell formerly a Succession of Pastures and Slopes ..... Foundation of the, Priory of St. John of Jeru salem and .the Nunnery of St. Mary Romantic Nature of the Country surrounding the Priory and Nunnery .... Clerkenwell in Aggas's Map of London . Clerkenwell in 1617 .... The Clerkenwell Watchmakers . . District occupied by the Clerkenwell Watch makers ...... St. John's Street ..... Portion of Clerkenwell included between St. John's Street and Goswell Street . District North of Compton Street . . Northampton Square . ... The " Watcli-raaking" Streets of Clerkenwell Anecdote of Miss Wilkes and the Arrow . Almshouses and School built by Lady Owen St. John's Square become a Region of Watch makers and Jewellers .... Clerkenwell Green and Red Lion Street . Aylesbury Street ..... The Red Bull Theatre .... 129130130 130 130131 131 131 131132132 133133133 133 133134334 134 135 135 135 Extract from ' The Wits, or Sport upon Sport' 135 First Woman who ever acted supposed to have ' appeared at the Red Bull Theatre . . 136 Thomas Britton, the " Musical Small-coal Man" 136 Brittou's Concerts at Clerkenwell . . . 136 St. Mary's Nunnery ..... 137 St. Mary's Nunnery converted into a Parochial Church 137 Newcastle House ..... 137 Cromwell's House in Clerkenwell . . , 138 Part of Clerkenwell lying Westward of Turnmill Street 138 The " River of Wells" 138 The Clerks' Well 133 Hockley-in-the-Hole ..... 13K Sir John Oldcastle ..... 139 The Small-Pox Hospital . ..... 139 Coldbath Fields 139 Cold Spring discovered near the Top of Mount Pleasant , 140 Sadler's Wells and Islington Spa ... 140 New Wells and Bagnigge Wells ... 140 Portion of Clerkenwell Northward of Exmouth Street 140 Early History of the Watch and Clock Manufac ture in England ..... 141 Watchmaking an important Trade in England a Century and a Half ago .... 14' Watchmaking Trade under the Control of a Com mittee ....... L4 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoe Means of ascertaining the Number of Watches produced in England .... 141 Number of Hands employed in the Manufacture of a Watch 142 Minute Division of Labour iu the Manufacture of a Watch 142 Observations on the 'Clock* in Rees's Cyclo psedia ...... The Watchmakers of Switzerland. . Extract from Dr. Bowring on Swiss Manu factures ...... Sale of Swiss Watches ^u England . ILLUSTRATIONS. 46. Cromwell's House . . . • 47. Lady Owen's School .... 48. St. James's Church .... 49. Bear-bating in the Seventeenth Century Designers. Engravers. Tiffin Jackson Fairholt Sly Tiffin Jackson Fairholt Sly 143 144 144 144 129 134 137 139 LX.— STRAWBERRY HILL.—WALPOLE'S LONDON. [Concluded from No. LFII.'] Horace Walpole's, Library . . . Persons with whom Walpole corresponded Walpole and Pope .... Walpole's Remarks on Thomson . . The Friendship of Walpole and Gray Walpole's Description of Gray's Conversation Johnson's Opinion of Gray . . . Johnson's Monument .... Walpole's Hatred of Johnson Letter from Walpole to Hume . Walpole's real Estimate of the Literary Class Anecdote of Fielding told by Walpole Newspapers in the Time of Walpole The Antiquarian Society . . . Societies of the present Day . Club-life of the Time of Walpole , Walpole's Opinion of ' Tristram Shandy' . Goldsmith's and Johnson's Opinions of Sterne Darwin's * Botanic Garden' . . Walpole's Opinion of the Writings of Robert Jephson ...... Preface to ' The Castle of Otranto' . Correspondence between Walpole and Voltaire Walpole's Hatred of Authors The Blessings of a Student's Life . 145 145146146 146146 146146147 147 147 147 148 149 149 149 149149 1.50 150150151152 152 Walpole and Rousseau . . . . .152 Letter written by Walpole, purporting to be from the King of Prussia to Rousseau . . Johnson's Denunciation of Rousseau . . Walpole's Vanity about the King of Prussia's Letter ....... Letter from Warburton to Hurd . . . The Affectation of Walpole .... Walpole's Behaviour to Chatterton . Death of Chatterton ..... Walpole's Defence of his Behaviour to Chatterton 155 Letter from Walpole to Cole on the subject of Chatterton ..... Original Title to ' The Castle of Otranto' - Mistress Ann Yearsley, the Butterwoman The Butterwoman's Ingratitude . . The Batheasto"h Vase .... The Intercourse between Hannah More and Horace Walpole .... Dr. Johnson and Hannah More . . Notices in ' Walpole's Letters' of the physical Increase of Loudon ..... 159 Hounslow Heath ..... 159 Horace Walpole's last Letter .... 159 ILLUSTRATIONS. 80. The Library, Strawberry Hill 51. Portrait of Horace Walpole, after Muntz 52. Clock of Henry VIII. at Strawberry Hill Designers. Engravers Tiffin Jackson FUSSELL Tiffin 152 153 153153154154155 155155156 156 157158 158 145 156160 LXI.— VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. Impression made by the Bridges on the Mind of a Stranger ...... 161 Battersea Bridge 162 Putney Bridge 162 Extract from the Hon. Mr. Grey's Collection of the Debates of the House of Commons , 162 Burial-place of Sir Thomas More . . . 163 Erasmus's Description of More's House . 163 Chelsea Hospital 163 Botanical Garden of the Apothecaries' Com pany ....... 163 Vauxhall Bridge 163 Mr. Dodd, the original Proposer of Vauxhall Bridge 164 Mr. James Walker, the Designer of the existing Bridge ... ..-.-, . 164 Vauxhall Bridge completed in 1816 . The Penitentiary ..... Proposed Bridge from the Horseferry to Lam beth Stairs ..... Legend of St. Peter and the Fisherman ! Ingenuity shown in rebuilding the Fifteen-font Arch of Westminster Bridge Waterloo Bridge ..... Canova's Opinion of Waterloo Bridge Act for building Waterloo Bridge obtained 1809 Mr. John Rtonie . . Mr. Rennie's Works in Great Britain '. Site chosen for Waterloo Bridge , . Cuper's Garden • • • , . First Ston,e of Waterloo Bridge laid in 1811 164164 164 164165 165 163 166166166166 166167 ANALYnCAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Strength and Beauty of Waterloo Bridge Dimensions of Waterloo Bridge Koasons for the Name of Waterloo being given to the New Bridge . . . Opening of Waterloo Bridge . Mr. Dodd's Claim to the Design of Waterloo Bridge ...... Comparative Solitude of Waterloo Bridge Increase of Passengers over Waterloo Bridge since the Reduction of the Toll . . Expense of Waterloo Bridge . . . Extract from M. Dupin's Work on the ' Com mercial Power of England' Suicides committed at Waterloo Bridge . Somerset House ..... Plant^enet and Somerset in the Temple Gar dens Scene in the Temple Gardens in the Reign of Edward I. ...... Extensive Alterations in the Neighbourhood of Blackfriars ..... fiaynard's Castle ..... Rights of Robert Fitzwalter as Castellain of the City Page 167 167167167163168 168169169169169170 170170170 171 Historical Events connected with the History of Castle Baynard .... Paris Garden i . . , . The Bear Gardens .... Houses on ths Bankside . . The Globe Theatre .... Southwark Bridge .... Spot selected for the Erection of Southwark Bridge ...... The Public Victualling Houses on the Water side Queenhithe ...... Commencement of Southwark Bridge in 1814 . The Arches of Southwai:k Bridge the largest in existence ....... Quantity and Weight of the Iron employed in the Construction of Southwark Bridge Mistake committed duriilg the Building of South wark Bridge ..... Rapid Changes in the Neighbourhood of South wark Extrinsic and Intrinsic Greatness of the Metro politan Bridges .... Tabular View of the Bridges of London . ILLUSTRATIONS. 53. Vauxhall Bridge ' 54. Waterloo Bridge ....... 55. Castle Baynard, as it appeared in the Seventeenth Century 56. Southwark Bridge . '. • . . Designers. Tiffin pAIRltoLt Balmer Engravers. Jackson ^ " Slader. Jackson Pa 91 172 1712 172172173 173 173174171174174 17,^ 175 I75175 176 161 171 176 LXII.— BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. The Barber-Surgeons' Pole .... Monkwell Street ...... First Step ttfwards combiniilg the Barber-Sur geons into an united and chartered Company Thoma:s Morestede, Surgeon in Henry V.'s Army Promises of the Alchymists in the Reign' of Henry VI Protections granted by Henry VI. to three " Fa mous Men" ..... Petition from Morestede to Edward IV. for grant of Charter .... Incorporation of the Company of Barber-Sur geons ...... A. separate Body formed called the Surgeons of London ...... Acts passed in the ReigC of Henry VIII . rela tive to Barber-Surgeons . Gale's Opinion of unprofessional Practitioners Surgery in the Sixteenth Century . Commencement of the Prosperity of the Barber Surgeons' Hall ..... Exterior of Barber-Surgeons' Hall • Interior of the Hall .... The Court-Room Holbein's Picture-of Henry VIII. granting the Charter to thi Barber-Surgeons . Study for Holbein's Picture in the College of Surgeons ..... Portraits in Holbein's Picture Incident related by Strype concerning Dr. Butts, Physician to Henry VIII. . Dr. Butts the Patron of Sir Jphn Cheke Vyeary, Autlior of the first Anatomical Work in the English Language . . , Inscription on the Tomb of Sir John Aylef 177178 178 178179 179179179179179 180 181181 181 182 182 182 182 183 183 184 134 184 Autograph Letter of James I. in the possession of the Barber-Surgeons' Company . .184 Remainder of the Pictures in the Court-Room 185' Cowley's Lines on Sir C. Scarborough . .185 Articles of Plate belonging to the Barber-Sur geons' Company . ¦ < . .185 Plate belonging to Barber-Surgeons' Hall stolen in 1615 . 185 Theatre at Barber-Surgeons' Hall designed by Inigo Jones . . . . . .186 Curious Passage in the Papers of the Company ] 86 Eminent Surgeons amongst the Wardens of the Company ...... 186 Story of a Woman committed for Sorcery and Witchcraft . . . . . .186 Mandate of Charles I. to the Masters and Go vernors of the Company . . . .187 Surgeons pressed under a Royal Warrant . 187 Smollett's Description in ' Roderick Random' of his Examination in Barber-Surgeons' Hall . 187 The Barbers and Surgeons permanently dis united 188 The Surgeons incorporated into a Royal College 188 Extraordinary Incident related by John Hunter 189 Bodv of a Criminal subjected to the Galvanic Process 189 The College removed to Lincoln's Inn Fields . 190 John Hunter and John Abemethy . . 1 DO Early Life of Abernethy . . « . 1 !'0 " Abernethy at Home " . . . .191 Abernethy's first Lecture after his Appointment as Professor of Anatomy to the College of Surgeons ' . . . . . . ]9l Extract from the List of Officers to Heriot's Hospital in 1627 l?l xil ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. 67. Court-Room, Barber-Surgeons' Hall ..... 68. Henry VIII. granting the Charter to the Barber-Surgeons. From Holbein ........ 69. Surgeons' Theatre, &c., Old Bailey ..... 60. Portrait of Abernethy ....... Designers. Balmer Fairholt Balmer FUSSBLL Engravers. JacksonGOHWAY Jackson Pasi 177 183 189 192 LXIIL— THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. Execution of Babington . . . Trial and Execution of Lord William Russell Betterton, the Actor .... The Exterior of the Royal College of Surgeons The Secretary's Room .... The Theatre Occupants of the Theatre during the delivery of a Lecture ..... The Lecturer, and the Subject of his Lecture The Hunterian Oration Birth and Education of John Hunter Hunter's Career after his arrival in London Hunter's Poverty and Perseverance . Hunter made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Surgeon to St. George's Hospital . Mr. Thomas's Account of his Introduction Hunter ...... Anecdote of Hunter and his two Leopards Hunter's Contest with a Bull Circumstances attending Hunter's Death The Library of the College of Surgeons . The Museum Library .... The Council Room .... Page 193 The Examination-Day ..... 199 193 Regulations of the Board of Examiners . .199 193 Advantages attached to the Membership of the 194 College of Surgeons ..... 200 194 The Museum . . . . . . 200 194 Additions made by the College to Hunter's Museum . . i , . . . 202 195 Catalogue of the Museum, commenced by 195 Hunter ....... 203 19-T Destruction of Hunter's Works by Sir Everard 196 Home ....... 203 196 Skeletons in Hunter's Museum . . . 204 196 Horns of Deer, &c., in the Museum . . 204 The Megatherium ..... 2(14 196 Skeleton of the Hippopotamus . . . 205 Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant . . . 206 197 ' Mdll'e. Cra'chani, the Sicilian Dwarf . . 206 M7 ' Skeleton oT the Elephant . . . .206 197 Mummies in the Museum .... 207 197 Discovery of three Bodies in a Sepulchre in 198 Caxamarca, Peru, ..... 207 198 'Bust of John Hunter ..... 208 198 ILLUSTBATIONS. 61. Surgeons' Hall, Lincoln's Inn Fields 62. Museum of Surgeons' Hall . 63. Skeleton of Megatherium , S4. Portrait of Hunter . Designers. Engravers, Shepheard Balmer Sly Fussell Burrows . Jackson Sly Jackson . . 193 . 201 . 205 . 208 LXIV.— THE ROYAL ACADEMY. No. 1. Painting in the Reign of George I. . ¦' i^ 209 Most eminent Artists at the Period of the AjSofeSt- ; sion of George II. . . , . * . 209 Sir James Thornhill and Hogarth . .'- ," . 210 Sir Joshua Reynolds and the older Artists , 210 Wilson's first Landscape . . . .210 Advance of English Art in the Space of a Cen tury 211 Rapid Disappearance of the Pictures of the La Guerre and Thornhill School . . . 211 First attempt to form an Artists' Academy . 211 Establishment of the first School in England for the Study of the Antique . . , .211 Society established by Hogarth, ultimately known as the Society of Incorporated Artists . ,211 First Public Exhibition of Pictures in England 212 Society formed in 1754 for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. . • . . . .212 Johnson's Notice of the Exhibition in Spring Gardens . 212 Reynolds's high Estimation of his Art . . 212 Commencement of the Friendship between Johnson and Reynolds . • . . ' 213 Johnson's Advertisement of the Third Exhibition of the Society 213 Dissensions amongst the Members of the So ciety . . . . . . Secession of Reynolds and other Members from the Society ..... West's Picture of "Regulus" ! ', Establishment of the Hojal Academy ! Reynolds chosen President of the Royal Aca demy . . Johnson's Elation at the Honour paid to Sir Jo shua Reynolds • . . . The Character of Reynolds . Reynolds's Sympathy with struggling Artists Death of Gainsborough First Act of Reynolds as President ' '. Zoffany's Picture of the Royal Academicians Goldsmith's Couplet on Reynolds . Nathaniel Hone's Attacks 'on Sir Joshua Rev' nolds ^ Peter Pindar's Summary of Hone's Abilities Anecdote of Richard Cosway, the Miniature Painter ..... NoUekens, the Sculptor ... [ Chantrey's Bust of Home Tooke . '. Anecdote of the Emperor of Germany and Johan Zoffany • . . , . 213 213 213214 214214214214 21a215 215216216217217 217217 217 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoi Connection of Johnson and Goldsmith with the Royal Academy ..... 218 Apartments in Somerset House fitted up for the Royal Academy . . . . ,218 The early History of Opie . . . .218 Pindar's ' Lyric Odes to the Royal Acade micians ' . . . . . , 218 Peter Pindar's Satire on West's Pictures . 2^19 Pindar's Description of West's Picture of King Alexander of Si-otland attacked by a Stag . 219 Partiality of the Ring for West . . .219 Pindar's Lines on Gainsborough's Portraits . 220 Loutherbourg aud Wilson .... 220 Wilson's extreme Indigence .... 220 Anecdote of Wilson and the Rev. Mr. Peters . 220 The Imitators of Sir Joshua Reynolds . . 221 The 'Country Cousins ' .... Division amongst the Academicians in 1790 Bonomi and Fuseli Candidates for the Degree of Associate .... Reynolds's Resolution of resigning the Presi dency of the Royal Academy Deputation from the Council to Sir Joshua Reynolds ....... Reynolds prevailed upon to continue in the President's Chair Circumstances attending the last Discourse deli vered by Reynolds ..... Death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1792 Edmund Burke on the Death of Sir Joshua Reynolds Pas* 221221 222222 223 223 223 223223 65. Old Academy in St. Martin's Lane 66. Zoffany's Picture of the Royal Academicians, 1773 67. Sir Joshua Reynolds . , ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. • • • • Tiffin Jackson . . 209 cians, 1773 Fussell >t . . 215 fi ' i» . . 224 LXV.— THE ROYAL ACADEMY, No: 2. Election of West to the Presidential Chair Birth and early Life of Benjamin West . Meeting of the Quakers to determine whether West was to be allowed to cultivate his Talent for Painting ...... John Williamson's Address .... Barry, the Artist ...... West's 'Death of Wolfe' . . . . Daring Innovation committed by West . Antony Pasquin's ' Liberal Critique on the Ex hibition for 1794 » . . . . . Pasquin's Attacks on Opie and West Pasquin's Remarks on Lawrence ... The West Dynasty in many respects a troubled One Mr. Bromley's ' History of the Fine Arts ' . Anecdote of Fuseli and Northcote . NoUeken's Avarice a favourite Subject for Fuseli's Wit. ....... Subject of Barry's first important Picture. . Exhibition of Barry's Picture ... Burke the Benefactor of Barry . . . Barry's ' Venus rising from the Sea ' . Attacks in Barry's Writings on his Contempo raries and Academic Associates . Occasional Estrangements between Burke and Barry, ....... Burke at Barry's House in Castle Street . Attack on the Royal Academy in Barry's Letter to the Dilettanti Society .... Barry expelled from the Academy . . . Death of Barry in 1806. .... W est resigns the Presidency of the Royal Aca demy ....... West's Reception at Paris • . . . West restored to the President's Chair . . Deathof West in 1820 . . First Appearance of Lawrence in the Academy. Lawrence's remarkable personal Attractions . Lawrence elected Supplemental Associate of the Royal Academy ..... Lawrence appointed Painter iu Ordinary to the King . • • . . . . 225 ,225 225225226 226 226 227•227227228 228228228 229229229 229 229230 230230 231231 231 231 231 232232 232 233 233 The Lawrence and -Hdppner Factions . . 233 Lawrence appointed President of the Royal •-Aeaderay .' .^ .. _ . . . . 233 Death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830 . . 233 Appointment'of Sir Martin Archer Shee to the Presidential Chair ..... 233 Superabundance of - Portraits in the Exhibitions bf the Royal Academy, . . . . 233 Opie's Complaint of the Preference given to Portraits over all other Subjects . . . 233 Removal of the Royal Academy from Somerset House to Trafalgar Square .... 234 Admission Arrangements of the Academy . 2.34 Prizes given by the .Royal Academy . . 234 Students sent by the Academy to Rome . . 235 Rossi and Banks . . . . . . . 235 School for Drawing from the Life Model . . 235 Management of the Schools vested in the Keeper ....... 235 Anecdote of Fuseli whilst Keeper ... 235 Jokes and Sarcasms of Fuseli yet current among the Students of the Royal Academy . . 23! The Hall of Casts 236 Statue of Theseus in the Hall of Casts . . 236 The Library of the Royal Academy . . 236 The Council Room ..... 236 Fuseli's Love for the Terrific .... 237 Michael Angelo the Idol of Reynolds and Fuseli 237 Fuseli's Paintings for the Shakspere Gallery . 237 Mr. Cunningham's Remarks on Fuseli's Pic tures ....... 237 Various Pictures in the Council Room . . 238 John Flaxman 238 Gainsborough's Love of Music . . . 238 Anecdotes of Gainsborough .... 238 Constitution of the Royal Academy . - . 239 Choice of the Works for the Annual Exhibition 239 Fuseli at the Receipt of Pictures . . . 239 Dinner given annually by the Royal Acade micians ' . . • . . . 240 »lv ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. 68. Benjamin West . 69. Sir Thomas Lawrence 70, Portico of the National Gallery pAii Designers. Engravers. Fussell Jackson . - . 225 ti • . 233 Shepheard Holloway . 24« LXVL— LONDON ASTROLOGERS. Francis Moore ...... List of the Astrological Almanacs published by the Stationers' Company in 1723 . . . London Astrologers of the end of the Seven teenth and beginning of the Eighteenth Cen tury . . ..... William Andrews's ' Astrological Physician ' . * News from the Stars ' . . . Coley's ' Starry Messenger ' . . . . John Gadbury, the Astrologer . . " . Gadbury's Publications .... Gadbury's Edition of ' The Works of Sir George Wharton' ...... Rivalry between Wharton and Lilly . • Lilly's ' Anglicus ' ..... Wharton's Misfortunes ..... Wharton made Treasurer to the Ordnance . Job Gadbury ...... • The Cpmpeijdious Chronology ' . . . Publication of Moore's ' Kalendarium Ecclesias- ticum' in 1699 Moore's Almanxc for 1723 .... John Partridge > > . • . . Original Name and Trade of Partridge > . Swift's Satire on Partridge . . < • Inscription on Partridge's Tomb . . > Partridge's Continental Reputation . . The Death of Partridge foretold in Swift's ' Pre dictions by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.' . . Alarm of Partridge at Bickerstaff 's Prediction . Partridge's Abuse of the suspected Author of the Prediction ....... Publication of the ' Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge ' , . . . . . » Partridge's Assertion of his Vitality . < 241 242 242 242 213 243 243 243244 244 244245 24.5 245 245 246246246 246 246246 247 247247 247247 247 Persecution of Partridge in ' The Tatler ' Partridge's Contradiction of the Story of his Death in his Almanac for 1710 . . Letter from the Master and Company of Up holders .....' Last Mention of Partridge in the ' Tatler Partridge's ' Merlinus Liberatus ' . Parker's ' Ephemeris ' . . The ' Celestial Diary ' . ¦< Poor Robin ' . . • • Richard Saunder .... Gadbury's ' Life of Vincent Wing ' Letter from Wing to Lilly . . The ' Olympia Dogmata ' . Lilly's Autobiography . . Dr. Simon Forman . . Birth and Education of Dr. Dee Imprisonment of Dr. Dee at Hampton Court . Dee in great request as a Magician at the Ac cession of Elizabeth . . t • . Dr. Dee's Services to Queen Elizabeth Visits of the Queen to Dee's House Connection between Dee and Edward Kelley . Departure of Dee and Kelley for Poland > Return of Dee to England in 1589 . . Dee's Detail of his Proceedings, published in 1659 ....... Robbery committed at Dee's House at Mort- lake ....... Dee's Poverty after his Return to England Dee appointed Warden of Manchester College • Death of Dr. Dee in 1608 .... Dr, Dee's Family ...... Mention of Dee in Ben Jonson's ' Alchymist ' . ILLUSTRATIONS. 71. Francis Moore, 1657. From an anonymous Print pub lished at that date ....... 72. John Gadbury ........ 73. Lilly 74. Kelley 7a. Dee Designers. Fussell 248 248 248249249 249 249250 250 250 250 251 251251251252 252252 252 253253253 254 254 255 255 255 255255 Jackson . 241 a . 244 )t . 245 a . 254 »» , 256 LXVIL— ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. Saints of the Roman Church . . r . 257 Antiquity of the Parish of St. Giles . • 258 Hospital for Lepers founded at St. Giles's in 1117 258 St. Giles's Hospital granted to the Brethren of Burton St. Lazar ..... 25S Removal of the Gallows from the Elms in Smith- field to St. Giles's 258 St. Giles's Hospital used as a Place of Refresh ment for condemned Criminals . . . 258 Character of St. Giles's from first to last . . %^ Erection of the Seven Dials .... 2'i9 Effort made to Reform the Morals of the Inhabit ants of St. Qtiles's ' . . . , 259 Extracts from the Pariah Books of St. Giles's . 259 The correcting Parliament .... 260 Dialogue in ' The Tapster's Downfall and the Drunkard's Joy '...., 280 Situation and Neighbourhood of St Giles's , 262 St. Giles's the Refuge of the Tipplers and Rag amuffins of London and Westminster . . 262 The Blackguardism of St. Giles's . . . 263 St. Giles's a Resort of Thurot the Smuggler . 262 Career of Thurot as Valet and Smuggler . . 263 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONl'ENTS. Club held in the Seven Dials . Boundaries and Situation of Modem St. Giles's The Seven Dials ...... The Literature of St. Giles's .... Letter from Letitia Pilkington to the Author of ' Sir Charles Grandison' .... Mr. Catnach's Literary Treasures . . . Book Stall in St. Giles's .... Taste for Birds and Flowers in St. Giles's Inhabitants of St. Giles's chiefly Jews and Irish Old-Clothes Shops in Monmouth Street Inhabitants of the Cellars in Monmouth Street . The Rookery the genuine St. Giles's . . Boundaries of the Rookery .... Pass 263 26326426426426426526626526C 266 266267 Aspect of the Rookery by Oay . . . The transient Population of the Rookery . . Intellectual and moral Character of the Rookery some Years back . . . , . Abandoned Conduct of the Children in the Rookery ....... Morality of Thief-catchers .... Influence of the Beadle over the unruly Inhabit ants of St. Giles's ..... Difference between the North and Soutli Sides of Oxford Street ..... The Education of St. Giles's .... Proposed Removal of the Rookery . . . Tomb of Richard Pendrill in St. Giles's Church ILLUSTRATIONS. 76.77. Sc'en Dials Old Plan of St Giles's Designers. Tiffin Engr.ivers. Jackson Thar. 267 267 268 268268269 270 270 271 271 257272 LXVIII.— THE POST OFFICE. 'The Post OiBce not as Ancient Institution in England .... , The " Nuncii" ...... Establishment of Post Stations on the Great Roads •....,, Entry in the • Household Book ' of the Lo Stranges ....... Duties of the Office of Chief Postmaster oi England Postmasters appointed by the Aliens resident in London . j . . . . , Appeal made to t'ie Privy Council in 1568 Agreement between the Postmasters of London and Antwerp ...... Office of Postmaster of England for Foreign Parts constituted by James I. . . . First Attempt to place the Post Office System on its Modem Footing .... Post Office set up by the Common Council of London ....... Struggle between the Government Posts and those carried on by private Individuals Revenue derived from the Postage of Letters during the Protectorate . . . • . Act passed in 1656 to settle the Postage of Great Britain . Revenue of the Post Office in the Reign of James II. ...... Act passed granting the Revenue of the Post Office to the King ..... Yearly Revenue of the Post Office from 1724 to 1832 Rate at which the Mail travelled in 17 17 Mr. Palmer's Plan for extending the Efficiency of the Post Office ..... Difference between the Speed of the Post and of the Coaches in 1784 .... Establishment of the first Mail Coach Opposition of the Post Office Authorities to Mr. Palmer's Flan ...... Success of Mr. Palmer's Plan Era of Mail Coaches ..... Departure of the Mail Coaches from the Post Office 273274 274 274 274 274 275275 275275275275276276 276 276276 277277 277 278278 278 278 279 Procession of the Mail Coaches on the King's Birthday ...... Penny Postage put into Operation in 1840 • Increase in the Numbers of Letters passing through the Post Office .... Transmission of Letters by Railway . . Revenue of the Post Office since the Introduc tion of the Penny Postage . • • Cost of the Management of the Post Office . Post Office removed from Bishopsgate Street to Lombard Street ..... Act passed for the Building of a new Post Office Present Post Office completed and opened in 1829 ... ... Exterior of the Post Office .... Interior Arrangement of the Post Office . Office set up by Dowckra in 1683 . . . Dismissal of Dowckra from the Office of Comp troller of the Penny Post .... Private Post set up by Mr. Povey in 1708 . Limits of the London District Post . . Receiving Offices of the General and Twopenny Post ....... Number of Receiving Houses iround London . The General-Post Letter-Cairriers . Process of collecting the Country Letters and Newspapers ...... Appearance of the Large Hall of the Post Office a few Minutes before Six o'clock . . Operation of Sof ting and Despatching the Let ters ....... Omnibuses for Conveying the Letters to the Railway Stations ,....- The Railway Post Office .... Mode of taking up and dropping Letter-Bags at the various To^vns through which the Traiift pass ....... Arrival of the Mails in the Morning at the Post Office ....... Money-Order Office ..... Number of Post Office Orders issued at the pre sent Time Admirable Management of the Post Office ILLUSTRATIONS. 78. West Ft'int of the General Post Office 79. Hall of the P:st Office .' I>esigner.=t. Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 279 270 280 280 280 2802S1 281 281281281 282282282 2832832832342?4285 285286 286286287 267 287 273 288 ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. LXIX.— PALL MALL. Paos Pall Mall in 1708 289 Pall Mall a frequent Resort of the gay World . 290 The Shops in Pall Mall in 1709 . . .290 The Smyrna Coffee-house ' . . . .290 Porters and Chairmen ..... 291 Pall Mall in the beginning of the Eighteenth Century ' . . . ' . . . .291 Beau Fielding and Mrs. Wadsworth . . 291 Public Amiisemeiits ofPall Mall . . . 292 Models of Dutch'Palaces exhibited in Pall Mall in 1701 ¦ 292 Races in Pall Mall in 1733 . . . .292 Houses in Pall Mall 293 Anecdote of the Duchess of Marlborough . 293 Carlton House purchased by the Prince of Wales in 1732 . . . . ... 293 Bookseller's Shop opened by Dodsley in Pall ¦ Mall . . ¦ 294 Dodsley's ' Muse in Livery ' .... 294 Frontispiece to ' The Muse in Livery '' . . 294 ' High Life below Stairs ' . •, . • • 294 Extracts from * The Muse in Livery'' . ¦ . . 295, Scene described by Steele in ' The Tatler ' . 295 Dodsley's Description of the ^^fyants' Hall . 296 The Footman of the present Day . . . 296 Works published by Dodsley . . . . 297 P.4ai Dodtky's Shop the Resort of the Eminent and Learned - . . The Wits of Queen Anne's Time in the habit of repairingto Pall Mall , . , ^ . Lord Sheffield's Edition of ' Gibbon's Diary and Letters ' . , • . . Gibbon's Association with the fashionable Worid Gibbon at the Cocoa Tree and at Almack's . The Clubhouses in Pall Mall The Political Clubs Decline of Drinking and Gaming in the Club houses ,.,,,.. Insignificant Appearance of Carlton House Sheridan's uncomplimentary Allusion to Carlton House . ... , . . . Moore's Squibs against Carlton House and its Occupant ....... Beau Brummell ...... Attractions of Pall Mall at the present Day . The Poetical Member of Parliament . . A ssassina[t}on of Mr. Thynne in Pall Mall . Duel between William Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth . . . ... Number of. Associations connected with Pall Mali 1 '. . ... ILLUSTRATIONS. 80. Pall Mall about 1 740 ... ,^_. . 81. Oxford and Cambridge Clubhouse . j • 82. Carlton House, Levee Day ...... 83. Sculpture oni Thynne's Mpnument in Westminster Abbey Designers. Engravers Tiffin Jackson Shepherd Burrows Tiffin Jackson Slv Sly 297 297 298 298298 299300 300300 300 301 301 302302 302 303 303 28929930.304 ?' ¦ I LXX.— THE TEMPLE CHURCH, ITS HISTORT AND ASSOCIATIONS. Restoration bf Public Edifices in London Fundsfor Restoring the Temple Church raised by the Societies of the Inner aud Middle Tem ple Advantages attending the Restoration of Na tional Edifices ...... Interior of the Temple Church . . . Arrival of Hugh de Payens in England . The Knighthood of the Templ'e of S'olomon Hugh de Payens made Master of the Order Templar Establishments founded in different Parts of Great Britain Erection of the present Temple . . , Arrival in England of Heraclius, the Patriirch of Jerusale'm, arid theTMaster of St. John's . Battle between the Christians and Mussulmans on the Banks of the Jordan , , . Capture and Death of Odo de St. Amand Reception of Heraclius and the Master by Henry II. ,.,... Consecration of the Temple Church by Hera clius* ..... s Discussion in the Parliament on Heraclius's De mands for Succour ..... Fabyau's Account of the Result of the Discus sion Result of the Patriarch's Visit to England Constitution and Discipline of the Order of the Templars .,,.,, piection of the Master of the Order . , 305 306306 307307307307 308 308308 308 308 309 309 309309310310310 Introduction of iiew Candidates into the Order Discourse delivered to the newly-made Tem plar , ¦ . , , . The Donates and Oblatea .... The Penitential Cell of the Temple Pimishmenti inflicted by the Order of the Tem plars ...... Populirity of the Order .... Residence of King John in the Temple . Matthew Paris's Account of the Visit of Martin the Pope's Nuncio, at the 1'emple . .' Treasure deposited in the Temple . . ! 0,0 Disgrace and Imprisonment of Hubert de Burgh 313 Hubert de Burgh's Treasure taken- out of the Temple by the King Eminent Persons interred in the Temple Church Geoffrey de Magnaville .... Effigy of the Eari of Pembroke . ! '. William and Gilbert Marshall . . \ Defence of Acre by the Templars in 1291* '. The Avarice of Philip the Fair Seizure by Edward 1. of the Jewels deposited in the Temple .... Charges brought against the Templars in 1307 - Sufferings endured by the Templars Burning of the Templars at Paris . , \ Arrest and Imprisonment of the Templars in England The Templars given up to Inquisitors appointed by the Pope ...... 31s 310 311 311312 312313 313 313 313 313 314314315 315 316 316 316 317317317317 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii Depositions of the Witnesses against the Tem plars Termination of the Proceedings against the Templars in England .... Order of the Templars abolished in 1312 . Paoe 318 319 819 Imprisonment of James de Molay, the Grand Master ......... Address of the Grand Master from the Scaffold , ¦rorture and Death of James de Molay . Paoi 319319 320 ILLUSTRATIONS. 84. Interior, of the Round 85. Entrance Doorway . 86. A Knight Templar . 87. Effigies of Knights Templars 88. Ditto Ditto 89. James de Molay, tl;e last Grand Master Designeis. Cleghorn » Fairholt Cleghorn )) Brooke Engravers. Sly 305 306 312 314 315320 LXXI.— SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. Dr. Johnson's Dislike of Scotsmen . . Anecdote of Charles Lamb .... The Scotch a distinct and peculiar People in , London ....... The Paisley " Corks " of Bread Street . Scotch Nationality in London . . . Society in Edinburgh ..... Scotsmen who have been educated in England Characteristic Conversation between two Scots men ....... Difference between the Characters of the En glish and Scotch ..... ' The Edinburgh Review ' . . . . The lecturing Propensity of the Scotch . . The Scotch qualified for Success in Business . Dislike of the English to the Scotch Instance of Second Sight told by the Earl of Clarendon . . . ... . Elation of the Scotch at the Accession of James I. Freaks of the Scotch Nobility in the Reign of James - . . . . ... Duels between the Scotch and English . Mr. Alexander and Miss Vanlove . . . Emulation of the English and Scotch Nobility . The Scotch in London after the Restoration . Bishop Burnett a favourable Specimen of a Scotsman . . . , . . Bishop Burnett's Absence of Mind ... 321 321321 322 322322 322 323323 324324 324 325326 326 326327327327328328 328 Anecdote of Burnett and the Duchess of Marl borough 328 The Bishop of Sarum ..... 329 Importance of the Scots in London after the Union . 329 Subordinate Situation of the Scotch Members of the Legislature ...... 330 Examples of the Ambition of Scotsmen for se cond-rate Distinction .... 330 Miss Gunning and the Dukes of Hamilton and Argyle 330 Caricatures of Scotsmen in London . . 330 The Character of Thomson .... 331 Thomson's Indolence ..... 331 Thomson's ' Seasons' ..... 331 The Marquis of Bute 331 Tobias Smollett 332 Fielding and Smollett, the Castor and Pollux of British Literature ..... 332 James Boswell ...... 333 Boswell's Innocence of Heart Scotsmen of Modem Times in London . The Scotsmen of Walter Scott and Smollett . Explanation of the Process by which the English Colonies and Indian Dependencies have be come filled with Scotsmen .... Union between the Scotsman in London and his Relatives in Scotland ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. 90. Scotsman and Frenchman. From Hogarth's 'March to Finchley' Tifpin 91. Smollett ,, 92. Boswell „ 93. Adam Smith Anelay 94, Snuff-shop Highlander Tiffin 333334335 335 . 336 EngTATers. Jackson . 321 j> . 332 »i . 333 Sly . 334 Jackson . 336 LXXIL— THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. Situation of the Foundling Hospital a Century ago ... ..... 337 The Hall of the Foundling Hospital . . 338 The Foundling Hospital Chapel . . .338 Handel's Organ 338 'The Messiah' presented by Handel to the Foundling Hospital 338 Misunderstanding between Handel and the Governors of the Hospital .... 339 Music taught to the Children of the Hospital . 339 Hogarth's Picture of Captain Coram in the Din ing-room of the Hospital .... 339 Sir Joshua Reynolds's Portrait of the Earl of Dartmouth ...... 340 The Dinner of the Girls of the Foundling Hos pital . 340 Drill Exercises performed by the Boys . . 340 Pictures in the Secretary's Room . . . 340 Hogarth's Benefactions to the Hospital . . 341 Decoration of the Committee Room • « 34J ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page Hogarth's 'Adoption of Moses by Pharaoh's Daughter' ...... Cartoon by Raffaelle"* . . . . • Extract from one of Addison's Essays in ' The Guardian' ...... Captain Coram's Scheme for Establishing a Foundling Hospital ..... Coram's Perseverance in his Object . Coram's Petition to the Princess Amelia . Grant of Charter for the Establishment of a Foundling Hospital ..... House in Hatton Garden opened for .the Ad mission of Twenty Children Balloting Process instituted at Hatton Garden . Westerii Wing of the present Hospital opened in 1745 . ' . . . . . . Commencement of the Chapel in 1747 Estimation in which Coram was held by the first Lord Walpole ..... Annuity for Coram raised by Subscription . Death of Captain Coram in 1751 ... Burial of Coram in the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital ....... Application to Pa,rliament from the Governors of the Hospital ...... The Hospital empowered to form Provincial Establishments ..... Commencement of a New System of Arvange- ments at the Foundling Hospital. . . Consequences of the New System . . Persons employed in Conveying Children to the Foundling Hospita,! , . • « . 341341 341 342 342342343343343343343344344344344344345345345 845 Modes by which Children were brought up from Yorkshire to the Foundling Hospital . . Evils attendant upon the indiscriminate Admis sion of Children to the Hospital . Mortality amongst the Children of the Hospital Sums contributed to the Hospital from the Na tional Funds ...... Improvement in the Administration of the Foundling Hospital ..... Present System of Management . . Forms of Admission ..... Views by which the Governors are actuated in their Selection of Cases for admissioii . Devices resorted to by Mothers to identify their Children ....... Number of Children in the Foundling Hospitalf 349 Admission and Baptism of the Children . . 349 Affection generally subsisting between the Chil dren and their Nurses .... Education received by the Children of the Foundling Hospital ..... Employment of the Children in the Hospital . Annual Meeting of the Apprentices at the Hos pital ....... Increase in the Annual Receipts of the Hos pital . . . - . • . > Mr. Wrottesley's Opinion of the Effect on So ciety produced by the indiscriminate Admis sion of Children into the Foundling Hospital , Statements extracted from Sir Thomas Bernard's ' Histpiy of the Foundling Hospital' . < 346346 346 347 347347347 348348 349350350 J50351 351 351 ILLUSTRATIONS. 95. Interior of the Chapel 96. Captain Corani Designers. Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 337352 LXXIII.— THE CORN EXCHANGE. William Cobbett's- ' RuraJ Rides " . . Prejudice entertained against Corn-dealers Process of supplying the Country with Bread . Value of the Oom-meiohants' Services . . Lnportationof FcH-eign^ilorn .... London formerly supplied with Corn from Kent and Essex ...... .\verage Quantity of Corn imported into London Restrictions under which Corn-dealers were placed three Centuries ago , . , Proclamatiop issued in 1549 relating to the Deal ings of Corn-merchants . ^ • . Statute passed in 1562 . , . . Stores of Cof n formed by the AuthQrities of the. City Public Granary established by Sir Stephen Brown Establishment of a Public Granary at Leaden- hall ....,.., Scarcity of Corn in 1521 .... Manner in which the City Authorities applied their Stores Qf C.o?R to reduce Prices in the Markets ,,,..., Mode of raising the Moftey for purchasing Corn fer tbe City Graparies. , , , , 353353354354355355 356 358356356356 357357357 357 358 Difficulty of keeping up the Practice of providing a Store of Corn ..... 359 Destruction of the City Granaries and Mills by the Great Fire , 360 Regulation of Prices in the Markets . , 36C Various Impediments to the Commerce of the Country , .360 Corn borrowed of the City by the Court , . 360 Letter from the Duke of Lennox to the Wardens of the Grocers' Company .... 360 Impositions practised in the Disposal of Com in 1631 .361 Queenhithe and Billingsgate thq ancient Ports for landing Cprn . , , , . 361 Corn Market on Cornhill . j . . 362 Market for Bread in Bread Street . . . 362 Endeavour to force Traders to sell their Commo dities in the open Market .... 362 Sums paid hy the various Companies of London 358 Demands upon the Companies in Times of Scarcity »,,,,.. 35a Stores, of Cqjn laid up at the Bridge-house . 359 The Cpmpaijies compelled by the Queen's Coun cil to purchase Foreign Cora . . .359 * It is erroneously stsited that this Cartoon was a recent acquisition, but, though little known, it has in feet l^een a'considerable tiwe in the pjossession of the Hospital. It was at one time the, property ef the late Prince Hoare. t By an accident the figures are wrong in this page,, and also in page 351 . Instead of 360 and 400. the num' bers should be 460 and SCO. ANALYTICAX. TABLE OF CONTi;NTS. aix The Assize of Bread .... Ancient Custom of the Bakers' Company Stpw's Account of the Bakers of Stratford . The Cheap during the Middle Ages , , Corn-mills .,...,. Situation of the ancient Corn Markets , , The Metropolitan Corn Market hel4 in Thames Street at the beginning of tlie last Century . Present System of Factorage in the Corn Tr^ide . The Old Cqm Excha^gp . , . " , Situation of the New Corn Exchange , , Interior Arrangement? of the' Corn E^fcbupge , Metropolitan Market for Corn entirely confine^ to Marlt La,ne , " , . , , . Paoe 362362363803 383363 363 3Q4 mi .3643M394 Paos Privileges of the Essex and Kentish Dealers . 364 Regulations to which a Cargo of Corn is sub jected on its arrival in the River . . . 365 The Cpra-metera and FellowshipTPorters . 36 j Quantity of Com usually brought in each Ship tojLondpn ...... 365 Process of measuring Corn .... 366 The Granaries ...... 366 Restrictions relating to the Importation of Fo reign Corn 366 Establishnxents engaged in Supplying the Metro polis with Corn, &c.. ..... 3(i7 Dr.Whateley's Remarks on the Necessity of Free dom of Action in all Cqmn^ercial Operations . 367 ILLUSTRATIONS. 97. Corn Exchange 98. Thames Com' Barg'e 99. Interior of tl)e 014 Cqrii Ilxphjipge Designers. Engravers. Tiffin Jackson , . 333 Mead Holloway . 365 Tiffin Jackson . . 368 LXXIV.— ELY PLACE, gt< Ettieldreda's Chapel ..... The Neighhourliood of St. Etheldreda's Chapel Seventy Years ago . . . . . The Garden of Ely Place .... Extract from Holinshed .... The Duke of Glouoestei and the Bishop of Ely The Great Hall at Ely Place .... John of Gaunt at Ely Place . . . . Serjeants' Feasts at Ely Place , . . Presence of Henry VII. and his Queen at a, Serjeants' Feast in 1495 .... Entertainment given at Ely Place in 1531 . Persons present at the Banquet in 1531 . . The .Masque prepared by the Members of the Four Inns of Court ..... Prynne's ' Histrio-Mast'ix' .... Committee for arranging the Benchers' Masque Whitelock's Account of his Share in the Arrange ments for the Masque .... Departure of the Masque from Ely Place Order of the Procession .... Chariots of the Masquers .... Arrival of the Procession at Whitehall . . Cloisters of Ely Place ..... Holborn itt 1560 Erection of the Chapel at Ely Place by De Luda. Bishop of Ely ..... The Life of St. Etheldreda .... Benefactors to Ely Place .... Sir Christopher Hatton's first Introduction to Queen Elizabeth ..... Sir Christopher Hatton appointed Lord Chan cellor ....... 369 370370370370 371371 371 371 371 372.S72372 373373373373 374 375 376376376 376 377 377 Grant of Part of Ely Place to Hatton In 1576 . Desire of Sir Christopher Hatton to have his Pro perty at Ely Place in Perpetuity . . , Refusal of the Bishop of Ely to grant Hatton's Request . . . . . , , Gray's Picture of Hatton in his Manor House at Stoke Pogis ...... Passage from Fuller's ' Worthies' . . , Death of Sir Christopher Hatton iu 1S9I . Letter from Queen Elizabeth to the Bishop of Ely Imprisonment of Bishop Wren ... Lady Elizabeth Hatton ..... The Rivalry of Coke and Bacon Bacon's Cause pleaded by the Earl of Essex . Marriage of Coke with Lady Elizabeth Hatton Desire of Coke to effect a Marriage between his Daughter and Sir John Villiers . . . Refusal of Lady Hatton to consent to the Mar riage of her Daughter .... Separation of Coke and Lady Hatton . ¦ Ben Jonson's ' Masque of Beauty' ... Representation of ' The Metamorphosed Gipsies'. Anecdote of Lady Hatton and Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador . . • . ' .. Gradual Decay of Ely Place .... Ely Place transferred to the Cro-wn in 1772 Erection of the Present Ely Place- . Interior of St. Etheldreda's Chapel Eveljii's Account of the Consecration of the Dean of Ripon at Ely House Marriage of Evelyn's Daughter in the Chapel of Ely House ...... Lines in Cowper's ' Task' .... 37S 878 378 379 379379 379380 ago380 380 380 381 381 381381381382382 382382 383 383384384 ILLUSTRATIONS. 100. The Chapel 101. Remains of the Palace, 1772 Designers. Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 36'37 > ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. LXXV.— GOLDSMITHS' HALL. Paok The Civic Companies the Originators of the Com mercial Greatness of London ... 385 Privilege of the Goldsmiths' Company . . 386 Situation of the Goldsmiths' Hall . . . 386 Vestibule and Staircase of Goldsmiths' Hall . 386 The Court Room . . . . . .387 Roman Altar Piece preserved in Goldsmiths' Hall 387 Portraits in the Court Room .... 387 The ' Goldsmiths' Jubilee' . . . .388 Illustration of the Company's Arms in the Pa geants performed in 1674 .... Description given by Thomas Jordan of the Trade Pageant ....... Connexion of St. Dunstan with the Goldsmiths' Company ....... Painting by Julio Romano in the Court Room . St. Dunstan adopted by the Goldsmiths as their Patron Saint ...... Business transacted in the Court Room . Jealousies between the Foreign and English Goldsmiths ...... Contention between Oliver Davy and White Johnson ....... Puncheons presented by Oliver Davy to the Goldsmiths' Company .... Customs among the Artificers of the Fifteenth Century . . . ^ . . . Chimney-piece in the Court Room . The Drawing Room ..... The Court Dining.- room Charters granted to the Goldsmiths' Company . Plunder of the Conquest taken to Normandy by William '. Excellence of the Saxons in the Goldsmiths' Art 388388 389 389 390390 390 390391391 391 391 392 392 392392 List of Edward I.'s Plate and Jewels The Goldsmiths the first to seek the Protection of the Guild ...... Conflict between the Goldsmiths and Merchant Tailors ....... Earliest Mention of the Goldsmiths as a Guild . Petition presented to Edward III. by the Gold smiths' Company ..... Answer given by Edward III. to the Goldsmiths' Petition . ' . . . , . The Company incorporated as " a perpetual Community" in the Reign of Richard II. . Confirmation and Enlargement of the Gold smiths' Privileges ..... The Goldsmiths' Trade Search Extract from the Goldsmiths' Book in the Reign of Henry VI ¦Ceremony of the Search .... Execution of the Goldsmiths iu 1278 . . The Livery Hall Plate belonging to the Goldsmiths' Company . Cup presented to the Lord Mayor by Queen Elizabeth ....... Portraits in the Livery Hall .... Gregory de Rokesley ..... Sir Nicholas Farindon ..... Bankers of the Thirteenth Century . , The Money of the London Merchants usually deposited in the Tower . . . . , Funds of the Merchants placed in the Hands of the .Goldsmiths. about 1645 .... ' The Mystery of the New-fashioned Goldsmiths, or Bankers, discovered' .... Francis Child, the first regular Banker . . Banquet at .Goldsmiths' Hall in 1835 ILLUSTRATIONS. Pasi 393393393 394 394 394 395 395395 395395 396 396396 397 397 397 397398 398 398 398 399400 102. 103. Staircase, Goldsmiths' Hall Goldsmiths' Hall, Exterior View Designers'. Tiffin Engraveis. Jackson 385 40l> fi-^''. it' " ^W"- P '^^^SbuJJiL^ [Existmg Remains of the Conventual Buildings.] LI.— BERMONDSEY. THE ABBEY. It is a curious circumstance, and one in which the history of many changes of opinion may be read, that within forty years after what remained of the mag nificent ecclesiastical foundation of the Abbey of Bermondsey had been swept away, a new conventual establishment has risen up, amidst the surrounding dese cration of factories and warehouses, in a large and picturesque pile, with iti stately church, fitted in every way for the residence and accommodation of thirty or forty inmates — the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, We read in the records of our own immediate time, that " A Convent was built adjoining the Roman Catholic chapel, in Parker's Row, in the year 1838, for the order o the Sisters of Mercy, On the 1 2th of December, 1839, the ceremony of the profession of six of the aforesaid sisters took place in the chapel adjoining. The high mass, performed by Mr. Collinwidge, was celebrated at eleven o'clock, at which the Right Rev. Dr. Griffith assisted ; after which the novices were in troduced."* Subsequently " a sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Maguire, and a collection made toward the funds of the convent." When the sermon was concluded the " profession" took place. The novices, attired in the " pleni* * From the ' History and Antiquities of Bermondsey,' by G. W. Phillips, p. 101. VOL. III. 2 LONDON. tude of worldly ornament," declared in the usual formula that " they renounced the world, and dedicated themselves to works of charity." This ceremony over, they retired and assumed the sober garb of " Sisters of Mercy." " The assem blage of spectators was most numerous, and the collection apparently a very good one." One of the nuns " was the Lady Barbara Eyre (second sister of Francis Earl of Newburgh), who has been a liberal benefactress to the chapel and convent, and has taken the vows under the name of Sister Mary." The remaining nuns were Miss Ponsonby (a convert), now Sister Vincent ; Miss Con ner, now Sister Ursula ; Miss Laleham, now Sister Xaiver ; and Sister Theresa, and Sister Joseph, whose worldly designations are not mentioned. With the abstract utility of such institutions we have here nothing to do, but we may observe that the building, &c., of the Sisters of Mercy, as well as the order to which they belong, are of an interesting character. The church is really a fine edifice, in the plain but noble pointed architecture of a very early period. The confessionals, the gilt altar-piece, with the tapers on each side^ and the square black board on the wall in the aisle, covered with small printed papers, desiring the prayers of the faithful for the souls of the different deceased persons mentioned in them, beginning with the touching motto from Job, " Have pity on me ! have pity on me ! at least you, my friends ;" and ending with the phrase, " Requiescat in pace," all remind you of the ancient religion, here again esta blished on the spot where it flourished so many centuries ago. The names of ancient places form a fruitful subject for the display of learning and ingenuity, and if the results are not generally so satisfactory as might be desired in the way of producing conviction, they are seldom destitute of interest, and are sometimes positively entertaining. In the instance of Bermon .sey, the oldest known explanation of the name is, that Beormund was in very ancient times the Saxon proprietor of the place ea or eye, which in Saxon signifies water, and is here supposed to denote the nature of the soil. Wilkinson, in his account of the Abbey,* adds that the words ea, or eye, " are frequent in the names of places whose situation on the banks of rivers renders them insular and marshy." If true, this explanation may apply to other places in and near London as well as Bermondsey. Battersea, for instance, is very similarly situated with regard to the Thames. But a more fanciful explanation of the name is given by the writer already mentioned in a note, where he says that " in the Saxon language beam signifies a nobleman or prince, and mund peace or security ; and when to these is added the termination ea, water, the word Bermondsey may signify ' the prince's defence by the river.' This interpretation may probably show the original use to which the manor was applied." Looking, then, upon the original Bermondsey as a kind of marshy island when the tide was out, and a wide expanse of water when it was in, till gradually reclaimed and made useful, one cannot help being struck with the many indi^' cations of the old state of things yet remaining, although the present Bermondsey be densely covered with habitations and warehouses. The descent down that Jong flight of steps at the foot of London Bridge tells you how low lie the terri- * Londina lUustrata. BERMONDSEY ABBEY. 3 tories ybu are about to explore ; the numerous wharfs, and docks, and water courses, and ditches, which bound and intersect so considerable a portion of it, seem but so many memorials of the once potent element ; the very streets have a damp feel about them, and in the part known as Jacob's Island the overhanging houses, and the little wooden bridges that span the stream, have, notwithstanding their forlorn look, something of a Dutch expression. In short, persons familiar with the history of the place may everywhere see that Beonnund's Ea still exists, but that it has been embanked and drained — that it has grown populous, busy, commercial. Its manufacturing prosperity, however, strikingly contrasts with the general aspect of Bermondsey. Its streets generally are but dreary-look ing places ; where, with the exception of a picturesque old tenement, projecting its story beyond story regularly upwards, and fast " nodding to its fall," or the name of a street suggestive of some agreeable reflections, there is little to gratify the delicate eye. The alleys and courts in particular with which this extensive neighbourhood abounds are of the most wretched-looking character, and inha bited by an equally wretched race, if we may judge by the squalid aspect of the shivering, half-clad, and frequently shoeless creatures we see going in and out. In this circumstance the site of the once-famous Priory of Bermondsey reminds us of the site of St. Bartholomew, which is still, to a certain extent, and was a few years ago much more so, occupied by houses and a population presenting similar aspects. It were perhaps a bold speculation to ask if there be not something of cause and effect in this; yet, when we remember the magnificent hospitalities of the old and wealthier monasteries, there seems nothing improbable in the suppo sition that a large number of the poorer classes of the people would gather around them, as it were, for shelter ; and, once there, we need not wonder to find them still clinging to the place three centuries after their benefactors disappeared from it. Inhabitants of this kind are slow to move, and still slower is the pro cess of effacing the character which they have impressed upon it, when they do leave. Noble arches here and there bestride the streets of Bermondsey, bearing up a railway, with its engines puffing like so many overworked giants, and its rapid trains of passengers ; lofty and handsome piles of warehouses are occasion ally passed ; an elegant free-school enriches one part, and a picturesque church another: but they all serve by contrast to show more vividly the unpleasant features of the neighbourhood, and, whilst they cannot but command the spec tator's admiration, make him at the same time wpnder how they got there. The answer is at hand. There is great industry in Bermondsey, and the wretchedness is more on the surface than in the depths of this quarter of the town. What modern Bermondsey is, we shall describe in our next paper. The earliest mention of the Priory occurs in the account of Bermorfdsey in Domesday; and it is interesting to notice the comparative solitude of the place at that time, when "woodland" could be afforded for "hogs" so near the city. From the Conqueror's record it appears that he, the king, was then lord of the manor, as Harold had been before him. It was then rated, including Rotherhithe, to the land-tax at twelve hides, which, according to the compu tation usual in the midland counties, of 120 acres to a hide or carucate, would amount to above HOO acres. The same computation would make the arable b2 4 LONDON. land amount to 960 acres. There was also a new and fair church, with twenty acres of meadow, and as much woodland as yielded pannage for a number or hogs, the lord receiving five by way of payment from the owners. The demesne land was one carucate occupied by the lord himself, and four carucates in the tenure of twenty-five villains, and thirty-three bordars.* Thirteen burgage tene ments in London were also held of this manor, at the rent of fifteen pounds, and the Earl of Moriton (Morton) possessed a hide of land, on which, it appears from another part of the record, he had a mansion-house. The " new and fair church" here mentioned was that belonging to the Priory. In the ' Chronicles of Bermondsey' (a manuscript preserved among the Har- leian collection, to which we are indebted for the greater part of what information we possess as to this once-famous monastery) we find the writer, most probably a monk of Bermondsey, before noticing the foundation of his own house, referring in the following terms to an event which had occurred five years before, in con nexion with another establishment: "Anno Domini 1077, Lanzo, first prior of St. Pancras, Lewes, came into England;" and if we look into the charter of that priory we see very clearly his reasons for so doing : for we have there recorded the circumstances which brought about the introduction of the order, to which both Lewes and Bermondsey belonged, into this country ; and very interesting circumstances they are. The charter in question was granted by William Earl of Warren, who came over with the Conqueror ; and in it that nobleman gives us the following history. It appears that he, with the Lady Gunfreda, his wife, were going on a pilgrimage to St. Peter's at Rome, and in their passage through France and Burgundy visited divers monasteries to make their orisons ; but un derstanding in Burgundy that they could not in safety proceed with their purpose, on account of the war which was then carrying on between the Pope and the Emperor, they took up their abode in the great monastery of St. Peter at Cluny in that country, and there paid their devotions to the saint. The aj)- pearances of sanctity, religion, and charity which they met with in that abbey were great beyond their expectation ; and these, together with the special re spect shown to them by the prior, in the abbot's absence, and the whole convent, who admitted them to their fraternity, charmed them, and raised their esteem both for the order and the House of Cluny above all others. And because, long before that time, the earl and his lady had determined, by the advice of Lan- franc. Archbishop of Canterbury, to found some religious house to make atone ment for their sins, and for the welfare of their souls, they forthwith resolved that it should be rather of the Cluniac than of any other order. They therefore soon after, sent over their request to Abbot Hugh, and the convent of Cluny, that they would favour them with two, three, or four monks out of their flock • and the intention was to give them a church, anciently dedicated to St. Pancras under the castle of Lewes, and which the earl - and countess purposed at the ¦• The original word vithinn appears to have meant simply the cultivators of the soil of a villa, or township Their position was superior to the lowest class, the servi or serfs, for, although their lives and personal pronertv were to a great extent at the disposal of the lord, they had a right of maintenance out of the land from which they could not be separated ; they formed, it is supposed, the origin of the present copyholders. The exact meaning of the word bordar, or bordarii, is unknown, Maitland calls them cottagers. BERMONDSEY ABBEY. 5 setting out to endow with lands and possessions sufficient for the maintenance of twelve monks. The abbot at first made great difficulty in the affair, and seemed unwilling to comply, as the proposed place of abode for his monks was to be a long way off, in another land, and especially as the sea would be between them and the parent convent ; but understanding that the earl had obtained licence from King William to introduce monks of their order into England, and being satisfied of his approbation thereof, he became reconciled to the proposal, and agreed to send them four monks of his convent, Lanzo being chief. . . , , " And thus it was," says the earl, " that I and my wife procured a convent of Cluniac monks in England."* The first difficulty got over, other establishments of Cluniacs were soon formed in England; Wenlock was founded in 1080, and Bermondsey two years later. A citizen was the chief benefactor in the present instance; his name, Aylwin Child; who, through the favour of the eminent churchman Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, obtained four Cluniac monks from another of the great Cluniac houses — the monastery of La Charite in Normandy. The Cluniacs, it may be necessary to observe, were the first off shoot of the Benedictine branch of monachism, and had their origin, like the parent tree, in the desire to improve upon the previous discipline. The reform ation desired by the sterner Benedictines was begun by Bernon, abbot of Gigni, in Burgundy, but consummated by Odo, abbot of Cluny, about 912 : he, there fore, is chiefly looked on as the founder of the order of Cluniacs. A brief view of their customs may be acceptable. The following extract is from Stevens's translation of the French history of the Monastic Orders, given in his continuation of Dugdale, and transcribed in the great edition of the ' Mo- nasticon.' " They every day sung two solemn masses, at each of which a monk of one of the choirs offered two hosts If any one would celebrate mass on Holy Thursday, before the solemn mass was sung, he made no use of light, be cause the new fire was not yet blessed. The preparation they used for making the bread which was to serve for the sacrifice of the altar is worthy to be ob served. They first chose the wheat, grain by grain, and washed it very carefully. Being put into a bag, appointed only for that use, a servant, known to be a just man, carried it to. the mill, washed the grindstones, covered them with curtains above and below, and having put on himself an alb, covered his face with a veil,' nothing but his eyes appearing. The same precaution was used with the meal. It was not boulted till it had been well washed ; and the warden of the church, if he were either priest or deacon, finished the rest, being assisted by two other religious men, who were in the same orders, and by a lay brother particularly appointed for that business. These four monks, when matins were ended, washed their faces and hands : the three first of them did put on albs ; one of them washed the meal with pure clean water, and the other two baked the hosts in the iron moulds ; so great was the veneration and respect the monks of Cluni paid to the holy Eucharist." The sites of the mill and the bakehouse of Ber mondsey Abbey are both yet traceable. The rapidity with which the new order spread was most extraordinary ; before any very great length of time had elapsed there were at least two thousand reli gious houses looking up to the Abbot of Cluny as their spiritual head. We maj * Monasticon, vol. v. p. 1. b LONDON. judge of the wealth and influence of the House of Cluny by the fact, that in 1245 it was able to entertain within its walls, and without disarranging the habits of the four hundred monks resident in it, the reigning Pope, twelve cardinals, a patriarch, three archbishops, the King of France, his mother, and three of his sons, the Emperor of Constantinople, and dukes and lords too many to enume rate. The other chief foreign houses at that time were those of St. Martin dcs Champs, at Paris, and La Charite. The building belonging to the latter was considered the finest in the kingdom. No doubt the Priory of Bermondsey must have been here similarly distinguished for its architectural grandeur ; for although no portion of the chief feature, the church, has been preserved to us even in en gravings, the long list of benefactors, occupying several folio pages of the ' Mo nasticon,' is of itself a sufficient testimony. Among those benefactors we find the names of William Rufus, who gave to the monks the manor and manor-house, or palace, then standing there ; Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, and Chancellor of England; Mary, sister to Maud (good Queen Maud), the wife of Henry I. ; Henry I. himself; King Stephen ; John, son of Hubert de Burgh ; and a host of other distinguished persons. Some of the gifts are sufficiently curious. Thus in 1152 Alan Pirot gave six thousand herrings and one acre of land. The first Prior of Bermondsey was Peter, one of the four monks of La Charite. Among his suc cessors we need only mention Richard, elected prior in 1210, who built an alms house or hospital adjoining the monastery for poor children and converts, called St. Saviour's Hospital, to which Agnes, sister of Thomas a Becket, was also a benefactor ; John de Causancia, during whose rule the Priory became involved in trouble, Causancia and several monks being arrested on account of their having received some rebels into their house for shelter, supposed to be adherents of the Earl of Lancaster, who had been defeated at Boroughbridge; and Richard Dunton (1372), the first English prior, the previous heads of the monastery having all been appointed by the Abbot of Cluny. This last-mentioned change was in consequence of the priory having been restored, after its sequestration with the other alien houses in the previous reign, by Richard II., who released il from its subjection to Cluny, made a denizen instead of an alien monastery of it and at the same time raised it to the rank of an abbey. Two hundred marks was the price of this favour. This was not the only benefit conferred on the house by Prior Dunton : he rebuilt the cloister and refectory^ and in 1387 covered the nave with lead, made new glass windows in the presbytery, and gilt tables for the high and morning altars. Why he did not stay to enjoy the honours of the abbacy, so peculiarly his own, we know not ; just at the period in question he resigned, and John Attilburg was created abbot by Pope Boniface IX., at ihc request of Richard II. The few brief and incidental notices of the conventual buildings, included in the foregoing pages, are in effect all that have been preserved. The records of incidents connected with the history of the monastery are not much more nume rous ; but what may be wanting in this respect through the loss of the records, &c. in the general ivreck at the dissolution, is more than compensated for by the interest which attaches to those which do exist. The least important we shall dismiss first. Provincial Chapters it appears were frequently held here; and the King occasionally used it for important state councils. Thus during the BEWMONDSEY ABBEY. 7 Christmas of 1154, Henry II., immediately after his coronation, held an important meeting here of his nobles, to consult with them on the general state of the coun try, and the measures it was advisable to adopt. In the reign of Henry III., many of the nobility having determined upon an expedition to the Holy Land, met at Bermondsey, to arrange the order of their journey. Many eminent and noticeable persons were buried in the church ; among whom may be mentioned Mary, sister of good Queen Maud, before mentioned ; Leofstane, provost, shrive (sheriff), or domesman of London, 1115; and Margaret de la Pole, 1473. In 1397 the body of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, (murdered at Calais, there is little doubt, by the order of Richard II., his nephew,, was Drought to Ber mondsey, and placed in the church, where it remained till tne .interment in West minster Abbey. Hospitality was one of the duties enjoined upon the inmates of religious houses, and to the last it appears to have been the duty they most constantly and willingly fulfilled. In the cases of persons of high rank the reception of visitors Avas an affair of great ceremony and importance. Bermondsey had at different times two visitors, to whom we may be sure every possible honour was done the first of these was Katherine, the wife of Henry V., the French Princess whom Shakspere has made so familiar to us in connexion with the blunt wooing of her gallant lover, and by her own pleasant attempts as a student of the English lan guage, and who alone perhaps of all her country's children could have so quickly reconquered France from the conqueror, as she now did, by throwing around him the nuptial tie. Few marriages promising so much of state convenience have ended in giving so much individual happiness, as Henry enjoyed with his young and beautiful bride. His early death was grieved by all ; his courtiers and nobles wept and sobbed round his death-bed : what, then, must have been her feelings at his loss ? Fortunately, perhaps, Katherine was not present at the last moment, nor did she learn the dreadful tidings for some days afterwards. It was to receive this distinguished visitor that some years later the monks of Bermondsey were suddenly summoned from all parts of the monastery by the stroke on one of the great bells, twice repeated, who, hurrying into the church, robed themselves, and prepared everything for the reception of the new comer. Upon the Queen's near approach, two of the great bells would ring out a peal of welcome, and then the abbot would advance to meet her, saluting her with his blessing, and sprink ling holy water over her. The procession then entered the church, and made a stand before the crucifix, where the visitor prayed. Service in honour of the Saviour as the patron saint followed ; the singing-boys in the choir sang, the organ played, and at the termination of the whole the Queen would find the best accommodation the Abbey could furnish provided for her use. She appears to have found all she desired, for she remained at Bermondsey till her death. One little' incident has been recorded on the subject of her residence here, which is supposed to have been caused in some way by the dissatisfaction of the court at her second marriage, with Owen Tudor, a gentleman of Wales, and, through this match, the founder of the Tudor dynasty. On the 1st of January, 1437, her son, the young Henry VI., sent to her at Bermondsey a token of his affectionate remembrance, in the shape of a tablet of gold, weighing thirteen ounces, on which was a crucifix set with sapphires and pearls. She was then, no doubt, vo'y ill, 8 LONDON. for two days later she died. There is a striking connexion between this and the next distinguished visitor, Elizabeth of York, a lady who, if not one of the most in teresting of female characters in herself, is unquestionably so from the circumstances of her strange and eventful history. She came to Bermondsey quite as much a prisoner as a visitor, and she owed that imprisonment to the man whom she her self had been to a considerable extent the means of placing on the throne. [Queen Elizabeth Woodville.] Henry VII., the grandson of the widow of Henry V., and of her second husband, Owen Tudor. That two such women should meet in the same place, to spend the last years of their lives, forms, in our opinion, no ordinary coincidence. The history of Elizabeth of York, though but an episode of that of Bermondsey, is so full of romance, and so closely connected with it, by her imprisonment and death within its walls, that the ancient priory may not improbably be freshly remem bered through those circumstances, when all others might have else failed to preserve more than the barest and driest recollections of the great house of the Cluniacs. Her history is, indeed, from first to last a romance, but a romance of a stern and melancholy nature ; not destitute of sweet passages on which the ima gination would love to rest but cannot, for there is always to be seen, through the opening vista of the future, ghastly and monstrous shapes, from which there is no averting the eye. It was on a visit to Jaquenetta, Duchess of Bedford, then married to a second husband. Sir Richard Woodville, that Edward IV., the hand somest, most accomplished, and most licentious man of his time, first beheld the duchess's daughter, Elizabeth Gray, the widow of Sir John Gray, a Lancastrian, slain at the second battle of St. Alban's. The knight's estates had been forfeited to Edward, and the young widow, who is said to have been as eloc[uent as she BERMONDSEY ABBEY. 9 was beautiful, availing herself of the opportunity, threw herself at the king's feet, and implored him, for the sake of her innocent and helpless children, to reverse the attainder. The irresistible petitioner rose with more than the grant of what she had asked — the king's heart was hers. Edward, perhaps for the first time, was seriously touched ; and, to the astonishment of the nation generally, and to the rage of no small portion of the King's own partisans, the Yorkists, the King some months after, at a solemn assembly of prelates and nobles, in the ancient abbey of Reading, announced his marriage with the widow of the fallen Lan castrian knight ; and, amid the surprise which prevailed throughout the assem blage, the King's brother, the Duke of Clarence, and the Earl of Warwick, led the Queen into the hall, and caused her in that character to be welcomed by all present. Thus ends one phase of her history. In the next we behold her again as a widow : but this time her widowhood has brought her new and more anxious public duties ; she is not merely a mother, but the mother of the young King Edward V. and of his brother the Duke of York. Into the particulars of the momentous period which includes the death of the young princes in the Tower, of course we are not about to enter ; but it may be permitted to us to observe, that few parents ever have endured keener agonies for their children than this unfortunate lady. The wild rumours that so quickly floated about as to the intentions of the Duke of Gloucester, the sudden shedding of the blood of her son and brother at Pomfret (Lords Gray and Rivers), the messages and deputa tions to and fro between the Protector and the Sanctuary at Westminster, [Sanctuary, Westminster, from a sketch by Dr. Stukeley, before its destruction in 1775.] where she had taken refuge with her youngest son, distracting her with conflict ing thoughts— one moment fearing to give the young prince up to destruction, the next fearing to bring that destruction on him by indiscreet jealousy, or by thwartino- Gloucester's views — all this must have been terrible to the lately-made 10 LONDON. widow, had nothing remained behind. But when at last, calling for her child, she delivered him up to the Cardinal Archbishop ; and, as soon as she had done so, burst into an uncontrollable fit of anguish, she but too rightly felt she had lost both her children. In the interval between the death of the princes and that of their murderer, Richard, occurs the most unromantic, and in every way most unsatisfactory, part of the history of one whose misfortunes, so unexampled for their severity, make us regret to meet with any incidents that tend to deprive her of our sympathy through the lessening of our respect. Suffice it to say, that whilst at one period we find her eagerly engaging in the scheme proposed of marrying the Earl of Richmond to her daughter Elizabeth ; at another, when the prospect looked less bright for the exile, she appears to have listened to Richard's overtures, first of marrying her daughter Elizabeth to his son, and when that son died, of giving her to himself. Whether there may not have been some dissimulation practised, in the hope of silencing the fears of Richard, who was aware of the project with regard to Richmond, cannot now be known, but the circumstances render such a supposition not improbable. Whatever her conduct at this period, there is, un happily, no doubt as to her subsequent misfortunes. The king, Henry VII., certainly did redeem the promise as to the marriage made by the Earl of Rich mond, but it was done so tardily and so ungraciously, that the very people were disgusted at his conduct ; and by their sentiments we may judge of the mother's, But this was not all. In the month of November, 1486, an extensive insurrec tion broke out in Ireland, at the head of which was, nominally, a youth who it was pretended was the Earl of Warwick (then in reality confined in the Tower), the son of the late Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV. A great council was immediately held at the Charter House near Richmond, where, first, a ge neral pardon was resolved on, free from all exceptions, and the second resolution was (a curious commentary on the first) to arrest Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen Dowager. This is altogether one of the most inexplicable of those many and subtle strokes of policy that mark the history of the English king, whose " life," it has been well observed, " produces much the same effect on the mind as the perusal of the celebrated manual of Machiavelli, most of whose notions he anticipated and put into practice."* The queen was immediately arrested, deprived of all her property, and placed a close prisoner in the mo nastery of Bermondsey. Henry's historian. Bacon, may well observe, " whereat there was much wondering that a weak woman, for the yielding to the menaces and jiromiscs of a tyrant, [he is alluding to her transactions with Richard III.,J after such a distance of time wherein the king had showed no displeasure or alteration, but much more after so happy a marriage between the kin<>- and her daughter, blest with issue male, [only two or three weeks before,] should upon a sudden mutability or disclosure of the king's mind be so severely handled :' for such it appears was the motive for this arrest set forth by the king. No one, however, believed in the truth of the allegation ; and Bacon, following the chro nicler Hall, gives a remarkable explanation of the affair. Having observed that the prompter of the young counterfeit of the Earl of Warwick, a priest, had never seen the latter, he continues, "so t cannot be, but that some gi-eiit person * ' Pictorial England,' vol, ii. p. 318. BERMONDSEY ABBEY. ] 1 that knew particularly and familiarly Edward Plantagenet, had a hand in the business, from whom the priest might take aim. That which is most probable, out of the precedent and subsequent acts, is, that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action had the principal source and motion. For certain it is she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the for tunate conspiracy for the king against King Richard III. been hatched, which the king knew, and remembered perhaps but too well; and was at this time extremely discontent with the king, thinking her daughter, as the king handled the matter, not advanced but depressed; and none could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage-play as she could." In the words of the old proverb, misfortunes never came single to the unhappy queen : the Marquis of Dorset, her son by her first husband, was arrested soon after and thrown into the Tower. At the coronation of the queen, his half-sister, in the following year, he Avas however released ; and was, we believe, present at the ceremony. The mother appears to have been still left to pine away in her enforced solitude at Ber mondsey, where she lingered till 1492, when a fatal illness seized her. On her death-bed she dictated the following pathetic will, which is of itself a decisive answer as to the doubts that have been raised concerning the penury of her latest days. It is dated Bermondsey, April 10, 1492 : — " I, Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, late wife to the most victorious prince of blessed me mory Edward the Fourth, being of whole mind, seeing the world so transitory, and no creature certain when they shall depart from hence, having Almighty God fresh in mind, in whom is all mercy and grace, bequeath my soul into his hands, beseeching him of the same mercy to accept it graciously, and our blessed lady queen of comfort, and all the holy company of heaven, to be good means (or mediators) for me. Item, I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, according to the will of my said lord and mine, without pomps entering or costly expenses done thereabout. Item, whereas I have no worldly goods to do the Queens Grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech Almighty God to bless her Grace, with all her noble issue ; and with as good heart and mind as is to me possible, I give her Grace my blessing, and all the aforesaid my children. Item, I will that such small stuff and goods that I have be disposed truly in the content- ation of my debts and for the health of my soul as far as they will extend. Item, if any of my blood will any of the said stuff or goods to me pertaining, I will that they have the preferment before any other. And of this my present testament I make and ordain mine executors, that is to say, John Ingleby, Prior of the Charter-house at Shene, William Sutton and Thomas Brente, Doctors; and I beseech my said dearest daughter, the Queen's Grace, and my son Thomas Marquis Dorset, to put their good wills and help for the performance of this my testament." And thus closes the eventful life of Elizabeth of York. Some thirty years ago, when the workmen were busy in the vaults of Windsor, pre paring a place of sepulture for the family of George III., they lighted upon a stone coffin buried fifteen feet below the surface. It contained the remains of Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Bermondsey has yet another memory in connexion with this unfortunate queen's persecutor, Henry VII., and one that illustrates another remarkable trait of his LONDON. character— his superstitious piety. If we could trace the secret springs of action that were here at work, we should no doubt find a close and striking connexion between the King's religious and political character ; the one, indeed, being per haps cherished as a kind of expiation for the other. His masterly policy was not often a very upright and honourable policy ; so, this stroke was followed by the erection of a chapel, that, by the founding of masses to be said evermore for his soul, he might keep a tolerably fair reckoning in the great account-book of his conscience. He is not the only monarch who has endeavoured to keep an " even mind" by the adoption of a similar kind of offset. Henry was in both the chief features of his character a not unworthy follower of the French Louis XI. ; it was fortunate that he did not superadd the cruelty of his crafty original. It appears that an indenture was executed between the King, the city of London, and the abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey, some time after the death of his queen, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, by which the abbot and monks of Westminster were to pay 3/. 6s. 8d. annually to those of Bermondsey, for the holding of an anniversary in the church on the Gth of February in every year, to pray for the good and prosperous estate of the King during his life and the pro sperity of his kingdom, also for the souls of his late queen and of their children, of his father, the Earl of Richmond, and his progenitors, and of his mother, the Countess of Richmond, after her decease. Full directions are contained in the indenture as to the mode of performing the ceremony. As a glimpse of what was sometimes doing in the old church, as well as of the old custom itself, the follow ing extract will be found interesting : — " The abbot and convent of St. Saviour of Bermondsey shall provide at every such anniversary a hearse, to be set in the midst of the high chancel of the same monastery before the high altar, covered and appareled with the best and most honourable stuff in the same monastery convenient for the same. And also four tapers of wax, each of them weighing eight pounds, to be set about the same hearse, that is to say, on either side thereof one taper, and at either end of the same hearse another taper, and all the same four tapers to be lighted and burning continually during all the time of every such Placebo, DIrige, with nine lessons, lauds, and mass of Requiem, with the prayers and obeisances above rehearsed." Why Bermondsey, with its remi niscences of his wife's mother, whose soul, be it observed, is not Included in the list of souls to be prayed for, should have been chosen by Henry VII. for the solemnization of the anniversary, were a curious problem to solve. At the dissolution, the Abbot of Bermondsey had no tender scruples about conscience or principle, like so many of his brethren, but arranged everything in the pleasantest possible manner for the King ; and he had his reward. While the poor monks had pensions varying from 5L 6s. 8d. a-year to lOZ. each allotted them, his amounted to 336/. 6s. 8d. The revenue of the abbey then amounted to 548/. 2s. 5^d. The monastery itself, with the manor, demesnes, &c., the " court-leet, the view of frank-pledge, and the free warren," were granted by Henry VIII. to Sir Robert Southwell, knight. Master of the Rolls, who sold them to Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford. It Is to this gentleman that the antiquary's maledictions on the destroyer of the fine old Abbey of Bermondsey legitimately belong. He pulled down the conventual church and most of the other buildings, and erected a mansion on the site ; and BERMONDSEY ABBEY. 13 then, as if satisfied with what he had done, re-conveyed the mansion with the orchards, gardens, &c., to Sir Robert. The manor he subsequently sold to a " citizen and goldsmith" of London. In the mansion built by Sir Thomas Pope afterwards resided the Earl of Sussex, Elizabeth's chamberlain ; and here also it appears from Stow, he died. The old chronicler's account of his funeral is picturesque, as usual. " On the ninth of June (1583), deceased Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, lord chamberlain to her majesty, a knight of the garter, at Ber mondsey, beside London ; and was on the eighth of July following conveyed through the same city of London toward Newhall, in Essex, there to be buried. First went before him forty-five poor men in black gowns, then on horseback one hundred and twenty serving-men in black coats, then twenty-five in black gowns or cloaks, besides the heralds at arms ; then the deceased Earl in a chariot covered with black velvet, drawn by four goodly geldings ; next after was led the Earl's steed, covered with black velvet ; then Sir Henry Ratcliffe, the succeeding Earl, chief mourner, and eight other lords, all in black ; then the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London riding in murrey (dark-red or purple) ; and then on foot the gentlemen of Gray's Inn ; and last of all the Merchant Tailors in their livery, for that the said Earl was a brother of their company, as many noblemen and famous princes, kings of this realm, before him, had been.'' According to the earl's directions, his executors kept open house, as we should now say, for twenty days after his interment. Altogether, this was a tolerably expensive funeral; the burial charges amounting to above 1600/., and the housekeeping to 158/. 8s. 2d. A walk over the site of the great Abbey of the Cluniacs can now afford little gratification, either to the lover of antiquities or to the man of taste generally. The remains spared till the present century have now mostly disappeared, in cluding the gateway represented in our engraving at the end of this paper. The entire site is pretty well covered with modern houses and dirty streets and courts. The Long Walk, once perhaps a fine shady avenue, where the abbot or his monks were accustomed to wile away the summer afternoon, is about one of the last places that would now tempt the wandering footsteps of the stranger ; the Grange Walk no longer leads to the pleasant farm or park of the abbey, and is in itself but a painful mockery of the associations roused by the name ; the court or Base Court Yard is changed into Bermondsey Square, flanked on all sides by small tenements, the handiwork of the builders who completed a few years ago what Sir Thomas Pope began ; and though some trees are yet there, of so ancient appearance that for aught we know they may have witnessed the destruction of the very conventual church, yet they are dwindling and dwindling away, as though they felt themselves a part of the old Abbey, and had no business to survive its destruction. They will not have much longer to wait; little remains to be destroyed. In the Grange Walk is a part of the gate-house of the east gateway, with a portion of the rusted hinge of the monastic doors. In Long Walk, on the right, is a small and filthy quadrangle (once called, from some tradition connected with the visits of the early English monarchs to Bermondsey, King John's Court, now Bear Yard), in which are the houses represented on oui commencing page, where the stone-work, and form and antiquity of the windows, afford abundant evidence of their connexion with the monastery. Lastly, in the 14 LONDON. churchyard of the present church of St. Mary Magdalen are some pieces of tae wall that surrounded the gardens and church of the Cluniacs. But there are two other memorials of the Abbey, which are not Iikeiy to [Remains of the Eastern Grate-house of the Abbey.] perish with the establishment to which they belonged. In the church of St. Mary, a handsome edifice, built on the site of a smaller one erected by the monks at a very early period (it Is supposed for the use of their servants and tenants), ' is a very curious ancient salver, of silver, now used for the collection of alms. On the centre is a beautifully chased representation of the gate of a castle or town, with two figures, a knight kneeling before a lady, who is about to place his helmet on his head. The long-pointed soUeretts of the feet, the ornaments of the arm-pits, and the form of the helmet, are supposed to mark the date of the salver as that of Edward II. The other memorial to which we have referred is of a much more interesting character. In the Chronicle of Bermondsey before mentioned we read at one part as follows : — "Anno Domini 1117. The cross of St. Saviour is found near the Thames." And again, under the date of 1118, " William Earl of Morton was miraculousl liberated from the Tower of London through the. power of the holy cross This Earl of Morton was a son of the nobleman mentioned in Domesday. It appears he had as much faith as the monks could have desired in the truth of the miracle, for the Chronicle subsequently sltites, " In the year 1140 William Earl of Morton came to Bermondsey, and assumed the monastic habit." Be fore we pursue the history of this Holy Cross, which we have no doubt was the Saxon cross found in the manner commemorated, we may observe that pilgrim ages to churches and shrines were, according to Fosbroke, the most ancient an ; universal of all pilgrimages If the Saxon cross had not been set up at BeJ BERMONDSEY ABBEY. 15 moudsey before Earl Morton's release, it would assuredly have been raised imme diately after. These pilgrimages were remarkably profitable things to a monastery. Sir David Lindsay, the old Scottish poet and church reformer, has given us an agreeable account of the feelings and customs once universally pre valent with regard to this kind of idolatrous worship of " imagery," which, says the poet finely, — of the unlearned be the hooks ; For when the laicks on them looks It brings them to rememberance Of Saintes lives the circumstance ; How, the faith for to fortify. They suffered pain right patiently. Seeing the image on the rood. Men should remember on the blood Wliich Christ into his passion Did shed for our salvation ; Or when thou seest the portraiture Of blessed Virgin Mary pure, A pleasant babe upon her knee. Then in thy mind remember thee The worde which the prophet said. How she should be both mother and maid. But who that sitteth on their knees. Praying to many imageries With oration and offerands. Kneeling with cup into their hands, No difference be I say to thee From the Gentile's idolatry.'' Sir David's doctrine obtained wide acceptance ; and one of the earliest popular manifestations of Protestant feeling was the destruction of all these " imageries," including, no doubt, many an exquisite and matchless piece of workmanship that the Protestant world of the present day could well wish to have been spared. In the account of St. Paul's Cross is given a description of the striking circum stances that attended the destruction of the Rood of Grace from Kent. The degradation of the Rood of Bermondsey was, it appears, an appendix to that day's proceedings. In an ancient diary of a citizen, preserved among the Cot- tonian MSS., under the date of 1558, occurs the following passage: — "M. Greshairi, mayor. On Saint Matthew's day, the apostle, the 24th day of Fe bruary, Sunday, did the Bishop of Rochester preach at Paul's Cross, and had standing afore him all his sermon-time the picture* of Rood of Grace in Kent, and was \i. e. which had been] greatly sought with pilgrims, and when he had made an end of his sermon, was torn all in pieces ; then was the picture of Saint Saviour, that had stood in Barmsey Abbey many years. In Southwark, taken down." " Taken down" are the words, not "destroyed." If the reader will turn to the engraving at the end of this paper, he will see, in the front of the building attached to the chief or north gate, the rude representation of a small cross, with some zigzag, (Saxon-like ornaments, the whole being evidently something placed upon or let into the wall, not a part of the original buildmg ; and there it '" This word was often used to express an image, or statue. 16 LONDON. remained till the comparatively recent destruction of the pile. Going further back, we find the same cross in the same situation in 1679, when a drawing was made of the remains of the Abbey, which was afterwards engraved by Wilkinson. There can then, we think, be no doubt, apart from the corroborative evidence of tradition, that this is the old Saxon cross found near the Thames, or that it is a part of the "picture" before which pilgrims used to congregate in the old conventual church. EemaiuB of the Abbey, from a drawing made immediately before their demolition.] riTew Lttatber and Skin Market, Bermondsey.] LII.— MODERN BERMONDSEY. It is a bold act to take up arms against old proverbs — those condensed epitomes of worldly wisdom, which charm by their brevity quite as much as by their truth : yet to the dictum that " two of a trade can never agree" we feel impelled to reply by pointing to Bermondsey. The inhabitants of that land of leather, that region of skins and pelts, afford a significant contradiction to the proverb : there are many " of one trade " here congregated, and we have reason for knowing that they " agree ' very well. Why it Is that the bazaar-system of the East is thus acted on in many parts of London — why it is that we find the watchmakers in one locality, the silkweavers in another, the sugar-refiners in a third — need not here be discussed ; but there appears reason for believing, as we shall endeavour to explain farther on, that the selection of Bermondsey as a "' local habitation " for the leather-manufacturers is greatly dependent/on a series of tide-streams which intersect the district, and which afford that abundant supply of water so indispensably necessary in the manufacture. Be the cause what it may, however, the fact is certain, that almost the whole circle of operations connected with this manufacture, so far as the metro.polis is concerned, are met with in Bermondsey ¦ VOL. III. o 18 LONDON, indeed it is scarcely too much to say that the history of a sheep's-skin and of an ox-hide forms the staple material for a description of this spot. There are, however, other features which render modern Bermondsey a remark able spot. It has been said that " there is a greater variety of trades and manufactures carried on in this parish than in any one parish besides throughout the kingdom ;" and although we doubt whether the means exist for making this determination, or, if existing, whether they have been properly estimated, yet the great diversity of operations is observable at a glance. Like as the Eastern Counties Railway forms a point of sight from which the dwellings of the Spital- fields weavers may be conveniently seen,* so will a trip on the Greenwich Railway reveal to us many of the characteristic features of Bermondsey, which it intersects from north-west to south-east. No sooner do we mount one of tlie railway car riages (and let all who would look about them select an opeii carriage) than we find ourselves in close vicinage to manufactories and tanneries. Chimneys innumerable shoot up at intervals of a few yards, towering above a very maze of red roofs, and furnishing their contribution to the smoky atmosphere of the neigh bourhood. It is chiefly on the south-western side of the railway, and within a mile of London Bridge, that these factory- chimneys are met with. A closer glance will detect other general features in the district ; we shall see vacant spaces or yards, surrounding or connected with many of the buildings, and exhibiting evidences of the tanners', the fell-mongers', thejeather-dressers', or the parchment-makers' operations. We shall see that many of the buildings are so constructed as to allow free access of air to all parts of the interior : these are tanners' drying-lofts. We shall see long, low, tile-covered buildings, principally north-eastward of the railway : these are rope-walks. We shall see large areas of ground in which low sheds or open boxes are ranged by dozens in parallel rows : these are glue-factories. We shall see many lofty warehouses, with cranes and doors at various parts of their height : these are wool-warehouses. But the railway traveller soon observes a remarkable change In the appearance of the district which he is traversing ; he finds himself suddenly transferred to a neigh bourhood of nursery- grounds and market-gardens — speckled here and there, it is true, with tanneries and other factories — but exhibiting the general features of open country ; and this is the character of the district from thence to Deptford and Greenwich. It would not perhaps be far from the truth to say that Bermondsey may be regarded as a region of manufacturers, a region of market-gardeners, a region of wholesale dealers, and a maritime region, according to the quarter where we take our stand. Were we indeed to confine ourselves strictly to the parochial limits, the features would include little of the two latter ; but we are not so strictly limited, and shall perhaps include a little of St. Olave's, and of one or two other parishes, in our remarks on Bermondsey generally. To the dwellers north of the Thames it Is perhaps generally known that Ber mondsey lies south-east of London Bridge, Avhile the burghers of Southwark can define the spot more closely. The parochial boundary embraces a portion of the banks of the Thames eastward of Dockhead ; extends from thence in an irregu- ¦^ London— No. XLIX, ' Spitalfields,' p. 385. MODERN BERMONDSEY. 19 iar line towards the Dover Road, separating Bermondsey from Rotherhithe and Deptford parishes ; skirts along the rear of the houses in the Kent Road and the Borough High Street ; enters Bermondsey Street by Snow's Fields-; and proceeds thence to St. Saviour's (once called Savorj') Dock. Let us, however, take a ramble over the bridge, and commence our observations at its south-eastern corner, proceeding thence in the direction of Rotherhithe. Perhaps no part of the metropolis has suffered greater changes of appearance in modern times than that at which we begin the survey of Bermondsey. The southern approaches to the new London Bridge required such a large increase to be made in the elevation of the roadways, that the west end of Tooley Street would have been sunk in a valley, had not a reconstruction of that part been made. The only mode of carrying the roadway continuously from the High Street towards Dockhead was by an inclined plane ; and on the northern side of this plane the houses have been rebuilt in an elegant and substantial man ner, forming a striking contrast, both in appearance and in elevation, to the houses which previously occupied that portion of Tooley Street. A still greater .change has occurred on the southern side : for here we meet with the terminus to the Greenwich Railway, which is also the terminus to the Croydon and the Brighton Railways. At present, the chief feature which this terminus presents is that of a large, scantily occupied, and somewhat inelegant area of ground, ren dered busy and bustling by those peculiar scenes which distinguish the terminus of a Railway ; but it is not improbable that this spot may be more diversified by buildings in a few years. After passing two or three large wharfs, and the high building on which the London station of Watson's telegraphic line Is erected, we enter fairly upon the old and unaltered portion of Tooley Street, whose name is a strange corrup tion of the former appellation, St. Olave's Street, and whose shops exhibit a singular mixture of the features which are found separate in other parts of the district : — wharfingers, merchants, salesmen, factors, and agents ; store-shippers, biscuit-bakers, outfitters, ship-chandlers, slop-sellers, block-makers, and rope- makers ; engineers and other manufacturers ; together with the usual varieties of retail tradesmen — all point to the diversified, and no less busy than diversi fied, traffic of this street, " Here,'' it has been said truly, " the crane and the pulley seem never to be idle," If we turn out of this leading thoroughfare into any of the narrow streets which bend towards the river, we find still greater indications of the warehousing and wharfing system ; and singular indeed are the contrasts which some of these streets have exhibited at different times. Mill Lane, for example, which leads down to Battlebridge Stairs, occupies the site of the London manor-house, or "inn," of the abbots of Battle — the "Maze" (now an assemblage of small streets on the opposite side of Tooley Street) having once been the garden at tached to the manor-house. From Morgan's Lane to St. Saviour's Dock there is a line of street — called in one part Pickle-herring Street, and in another Shad Thames— which exhibits an uninterrupted series of wharfs, warehouses, mills, and factories, on both sides of a narrow and crowdeH roadway. The buildings on the northern side are contiguous to the river ; and through gateways and openings in these we witness the busy scenes and the mazes of shipping which c2 20 LONDON. pertain to such a spot. We see the handiwork of Commerce, who, to use the words of Thomson, — " the big warehouse built, Rais'd the strong crane, chok'd up the loaded street With foreign plenty ; and thy stream, O Thames, Large, gentle, deep, majestic. King of Floods ! Chose for his grac'd resort!" In advancing towards St. Saviour's Dock, a short inlet between the river and Dockhead, we leave on the right a few streets which collectively form what is termed Horsleydown— once "Horse-down," a grazlng-ground for horses; and after passing several large granaries we arrive at the southern end of St. Saviour's Dock. Here commences the parish of Bermondsey; and a little far ther progress brings us to a district as remarkable for its appearance as for its importance, in past times at least, to the manufactures of Bermondsey. All Londoners have heard of the " Rookery," or, more irreverently, the " Holy Land" of St. Giles's; but far less is known of "Jacob's Island" in Bermondsey, though it has been rendered familiar to many by the most successful of living novelists. The first street beyond St. Saviours Dock is Mill Street; and as we pass down it a glance'will detect, on the right hand, several openings leading to small, crazy, and very primitive wooden bridges. If we cross one' of these bridges, and examine the spot to which it leads, we find that a stream, about twenty feet wide, entirely encircles a cluster of mean and dilapidated houses, to which access Is gained by about a dozen wooden bridges from the " terra firma" on the other side ot the stream. This stream Is bounded on the four sides by Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall, Nutkln's Court, and London Street; and from the east end of the latter "Jacob's Island" can be seen in all its ragged glory. The ditch becomes filled with water at every high tide. In one of Mr. Dickens's most popular works,* the features which this spot presents are described so vividly, and with such close accuracy, that we cannot do better than quote the passage. He first speaks of the ditch itself and the houses exte rior to the Island. " A stranger, standing on one of the wooden bridges thrown across this ditch in Mill Street, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering, from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails and domestic utensils in -which to haul the water up ; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from whence to look on the slime beneath ; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out on which to dry the linen that is never there ; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some of them have done ; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations — all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch." This is the scene in the narrow passages near the Island, two of which are known by the humble names of Halfpenny Alley and Farthing Alley. In Jacob's Island itself the " warehouses are roofless and empty, the walls are crumbling down, the windows are now no windows, the "¦ " Oliver Twist,'' vol. iii. p 240. MODERN BERMONDSEY. 21 doors are falling into the street, the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke ; and, through losses and Chancery suits, it Is made quite a desolate island indeed." Rough and wild as the spot appears when the ditch is filled at high tide, yet, if we visit it six hours afterwards, when mud usurps the place of water, more than one organ of sense is strongly and unpleasantly appealed to. Wilkinson gave a view of this spot in the ' Londina lUustrata' more than twenty years ago ; and the interval of time does not seem to have produced much change in the appear ance of the scene. In the plate here alluded to, the artist (and spectator like wise) is supposed to be standing on Jacob's Island, and looking across the Folly Ditch to the crazy, ancient houses of London Street. The history of this ditch or tide stream Is connected, in a remarkable way, with the manufacturing features of Bermondsey. When the Abbey was at the height of its glory, and formed a nucleus to which all else in the neighbourhood was subordinate, the supply of water for its inmates was obtained from the Thames through the medium of this tide. Bermondsey was probably at one time very little better than a morass, the whole being low and level : indeed, at the present time, manufacturers in that locality find the utmost difficulty in obtaining a firm foundation for their buildings, such Is the spongy nature of the ground. In the early period just alluded to, the spot, besides being low, was almost entirely un encumbered with buildings; and thus a channel from the Thames, although not many feet in depth, was filled throughout the entire district at every high tide. There was a mill at the river-side, at which the corn for the granary of the Abbey was ground ; and this mill was turned by the flux and reflux of the water along the channel. When the Abbey was destroyed, and the ground passed into the possession of others, the houses which were built on the site still received a supply of water from this water-course. In process of time tanneries were established on the spot, most probably on account of the valuable supply of fresh water obtainable every twelve hours from the river. This seems to be an opinion entertained by many of the principal manufacturers of the place. There appears reason to believe that the Neckinger, the name Avhich the ditch formerly held, was by degrees made to supply other ditches, or small water courses cut in different directions, and placed in communication with it ; for, pro vided they were all nearly on a level, each high tide would as easily fill a dozen as a single one. Had there been no mill at the mouth of the channel, the supply might have gone on continuously ; but the mill continued to be moved by the stream, and to be held by parties who neither had nor felt any interest in the affairs of the Neckinger manufacturers. Disagreements thence arose; and we find that, about fifty years ago, the tanners in the central parts of Bermondsey instituted a suit against the owner of the mill for shutting off the tide when it suited his own purpose so to do, to the detriment of the leather-manufacturers. The ancient usages of the district were brought forward in evidence ; and the result was, that the right of the inhabitants to a supply of water from the river, at every high tide, was confirmed, to the discomfiture of the mill-owner. Since that period there have been occasional disagreements between the manufacturers and the owners of the mill (now a lead-mill), respecting the closing of sluice-gates, the repair and cleansing of the d^tch, and the construction of wooden bridges across it; but 22 LONDuiN. the tide has, with few exceptions, flowed to and fro daily from the Thames to the neighbourhood of the Grange and Neckinger Roads. We have visited three or four of the largest establishments in Bermondsey, and find that they are still dependent on the tide-stream for the water — very abundant in quantity — re quired In the manufacture of leather. Other manufacturers have, however, now constructed Artesian wells on their premises, while the mill at the mouth bf the stream is worked by steam-power, so that the channel itself is much less important than in former times. It Is anything but a " New River " in cleanliness and neatness of appearance. At present it is under the management of Commis sioners, consisting of the principal manufacturers, who are empowered to levy a sjnall rate for its maintenance and repair. This stream has somewhat detained us in our circuit walk, but it is so closely connected with the establishment and advancement of the staple manufacture of the district that we have felt it proper not to omit these details. The interest which the older inhabitants of the parish still take in the decision of 1 786 indi cates the importance attached to it. When we have passed St. Saviour's Dock, in our ramble eastward, we see that the region of wharfs and granaries, of warehouses and factories, has in part given place to features of a more maritime character. We are approaching towards Rotherhithe. We meet seamen — sauntering, jo^^al, careless, light-hearted sea men — in the streets. We meet with rope-walks, anchor-smitheries, boat-builders; Avith outfitters, slopsellers, sea-biscuit bakers; with dealers in all the knick- knacks to which " Jack " is so much attached. The opposite side of the river presents these features in a more marked degree, but the eastern parts of Ber mondsey are not without them. The same picture, but painted in stronger colours, presents itself through the greater part of Rotherhithe, past the entrance to the Thames Tunnel— past the Surrey Dock — to the Greenland Dock, that " profitable nuisance," as Pennant once termed it, when the whale-fishery was at its height. But it is not of Rotherhithe that we have here to speak . we will, therefore, bend our steps southward. The belt of houses which skirts the Thames at the junction of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe does not extend far from its banks before we obtain glimpses of the nursery- grounds and market-gardens— the third feature in this district. Here, too, wc meet with another of those streams which seem at one time to have been so plentiful in this locality. Contiguous to a narrow street called West Lane, which we believe separates the two parishes, is a stream, or ditch, communicating with the Thames, and sending out a number of minor branches, which, turning and winding, and commingling with each other, form a number of little islands in the open fields of Rotherhithe. These islands were formeriy used as bleachlng- grcunds ; but they now present rather a desolate appearance, and the streams are muddy and ill ordered. Such a curious intermixture of agricultural and manufacturing labour, of nature and art, of open ground and close factories, we do not know in any other part of London, as in the district intersected by the Greenwich Railway in the second mile of its length. We may go to many parts of the metropolis and see groups of black chimneys and large buildings, symbols of the operations con ducted within ; wc may visit many other districts in which the nurseryman or the MODERN BERMONDSEY. 23 market-gardener pursues his labours in an atmosphere (for London) tolerably free from smoke ; but here the two characteristics present themselves in common. The market-gardens are very extensive ; and between them, at various isolated spots, are the factories : here, white-lead works ; a little farther on, a rope-walk; then chemical-works, oil-cloth works, paper-mills, glue -manufactories, engine- factories ; and farther westward, the thickly-congregated leather-manufactories. In most of these instances each factory is isolated, having gardens within a few yards of it on all sides. A lover of the pastoral and the picturesque might not think the gardens improved, in rural association or in appearance, by the presence of these busy scenes of industrjr ; but it is only one instance of that which over grown London exhibits on every side — the gradual absorption of green fields in the labyrinth of brick and mortar, a process by which Greenwich and Hampstead, Clapham and Hammersmith, bid fair to be eventually as much in London as Pimlico, Bermondsey, and Mile End now are. The market-gar dens between Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Deptford, and the Kent Road still exist, however, and we are indebted to them for no small portion of our daily sup ply of culinary vegetables. On market mornings, at two or three o'clock, the market-gardener's waggon is receiving its store, and setting out for Covent Garden Market, where the greater part of the produce is sold ; and on the same day all may buy just as much of this food as thej"^ may require, and in any corner of London. This is not the place to dwell on the wonderful yet simple machinery by which a large city is supplied with its daily store of food; but such thoughts naturally occur to the mind when a district of market-gardens is spread out before us. The Roman Catholic Convent, noticed in our last Chapter, Is situated at the spot where the maritime and the agricultural districts may be said to meet. It is at the corner of a street called Parker's Row, the north end of which belongs to the former,- and the south to the latter. Nay, the Convent is associated with another circumstance which still more disturbs those notions of seclusion and romance which Ave in England are accustomed to entertain in respect to such establishments : the site on which it is erected was previously a tan-yard, sup plied with water from the tide- stream, which passes close to the Convent in Its progress from the Folly to the neighbourhood of the N%3kinger Mills. At a short distance from this Convent is the pleasantly-situated New Church of Bermondsey. In proceeding southward fi-om the "water-side division" of Bermondsey (as that part is called which is nearest to the Thames), we may select among many tolerably pleasant roads and pathways, passing through, or rather dividing, the nursery-grounds, and leading to the manufacturing establishments Avhich speckle the scene. One of the prettiest of these is Blue Anchor Lane, passing beneath one of the arches of the railway, and having extensive market-gardens stretching out on cither side of it. Another Is Blue Anchor Road, exhibiting, among more agreeable features of the spot, many shapeless and Inelegant masses of building : these consist of rope-Avalks, paper-mills, an engine-factory, a glue-factory, &c. Manor Lane and Corbett's Lane, Grange Road and WilloAV Walk, all present sufiBcient that is green and pleasant to induce a ramble through them, inter spersed with features more interesting to the manufacturer than to the gardener 24 LONDON. or to the lover of country scenery. In a road called the Spa Road, leading east ward to Bermondsey New Church, we meet with the Spa from which the road derived Its name. A chalybeate spring was discovered here about seventy years ago; and the place was converted Into a sort of tea-garden by an ingenious man, who'had exhibited some talent for painting, and who decorated his house of enter tainment with subjects from his own pencil. The following description from Hughson, compared with the " Mount Heclas" and " Mount Vesuviuses" of modern exhibitions, will make us doubt whether there is really anything new " under the sun." Mr. Keyse, the proprietor, established a sort of Vauxhall at the Bermondsey Spa, and, finding this to succeed, his ingenuity " suggested various improvements, and among others he entertained the public with an excellent representation of the siege of Gibraltar, consisting of transparencies and fireworks, constructed and arranged by Mr, Keyse himself; the height of the rock was fifty, and the length two hundred feet ; the whole of the apparatus covering about four acres of ground." On the east of the nursery- grounds are the docks, ponds, and re.servolrs be longing to the Commercial, the Greenland, and the Grand Surry Docks; and also the buildings which constitute the town of Deptford. These collectively separate the Bermondsey nurseries from that bend or " reach " of the Thames which bounds the western side of the Isle of Dogs. If we draw a line from Bermondsey New Church to the intersection of the Grange Road with the Old Kent Road, we shall find to the west, or rather the north-west, of that line nearly the whole of the factories connected with the leather and wool trade of London. A circle one mile In diameter, having its centre at the spot where the Abbey once stood, will include within its limits most of the tanners, the curriers, the fellmongers, the woolstaplers, the leather-factors, the leather-dressers, the leather-dyers, the parchment-makers, and the gliie- makers, for which this district Is so remarkable. There is scarcely a street, a road, a lane, into which we can turn without seeing evidences of -one or other of these occupations. One narrow road — leading from the Grange Road to the Kent Road — is particularly distinguishable for the number of leather- factories Avhich it exhibits on either side ; some time-worn and mean, others newly and skilfully erected. Another street, known as Long Lane, and lying westward of the church, exhibits nearly twenty distinct establishments where skins or hides undergo some of the many processes to which they are subjected. In Snow's Fields, in Bermondsey New Road, in Russell Street, upper and lower, in Willow Walk, and Page's Walk, and Grange Walk, and others whose names we cannot now remember — in all of these, leather, skins, and wool seem to be the commodities out of which the wealth of the inhabitants has been created. Even the public-houses give note of these peculiarities, by the signs chosen for them, such as the "Woolpack," the "Fellmongers' Arms," " Simon the Tanner," and others of like import. If there is any district in London whose inhabitants might be excused for supporting the proposition that " there is nothing like leather, " surely Bermondsey is that place ! It might at first seem that the connexion between leather and wool is not very apparent, the nature, uses, and preparation of the two being so very dissimilar; but when Ave remember that both are taken from those animals Avhose flesh sup- MODERN BERMONDSEY. 25 we plies us with one portion of our daily food, and in part from other animals, perceive a reason why the cleansing and prepararion of them are conveniently effected in one spot. The ox yields hide for stout leather ; the sheep yields wool and skin for thin leather and parchment ; the horse yields hide and valuable hair ; and from the following enumeration of some of the manufacturers in Ber mondsey Street alone it will be seen hoAV many branches of trade spring from these sources : — hide-sellers, tanners, leather-dressers, morocco-leather dressers, leather sellers and eutters, curriers, parchment-makers, wool-agents, wool staplers, horse-hair manufacturers, hair and flock manufacturers, patent hair-felt manufacturers. There are, besides these, skin and hide salesmen, fellmongers, leather-dyers, and glue-makers, in other parts of the vicinity. The extent to which these branches of manufacture are carried on at Bermond sey has neveifj as far as we are aware, been ascertained ; but it must be enormous. The following remarks of Mr. M'Culloch (' Statistical Account of the British Empire ') will illustrate the national importance of the manufacture of leather. After alluding to the large scale in which the manufacture is carried on at Ber mondsey, that gentleman states, that, besides the hides and skins of animals slaughtered in this country, vast quantities are imported from abroad, to be tanned or dressed in England. " At an average of the years 183.3 and 1834, no fewer than 304,279 cwt, or 34,079,248 lbs., of foreign cow, ox, and buffalo hides were entered for home consumption, exclusive of vast quantities of lamb-skins, goat-skins, &c. The total quantity of all sorts of leather, taAved, tanned, dressed, and curried in Great Britain may at present be estimated at about 65,000,000 ; which, at Is. 6d. per pound, gives 4,875,000/. as the value of the leather alone." He proceeds to estimate the value of this leather, when manufactured into shoes, harness, gloves, and other saleable articles, at nearly three times this amount, or at 13,00O,00OZ. per annum. This sum he divides into three portions, viz., 4,875,000/, for the raw material ; 2,031,000/. for profits, rent of workshops, and capital invested ; and 6,094,000/. for wages. The distribution of this large amount of wages he thus conjectures : — " Supposing those employed as shoe makers, saddlers, glovers, &c., to make, one with another, 30/. a-year, the total number of such persons will be 203,0CO. This, however, does not give the total number of persons employed in the leather-trade, inasmuch as it excludes the tanners, curriers, &c., employed In dressing and preparing the leather. But if, from the value of the prepared leather, 4,875,000/., we deduct 1,500,000/. for the value of the hides and skins, and 2,300,000/, for tanners' and curriers' profits, including the expense of bark, lime, pits, &c., we have 1,075,000/. left as wages. Now, as the wages of tanners, curriers, leather-dressers, &c., may, we believe, be taken at 35/. a-year at an average, we shall have 30,700 as the number employed in these departments; and, adding these to the persons employed in manufacturing the leather, we have a grand total of 233,700 employed in the various depart ments of the business." These are high numbers, and point to the vast importance of this department of manufacture. The nature of our publication does not admit details of manu facturing processes, nor descriptions of particular factories ; but the topography and general features of Bermondsey are so dependent on the subdivision of em- 26 LONDON. ployments arising out of the leather-manufacture, that we deem it right to glance 'ifthe^ChapTer relating to " Smithfield," the career of the ox and the sheep is traced down to the point when the drovers consign the animals to the hands oi the butcher. Let us take up the thread of the story from that pomt. Ihe animals are slaughtered, the flesh is retailed for the tables of rich and poor, and the skins and hides pass into other hands. Who is there that has not at some time or other, had his ears dinned and tormented in the London streets by a cart rattling and rumbling over the rough stones, and laden with sheep-skins? Neither the sound, nor the sight, nor the odour is a pleasant one; yet is there the germ of much wealth in those carts. They do not belong to the butcher, nor to the tanner, nor to the leather-dresser, nor to the wool-dealer; they are owned by " skin-salesmen," Avho act as agents between buyer and seller. As the Smithfield salesman transacts the dealings between the country grazier and the London butcher, receiving a small per centage on the purchase price of the animals ; as the Mark Lane corn-facfor sells the corn of the country farmer to the miller, the mealman, or the corn-chandler of London, receiving in like manner a small payment for his services; so does the skin-salesman act as agent for the butcher, disposing of the skins to the " fell-monger," and receiving a few pence on the purchase-money of each. There are some fell-mongers in Bermondsey Avho purchase their sheep-skins directly from the butchers, without the interven tion of a salesman ; but the general system is as Ave have stated. It may next be asked Avhetlier these skins, thus taken away in carts from the butchers and slaughterers, are conveyed to factories, to storehouses, or to markets? If the " fell-monger " is the purchaser, the skins are conveyed to his yard ; but if, as is more common, the salesman is employed as an intermediate party, the skins are conveyed to the Skin Market in Bermondsey. Until Avithin the last foAV years, there were two places used as skin-markets on the SouthAvark side of the water ; one near Blackfriars Road, and the other near the SouthAvark Bridge Road : but the tanners and leather-dressers, deeming it desirable to concentrate the Avhole routine of operations, made arrangements for building the present Leather and Skin Market. They formed a company, subscribed a joint stock, and purchased a large piece of ground a little to the north of Long Lane, Bermondsey ; and by about the year 1833 the Avhole Avas completed, at an expense of nearly fifty thousand pounds. On passing into Noav Weston Street from Long Lane Ave see the front portion of this building on the right-hand side. It is a long series of brick warehouses, lighted by a range of AvindoAVS, and having an arched entrance gatcAvay at either end. These entrances open into a quadrangle or court, covered for the most part Avith grass, and surrounded by Avarehouses. In the warehouses is transacted the business of a class of persons AA'ho are termed " leather-factors," Avho sell to the curriers or leather-sellers leather belonging to the tanners ; or sell London-tanned leather to country pur chasers, or country-tanned leather to London purchasers : in short, they are middle men in the traffic in leather, as skin-salesmen are in the traffic in skins. Beyond this first quadrangle is a second, called the " Skin Depository," and having four entrances, tAVo from the larger quadrangle, and two from a street leading into MODERN BERMONDSEY. 27 Bermondsey Street. This depository is an oblong plot of ground terminated by semicircular ends: it is pitched with common road stones along the middle, and flagged round with a broad foot-pavement. Over the pavement, through its whole extent, is an arcade supported by pillars ; and the portion of pavement included between every tAvo conriguous pillars is called a "bay." There are about fifty of these "bays," Avhich are let out to skin-salesmen at about tAvelve pounds per annum each ; and on the pavement of his bay the salesman ex poses the skins Avhich he is commissioned to sell. Here on market days may be seen a busy scene of traffic between the salesmen on the one hand and the fell mongers on the other. The carts, laden Avith sheep-skins, come rattling into the place, and draAV up in the road-way of the depository ; the skins are taken out, and ranged on the pavement of the bays ; the sellers and buyers make their bargains ; the purchase-money is paid into the hands of the salesman, and by him transmitted to the butcher ; and the skins are removed to the yards of the fellmongers. Our frontispiece presents a sketch of the scene here described. It is necessary here to mention a distinction which Is made between hides and skins. The transactions^ alluded to above relate to skins only, that is, the coverings of sheep and calves, Avhereas the skins of oxen and horses are known in the trade as hides. It Avas supposed, Avheii the New Skin-Market Avas built, that the dealings in hides would, in part at least, be carried on there as well as that in skins. But nearly all the ox-hides, froM Avhich the thicker kinds of leather are made, r.re still sold at Leadenhall Market, which has long been the centre of this trade. It IS not difficult to see Avhy this is the case, for cattle are generally slaughtered, not on the premises of the butcher, but in slaughter-houses near the flesh-markets, and therefore in the vicinity of Leadenhall hide-market. The grass-plot now existing in the area of the larger quadrangle of the Skin-Market is intended to be covered Avith additional warehouses or depositories, Avhenever the traffic may render such a step desirable. Nearly all the leather manufacturers in Bermondsey are proprietors in this Market, There is, then, this difference betAveen the earlier operations of the fellmongers and the tanners of Bermondsey, that the foririer purchase sheepskins at the Bermondsey Market from salesmen Avho act as agents to the London butchers, and then prepare the skins for the leather-dressers and parchment-makers; whereas the tanners purchase ox, coav, and calf skins at Leadenhall Market, from the hide-salesmen, as also horse hides from the persons knoAvn as " knackers," and then tan these hides. There are many points of similarity betAveen the tAvo departments; but there are also differences Avhich make a broad line of distinc tion betAveen them. All the tanneries in London, Avith, avo believe, one exception, are situated in Bermondsej- ; and all present nearly the same features. Whoever has resolution enough to brave the appeals to his organ of smell, and visit one of these places, Avill see a large area of ground— sometimes open above, and in other cases covered' by a roof — intersected by pits or oblong cisterns, Avhose upper edges are level Avith the ground . these cisterns are the tan-pits, in Avhich hides are exposed to the action of liquor containing oak-bark. He Avill see, perhaps, in one corner of the premises, a heap of ox and cow horns, just removed from the hide, and about to be sold to the comb-makers, the knife-handlc-makers, and other manu- 28 LONDON. facturers of horn. He will see in another corner a heap of refuse matter about tc be consigned to the glue-manufacturer. In a covered building he will find a [Neckinger Miils Leather Manuliictory, Bermondsey.] heap of hides exposed to the action of lime, for loosening the hair with which the pelt is covered ; and In an adjoining building he will probably see a number of men scraping the surfaces of the hides, to prepare them for the tan-pits. In many of the tanneries, though not all, he will see stacks of spent tan, no longer useful in the tannery, but destined for fuel or manure, or gardeners' hot-beds. In airy buildings he will see the tanned leather hanging up to dry, disposed in long ranges of rooms or galleries. Such are the features which all the tanneries, with some minor differences, exhibit. In the Willow Walk, and one or two other places in the vicinity, may be seen instances of one of the purposes to which tan is appropriated. A large plot of ground contains, in addition to heaps of tan, skeleton frames about five or six feet m height, consisting of a range of shelves one above another ; and on these shelves are placed the oblong rectangular pieces of " tan-turf," with which the middle classes have not much to do, but which are extensively purchased for fuel -at "ten or tAvelve for a penny," by the humbler classes. This Is one of the numerous branches of trade arising out of the leather-manufacture, and giving to Bermondsey so many of its peculiar characteristics. The whole of the fell-mongers belonging to the metropolis are congregated. withm a small circle around the Skin-Market in Weston Street. It forms no part MODERN BERMONDSEY. 29 of the occupation of these persons to convert the sheepskins into leather. The skins pass into their hands with the wool on, just as they are taken from the sheep ; and the fellmonger then proceeds to remove the wool from the pelt, and to cleanse the latter from some of the impurities with which it is coated. This occupation is extremely dirty and disagreeable, and offers few inducements to a visit from a stranger. The produce of the fellmongers' labours passes into the hands of two or three other classes of manufacturers, such as the wool-stapler, the leather-dresser, and the parchment-maker. The wool-staplers, thirty or forty in number, are, like the fell-mongers, located almost without a single exception in Bermondsey. They are wool-dealers, who purchase the commodity as taken from the skins, and sell it to the hatters, the woollen and worsted manufacturers, and others. They are scarcely to be denominated manufacturers, since the wool passes through their hands Avithout undergoing any particular change or preparation ; it Is sorted Into various qualities, and, like the foreign wool, packed in bags for the market. In a street called Russell Street, intersecting Bermondsey Street, the large ware houses of these wool-staplers may be seen in great number ; tiers of Avare or store rooms, with cranes over them ; waggons in the yard beneath; huge bags filled with wool — some arriving and others departing — these are the appearances which a wool-warehouse presents. It may, perhaps, not be wholly unnecessary to observe, that the sheep's wool here spoken of is only that portion Avhich is taken from the pelt or skin of the slaughtered animal, and Avhich is known by the name of skin-wool. The portion which is taken from the animal during life, and which is called " shear-AVOol," possesses qualities in some respects different from the former, and passes through various hands. As very few sheep are sheared near London, the shear-wool is not, generally speaking, brought into the London market, except that which comes from abroad. The leather-dresser, to Avhom the pelts (the name applied to skins when the wool has been removed from them) are consigned by the fell-monger, undertakes the preparation of all the thinner kinds of leather, Avhether from the sheep-pelts just alluded to, or from goat, kid, deer, dog, or other thin skins. The leather for gloves, for women's shoes, for bookbinders, for coach-trimmings, and for ornamental purposes, is mostly prepared by the leather-dresser, who differs from the tanner in this, that the latter prepares the thicker hides, which require the process of tanning ; whereas the former manufactures those thinner kinds of leather which are prepared with alum, with oil, and with other substances, but not by tanning. The same remark may be applied to the leather-dressers of the metropolis as to the tanners, the fell-mongers, and the wool-staplers — Bermondsey contains them all, with few exceptions. A leather-dresser's manufactory presents many of the features observable In a tannery. There are the pits or cisterns in which the skins and pelts are steeped ; there are the blocks on which the skins are placed while being scraped ; there are the drying-rooms in which the pre pared leather is hung. But there are points in which the two kinds of factories differ. When the tanner has tanned his leather, any staining, softening, or farther preparation which it may require is performed by the currier ; whereas the leather-dresser brings the thinner kinds of leather to a completion, carrying 30 LONDON. on Avithin his OAvn establishment all the processes, from the cleaning of tlie pell to the consignment of the leather to the glove-maker, the shoemaker, or the bookbinder. The dyeing of coloured leather, the " tawing" of Avhite leather, the "shammoying" of wash-leather— all are done, to a greater or less extent, by the leather-dresser. There is one extensive establishment at Bermondsey, knoAvn as the Neckinger Mills, at Avhich, in addition to other varieties of leather, a very large proportion of all the " morocco-leather" made in England is produced. The stores of prepared leather kept at an establishment of this kind are im mense. The mills here spoken of were built sixty or eighty years ago by a company Avho attempted the manufacture of paper from straw ; but this failing, the premises passed into the hands of others, Avho established the leather-manu facture. In illustration of Avhat Avas. formerly stated respecting the tide-streams, wc may remark that this is one of the factories Avhich still obtain their supply of Avater from this source. We have thought that a Avood-cut representation, given in a previous page, of a leather-manufacturer's establishment, avIU convey a general idea of the appearance which Bermondsey derives from the numerous examples of them. Glue-manufactories form another item in the list for which Bermondsey is so remarkable, and Avhich, so far as the metropolis is concerned, is confined almost Avholly to that locality. Here, as in the leather-manufacture, both buildings and open ground are required. The small erections which Ave have spoken of as being visible in the glue-manufactories from the Greenwich Raihvay are covered stages, or tiers of frames, each frame having a net-work stretched across it, for the reception of thin cakes of glue, Avhich are thus dried by the access of air. In passing one of these factories more closely, the eye of a stranger is attracted by the appearance of thousands of small white substances, either suspe;nded under roofs or lying on stages exposed to the open air. These are scraps and parings of hides and skins, useless to the leather-manufacturer, but valuable to the glue- maker, as the substance Avhence his glue is produced : they are thus exposed for the purpose of being dried before the gelatine Is extracted from them. After all this has been done— after the tanner and the fellmonger, the leather-dresser and the glue-maker, have derived from the hides and skins all that is valuable to them, and have coined gold out of these rude substances— the refuse still possesses a value as manure, for which purpose it is sold to agriculturists and gardeners. There was a time when the manufacture of hats formed one of the charac teristics of this neighbourhood ; but this branch of manufacture, from some cause with which we are not Avell acquainted, has suffered a curious migration. At about the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, the " Maze" (a dis trict between Bermondsey Street and the Borough High Street), Tooley Street, the northern end of Bermondsey Street, and other streets in the immediate vicinity, formed the grand centre of the hat-manufacture of London; but since then some commercial motlve-poAver ha.i exerted a leverage Avhich has transferred neariy the Avhole assemblage farther westward. If we wish to find the centre of this manufacture, with its subordinate branches of hat-block makers, hat-dyers, hat-lining and leather cutters, hat-shag makers, hat-tip makers hat-bowstring MODERN BERMONDSEY. 3] makers, hat-f'urrlers, hat-trimming makers, &c., we must visit the district included between the Borough High Street and Blackfriars Road. A glance at that curi ous record of statistical facts, a ' London Directory,' avIII show to what an extent this manufacture is carried on in the district just marked out. It is true that Bermondsey still contains one hat-factory which has been characterised as the largest in the Avorld, and that Tooley Street still exhibits a sprinkHng of smaller firms ; but the manufacture is no longer a feature to be numbered among the peculiarities of Bermondsey, The connexion betAveen fur, hair, avooI, and skin — all being portions of the coating of animals — might raise a supposition that the manufacture or rather preparation of the first, like that of the other three, is carried on at Bermondsey, But this is the case only to a small extent. The fur for hatters Is cut from the pelts of the beaver, the neutria, the rabbit, and other fur-bearing animals, by a class of tradesmen called " hatters' furriers," residing principally in the hat- making district ; Avhile the furs Avhich are left on the pelts such as are used for muffs and tippets are slightly dressed by persons residing in various parts of London. A walk through the streets of Bermondsey shoAvs us that everybody is busy and active. Scarcely any houses are shut up — scarcely any loiterers or idlers are looking about for a leaning-post. Unlike Spitalfields, which experiences great and frequent depressions in trade — thus bearing heavily on the resources and the comforts of the Aveaver — the staple manufacture of Bermondsey seems al- Avays more or less flourishing. Wc seldom hear of petitions, and subscriptions, and appeals; for the "poor tanners;" and long may it be before such are heard ! If this article should fall into the hands of any Avho are accustomed to cross London Bridge daily in the course of their regular avocations, they Avill probably understand to Avhom we allude Avhen Ave speak of the sack and bag Avomen of Bermondsey. Not more regular are the " short stages " and omnibuses in their daily arrival from the villages south of the Thames, than the Avomen Avhom Ave see bustling along to and fro over London Bridge, Their features' shoAV them to be generally natlA^es of the "Emerald Isle;" their garb shows that they move in a humble, a very humble, station in life; but their light and rapid Avalk or run, or — perhaps more correctly — trot, indicates the happy activity of persons having " something to do '' by Avhich an honest living maybe gained. These Avomen carry on their heads bundles of coarse canvas, either made up into bags and sacks, or about so to be. The corn-trade of Mark-Lane, the Avool-trade of Bermondsey, and other branches of commercial dealings, require a very largo supply of coarse bags and sacks. There are many firms Avhose sole or principal occupation is to manufacture these bags, while other persons keep " sack and bag hire-Avarehouscs.'' The Avomen to Avhom we allude are the persons Avho make these bags' and sacks. They go to the Avarehouses, principally on the northern side of the Avater, receive each a bundle of coarse canvas or other Avoven material sufficient lo make a certain number of bags, place the bundles on their heads, and — braving Aveather and croAvds and interruptions right merrily — hasten to their OAvn poor 32 LONDON. dwellings, which are principally in the lower parts of Bermondsey, They receive, as may be supposed, an extremely-low price for the labour which they bestow. As soon as the bags are made they are wrapped up into a bundle and carried home to the warehouses. The morning is the time when these busy journeyings to and fro are principally made ; and they form one among the many " moving pictures " Avhich London Bridge presents. iTIermoiidsey Sack and Bag Women, London Bridge.] [The Mint.] LIII.— THE MINT, A STRIKING illustration of the magnitude of the transactions of the British Empire may be drawn from the recent records of the Mint. Between the years 1816 and 1836 the money coined in it amounted in round numbers to a quarter of a million of copper, twelve millions of silver, and considerably above fifty-five millions of gold, making a total of between sixty-seven and sixty-eight millions of money sent into circulation within twenty years. Whilst we are dealing with figures, we may add that the charge for coining this enormous amount of precious metal was nearly four hundred and twenty-one thousand pounds, and the actual cost about two hundred and fourteen thousand pounds, leaving a profit to the Company of Moneyers not much less in amount. Any one may send bullion to be coined, but for many years the Bank of England alone has been the medium between the foreign importer and the Mint. During the lapse of time the sourqes of our supplies of bullion have been frequently changed. Time was when even England itself added silver to the other inexhaustible stores which it was for ever pouring forth from its bosom; Edward I., for Instance, received no VOL. in. ^ 34 LONDON. « less than seven hundred and four pounds weight of silver during the year 1296 from Devonshire, and down to the reign of George I, silver money has been coined from the proceeds of the Welsh and other native mines. The principal sources of supply at present are the mines of Peru and Mexico for both silver and gold ; and from the mines comparatively recently discovered in the Russian Ural mountains a large quantity of gold is also received. The Bank buys silver at the market price, which fluctuates ; gold at 3/, 17s, 9i, per ounce ; -but it will make no purchases of gold without having first sent specimens for assay to the king's assay-master of the Mint, This is the simple history of our uncoined money generally. But there are some notable exceptions. A few weeks since the neAvspapers of the day informed us that considerable interest Avas excited by the arrival in the Borough of the first portion of the ransom payable by the Chinese nation to the British Government, which amounted to two millions of dollars. It was packed in wooden chests, and filled ten Avaggons and carts, forming a train of considerable length ; and Avas escorted by a detachment of the 32nd regiment. The whole passed over London Bridge, and was conveyed to the Bank. This money, which weighs upAvards of sixty-five tons, was brought from China by Her Majesty's ship ' Conway." It Avill, no doubt, ultimately be coined into British money, and we shall be circulating our shillings and six pences to and fro without the slightest notion of their having once formed a part of the price of Canton — nay, for aught we knoAv, some of them may in their state of transformation find their way back again to the Celestial Empire, to gladden, possibly, for a second time the eyes of some unconscious Chinese, and be treasured for their novelty in the same cabinet where they had previously been hoarded for their intrinsic value. In 1804 a somoAvhat similar convoy passed through the streets, Avhich had been taken under no less memorable circumstances. Political considerations having determined our Government to commence war with Spain, a bright notion occurred to it before making a formal declaration of its purposes. Some Spanish vessels with treasure were then expected home ; accordingly Captain Moore, Avith four vessels, was despatched to intercept them. He was successful, but did not obtain possession of the prize till the Spanish admiral's vessel had blown up, and some hundreds of persons had gone to their last account. To the honour of the British people, their indig nation was all but universal. There was one incident that did much to deepen the general impression of the affair, A Spanish gentleman Avas on board one of the ships, Avho, after tAventy-five years' industry and economy in America, had realised a fortune, and Avas now returning to his native country, contented in its possession, and blessed AvIth a numerous and beautiful family to share it. Before the action commenced, he, with one of his sons, went on "board one of the largest ships, the better perhaps to assist in repelling so unexpected an attack ; and in a few minutes beheld the one in which he had left his wife and his other children surrounded with flames. This was the admiral's ship already mentioned. None of the humiliating and painful reflections attached to this case belonged , to the one preceding it by some forty years, and which accordingly seems to have been marked by a very joyous sort of procession. The day was a remarkable one, being that on which the young sovereign George the Third's first son and successor was born, " Just after Her Majesty Avas safely in her bed, the waggons with the THE MINT. 35 treasure of the ' Hermione ' entered St, James's Street; on which His Majesty and the nobility went to the windoAVs over the palace-gate to see them, and joined their acclamations on two such joyful occasions ; from Avhence the procession proceeded to the Tower in the following order, viz. : — A company of light horse, attended with kettle-drums, French horns, trumpets, and. hautboys. A covered waggon, decorated with an English jack, and a Spanish flag underneath, hanging behind the waggon. Tavo more covered waggons. Seven waggons uncovered. And, lastly, a covered waggon, decorated with an English jack and a Spanish flag. In the whole tAventy Avaggons. The procession Avas concluded Avith an officer on horseback, carrying an English ensign, attended by another holding a drawn cutlass. The escort to each Avaggon consisted of four marines with their bayonets fixed. The whole cavalcade was saluted by the people with acclamations of joy. On opening some of the chests at the Bank they were greatly surprised to find a bag full of gold instead of silver in one of them ; several have since been found of the same kind," * The treasure weighed sixty-five tons, and was valued at nearly a million sterling. In the last incident of this kind we shall mention, which occurred just a century before, the money Avas obtained without violence of any kind from its OAvners, yet not the less disgraceful was its possession. It was the purchase-money of Dunkirk, acquired by Cromwell, and so much valued by the English people, that just before the sale Avas concluded the merchants of London offered through the Lord Mayor any sum of money to Charles rather than it should be lost. The offer, however, was declined. We have already, in our account of the Tower, noticed Charles's visit there to see the wealth he had so dearly purchased. Pepys had a hope of getting some portion of the treasure to pay off the naval arrears, but the king knew better how to dispose of it than on such merely national purposes. These passages refer to one of the extraordinary modes of supplying the Mint with bullion. Another proposed method, which has engaged a great deal of " attention, is of a very interesting, though, unfortunately for its projectors, not of a very practical character. The name of Raymond Lully, the alchemist, is well known. He was the chief of those who, in the middle ages, helped to spread abroad through Europe a belief in the possibility of transmuting the baser metals into gold. He appears to have been a simple-minded, enthusiastic man, who in this matter probably imposed upon himself by his discoveries in the then Avon- derful science of chemistry. His chief object, to which he adhered with the most exemplary fortitude through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, was the con version of the Mohammedans ; and when he came to England, during the reign of Edward I., it was to engage that monarch in some new holy war. Edward had, hoAvever, plenty of business on hand with the Scotch and Welsh patriots ; but the temptation held out by Lully was irresistible, being no less than that of filling his treasury on the cheapest possible terms. The alchemist set to work in " the chamber of St, Katherine " in the Tower ; and Ashmole says, " gold is affirmed, by an unwritten verity, to have been made .... and, besides the tra dition, the inscription is some proof, for upon the reverse is a cross fleury, with lioneux, inscribed, Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum ibat, that is, as Jesus passed invisible and in the most secret manner by the midst of the Pharisees so * Gent. Mag, Aug, 12, 1762. d2 36 LONDON. that gold was made by Invisible and secret art amidst the ignorant.''* Ashmole here refers to an inscription first seen on the gold noble of Edward III., and continued on various coins doAvn to the period of Elizabeth. Much specu lation has been excited by it, but to little purpose. The reader may wonder Avhy the work did not proceed, since the great secret was discovered. It appears that, after a time, Edward refused to keep his promise, and Lully, on his part, declined any longer making the King rich. He was, in consequence, con fined in one of the Tower dungeons. Such Is the story ; and it does not seem very difficult to extract from it the essential truth, that alchemy was yet to be ranked amongst the undiscovered secrets of science. Not such Avas the conclusion of the government. One of the most curious parts of the history of the Mint is the con tinual faith our sovereigns have had in being able to supply it with cheap gold and silver. The patent roll of the third year of Edward III.'s reign states that the King had been given to understand that John le Rous and Master William de Dalby could make silver by art oi alkemony ; that they had heretofore made it, and still did make it ; and that by such making of that metal they could greatly profit the realm. He therefore commanded Thomas Carey to find them out, and to bring them before the King, with all the instruments, &c., belonging to the said art. If they would come willingly, they were to be brought safely and honourably ; but if not, they were to be seized and brought before the King, wherever he might be. All sheriffs, &c., were commanded to assist the said Thomas Carey. Either rumour had a little enhanced the skill of " John le Rous and Master William de Dalby," or they had themselves assumed too readily their "blushing honours," for no alchemic money poured into the Mint in consequence of the mandate. In the reign of Henry Vl. the tempting cup of wealth seemed again brought to the royal lips. In that monarch's twenty-second year John Cobbe presented a petition to the King, stating that he was desirous of operating upon certain materials by art philosophical, viz., to transubstantiate the inferior metals, by the said art, into perfect gold and silver, so as to endure every trial ; but that certain persons had suspected this to be done by art unlawful, and there fore had power to hinder and disturb him in giving proof of it. The King, in answer, granted a special licence of protection, and, hoping at least to find among a multitude of alchemists the treasure he desired, soon after bestowed a similar mark of his grace on several other persons. Growing more and more impatient for some tangible result, in his thirty-fifth year he appointed a commission to inquire into the truth of the art, the professors of it having promised him wealth enough to pay all his debts in gold and silver, to the great advantage of the kingdom. The members consisted of Augustine and Preaching friars, the Queen's physician, the master of St. Laurence Pontlgny College, an alderman of London, a fishmonger, two grocers, and a mercer— certainly one of the oddest mixtures of persons for a tribunal of judgment on a scientific question we ever remember to have read of. The result must have been, we should suppose, par tially favourable, for two years later we find the King again granting a licence for the pursuit. The people's faith in alchemy, during all this period, seems to have been no less earnest than that of their sovereign, but it was a faith of a * A.l.Tnole'8 Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. The translation of the inscription is, however, a very lo«e paraphrase. Literally it is—" Jesus passing over went through the midst of them." THE MINT. 37 very different nature. They appear to have believed that gold and silver might be made, but only by the assistance of the Evil One. An alchemist was a wiser, subtler, and infinitely more mischievous sort of witch, one who would soar above the vulgar desire of sticking pins into people, and preventing butter from being churned, in order to play at ducks and drakes with the national money. Many and many a time, no doubt, has the rustic (and perhaps even higher than hej, when he has heard some of the marvellous tales of the alchemists and the Mint, blessed himself as the thought crossed him that his little hoard might be of money made in the mysterious way, and gone to look at it once more to be sure that it had not disappeared. We have already seen that John Cobbe was obliged to petition the King for a licence, on the ground of having been disturbed by persons who suspected him to practise by art unlawful ; another evidence of a similar kind, and in connexion with a new instance of the royal hankering after this " new way to pay old debts," occurs in the Leet Book of the corporation of Coventry, under the date of the 6th of January, in the seventeenth year of the reign of Henry's conqueror and successor, Edward IV. " The mayor received a privy signet by the hands of a servant of the King, the tenor whereof after ensueth : ' By the King. — Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well, and let you wite (know) that it hath been showed unto us that our Avell-beloved John French, our servant, com'inying [query, coming in] and commonly abiding in our city there, intendeth by his labour to practise a true and a profitable conclusion in the cunning of transmutation of metals, to our profit and pleasure ; and for to make a clear showing of the same before certain our council and servants by us therefore appointed, is required a certain time to prepare his materials : we, not willing therefore our said servant to be troubled in that he shall so work or prepare for our pleasure and profit, will and charge you that ye ne suffer him iu any wise by person or persons to be letted, troubled, or vexed of his said labour and practice, to the intent that he at his good liberty may shew unto us, and such as be by us therefore appointed, the clear effect of his said conclusion. Given under our signet, at our palace of Westminster, the 29th day of December.' " The excessive courteousness of tone perceptible in this epistle will not escape observation. From this time, if the art of alchemy still continued for a time to find believers, the sovereigns of England appear to have grown too wise by experience to rank themselves publicly among the number. The establishment of the Mint in London must date from the remotest periods of the known history of the latter. There can be no doubt some of the Roman emperors coined money here, and specimens bearing the name of London in an abbreviated form still exist. In the Saxon period, also, Ave know not only that London had a Mint, but that it was the chief one in the kingdom. There were eight moneyers (as the chief officers were called, to whom the coining of money was intrusted in early times) in London in the reign of Athelstan, and six at Winchester, the next place in rank. The Mint in the Tower is as old as the erection ; and it has been worked in every reign from the Conquest to the present time, with one or two unimportant exceptions. In treating of the " Mint " through the remainder of this article, we propose to direct our attention chiefly to the growth of our national coinage, as illustrated by the introduction of the most important new coins from time to time into it. The engravings introduced will at the same time show the nature and extent of its artistical progress, from 38 LONDON. the earliest period up to that of the Commonwealth ; for since then, if there has been progress at all, it has been in the wrong direction. This is no place to enter into disquisitions on the uncertain subject of the money of the ancient Britons, of the Roman-British, or of the Saxons : suffice it, therefore, to observe that to the period of the first are assigned the ring coins of the character here represented ; to that of the second the rude coins, bearing some — inscriptions [Ring Coins.] supposed to refer to Boadicea, and others to Cunobelin, a British king of the time of Augustus ; Avhilst to the third may be assigned the first real coin having a direct connexion with our present system. The silver penny is first mentioned in the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, who reigned from 689 to 726. It most probably derived its name from the word pendo, to weigh, being then, as now, the 240th part of a pound. Its weight was 22^ grains, and would now ^be worth 2|i. This coin was for several centuries the chief circulating medium, "-^he silver penny of Alfred," says Ruding (to Avhom we must express our obli gations), " IS the first authentic coin yet discovered which can with certainty be appropriated to the London Mint," The history of the silver penny offers a good illustration of the disgraceful as well as foolish system adopted by our older sovereigns of depreciating the real value of coin, in the hope of preserving at the same time the origmal current value. From 22^ grains, in the Anglo-Saxon period. It had fallen to 18 grains by the reign of the third Edward, to 12 grains Silver Pennies. [AVilliam I.] [Edward 1 [Richard II.) THE MINT. 39 by the reign of the fourth Edward, to 8 grains by the reign of the sixth Edward, and during the reign of Elizabeth Avas fixed at 7 if grains, its present weight. The silver halfpenny and farthing are both mentioned in the translation of the Saxon gospels; they would noAv be Avorth respectively about l^d. and |c/. : these also continued for several centuries in circulation. The last halfpenny Avas struck during the Commonwealth ; the last farthing in the reign of EdAvard VI. Next in antiquity to the Saxon penny is the styca, or copper money of the kings of Northumberland, and which appear to have been confined to that kingdom. Their date is from 670 to about the close of the ninth century. The styca Avould noAV be worth about a third of a farthing. The rudeness of the money during these early times, and of the system under Avhich they Avere coined, offered a wide field for knavery ; and the consequence Avas that the currency was at all times in a deplorable state. Punishments more and more severe were tried on the great offenders, who Avere the moneyers them selves, but with only the most temporary benefit. We learn that in the reign of Edgar the penny had become at one time scarcely equal to. a halfpenny in Aveight ; and on one Whit Sunday, St. Dunstan, who had become very indignant at this state of things on the part of the public officers, refused to celebrate mass till three moneyers had received immediate punishment. Accordingly their right hands were struck off. A more frightful instance of the kind occurred in the reign of Henry I., the " Lion of Justice " as he has been called, who had a very significant testimony of the baseness of his money in the refusal of dealers U take it in the market. He was then in Normandy, but, determined upon swift and sweeping vengeance, he sent over his mandate to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, to summon the moneyers throughout England to appear at Winchester against Christmas Day. As they arrived, they were taken apart singly, and underwent the most cruel and disgraceful mutilations. They were afterwards driven into banishment. Three alone out of ninety-four persons escaped punishment, and to them Avas committed the charge of making a new coinage to supply the Avhole kingdom. The rudeness of the money offered, of course, facilities to others beside moneyers for living upon the coinage. Makers and utterers of false coin flourished. In a curious anecdote of King John and Pandulph, we see that even learned ecclesiastics occasionally were to be found in their ranks. Immediately after sentence of excommunication Avas pronounced on John by Pandulph at Northampton in 1212, the King, doubtless with the view of intimidating Pan dulph for continuing the interdict he had promulgated, ordered the sheriff to bring before him all the prisoners then in his custody. Some of these he caused to be hung, some to have their eyes torn out, and some their feet cut off. Among the prisoners Avas a priest, a clerk, Avho had counterfeited money, Avhom the King ordered to be hanged. Pandulph at once stepped forward, and threatened to excommunicate whoever should touch the priest, a.nd went himself in search of a candle to fulfil his determination. John was noAV frightened, and, following the legate, delivered the prisoner into his hands that he might himself execute justice upon him. The latter, however, was immediately set at liberty. The chief offenders against the King's coin, if history has not belied them, Avere the Jews, of whom no less than 280 persons of both sexes were hung in London alone by EdAvard I. His bigotry against them, coupled with his 40 LONDON. rapacity, which their wealth was so well able to gratify, may account for a great part of these horrible proceedings, without taking it for granted that his Jewish Avere so infinitely worse than his Christian subjects. But Edward did not punish only. He was too much of the statesman to allow all the evils of his monetary system to remain unchecked, save by the irregular operation of such influences : to him the Company of Moneyers are indebted for a confirmation of the privi leges they still enjoy (iticluding the great one of being the only national coiners), and most probably also for a general consolidation and improvement of their body, so as to make it more responsible ; for we find that by the following reign the reformation of the Mint may be said to have been essentially completed : then an officer called the Comptroller was appointed, who, like the Warden and the Master, was to send in his accounts separately. From this time no fraud could take place without the conjunction of the three officers. The Company now consists of seven senior and junior members and a provost, who undertake the coinage at fixed prices. The improvements carried into effect among the coiners appear very wisely to have been closely connected with a similar reformation of the coinage. From the reign of Henry III. English money begins to improve in appearance, as well as to exhibit more variety. According to a manuscript chronicle in the archives of the city of London, the King, in 1257, made a penny of the finest gold, which weighed two sterlings, and willed that it should be current for twenty pence. This was the first English coinage of gold. Under the date of Edward I's reign, our old writers speak of a coinage of silver halfpennies and farthings, then for the first time made ¦ round, instead as of old, square. These new coins were issued in 1279, and are connected with an interesting story. An old prophecy of Merlin had declared that whenever the money of England should be round, the Prince of Wales should be crowned in London. Llewellyn, the last prince, was slain by Edward in 1282 : his head was cut off and sent to London, where it was placed in the ToAver, crowned with willows, in mockery either of its late unhappy owner's pretensions or of the prophecy. [Silver Groat of Edwaril UL] [Gold Noble of Richard H.j Edward III. introduced several new coins into circulation, namely, the gold florin, with Its half and quarter ; the gold noble, also with its divisions ; the groat and the half-groat. The gold florin, intended to pass for six shillings, now worth about nineteen, was found an inconvenient sum, and also. It is said, priced beyond its real value : so it soon gave place to the gold noble, or rose noble, as it was sometimes called, of the value of 6s. 8d., or half a mark. On this coin we per- THE MINT. 41 ceive Edward, completely armed, in a ship— a reference most probably to his great naval victory over the French at Sluys in 1340, when the latter lost from ten to fifteen thousand men. This is the coin bearing the extraordinary legend before mentioned, and which was supposed in ancient times to have been made of LuUy's wondrous gold. The noble of Richard II. (shown above) is almost an exact fac simile of this famous coin, which was subsequently (temp. Henry VI.) raised to the value of ten shillings, and called the rial. The silver groat borrowed its name from the French word gros, and was no doubt so designated from its being the largest piece then known. No new coins appeared from this time until the reign of Edward IV. ; but a story of a remarkable kind is told by Speed, Hollinshed, and other writers, of which, according to a high authority, the silver coins of Henry V. probably pre sent a permanent memorial. In the coin here shoAvn the reader will perceive [Silver Groat of Henry V.] below the flowing hair small round circles. These are the only distinguishing features of Henry V.'s coin from his father's, and are, it is supposed, " intended for eyelet holes, from an odd stratagem when he was prince." * The following account of the " odd stratagem " is from Speed. The period referred to is the latter part of Henry IV. 's reign, when the King being " somewhat crazy, and keeping his chamber, hearing news daily of his son's loose exercises, too mean for a prince, and their constructions — (ever made to aim at his crown) , he began both to withdraw his fatherly affection, and to fear some violence against his own person ; which, Avhen Prince Henry heard of, by some that favoured him of the King's council, in a strange disguise he repaired to his court, accompanied with many lords and noblemen's sons. His garment was a gown of blue satin, wrought full of eyelet holes, and at every eyelet the needle left hanging by the silk it was wrought with. About his arm he wore a dog's collar, set full of SS of gold, the tirets thereof being most fine gold. Thus coming to Westminster and the court of his father, having commanded his followers to advance no farther than the fire in the hall, himself, accompanied with some of the King's household, passed on to his presence, and, after his duty and obeisance done, offered to make known the cause of his coming. The King, weak then with sickness, and supposing the worst, commanded himself to be borne into a withdrawing chamber, some of his lords attending upon him, before whose feet Prince Henry fell, and with all reverent obeisaifce spake to him as followeth : — ' Most gracious sovereign and renowned father, the suspicion of disloyalty and divulged reports of my danger ous intendments towards your royal person and crown hath enforced at this time and in this manner to present myself and life at your Majesty's dispose. Some * Leake's History of British Money. 42 LONDON, faults and misspent time (with blushes I may speak it) my youth hath com mitted, yet those made much more by such fleering pickthanks that blow them stronger into your unwilling and distasteful ears. The name of sovereign ties allegiance to all ; but of a father, to a further feeling of nature's obedience : so that my sins were double if such suggestions possessed my heart : for the law oif God ordaineth that he Avhich doth presumptuously against the ruler of his people shall not live, and the child that smiteth his father shall die the death. So far therefore am I from any disloyal attempts against the person of you, my father and the Lord's anointed, that if I knoAV any of whom you stood in the least dan ger or fear, my hand, according to duty, should be the first to free your sus picion. Yea, 1 will most gladly suffer death to ease your perplexed heart ; and to that end I have this day prepared myself, both by confession of my offences past, and receiving the blessed sacrament. Wherefore I humbly beseech your Grace to free your suspicion from all fear conceived against me with this dagger, the stab Avhereof I avIII willingly receive here at your Majesty's hand, and so doing, in the presence of these lords, and before God at the day of judgment, I clearly forgive my death.' But the King, melting into tears, cast down the naked dagger (which the prince delivered him), and raising his prostrate son, embraced and kissed him, confessing his ears to have been over-credulous that way, and promising never to open them again against him. But the prince, unsatisfied, instantly desired that at least his accusers might be produced, and, if convicted, to receive punishment, though not to the full of their demerits : to which request the King replied that, as the offence was cajjital, so should it be examined by the peers, and therefore willed him to rest contented until the next parliament. Thus by his great Avisdom he satisfied his father from further sus picion, and recovered his love that nearly was lost,"* [Angel of Edward IV.] The gold angel, and angelet or half-angel, were first struck by Edward IV, i.. 1466, and were intended to pass in the room and at the value of the noble and m [Sovereign of Henry VII.] ¦- Speed's History of Great Britain, ed. 1632, p. 7C7. THE MINT. 43 half-noble, but were considerably inferior in intrinsic value. The next new coins issued from the Mint during the reign of Henry VII. : these were the sovereign, with its double and half, of gold, and the testoon or shilling of silver. The term shilling is, at least, as old as the Saxon period, Avhen, however, it expressed money of account only : it noAv became a coin of currency. The name testoon [Groat or Shilling of Henry Vll. [The George Noble of Henry VIII.] was derived from the French word teste or tete, a head, the royal portrait being stamped in the novel form of a profile. The coin itself Avas often called a groat. The testoon in the course of a reign or two obtained a bad reputation, having become greatly debased. HeyAvood has several epigrams on the subject. Here is one of them : — " These testoons look red ; how like you the same ? 'Tis a token of grace : they blush f6r shame.'' The debasement here referred to commenced with the reign of Henry VIII., Avho, to the other characteristics of his reign, added the feature that he Avas the first English sovereign who corrupted the sterling quality of his coin. His pre decessors had often tried the effect of making a small piece of silver or gold pass for the value of larger ones ; but in some cases this inay have arisen from erro neous notions as to the laAvs which govern the value of money, and, at the worst, it Avas a sort. of frank dishonesty : it was reserved for " bluff King Hal" to try to cheat the nation ; to keep the coin of proihise to the eye, but break it to the hope ; to place, in a word, the British Government on the level of the poor Avretches who Avere being continually strung up for the same crime, without having the same excuse for its commission. Among the coins struck by Henry VIII. may be mentioned the George noble, so called from the repre sentation of St. George and the Dragon stamped on the reverse. A specimen of a silver crown-piece was coined by Henry, but that coin was first issued for currency by his son EdAvard, Avith the half-crown, sixpence, and threepence [Crown of Edward VI.] 44 LONDON. During this reign the corruption of the coin Avas carried even still further. Henry had reduced the proportions pf his silver from eleven ounces two penny weights of the pure metal and eighteen pennyweights of alloy, to four ounces of silver and eight of alloy. Edward's government now left only three ounces of silver in the pound of mixed metal. Old Latimer, in one of his sermons (1548), complains bitterly of the interference of the ecclesiastics of his day in the affairs of government : " Some," he says, " are ambassadors, some of the privy council, some to furnish the court, some are lords of the Parliament, some are presidents, siadi &om.e comptrollers of Mints. Well, well, is this their duty? Is this their office ? Is this their calling ? Should we have ministers of the church to be comptrollers of the Mint ? . . . . I would fain know who comptroUeth the devil at home at his parish while he comptroUeth the Mint?" The honest bishop was also very probably thinking at the same time how the Mint was comptroUed by them, but left that part of the business untouched, as being beyond his sphere. All this evil was now to be remedied, and, above most other features, the reform ation of the coinage is the one perhaps that adds the greatest lustre to the reign of the virgin queen. In our account of the Exchange, we have, had occasion to show that Sir Thomas Gresham was one of the most strenuous promoters of this reformation, if indeed he was not its chief originator. The silver was now restored to its original proportions of eighteen pennyweights of alloy in the pound of standard metal, which are also the proportions observed to this day. In making this alteration It was necessary to recall the corrupt coin of her brother and father, and melt it down for re-casting. The real value of what was received at the Mint for this purpose was about 244,000/., its current value having actually been 638,000/. Whilst the process of reformation was going on, Elizabeth went publicly to the Tower, where she coined several pieces with her own hand, and distributed them among her suite. This queen added silver three -halfpenny and three-farthing pieces to the money of England ; and during her reign the first milled money appeared ; the " mill-sixpences " of which Master Slender was robbed. [Milled Sixpence of Elizabeth, j [Three-farthings of Elizabeth.] During the period commencing with the reign of Charles I. and ending with that of his son, the history of the Mint is highly interesting ; we can here only notice in the fewest words its chief points. One of Charles's most despotic acts in the contest with the Parliament was the seizing the money placed in the Mint by the merchants of London (a custom with them at that time) to the amount of 200,000/., and, like most of his other acts of a similar nature, recoiled terribly upon himself: some of the most influential moneyed men of the empire were made hostile to him. The coins of Charles I. are in themselves a history of his THE MINT. 45 subsequent life, showing in the variety of their shape and the places of their coinage the troubled character of the period, and the shifts to which he was con tinually reduced. We have them lozenge-shaped, round, and octangular; and others again are small bits of silver plate, an inch and a half long, with a scarcely legible drawing of a castle. Among the places of mintage we find Oxford York Shrewsbury, Newark, Carlisle, Pontefract, &c. Silver ten and twenty shilling pieces were struck by Charies. In marked contrast with the money current during the war appears that of the Commonwealth when the contest was over. Unquestionably the finest coins we can boast of belong to the period in most other respects so unfavourable to the arts. Prior to the war Nicholas Briot, a French engraver, had produced for Charles I. the most beautiful money then known : it was a pupil of Briot's, Thomas Simon, who, in the service of Cromwell, outstripped his master, and produced the coins here shown, in which the bust of the great Protector is considered to be, with few exceptions, the most masterly [Silver Crown of Cromwell.] production of any modern artist who has exhibited his genius in this mode. It is probable that Simon's very excellence In connexion with such a subject was his dire offence when Charles II. came to the throne. How else are we to account for the treatment he then received ? He was superseded ; and although in a generous spirit of emulation he prepared a crown-piece, esteemed to this day one of the noblest specimens of medalling known, and presented it to the King, with a petition for his restoration, the application was unsuccessful. We must not quit the subject of the Commonwealth money till we have referred to the coins which so long furnished a standing joke for the Cavaliers. These appeared before Cromwell's appointment as Protector, and presented on the one side the English arms, and on the other the arms of England and' Ireland, with the in scription " God with us." , One Royalist jest was, that it appeared from their own coin that God and the Commonwealth were on different sides ; another, that the two shields were the breeches of the Rump Parliament : this last was a pro lific source of amusement. So late as 1731, we read in a prologue, spoken in Bury School, of " A silver pair of breeches neatly wrought. Such as you see upon an old Rump groat. Which emblem our good grandsires chose to boast To all the world, the tail was uppermost." * » Gent's Mag., 1731. 46 LONDON. We may now dismiss rapidly the only remaining coins that require notice. The guinea was coined by Charies II., and was so called as being made from the gold brought over by the African Company from Guinea, whose stamp, the elephant, appears upon all the coins made from their bullion. Accompanying the guinea were struck in the same reign the five-guinea piece, the two- guinea, and the half-guinea. The present copper coinage of halfpennies and farthings also dates from Charies's reign;- and the figure of Britannia, still preserved, was modelled after the celebrated Miss Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond. Charies II. also coined a tin farthing, with a stud of copper in the centre. James, and William and Mary, continued that coin, and added a halfpenny of the same kind. This tin coinage was recalled in 1693. The reign of William and Mary is memorable in the history of the Mint, from another great reformation of the coinage, which had become so much depreciated by clipping, that 572 bags of silver coins brought into the Mint in 1695, which ought to have weighed above 18,450 lbs., did actually weigh but a littie more than half, or 9,480 Ibs.^ This single re-coinage must have cost the Government nearly two millions. Anne's reign is chiefly noticeable to the connoisseur in coins for the famous farthings, about which there has been so much misunderstanding. A complete set of this Queen's farthings comprise no less than six different coins, though these are all more or less rare, but in particular the one here [Queen Anne's Farthing.] \ engraved, which is consequently valuable. The gold quarter-guinea was coined by George I., and is remarkable as bearing for the first time the letters F. D. (Fidel Defensor). Gold seven-shilling pieces and copper pennies and twopences first appeared during the reign of George III. ; both the first and the last have since been withdraAvn. The guinea and half-guinea were withdrawn in 1815, Avhen they Avere replaced by the present sovereign and its half. The last new piece added to our coinage was the fourpenny- piece by William IV, in 1836, which is of a different type from the existing groat. Till the present century the Mint remained in the ToAver, But about 1806 the Government, finding the military department had greatly encroached upon the buildings originally used for coining, intrusted to Sir Robert Smirke the erection of a noAv edifice upon Tower Hill. It was completed about 1811, at an expense of above a quarter of a million of money. This immense sum, however, included Boulton's expensive machinery, which, by successive improvements, has been brought to such a surprising degree of perfection, as, in conjunction AvIth the other admirable arrangements of the establishment, places a power at the dis posal of the Moneyers that Avill enable them, if required, to receive fifty thousand pounds worth of gold one morning in bullion, and return it the next in coin. It is amusing to contrast this rapidity Avith the state of things existing when every THE MINT. 47 piece was struck by hand, or when the entire process of coining could be carried on in a single room, as we see it in the engraving at the end of this paper, which evidently agrees in its essentials with the old English methods. In the present interesting process of coining the ingots are first melted in pots, when the alloy, of copper, is added (to gold, one part in twelve ; to silver, eighteen penny weights to a pound weight), and the mixed metal cast into small bars. And now begin the operations of the stupendous machinery, which is unequalled in the Mint of any other country, and is in every way a triumph of mechanical skill. The bars, in a heated state, are first passed through the breaking-doAvn rollers, which, by their tremendous crushing power, reduce them to only one-third their former thickness, and increase them proportionally in their length. They are now passed through the cold rollers, which bring them nearly to the thickness of the coin required, when the last operation of this nature is performed by the draw-bench — a machine peculiar to our Mint, and which secures an extraordinary degree of accuracy and uniformity in the surface of the metal, and leaves it of the exact thickness desired. The cutting-out machines now begin their work. There are twelve of these engines in the elegant room set apart for them, all mounted on the same basement, and forming a circular range. Here the bars or strips are cut into pieces of the proper shape and weight for the coining-press, and then taken to the sizing-room to be separately weighed, as well as sounded on a circular piece of iron, to detect any flaws. The protecting rim is next raised in the marking-room, and the pieces after blanching and annealing are ready for stamping. The coining-room is a magnificent-looking place, Avith its columns and its great iron beams, and the presses ranging along the solid stone basement. There are eight presses, each of theiti making, when required, sixty or seventy (or even more) strokes a minute ; and as at each stroke a blank is made a perfect coin — that is to say, stamped on both sides, and milled at the edge — each press will coin between four and five thousand pieces in the hour, or the whole eight between thirty and forty thousand. And to accomplish these mighty results the attention of one little boy alone is required, who stands in a sunken place before the press, supplying it Avith blanks. The bullion is noAV money, and ready for the trial of the Pix, Avhich, at the Mint, is a kind of tri bunal of judgment between the actual coiners and the OAvners, as the greater trial known by the same name in the Court of Exchequer is to test the quality of the money as between the Master of the Mint and the people. This trial generally takes place on the appointment of a new master before the members of the Privy Council and a certain number of the Goldsmiths' Company ; from the latter a jury of twelve persons is sworn. The Lord High Chancellor, or, in his absence, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presides. Ruding was present at the trial of the Pix in 1799, when, after a variety of minute experiments, it was found that a cer tain quantity of gold which should have Aveighed 190 pounds, 9 ounces, 9 penny- weights, and 15 grains, did weigh just I pennyAveight and the 15 grains less: a closeness of approximation sufficient, no doubt, to satisfy the nicest tribunal. At the time at which we are Avriting it has been announced that some change or re-coinage of our gold money is in meditation. It may be worth Avhile there fore to recall an idea put forth by SAvift on a somewhat similar occasion. In 1712 he delivered to the Lord Treasurer a plan for the improvement of the British 48 LONDON. cx)inage, which, among other matters, proposed that they should bear devices and inscriptions, alluding to all the more remarkable parts of the sovereign's reign. " By this means," he says, " medals that are at present only a dead treasure, or mere curiosities, will be of use in the ordinary commerce of life, and at the same time perpetuate the glories of her Majesty's reign, reward the labours of her greatest subjects, keep alive in the people a gratitude for public services, and excite the emulation of posterity. To these generous purposes nothing can so much con tribute as medals of this kind, which are of undoubted authority, of necessary use and observation, not perishable by time, not confined to any certain place ; properties not to be found in books, statues, pictures, buildings, or any other monuments of illustrious actions."* * Guardian, No, 96. [Process of Coining.] !¦> -' ' [View in the Tunnel.] LIV.— THE THAMES TUNNEL. Whatever Wapping may appear to the eyes of landsmen, to the British sailor it is, without doubti a region of romance ; a place to think about when — having Been long tossed on some " still vexed " sea, or, more intolerable annoyance, becalmed on some far-stretching dead waste of waters — his heart yearns towards home ; and the spot, made so familiar to him by the songs and stories he most delights in, — the spot where he has so often first touched English ground after many months' absence, — rises to his imagination decked in fairer and more gloA\-Ing hues than poet or painter ever lavished on places a hundred times more beautiful. We go through its long and narroAV streets thinking nothing of all this, and turning up our noses at its dirt, and age, and squalor ; but the sailor's respect for us is not so remarkable as to make that circumstance trouble him : we verily believe, if he told voT.. in. E 50 LONDON. the truth, he would acknoAvledge he liked Wapping the better for its disagreeableB, And after all, it may be questioned Avhether he docs not love as "Avisely" as " well." See the attention every one here pays to him. From the moment Ave pass Tower Hill, and those immense warehouses to the right — rising story upon story, and large enough, apparently, to be the storehouses of an empire rather than of a single metropolitan dock (St, Katherine's)— every otiier shop is in some way or other devoted to his -wants, his instruction, Aw recreations; or to the wants of what he is quite as anxious about as his oAvn, those of his good ship. Here Ave have the wholesale slopseller occasionally condescending to throAv a half-unpacked bundle of jackets or shirts into his windoAV, and Avho can at the briefest notice rig out a ship's croAv : there the retail dealer, Avho is not too proud to exhibit nearly his whole substance to the light of common day, and covers his entire front, from the pavement to the first floor, with snow-white ducks, and rough pilot coats, oil skin overalls, and every variety of hat, from the small jaunty round to the coal- heaver fashioned, with the long descending piece behind. Then there are the ship-joiners, and ship-carpenters, and ship sail-makers-^each a numerous race. The aristocratical shop-keeper of Wapping Ave take to be the mathematical in strument-maker, whose windows, so full of neatly-finished and highly-polished brass articles, in so many varieties of form, might even cut a figure in Bond Street : sea-charts and sounding-machines, telescopes, compasses, and quadrants, — these are his staple commodities. The book-stall is equally characteristic of its customers and the place. A glance over its literature Avill at once show you your pre cise latitude and longitude. Side-by-side you see ' Azimuth Tables ' and ' Fal coner's Shipwreck,' 'The Little Sea Torch, or the Guide for Coasting Pilots,' and ' The NeAV Naval Song Book,' ready to tempt some Incledon of the deck with a promise of a fresh accession of strength for the next trip. But the general visitor may find much in Wapping to excite his attention, Avithout having a sailor's sympathies. The London Docks, for instance, occupy ing above twenty acres, Avith their truly vast tobacco and other Avarehouses, are here. And the historical memories are not destitute of interest. It Avas in Wap ping that the infamous Jeffreys, when James II. abdicated the throne, sought to shelter himself from the popular indignation, but in vain : he was detected in spite of his disguise as a common seaman, cudgelled, and hurried off to the Tower, where he died a few days after. The name of one of the outlets to the Thames pre serves the memory of many a terrible tale of murder and piracy on the high seas • it was at Execution Dock, still known by that name, that all pirates used to be executed; and it appears, from an anecdote recorded by Maitland in his History,* not pirates only, but sailors found guilty of any of the greater crimes committed on ship-board. He states that, " on the 20th of December, 1738, one James Buchanan, condemned at the late Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey for the murder of Mr. Smith, fourth mate of the 'Royal Guardian' Indiaman, in Canton River, in the East Indies, was carried from NeAvgate to Execution Dock in Wap ping, to suffer for the same. But before he had hung five minutes a gang of sailors cut him doAvn, and carried him off alive in triumph down the Avater, He afterwards escaped to France, as was commonly reported." The pirates were * Vol. i. p. 591. THE THAMES TUNNEL. 51 formerly hung about low-Avater mark, and left till three tides had overflowed them. This custom is of old date, for Stow mentions it as usual in his time. The same writer adds that " there Avas never a house standing " till within fifty years of the period at which he wrote, the close of the sixteenth century ; " but since," he continues, " a continuous street, or filthy straight passage, Avith alleys of small tenements or cottages, is builded, inhabited by sailors and victuallers, along by the river of Thames, almost to Radcliffe, a good mile from the Tower."* The cause of the building of the first part of Wapping (that near the river) is curious. The manor being continually overflowed with Avater, the Commissioners of SeAvers originated the idea of building houses on the banks, on the principle that the tenants Avould be sure to take effective ineasures for the preservation of their lives and property. The idea Avas good, and, being carried into practice, successful. This was the commencement of Wapping. And thus may be ex plained a circumstance that excited some surprise in sinking the Wapping shaft of the great Avork which forms the subject of this paper. Houses previously stood on the spot, which were removed for the shaft ; and at some distance beloAV their foundation Avere found the relics of a ship -builder's yard, including part of a slip, a ship's figure-head, and a great quantity of oak. Such is Wapping, the place at one extremity of the Thames Tunnel ; to reach the other, Rotherhithe, we must yet for a brief space avail ourselves of the boat man and his graceful wherry. As Ave are crossing, let us recall a few recollections of the early subaqueous excavations attempted or accomplished in England. Beneath the Tyne and Wear are passages made by the coal-miners, extending from one side to the other ; and at Whitehaven an excavation made by these men extends for upAvards of a mile under the sea. Mr. Dodd believes the first of these in point of time to be that in the Wylan Colliery, crossing beloAV the bottom of the Tyne.f These Avorks Avere of course very simple and easy,' or they Avould not have been attempted. It was towards the close of the last century that something much more arduous Avas proposed by the gentleman we have mentioned, an engineer of reputation. He says, " From the importance of a communication between the towns of North and .South Shields, which Avere under my constant view, and where no bridge, could possibly be constructed, my mind happily thought upon the scheme of making a subterranean and (I may say) subaqueous passage to accomplish this desirable purpose." Cir cumstances caused the abandonment of the scheme. He next proposed a Tunnel from Gravesend to Tilbury ; and it is interesting to observe how similar its chief features were to have been to those of the present Tunnel. Like that, its form Avas to be cylindrical, Avith a drain beneath, and a dip of the Avhole Avork in the centre of the river. The plan Avas much approved, public meetings were held, a government survey made Avith a favourable result, a subscription-book opened Avhich rapidly filled, and at last operations commenced by the sinking of a Avell on one side ; Avhen so much water was found, that the whole affair Avas aban- * Survey, 1633, p. 4C1. f He mentions an amusing story connected with this passage. A cow was grazing near the air-shaft built on roe side of the river, when she accidentally slipped into it, and fell or rather rolled from side to side downward to a depth of a hundred and ninety-two feet, without serious injury. We may imagine the amazement of the colliers at work at the bottom. They drove the animal through the paasage to the other side of the river, v/licre tM was taken up by the usual means of ascent to the top, and immediately swam back to her own meadow. k2 52 LONDON. doned as impracticable,"' Two or three years after this an attempt Avas made only a mile below the present Tunnel, to connect Rotherhithe and Limehquse, by an experienced Cornish miner of the name of Vesey. A company Avas formed under the title of the Thames Archway Company, an act of parliament obtained, and the Avork begun. A shaft of eleven feet In diameter was sunk to the depth of forty-two feet : to avoid certain difficulties, it Avas then contracted to eight feet, and thus continued to the depth of seventy-six feet. The horizontal excavation was there begun, in the form of a driftway, to be afterAvards widened into the required dimensions for a passage, and carried to within one hundred and fifty feet of the Middlesex shore, Avhen the engineer of this second attempt had also to report that further progress Avas impracticable. Five or six years Avere thus expended, during which the talents of three different engineers had been put in requisition, and reAvards offered for plans, which brought In communications from all quarters. It was under the remembrance of these discouraging circumstances that Mr. (now Sir M. I.) Brunei appeared before the public with a new proposal in 1823, which it was stated had received the sanction of many eminent persons, in particular of the Duke of Wellington and Dr. Wollaston. The mere idea of a Tunnel below rivers is of course a matter of little moment, whoever the originator— the doing it every thing. The novelty of Mr. Brunei's proposed mode of operation, therefore, was rightly judged of great importance. That gentleman has himself explained the origin of his idea. The writer of the article ' Tunnel ' in the ' Edinburgh Eucy- clopsedia ' states that he was informed by Mr. Brunei " that the idea upon which his new plan of tunnelling is founded Avas suggested to him by the operations of the teredo, a testaceous worm, covered Avith a cylindrical shell, which eats its way through , the hardest wood ; and has on this account been called by Linnaeus Calamitas nacium. The same happy observation of the wisdom of nature led our celebrated countryman Mr. Watt to deduce the construction of the flexible water- main from the mechanism of the lobster's tail." To the practical form which the idea thus given assumed we shall revert presently. Rotherhithe In this, as in the preceding Instance, was chosen as the starting- place of the Tunnel, though the precise spot Avas a mile nearer to the city. Un like Wapping, Rotherhithe (or Redrlff, as it is often corruptly called) is of great antiquity; and, were it from one circumstance only, of considerable historical interest. It was here that the famous trench or canal of Canute was commenced, in order that the invader might avoid London Bridge, an account of which has been given in our notice of that structure.f In the reign of Edward III a great navy was fitted out at Rotherhithe, under the care of the Black Prince for the Invasion of France. And, lastiy, it was off Rotherhithe that Richard II 'was so alarmed at the shouts and the array of the malcontents whom he came to appease, that he returned hastily to the Tower ; whilst the infuriate people led by one kind of wrong from which they suffered, into the commission of ano'ther of which they were the infllctovs, swept on to the Marshalsea and Lambeth, and committed the excesses already frequently referred to. Rotherhithe like 'tap ping, has its numerous docks, a similar population, and presents generally the in^StrD^lrElllr^lVsf'^^™^^ t Vol. i. p, 77, THE THAMES TUNNEL. 53 same features. But there are some circumstances which distinguish the Surrey from the Middlesex side : we may instance its numerous flour-mills, the various manufactories, and the wharfs for the coasting-trade of England which are all to be found between the Tunnel and London Bridge. The importance of a new mode of communication between two such places, only some twelve hundred feet apart geographically, but four miles by the way of London Bridge, will be at once apparent. But it Is still more so, if we consider for a moment the peculiar connection between the two great interests which belong to the different sides of the river. An immense amount of the foreign goods brought into the West India, the London, and St. Katherine's Docks, on the north side, is absorbed by this coasting-trade on the south ; and, it appears, is almost entirely conveyed from one to the other by land carriage. During the year 1829, of 887 Avaggons and 3241 carts which passed over London Bridge southwards, no less than 480 of the first, and 1700 of the second, turned down Tooley Street — one-half of which are supposed to be engaged in the traffic mentioned. The accommodation a Tunnel may afford to passengers receives a striking illustration from the returns made' to Parliament of the watermen engaged at the different ferries in the neigh bourhood, who were 350 in number, and calculated to take, on an average, not less than 3700 passengers daily. An important consideration is deducible from the position of the Tunnel : it will have no expensive approaches to form. On the north it is connected, through Old Gravel Lane, with Ratcliffe Highway, and a new road is projected in continuation of the former to the Commercial Road and Whitechapel. On the south it is close to the Deptford Lower Road. All these places will, of course, assume a new character when the influence of the new traffic shall reach them. [Plan of the Thames Tunnel and its Approaches.] In the beginning of 1824 Mr. Brunei had the satisfaction to see the first and least arduous, but still indispensable, step secured, the formation of a Company with the express object of carrying his designs into execution, and by whom an Act of Parliament was obtained. The Company took the preliminary precaution of having three parallel borings made beneath the bed of the Thames in the direction of the proposed Tunnel, when the report was so very favourable that. 54 LONDON. in consequence, Mr. Brunei went to work in a somewhat bolder way than he had otherwise intended. The soil Avas the great object of deliberation, for upon it depended at what level the Tunnel should be commenced. The assistance of some eminent geologists Avas here of great moment. These informed the engineer that below a certain depth the soil Avould be a kind of quicksand, and there fore advised him to keep above it, and as close as possible to the stratum of clay forming the bed of the river. We shall presently see that the geologists Avere right. We are not about to give a technical description of the progress of the Avorks of the Tunnel, which could be interesting alone to the professional or scien tific man ; but we must notice at some length tAvo or three of their chief points, not only because the success of the work has depended upon them, but because in their admirable simplicity, as well as their Avonderful fitness to the purposes designed, they cannot fail to be universally understood and appreciated. And first of the construction of the shaft with Avhich the Tunnel Avas com menced in March, 1825. This seems to our eyes, uninitiated in the Avonders of engineering, not one of the least marvels of this altogether marvellous work. A space being marked out a hundred and fifty feet distant from the river, the bricklayers began raising a round frame, or cylinder, three feet thick and one hundred and fifty feet in circumference. This Avas strengthened in various ways, by iron rods, &c., passing up the centre of the thickness ; and Avas continued to the height of forty-two feet. The excavators now commenced their work on the Inside, cutting away the ground, AvhIch Avas raised to the top of the shaft by a steam-engine there placed, and which also relieved them from the water that occasionally impeded their descent. We may imagine the Avonder with Avhich a person unacquainted with the object of these preparations must have beheld that enormous mass of masonry at last beginning to descend regularly and peace fully after the busy pigmies Avho Avere carving the way for it, and at the same time, as it Avere, accommodating itself to the convenience of the bricklayers, who, in order to give it the additional height required, had merely to keep adding to the top as it descended. This is the history of the great circular opening into Avhich the visitor passes from the little lobby, and where he beholds, in the cen tre, an elaborate machinery of pumps, connected Avith a steam-engine, raising its four hundred gallons per minute, and, as though that was really too trifling for an engine of its respectability of poAver, performing into the bargain the duties of draAving carriages along the raihvay, Avhich as yet occupies one of the tAvo arches of the Tunnel, and that of hoisting and letting doAvn all the heavier articles passing betAveen the upper and loAver Avorld, We must not omit to observe, AvIth regard to the shaft, that by its means the bed of gravel and sand twenty-six feet deep, full of land-water, in Avhich the drift-makers of the earlier attempt had been compelled to narroAV the dimensions of their already small shaft, was passed Avithout inconvenience. We may add also that, when the shaft was sunk to its present depth of sixty-five feet, another shaft, of tAventy-five feet diameter, Avas sunk still loAver, till, at the depth of eighty feet, the ground suddenly gave Avay, sinking several feet, Avhilst sand and Avater were bloAvn up Avith some violence. This confirmed the statement of the geologists, and satisfied the engineer as to the propriety of the level he had chosen. THE THAMES TUNNEL. 55 The shaft accomplished, the Tunnel itself was begun at the depth of sixty- three feet. The excavation Mr. Brunei proposed to make from bank to bank Avas to be about thirty-eight feet broad and twenty-tAVo and a half high, which,. being defended by strong walls, Avas to leave room Avithin for a double archAvay, each fifteen feet high, and wide enough for a single carriage-way and a footpath. The mode in which this great excavation Avas accomplished has been the wonder and admiration of the most experienced engineers, and will for ever remain a monument of the genius of its author. The engravings before us represent tAvo -efV'/r ... ''''/r^"r'-»'& ffi^ Af flHtelB. if 'ift.'! V 7svr?^^.f *'. f/W^ ¦ >_i ""VK i. [Longitudinal Section of the Tunnel, showing the Shield and the mode of working it.] ^sM % V* Hi;!' ¦ if [Three IJivisions of the Shield of the Thames Tunnel.] 56 LONDON, views of the working of the shield, by means of which the Avelght of the superin cumbent bottom of the river has been supported, whilst the men who were under mining it were sheltered in its little cells beloAV. This mighty instrument— one in idea and object, but consisting of twelve separate parts or divisions, each containing three cells, one above the other— is thus used. We will suppose that, the work being finished in its rear, an advance is desired, and that the divisions are in their usual position— the alternate ones a littie before the others. These last have now to be moved. The men in their cells pull doAvn the top pollng-board, one of those small defences with which the entire front of the shield is covered, and immedi ately cut away the ground for about six Inches. That done, the poling-board is replaced, and the one below removed, and so on till the entire space in front of these divisions has been excavated to the depth of six inches. Each of the divi sions is now advanced by the application of two screws — one at its head, and one at its foot — which, resting against the finished brickwork, and turned, impel it forward into the vacant space. The other set of divisions then advance. As the miners are at work at one end of the cells, so the bricklayers are no less actively employed at the other, forming the brick walls of the top, sides, and bottom — the superincumbent earth of the top being still held up by the shield till the bricklayers have finished. This Is but a rude description of an engine almost as remarkable for its elaborate organization as for its vast strength. Beneath those great iron ribs a kind of mechanical soul really seems to have been created. It has its shoes and its legs, and uses them too AvIth good effect. It raises and de presses its head at pleasure ; it presents invincible buttresses in its front to what ever danger may there threaten, and, when the danger is past, again opens its breast for the further advances of the indefatigable host. In a word, to the shield the successful formation of the Tunnel is entirely owing. We may add that fol lowing the shield Avas a stage in each archway for the assistance of the men in the upper cells. But, great as was the confidence of Mr. Brunei in his shield, and the resources which he must have felt he had within himself, ready for every difficulty, it Is impossible that he could have ever anticipated the all but overwhelming amount of obstacles that he has actually experienced, principally from the character of the soil, and the extraordinary influence which the tides exercised even at the Tunnel's depth. The first nine feet of the Tunnel (commenced with the new year, 1826) Avere passed through firm clay ; then came a loose Avatery sand, where every movement was made Avith imminent hazard. ThIrty-tAvo anxious days passed in this part. Substantial ground again reached about the 14th of March, matters went on prosperously till September following, by which time tAvo hundred and sixty feet had been completed. On the I4th of that month the engineer startled the Directors Avith the information that he expected the bottom of the river, just be yond the shield, would break down with the coming tide. It appears he had disco vered a cavity above the top of the shield. Exactly at high tide the miners heard the uproar of the falling soil upon the head of their good shield, and saw bursts of water follow ; but so complete were the precautions taken that no injury ensued, and the cavity Avas soon filled by the river itself. Another month, and a similar occurrence took place. By the 2nd of January, 1827, three hundred and fifty feet were accomplished, when the tide, during the removal of one of the poling-boards, THE THAMES TUNNEL. 57 forced through the shield a quantity of loose clay ; but still no irruption of the river itself followed— the fear of which, from the commencement to the termina tion of the AVork, was continually upon every one's mind. From January to April the Tunnel proceeded at an excellent rate, although the ground continued so very moist that, in the latter month, an inspection, by means of a diving-bell, of the bed of the river became necessary. Some depressions were observed, and filled up by the usual means — bags of clay. A shovel and hammer, being acci dentally left on this occasion in the river, were afterwards found during an influx of loose ground through the shield, having descended some eighteen feet. This little circumstance shows the nature of the ground above, and the all but invin cible difficulties through which the engineer had to make his ^ay. But the more important incidents of the work — those which were to put his ability and forti tude to the severest tests— Avere now corning on. About the middle of May, some vessels, coming in at a late tide, moored just over the head of the Tunnel. The consequence Avas, that the obstruction they presented to the water caused a great washing away of the soil beneath. What followed may be best de scribed in the Avords of Mr. Beamish, the then resident assistant-engineer, with whose Report of this, the first irruption of the river, we have been favoured among other interesting matter, and which Ave give as a perfectly dramatic view of the scene, the actors, and the event. "May 18, 1827. Some of the faces cut down without difficulty. As the water rose with the tide, it increased in the frames very considerably between Nos. 5 and 6, forcing its way at the front, then the back : Ball and Comptph (the occu pants) most active. About a quarter before six o'clock No. 11 (division) went forward. Clay appeared at the back. Had it closed up immediately. While this was going forward my attention was again drawn to No. 6, where I found gravel forcing itself with the water. It was with the utmost difficulty that Ball could keep anything against the opening. Fearing that the pumpers would now become alarmed, as they had been once or twice before, and leave their post, I went upon the east stage to encourage them, and to chase more shoring for Ball, Goodwin, who was engaged at No. 11, where indications of a run appeared, called to Rogers, who was in the act of working down No. 9, to come to his assistance. But Rogers, having his second poling (board) doAvn, could not. Goodwin again called. I then said to Rogers, ' Don't you hear ?' Upon which he left his poling for the purpose of assisting GoodAvin ; but before he could get to him, and before I could get fairly into the frames, there poured such an over whelming volume of water and sludge as to force them out of the frames William Carps, a bricklayer, who had gone to Goodwin's assistance, was knocked down, and literally rolled out of the frames on the stage as though he had come through a mill-sluice ; and would undoubtedly have fallen off the stage had I not caught hold of him, and with Rogers's assistance helped him doAvn the ladder. I again made an attempt to get into the frames, calling upon the miners to follow ; but all was dark (the lights at the frames and stage being all bloAvn out), and I was only answered by the hoarse and angry sounds of Father Thames's roarings Rogers (an old sergeant of the Guards), the only man left upon the stage, now caught my arm, and, gently drawing me from the frames, said, ^Come away, pray sir, come away ; 'tis no use, the water is rising fast.' I turned once more ; but. 58 LONDON. hearing an increased rush at No, 6, and finding the column of Avater at Nos. 11 and 12 to be augmenting, I reluctantly descended. The cement-casks, compo- boxes, pieces of timber, Avere floating around me. I turned into the west arch, where the enemy had not yet advanced so rapidly, and again looked toAvards the frames, lest some one might have been overtaken ; but the cement-casks, &c., striking my legs, threatened seriously to obstruct my retreat, and It Avas with some difficulty that I reached the visitors' bar,* Avhere Mayo, Bertram, and others, Avere anxiously waiting to receive me I was glad of their assistance ; indeed. Mayo fairly dragged me over it. Not bearing the idea of so precipitate a retreat, I turned once more ; but vain Avas the hope ! The Avave rolled onv/ard and onward. The men retreated, and I folloAved. Met Gravatt coining down. Short AVas the question, and brief Avas the ansAver. As Ave approached I met I. Brunei. We turned round : the effect Avas splendid beyond description. The water as it rose became more and more vivid, from the reflected lights of the gas As Ave reached the staircase a crash Avas heard, and then a rush of air at once extinguished all the lights Noav it Avas that I experienced something like dread. I looked up the shaft and saw both stairs crowded ; I looked beloAv, and beheld the overAvhelming Avave appearing to move Avith accumulated velocity. Dreading the effect of the reaction of this Avave from the back of the shaft upon our staircase, I exclaimed to Mr. Gravatt, ' The staircase will bloAv up !' I. Bru nei ordered the men to get up Avith all expedition ; and our feet Avere scarcely off the bottom stairs, when the first flight, which we had just left, Avas SAvept aAvaj. Upon our reaching the top, a bustling noise assailed our ears, some calling for a raft, others a boat, and others again a rope ; from which it was evident that some unfortunate individual Avas in the water. I. Brunei instantly, with that presence of mind to which I have been more than once witness, slid down one of the iron ties, and after him Mr. Gravatt, each making a rope fast to old Tillet's Avaist, Avho, having been looking after the packing of the pumps below the shaft, Avas overtaken by the flood. He Avas soon placed out of danger. The roll Avas imme diately called — 7iol one absent .'" The diving-bell being again employed, and the hole or chasm discovered, some three thousand bags of clay, armed with small hazel rods, Avere expended before it was effectually closed. On the 21st of the next month the water in the Tunnel Avas got under; but it Avas not till the middle of August that the soil forced in was completely cleared away, and the engineer able to examine the effect of the irruption on his work. The structure was found perfectly sound, even whilst a part of the brick-work close to the shield was reduced to nearly half its original thick ness by the tremendous violence of the rushing waters, Avhilst the chain which held the divisions of the shield together had been snapped like a twig, and Avhilst various heavy pieces of iron belonging to the shield were found driven into the ground as if by a battering-ram. Progress was now recommenced; and here we Avould pause a moment to pay a just tribute of admiration to the men, as well as to their directors, for the courage they have so constantly evinced. Even uoav, as they resumed their labours with the impression of the recent event fresh upon their mmds, something or other was constantly occurring to excite fresh alarm Now a report would take place in the frames like a cannon-shot, some part having '» A bar so placed as to keep the visitors at some liltle distance from the shield and the unfinished works. THE THAMES TUNNEL, 59 been suddenly ruptured ; now alarming cries were heard, as some irruption of earth or water impetuously poured in. With the bursts of soil and water would be felt large quantities of carburetted and sulphuretted hydrogen, AvhIch, presently igniting with an explosion, would wrap the place in a sheet of flame. Beautiful at such times to those Avho had coolness to admire it Avas the appearance of the mingling fire and Avater, the flame appearing to dance along the surface of the liquid. And to what may we not get accustomed ? Those philosophers, the miners and bricklayers, used to look quietly on at the cry of "Fire andAvater;" or, if they did make any observation, it Avas nothing more important than a prudent piece of advice, such as "Light your pipes, my boys." But perhaps, of all the difficulties overcome or endured, none have been more serious to the men than the impurity of the air ; especially in summer, when the most powerful labourers had frequently to be carried out in a state of insensibility. Headaches, sickness, eruptions on the skin, Avere matters of too common occurrence to be noticed. Such a combination of circumstances must have given a strange colour to the lives of these labourers. An accurate description of the feelings and thoughts of the more imaginative Avould no doubt be as interesting as a romance. They have felt, and rightly, that a part of the true glory which belongs to such a AVork Avas theirs ; and such feel ings elevate even ordinary men. They have served also a kind and thoughtful master. It Avas touching to hear the terms in Avhich one of the miners spoke to us of him. As in their waking hours these men could have had no thought but of the Tunnel, so no doubt did the eternal subject constantly mingle Avith their dreams, and harass them Avith unreal dangers. One amusing instance may be mentioned. Whilst Mr. Brunei, jun., Avas engaged one midnight superintending the progress of the work, he and those with him Avere alarmed by a sudden cry of " The Avater ! the Avater ! Wedges and straAv here !" foUoAved by an appalling silence. Mr. Brunei hastened to the spot, where the men were found perfectly safe. They had fallen fast asleep from fatigue ; and one of them had been evidently dreaming of a noAV irruption. By January, 1828, the middle of the river had been reached ; and, Avhatever the dangers and difficulties experienced up to that time, there Avas the gratifica tion arising from their having been completely overcome Avithout the loss of a single life. That gratification was to exist no longer. Even the very completion of the Tunnel Avas uoav to become a grave matter of doubt, and its projector to be left for long years in the sickening suspense of hope deferred on a matter wherein he had risked his professional reputation, and to AvhIch he devoted his entire energies — Ave might almost say, Avithout exaggeration, his life. " I had been in the frames," says Mr. Brunei, junior, in a letter Avrltten to the Directors on the fatal Saturday, August 12, 1828, "with the Avorkmen throughout the Avliole night, having taken my station there at ten o'clock. During the Avorkings through the night no symptoms of insecurity appeared. At six o'clock this morning (the usual time for shifting the men) a fresh set came on to Avork. Wc began to work the ground at the Avest top corner of the frame. The tide had just then begun to flow ; and, finding the ground tolerably quiet, Ave proceeded by beginning at the top, and had worked about a foot doAvnwards, Avhen, on exposing the next six inches, the ground sAvelled suddenly, and a large quantity burst through the opening thus made. This Avas folloAved instantly by a large body of 60 LONDON Avater. The rush was so violent as to force the man on the spot where the burst took place out of the frame (or cell) on to the timber stage behind the frames. I Avas in the frame with the man ; but upon the rush of the Avater I went into the next box, in order to command a better view of the irruption, and, seeing there was no possibility of their opposing the Avater, I ordered all the men in the frames to retire. All Avere retiring, except the three men who Avere with me, and they retreated with me. I did not leave the stage until those three men were down the ladder of the frames, when they and I proceeded about twenty feet along the west arch of the Tunnel. At this moment the agitation of the air by the rush of the water was such as to extinguish all the lights, and the water had gained the height of the middle of our waists. I was at that moment giving directions to the three men in what manner they ought to proceed in the dark to effect their escape, when they and I were knocked down and covered by a part of the timber stage. I struggled under water for some time, and at length extricated myself from the stage ; and by sAvimming, and being forced by the Avater, I gained the eastern arch, where I got a better footing, and was enabled, by laying hold of the railway rope, to pause a little, in the hope of encouraging the men who had been knocked doAvn at the same time Avith myself This I endeavoured to do by calling to them. Before I reached the shaft the Avater had risen so rapidly that I was out of my depth, and therefore swam to the visitors' stairs — the stairs of the workmen being occupied by those who had so far escaped. My knee was so in jured by the timber stage that I could scarcely swim or get up the stairs, but the rush of the water carried me up the shaft. The three men who had been knocked down with me were unable to extricate themselves, and I am grieved to say they are lost ; and, I believe, also two old men and one young man in other parts of the work." The scene at the shaft was truly deplorable. At one period there were no less than eighteen men immersed, all of whom, Avith the exception of the unfortunates who perished, were taken out in an exhausted state, and some of them fainting. The noise in the shaft, created by the influx of the Avater, is described as having been absolutely deafening. The news rapidly spread about the neigh bourhood of the Tunnel ; and before it Avas known who were lost and who saved, the wives and relations of the Avorkmen were rushing in, and adding to the con fusion and distress of the scene by their wild gestures and exclamations. The water, as we have seen, actually bore Mr. Brunei up to the top of the shaft, and then still rising, flowed over even to the visitors' lodge. It was then evident that all who Avere still below had perished. This calamity occurred at a critical time. The funds of the Company were exhausted : their confidence, in some measure, now failed too. After two descents in the bell, the rent Avas discovered, and most formidable were its dimensions. It was of oblong shape, quite perpendicular, and measuring about seven feet in its longest direction, from east to west. The measures so often before and afterwards resorted to with success were adopted. Four thousand tons of soil, principally clay in bags, were laid in the place. When they re-entered the Tunnel there was the melancholy satisfaction of seeing the work as substantial as ever, but there was but too much reason to fear it was of little consequence— 4;he completion might now never take place. What with the accident, and what with its consequences, we need not wonder to find it stated that the engineer appeared THE THAMES TUNNEL. 61 almost in a state of frenzy. For seven years from that time all Avas silence and darkness beneath those hollow roofs ; and had the matter thus ended, what would have been the judgment of posterity ? The plan had failed ; and many of that immense array of projectors, hundreds in number, who now poured in their plans upon the Directors, Avould have lamented, Avith delightful self-forgetfulness, that Mr. Brunei had not adopted their schemes. But the Tunnel was to be com pleted — ^he was to be the man. In January, 1835, the arches of the Tunnel were at last unclosed. Government, after repeated applications, agreed to make advances for the continuation of the work, which was accordingly once more carried forAvard with renewed energy. Very slow, however, was the progress made. Of sixty-six weeks, two feet four inches only per week were accomplished during the first eighteen, three feet nine inches per week during the second eighteen, one foot per Aveek during the third eighteen, and during the last twelve weeks only three feet four inches altogether. This will excite little surprise when we know that the ground in front of the shield was, from excessive saturation, almost constantly in little better than a fluid state, that an entire uoav and artificial bed had to be formed in the river in ad vance, and brought down by ingenious contrivances till it was deep enough to occupy the place of the natural soil where the excavation was to be made, and that then there must be time alloAved for its settlement, whenever the warning rush of sand and water was heard in the shield. Lastly, owing to the excavation being so much below that of any other works around the Tunnel, it formed a drain and receptacle for all the water of the neighbourhood. This was ultimately remedied by the sinking of the shaft on the Wapping side. Yet it Avas under such circumstances that the old shield injured by the last irruption Avas taken aAvay and replaced by a new one. If our readers consider for a moment the first and most important office executed by this engine, that it alone bore up above and kept back in front the incalculable pressure of the river and its bed, we may appreciate the opinions of engineers when the idea Avas first started : "It was impracticable," was their common remark ; yet it Avas done Avithout the slightest derangement of the ground, or the loss of a single man. The most serious evil attending these delays and difficulties Avas the extra expenditure they involved, which became so great that the Lords of the Treasury declined further advances without the sanction of Parliament. A Committee was in consequence appointed, and witnesses examined, including of course the chief and assistant en gineers. The result was favourable, and the work proceeded. On Wednesday, August 23, 1837, a third irruption occurred, but happily without any fatal con sequences, or without materially retarding the works. An interesting escape marks this event. The Avater had gradually increased in quantity at the east corner since tAvo p.m., rushing into the shield with a hollow roar as though it fell through a cavity. A boat was taken out of the river and sent doAvn into the Tunnel for the purpose of conveying materials (for blocking up the frames) doAvn to the shield. Notwithstanding all that could be done by the men, the water gained upon them and rapidly rose in the Tunnel. About four o'clock, the water having risen to within seven feet of the crown of the arch, and every thing having been done that could be effected for the security of the work, it was thought most prudent for the men to retire, which they did in a very orderly 62 LONDON. manner along a platform which had been most judiciously and providentially con structed for that purpose in the east arch only a foAV weeks before by Sir I. Brunei's orders. After the men had retired, and as the Avater continued rising gradually, Mr. Page, the acting engineer, accompanied by Mr. Francis, Mr. Mason, and two of the men, got into the boat for the purpose of reaching the stages to see If any change had taken place ; and, after passing the six hundred feet mark in the Tunnel, the line attached to the boat ran out, and they returned to lengthen it. To this accident they Avere Indebted for their lives; for Avhile they were preparing the rope the Avater surged, running up the arch ten or twelve feet. Every one made his Avay to the shaft, and Mr. Page, fearing that the men Avould be jammed In the staircase, called to them to go up steadily ; but they, misunder standing him, returned, and it Avas Avith some difficulty that they could be pre vailed upon to go up. Had the rope been long enough, all the persons Avho Avere in the boat (which Avas in a sinking condition when they grounded) must inevit ably have perished in the surge, for now not less than a million gallons of water burst into the Tunnel in the course of a single minute. The lower gas-lights were then under Avater ; and the pipes being but partially filled, the remainder burnt first very irregularly, leaving the Tunnel almost in darkness, and then, flaming up to the top of the glasses, thrcAV a blaze of light over the west arch and the water. When the water had risen to Avithin fifty feet of the entrance to the Tunnel, it came forward in a wave ; and Mr. Page, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Francis, Avho Avere at the bottom of the visitors' stairs, ran up to the second land ing, but Avere so rapidly followed that one of the party Avas up to his knees before he reached the top. Two other irruptions of the Thames complete this part of the history of the Tunnel. The first occurred on the 2nd of November, 1837 when the Avater burst in about four in the morning, and speedily filled the Tunnel. The excellent arrangements provided for escape secured the safety of the seventy or more persons in it at the time, with one exception. When the roll was called there was no answer to one name. Inquiry being made, some one it appeared had seen a miner returning towards the shield Avhen all else Avere leaving it, and that Avas all that Avas known of him. The fifth and last irruption occurred on the morning of the 6th of March 1838 and was remarkable for the noise resembling thunder Avith Avhich it Avas accom panied. Happily no loss of life occurred. All this while the Tunnel was every Aveek approaching nearer and nearer to the goal of the engineer's hopes— the opposite shore ; and all parties began to feel the buoyancy of assured success in spiring them as they found the difficulties grow less and less formidable. They Avere, hoAveyer, still sufficient to have paralysed any less energetic spirits than those who had brought the Avhole to that point. Here is an incident of so late date as 1840:— On the 4th of April, about eight o'clock in the morning, being then about low water, the top face of No. 12 was attempted ; but no sooner was the poling-board removed than the second one canted over, and a quantity of gravel and water rushed into the frair.o, forcing out another of the boards. At the hole thus left unprotected, the ground rushed in with such impetuosity as to knock the men out of the shield; and they, being panic-struck, ran away, but, finding that the water did not foUoAV, they returned to the scene of action, and after immense exertions succeeded in stopping the run, when upwards of six THE THAMES TUNNEL. 63 thousand cubic feet of ground had fallen into the Tunnel. 1 he rush of the ground was attended with a very great noise, resembling the bursting of a thunder-cloud, and a general extinguishing of the lights. While this Avas taking place in the Tunnel, a still more unusual phenomenon Avas occurring on the shore at Wapping, Avhere, to the astonishment and dismay of the neighbourhood, the ground commenced sinking gradually over an area of upAvards of seven hundred feet, leaving a cavity on the shore of about thirty feet in diameter and thirteen in depth. It Avas most fortunate that this occurred at Ioav Avater, for at high Avater an irruption of the river Avould have been the inevitable consequence. A number of men Avere sent over, and the hole was filled AvIth bags of clay and gravel, and everything rendered perfectly secure by the return of the tide. With another incident of the same year of a somcAvhat similar nature, avc con clude these notices of the " hair-breadth 'scapes," the " accidents by flood," and, in a sense, by " field," Avhich have marked almost every foAV months of the lives of the labourers in this great and hazardous undertaking. It appears that fre quently the sand, mixing with water, so as to be quite in a fluid state, Avould ooze through the minute cracks betAveen the small poling-boards, leaving immense cavities in the ground in front. A remarkable instance occurred upon the 24th of July. The sand had been running in this Avay the whole of the night, and had completely filled the bottom of the shield. In the morning, on opening one of the faces, a hollow was discovered extending upAvards of eighteen feet along the front of the faces, projecting six feet into the ground, and being about the same in height. This enormous cavity Avas filled with brickbats and lumps of clay, one of the miners being obliged to lay himself the Avhole length of his body into the faces for the purpose of filling the farther end ; and of course at the hazard, every moment he continued in his position, of being buried beneath fallen masses of earth, uoav left Avithout any support from beloAV. The reward for every difficulty, anxiety, or suffering, was at last obtained. It is pleasant even to have to record that, on the 13th of August, 1841, Sir Isambert Brunei passed doAvn the shaft recently erected on the Wapping side of the river, and thence by a small driftway through the shield into the Tunnel. Under Avhat a ncAV aspect that beautiful double archway must have thence appeared even to him, whose eyes had not for a single day forgotten to look upon it for many years ! And, as he turned, what poAver must have been felt in that little beam of light struggling through the driftway ! The Avorld must have appeared brighter from that moment. Nor should the labourers be forgotten, Avho, Avhilst expressing their admiration of him Avho had given methods firmness, "and prosperity to their labours, in the cheering with Avhich they greeted his appearance in the Tunnel from the opposite shore, deserve their meed of respect and applause. The Tunnel is now entirely completed (measuring tAvelve hundred feet), and it is in order to make the necessary preparations for opening it to the public for use that it is noAV closed against mere visitors. The great circular shafts are being provided with handsome staircases for the accommodation of foot-passen gers. The carriage-ways have yet to be constructed, and will be costly Avorks. Their plan is marked with the inventive ability that so eminently characterizes the whole history of the Tunnel. They Avill consist each of an immense spiral road, winding tAvice round a circular excavation fifty-seven feet deep, in order to 64 LONDON. reach the proper level. The extreme diameter of the spiral road wdl be no less than two hundred feet. The side of the road next to the interior, or excavation, will be defended with substantial walls relieved by open arches ; and on the other will be built warehouses at the top, and cellars at the bottom. The road itself will be forty feet wide, and the descent very moderate. Ihe expenses of the Tunnel have been, of course, very much greater than were contemplated, and that circumstance has not been one of the least of the engineer's difficulties : in one sense, indeed, it was his greatest, since it did not rest with himself to conquer it. Yet strange to say, in spite of such an accumulation of hindrances and obstruc tions as no man could have ever conceived could have been met with— and over come the expenses of the Tunnel forms one of its advantageous features, Avhen we contrast its cost with the only other mode of communication (impracticable here from the size and number of the shipping passing to and fro)— a bridge. We do not know the exact expenditure up to this moment, but we do know that the entire expense will not materially exceed the estimate presented to Govern ment in 1837 by Mr. Walker, the engineer It had appointed to examine from time to time the state of the work, and its probable cost. At that period 180,000/. of the Company's capital had been expended, and 84,000/. worth of Exchequer bills advanced by Government, making together 264,000/. The esti mate for the future consisted of two items, one of 150,000/. to complete the Tunnel, and the other of '200,000/. for the shaft on the Wapping side, the great circular approaches, Ssc, forming a grand total of 614 000/. And this, we are informed, will be about the actual expense. By the side of this we may place the cost of the latest in erection of the great metropolitan bridges, London, AvIth its expenditure of two millions, or, if the disparity between the positive utility ' of the two works be objected, we may mention Waterloo, Avhich has cost above a inlllion. [ndutivL' PositioQB of the Tunnel find tlie ThAmes.. Square. EEHMONDSEY. Black Horse oiul Diptford Cree'x DKPTFORD. GKEENWICH. Royal Hospiul. Ok^* STEPNEY. Regent's Canal. LIMEHOUSE. Lea Cut. ao [Map of the Port of London.] LV.— THE DOCKS. We may trace the vastness of London, the varied character of its external fea tures, and the Avonderful diversity Avhich its social aspects present, to three dis tinct causes. First, its official supremacy, as the residence of the sovereign, the seat of the government and legislature, and all the most important departments of the state; secondly, its manufacturing industry; and, thirdly, its commercJaJ VOL. III. F 66 LONDON. importance as a port. Any one of these elements would nourish a large amount of population ; but without the two latter it would be kept within moderate limits, and it is chiefly in consequence of their influence that London is twice as large as Paris. That portion of London connected with the port and shipping differs so much from the districts appropriated to manufactures, and from all others possessing a special character of their own, as to constitute one of the most distinct divisions of the metropolis. It embraces, on the northern side of the river, a district ex tending eastward from Tower Hill, and comprising Wapping and Ratcliffe Highway, Shadwell, Limehouse, Poplar, and Blackwall ; and, on the other side, commences with Tooley Street, and comprehends Rotherhithe and all along the river to Deptford. The general characteristics of the district have already been noticed ;* and we shall, therefore, devote the present number to an account of one of its great features — the Docks. The stranger, especially from an inland county, who takes a passage by one of the steamers Avhich leave London Bridge every quarter of an hour for Greenwich, Avill be astonished at the apparently interminable forests of masts which extend on both sides of the channel, Avhere a Avidth of three hundred feet should be kept for the purposes of safe navigation, but AvhIch the crowd of ships from all quarters of the globe, of colliers, coasters, steam-boats, and river-craft, renders it difficult for the harbour-masters to maintain. If the tide be running upward, laden coal- barges are thronging the channel, proceeding to the wharfs in the upper part of the river ; and colliers at their moorings are at all times discharging their cargoes into barges alongside. By the regulations of the coal-trade only a certain number of coal-ships are allowed to unload at the same time, the others remaining loAver down the river until their turn arrives ; and the coal-meters, who are appointed by the City, are also limited in number. But for these restrictions the river Avould present a still more croAvded appearance, as it has happened that above three hundred colliers have arrived in the LoAver Pool in one day ; and even noAV a very large portion of the river is occupied by this one branch of commerce. Forty years ago, not only coal-ships, but vessels of every other kind, discharged their cargoes into lighters while at anchor in the stream ; but such a practice Avould noAv be impossible, so great has been the increase of commerce. East Indiamen generally came only as far as Blackwall, where they discharged their cargoes into decked lighters of from fifty to one hundred tons, and, the hatch ways being secured under lock and key, they proceeded to the wharfs. West India ships discharged in the river, and the cargoes were also conveyed In lighters to the legal quays. All other vessels, except they were of small size, Avere in like manner compelled to use lighters in discharging their car goes. At the present time six-sevenths of the barges and river-craft are solely employed in transporting the cargoes of coal, corn, and timber ships, so small a proportion as one-seventh only being required for the conveyance of all other commodities, the chief of which are of a bulky kind, and do not offer any great temptation to pilferers. In 1792 the number of barges and craft required for the traffic betAveen the ships in the river and the quays was 500 for timber and 1 180 for coal, each averaging thirty-three tons ; 402 lighters of thirtr- nine tons ¦ 338 punts of twenty tons ; 57 lugger-boats of twenty-four tons ; six •* Thames Tunnel, LIV. p. 50. THE DOCKS. 67 sloops of tAventy-seven tons; 10 cutters of seventh-one tons; and 10 hoys of fifty- eight tons ; making a total of 3503 craft Property of the most costly and valuable description, iwid every kind of merchandise, Avas daily exposed to plun der in these open boats, foir only the lighters of the East India Company Avere decked, and it was considered that even they afforded a very insufficient protection. The temptation to pilfer Avas almost irresistible, those Avho were honestly dis posed taking their share under the plea that wastage and leakage Avere perqui sites. So many persons Avere engaged in the Avork of depredation on the river, that it Avas carried on in the most daring and open manner — lightermen, Avatermen, labourers, the croAvs of ships, the mates and officers in some instances, and to a great extent the officers of the revenue, being combined in this nefarious system ; while on each side of the river there was a host of receivers, some of them persons of opulence, who carried on an extensive business in stolen property.* In 1798 the Thames Police, called then the Marine Police, Avas instituted for the repres sion of these offences, but the source of the evil was still untouched, the tempta tion remaining undiminished so long as the exposure of property was rendered unavoidable by the absence of sufficient accommodation in quays and ware houses. In 1558 certain wharfs, afterwards known as the " legal quays," Avere ap pointed to be the sole landing-places for goods in the port of London. They Avere situated betAveen Billingsgate and the ToAver, and had a frontage of 1464 feet by 40 Avide, and of this space 300 feet Avere taken up by landing-stairs and by the coasting-trade, leaving, in the year 1796, only 1164 feet for the use of the foreign trade. Other wharfs had, it is true, been added from time to time, five of these, " sufferance Avharfs," as they Avere called, being on the northern side of the river, and sixteen on the opposite side, comprising altogether a frontage of 3676 feet. The Avarehouses belonging to the sufferance Avharfs were capable of containing 125,000 tons of merchandise, and 78,800 tons could be stowed in the yards. The Avant of Avarehouse-room was so great that sugars Avere deposited in warehouses on SnoAv-hill, and even In Oxford-street. Wine, spirits, and the great majority of articles of foreign produce, especially those on Avhich the higher rate of duties Avas charged, could be landed only at the legal quays. In 1793 sugars were allowed to be landed at the sufferance wharfs, but the charges were higher than at the legal quays ; extra fees had to be paid to the revenue officers for attendance at them, though at the same time they Avere incon veniently situated, and at too great a distance from the centre of business. The above concession to the sufferance Avharfs was demanded by common sense and necessity, for the ships entered Avith sugar increased from 203, in 1756, to 433, of larger dimensions, in 1794. Generally speaking, the sufferance wharfs Avere used chiefly by vessels in the coasting-trade," and for such departments of the foreign trade as could not by any possibility be accommodated at the legal quays. Even in 1765, commissions appointed by the Court of Exchequer had reported that the latter Avere " not of sufficient extent, from which delays and many extraordinary expenses occur, and obstructions to the due collection of the revenue." But the commerce of London hati AvonderfuUy increased since * See Mr. Colquhonn"s work on the ' Commerce and Police of the River Thames' for some curious statements as U. atcbe prdcuces, f2 Tonnage. Average Tonnage. 80,040 96 198,053 132 429,715 194 68 LONDON, that time, its progress in the twenty -five years from 1770 to 1795 having been as great as in the first seventy years of the century. The value of the exports and imports of London in 1700 was about ten millions sterling, and in 1794 about thirty-one millions ; and the shipping engaged in foreign trade had in creased in tonnage still more than in numbers, as the following table of British and foreign shipping inwards will show : — Number of Ships. 1702 ... 839 1751 , , . 1,498 1794 . . . 2,219 The coasting-trade had more than doubled in tonnage, and nearly so in number, from 1750 to 1795:— Number of Ships. Tonnage. Average Tonnage. 1750 . . . 6,396 511,680 80 1795 . . . 11,964 1,176,400 101 For the accommodation of this vastly-increased trade scarcely an effort had been made, and the mercantile interests experienced in consequence impediments and losses Avhich it is Avonderful did not arouse them earlier to provide a remedy. Merchandise Avas kept afloat in barges, as Ave noAV see coal, from want of room to discharge it at the legal quays, Avhere sugar-hogsheads piled six and eight high, bales, boxes, barrels, bags, and packages of every description were heaped together. These quays Avere converted into a market for spirits, oil, fruits, and other commodities, and the export and import trades Avere confiiunded to gether on the same limited and inconvenient spot. At one time the stripping and cutting of tobacco Avas performed on quays, and the sugar-hogsheads were put to rights by the coopers on the decks of the loaded ships, AvhIle spirits Avere landed at one wharf and gauged at another. The Custom-House authorities might have done much to have remedied these inconveniences, but the service of this department appears to have been very inefficiently performed. The number of holidays was far too great ; the officers were not very punctual in their attendance ; and there Avas a general Avant of classification and arrange ment amongst them, so that, while some had too much to do, others had too little. Instances are on record of above a thousand tons of goods lying for several days in lighters at a sufferance Avharf, during which only two officers Avere on duty. Goods Avere allowed to remain on board ship a certain time after they were reported, but, in consequence of the crowded state of the quays, this time was not unfrequently overstepped, and penalties Avere incurred in conse quence. The delays and obstructions of all kinds were profitable enough to the depredators on the river, but ruinous to the merchants. About the year 1793 the complaints of the merchants began to attract more attention than they had hitherto received, and they held meetings, at which various remedies were proposed, but no substantial improvement was the result. At length, in 1796, Pariiament took up the subject, and instituted a formal inquiry. After the war had commenced the evils complained of had enormously increased. The commerce of other countries flowed towards London, and mer- ohant-shi^)s, instead of arriving and departing singly, were compelled to sail in large fleets under the convoy of men-of-war, and thus the operations of a more extended trade were concentrated into irregular periods, which demanded the mosi THE DOCKS. 69 extraordinary activity and every possible facility which tended to promote despatch and economy of time and labour. This Avas a most flourishing era for the river plunderers, but the difficulties and inconvenience of the mercantile in terest had noAV become so pressing as to render improvement inevitable, however difficult it might be to devise the most appropriate remedy. The Parliamentary Committee had under its consideration eight different plans for givino- greater ac commodation to the trading and shipping interests, and it had also to listen to the representations of various classes whose interests Avere involved in maintaining matters in their existing state ; and amongst those Avho Avould be benefited by almost any change there was not as yet that concurrence Avhich was desirable, and Avhich Avould at once have led to a decisive result. It was not until 1799, three years affer the Committee above mentioned had been appointed, that.the West India merchants, a very influential and Avealthy body, attained their object ; and, but for the inquiry conducted by the Committee of 1 796, the delay Avould have been still greater. Liverpool and Hull had long experienced the benefits oF Avet docks, and, in 1789, a private individual, Mr. Perry, a ship -builder, had con structed a dock called the BrunsAvick Dock, adjoining his building-yard at BlackAvall, capable of containing at one time tAventy-eight East Indiamen, and fifty or sixty ships of smaller burden. But even in 1799 the Greenland Dock Avas not alloAved to be used by vessels discharging their cargoes, in consequence of objections on the part of the Commissioners of Customs. The obstacles overcome by the generation Avhich is uoav passing aAvay, in the attempt to provide wet docks in the port of London, are comparatively so little known by the generation which is enjoying the fruit of their efforts, as to render a brief recapitulation of the various plans of 1796 not altogether unin teresting. The first plan which Ave shall notice Avas intended to provide accommodation for the increased trade and shipping by deepening and improving the river, and extending the legal quays, at an estimated expense of 565,000/. Its author, Avho Avas chairman of the Avharfingers of these quays, proposed that, from London Bridge to Deptford, the depth of the river at Ioav Avater should be increased to sixteen and tAventy feet, and, calculating that, in 1795, the number of ships (exclu sive of all coasters except colliers) in the port of London at any one time did not exceed 750, he Avould, in the space already mentioned, have provided moorlng- tiers for 1200 colliers, coasters, and foreign traders, with a ballast-Avharf, 1140 yards in length, fronting the King's Yard at Deptford. To each species of trade, and the shipping employed in it, a distinct portion of the river Avas to be assigned ; the space betAveen London Bridge and the Tower on one side being for craft employed at the legal quays; the station for the coasting- trade commencing at the southern foot of the bridsje and on the northern side from Tower Dock, from Avhich point, on each side of the river, Avere to be the stations for the foreign shipping, the colliers being removed entirely out of the upper Pool. Harbour masters Avere to be appointed to enforce the berthing of ships In their proper places. This plan also comprised the Avidening of the legal quays from forty to seventy feet, by platforms so as not to obstruct the current; the taking doAvn of houses on each side of Thames Street, at the back of the legal quays, Avhere spacious Avarehouses were to be erected ; the avenues leading to Thames 70 ' LONDON. Street to be widened, and here also additional warehouses Avere to be builf;. The authorities at the Custom-House were also to be called upon to enforce stricter regulations for the despatch of business. The object of this temporising scheme Avould not have alleviated one of the most prominent causes of complaint —the plunder of merchandise from lighters and barges on their passage from the ships to the quays, as it would still have been necessary for shipping to discharge their cargoes Avhile lying in the river ; and the accumulation of warehouses in the rear of the legal quays would have afforded very inferior accommodation in com parison Avith the commodious arrangements Avhich the docks now presei.>. The " Merchants' Plan " is also deserving of attention. They proposed pur chasing eighty acres of land in Wapping, east of Nightingale Lane, and to excavate and form Avet docks, of thirty-nine acres, capable of containing 350 ships, and one other of about tAvo acres for lighters. One of the entrances of the larger dock was to be by a canal two miles and three-quarters in length, navi gable for ships of 350 tons, and communicating with the river at Blackwall. The Avhole area of eighty acres Avas to be surrounded by a high Avail, enclosing Avarehouses, Avharfs, and quays. The Commissioners of Customs and the Corpo ration of the Trinity House each approved of this plan so far as related to the construction of docks, and it Avill be seen that It was nearly foUoAved In the forma tion of the London Docks. The canal Avas objected to by the authorities at the Custom-House on the ground that, Avhile shipping were towed along it, there would be great facilities for smuggling and plundering — an apprehension Avhich, in that day, haunted all who had property afloat on the river. The Brethren of the Trinity House remarked, in their report on the plan, that contiguity to the metropolis Avas one of the essential points to be insisted upon in every project for Avet docks, as long and tedious lighterage, fraught with so many evils both to jjroperty and the revenue, Avould be at once diminished. The estimated expense of the Merchants' Plan was 993,000/. The authorities of the City had also their plan, or rather plans, the chief feature of which Avas a dock, of 102 acres, in the Isle of Dogs, to contain above 400 ships, and another at Rotherhithe, of the same extent, for colliers. They moreover proposed to extend the frontage and area of the legal quays to 4150 feet in length and 60 in depth, by making five indented quays (and, including Billingsgate, six), each capable of accommodating twenty-nine lighters. The existing approaches to the quays, Avhich were very narroAV and incommodious, and caused great obstruction, Avere also to be widened. It was also proposed to arch over quays and to construct warehouses on them, with special reference to the security of the revenue. The erection of warehouses at the proposed docks does not appear to have been contemplated, and they Avould, therefore, have merely relieved the river Avithout obviating the necessity of lighterage. The cost of carrying these extensive plans into effect Avas estimated at 1,109,352/. The fourth plan, described as Mr. Wyatt's, was a project for constructing three docks in the Isle of Dogs, with a basin, common to them all, at BlackAvall, capable of receiving 160 .ships, and having three entrances; the corresponding western basin at Limehouse to accommodate 800 lighters. The three docks were to be of oblong form, extending from east to west : the northern dock to contain 200 ships ; the middle dock, 250, for ships with the most valuable cargoes of foreign THE DOCKS 7 produce ; and the southern dock to contain 300 colliers. The Avnoie area com prising the three docks was to be surrounded by a wall sixteen feet high. Landing Avharfs and Avarehouses, the most prominent features of the existing docks, Avere not contemplated in this plan ; but ships were to discharge their cargoes on a floating wharf, the Custom-House duties to be ascertained at the time. Lighterage would therefore still have been necessary ; and there Avould have been a waste of time in craning goods from the ship to the floating-Avharf, and then into thelighter ; whence they Avould require to be a third time moved at the quay before they finally reached the Avarehouse. The estimated expenses of the plan were 840,252/. ; and it Avas partly followed in the construction of the West India Docks. The SouthAvark Plan, as it Avas called, which Avas estimated to cost only 300,000/., v/as calculated for local rather than general coiiA'^enience. Docks for colliers, timber-ships, and vessels for sale, were to be formed at Rotherhithe ; and a canal (in Avhich Ave perceive the idea of the Surrey Canal) Avas to open an outlet from the western extremity of the dock through Southwark, and, after nearly touching the King's Bench Prison, would have entered the Thames nearly opposite St. Paul's, A plan Avas submitted by Mr. Spence for arranging all the shipping frequent ing the river into twelve classes, according to their respective employments, for each of Avhich it was proposed to erect a separate dock, either on the Isle of Dogs or betAveen the ToAver and Limehouse ; six of these docks to be 600 feet square, and the remaining six one-third less. The estimated expense Avas 500,000/. ; but the general opinion Avas that a single spacious dock Avould be more convenient and less expensive. Mr. Walker's plan for docks, quays, and warehouses at Wapping, though not differing greatly from the Merchants' Plan, was favourably regarded, on account of the site being contiguous to the City. He proposed to excavate fifty -five acres for docks ; thirty-five acres additional being intended for quays, wharfs, and Avare houses. One of the entrances Avas to be by a canal intersecting the Isle of Dogs at a point nearer the southern shore than the proposed canal in the Merchants' Plan. The cost Avas estimated at 880,000/. The last of these plans Avas Mr. Reaveley's, which displayed considerable in genuity, and consisted in fact of four distinct projects : 1 . To form a noAV channel for the river in a straight line from Limehouse to BlackAvall ; the Long Reach round the Isle of Dogs thus constituting a dock, with flood-gates at each entrance. 2. To continue the new channel beloAV Blackwall towards Woolwich Reach, so as to convert another bend of the old channel into a dock. 3, To make a new chan nel from Wapping, and to form three docks out of the three bends, to be called Ratcliffe Dock, BlackAvall Dock, and GreeuAvich Dock, The Trinity House ob jected that the King's Dock at Deptford Avould be injured by the latter plan; on Avhich Mr. Reaveley proposed : — 4. To make a new channel from Wapping to the old channel between Greenland Dock (noAv the Commercial Docks) and Deptford, thence inclining to the northward until it opened into Woolwich Reach, thus forming tAvo spacious docks out of the bends of the river (above and below) at BlackAvall. The estimated cost of these various plans Avas not given. These projects brought forAvard the interests which depended upon the conti nuance of things as they were. The Tackle House and City porters complained 72 LONDON that, if the import and export business Avere removed beyond the City limits. their right to the exclusive privilege of unloading and delivering all merchandise imported into the City would be worthless ; the carmen, Avho enjoyed a similar monopoly, made the same complaint, and they stated that Christ's Hospital de rived an income of 400/, a-year from the licences under Avhich they exercised their privilege ; the Avatermen foretold that the establishment of docks Avould deprive one-half of them of bread ; the lightermen stated that they had a capital of 120,000/, invested in tackle and craft employed in the transport of merchandise, Avhich capital Avould be annihilated if shipping Avere enabled to discharge their cargoes on quays AvIthin docks ; the proprietors of the legal quays endeavoured to prove that, if only the West India trade Avere allowed to use docks, the value of their interests Avould be diminished two-thirds, and that it Avould be totally annihilated if the foreign trade Avere to be altogether Avithdrawn from the river ; and, lastly, the proprietors of the sufferance wharfs raised their voices against the proposed docks. Some of the objections were not directly founded on a probable loss to the indi viduals who urged them ; but it Avas contended that unloading ships in docks Avould be more expensive than discharging them into lighters in the river. Here, hoAvever, experience could be adduced' to shoAv that the case Avould be quite other- Avlse. Excluding details Avhich were not common to the respective circumstances of Liverpool and London, it was shown that the expense in the discharge of 500 hogsheads of sugar would be 52/. less in docks than in the river. Others scarcely hoped to see an end put to the system of plunder, Avhich had existed so long, and Avith such impunity, as to be regarded almost in the nature of a port- charge — as an evil Avhich there Avas little hope of removing. They feared that articles Avould be convey^ed over the dock-walls, or that the docks would be the resort of depredators and smugglers, Avho Avould convey property out at the gates ; and it was in order to allay these apprehensions that the Parliamentary Committee observed in their Report that " the walls may be built too high to convey articles over, the gates be kept by revenue officers, and no extraordinary concourse be permitted." The Commissioners of Customs, with the same object, also gave it as their opinion that the revenue " may be as effectually guarded by their officers within docks as in the open river ;" and they alleged, further, that Avith Avet docks the delay in the payment of duties occasioned by the detention of cargoes for Avant of accommodation at the quays and Avarehouses Avould be altogether avoided. Only one Avitness examined before the Parliamentary Com mittee thought that docks Avould not " pay," So little, hoAvever, did even the Committee see their Avay distinctly as to observe in their Report, that " Avet docks do not necessarily imply quays, and still less the delivery of cargoes on quays;" so that at this date (April, 1796) there Avas no clear apprehension of the plans Avhich Avould eventually be adopted even if docks Avere constructed. Three years afterwards, in 1 799, not a single Bill had been passed for the con struction of docks, but several had been introduced into Parliament for the still desiderated improvements of the port, and a Committee Avas appointed to report on their merits. Of the plans of 1796 only that of the merchants, for docks at Wapping, and that of the City, for docks on the Isle of Dogs, appear to have been now entertained ; but there Avas one new plan, the object of Avhich was to THE DOCKS. 73 rebuild London Bridge, and to admit ships of 500 tons burthen up to Black friars Bridge, either by a large central arch of 300 feet span and 90 feet high, or by a double roadway in the middle of the bridge with a drawbridge on each side admitting ships into a basin, from Avhich they Avere to pass either up or doAvn the river, only one of the draAvbridges to be opened at the same time, to pre vent impediment to passengers and vehicles. This plan also comprised a range of quays and Avarehouses on both sides of the river from London Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge, A drawing of the substantial and lofty warehouses Avhich it Avas proposed to erect is given in the Parliamentary Report ; and, as they ad mitted of no architectural embellishment, this long and dreary line of uniform buildings enclosing the river has an aspect little short of appalling, and it can not be regretted that its banks are left with meaner buildings of more pic turesque variety. The question respecting the advantages of docks had uoav, however, made such progress that the Committee, in reference to the last-men tioned project, Avere inclined to consider " any plan for the improvement of the port imperfect, of Avhich wet docks did not make a part," There remained, therefore, only tAvo plans under consideration ; and though, as observed in the Report, docks might be advantageously established in each of the places pro posed, yet, considering the inconvenience resulting from further delay, the Committee gave a preference to those intended to be constructed in the Islei of Dogs, as they could be formed in the shortest time and at the least expense. The Bill for the West India Docks Avas therefore passed in 1799, and on the 21st of August, 1802, they Avere opened for business. A compulsory clause was introduced into the Act requiring all ships laden with West India produce to make use of these docks for the space of tAventy-one years. In the following year (1800) the Act for the construction of the London Docks (or rather Dock, for the smaller dock was not made until many years afterwards) Avas passed ; and it also obtained exclusive privileges, vessels laden with certain produce, as Avine, brandy, tobacco, rice, being required to enter. The London Dock Avas opened on the 30th of January, 1805. In 1803 the Act for making the. East India Docks at Blackwall Avas passed, and they Avere opened on the 4th of August, 1806. This terminates the first period In the history of these useful establishments. The interest of the proprietors of the legal quays was bought by Government for 486,087/., and compensation amounting to 138,791/. was granted to persons having vested interests in the mooring-chains in the river. The amount paid out of the Consolidated Fund by virtue of the several. Acts for improving the port of London was 1,681,685/., including the purchase of the legal quays. The sum demanded as compensation (Avithout reckoning the purchase of houses and land, Avhich cost the London Dock proprietors especially an enormous sum) Avas little short of four millions sterling, of Avhich only 677,382/. Avas aAvarded and paid. The Docks did not contribute towards such compensation. Besides the West India, London, and East India Docks, there Avere constructed in the course of a few years afterAvards the Commercial Docks, the East Country Docks, the Surrey Canal Dock, and the Regent's Canal Dock, which Ave shall notice presently. The second period in the history of these works commences Avith the St. Kathe rine's Docks, the projectors of~ Avhich stood pretty much in the same relation to 74 LONDON. the old Dock Companies as these latter did to the proprietors of the legal quays in 1796. In 1822, the government refused to renew the privileges of the West India Docks, Avhich were on the point of expiring, when ships with- West -India produce would be at liberty to enter any other dock. The privileges of the London Dock, to which allusion hag already been made, would also expire in January, 1826; and in 1827 the East India Dock would cease to be the only place for the admission of East India produce, thus liberating the private trade. It was clear that a considerable portion of the business which had hitherto been forced into channels which were remote from the centre of trade would m future be directed to the dock nearest London, and that it would in consequence possess a virtual monopoly, as it already enjoyed great advantages from its situation, and AVas overflowing Avith business, although the dues Avere high, The merchants felt that it would be desirable to have another dock, possessing equal advantages in point of contiguity and convenience, and which Avould prevent their being de pendent on a single establishment; and besides this consideration, it appeared to them that the addition of a ncAV dock was required for the accommodation of an increased trade. Among the projectors of the St. Katherine's Docks Avere there fore to be found many of the principal merchants of the port of London ; and in 1824 they carried a bill into parliament to effect their object. It was strenuously opposed; but a strong case Avas made out In Its favour, and the Committee of the House of Commons reported that " they Avere strongly impressed with the im portant benefits that Avould result If the sanction of parliament were given to the application for the construction of the St. Katherine's Docks." The site selected Avas regarded as a favourable situation for commercial purposes when it was pro posed to extend the legal quays. At that time (thirty years previously) the district chiefly consisted of " mean and Avretched alleys and courts, and some vacant ground : the houses are in general old and ruinous, and the inhabitants low. and poor." In 1763, also, St. Katherine's was actually constituted a legal quay; but from some cause the proceeding was informal, and it had never been used as siich; and in 1799 Its eligibility for Avet docks Avas also pointed out. The bill for converting the site here spoken of into Avet docks received the royal assent in 1825. Upwards of eight hundred houses were taken down,^with St. Ka therine's Hospital, founded in 1148 by Matilda of Boulogne, wife of King Stephen, together AvIth the house of the master, a valuable appointment in the gift of the queen, or of the queen-doAvager, if there be one. The hospital and master's resi dence have been rebuilt in the Regent's Park. The first stone of the new docks was laid 3d May, 1827 ; and they were opened 25th October, 1828, having been constructed with unexampled rapidity. Two other bills for the construction of docks passed in the same year, one on the south side of the river, and another, for colliers, on the Isle of Dogs ; but the project Avas abandoned in both cases. We may noAV commence a tour of the different docks ; and, beginning Avith those nearest London, we first visit St. Katherine's, which are just below the Tower. The lofty Avails which constitute it, in the language of the Custom-House, a place of "special security," surround an area of tAventy-three acres, of Avhich eleven arc water, capable of accommodating 120 ships, besides barges and other craft. The frontage of the quays is 4,600 feet, or nearly three times the extent of the legal quays of 1 796 ; and the Avarehouses, vaults, sheds, and covered ways will contain THE DOCKS. 75 [St. Katherine's Docks.] 110,000 tons of goods. The warehouses are massive and spacious, five stories high. The vaults below, for wine and spirits, are admirably constructed ; and Avhere a range of vaults turns off to the right and left, the arches are by no means destitute of architectural beauty ; and, seen by the dim illumination of a lamp (in the spirit vaults the Davy lamp is used), the visitor is reminded of the solemn gloom of the crypts in some of our most ancient ecclesiastical edifices. All the arrangements connected with the St. Katherine's Docks are directed to secure the two great desiderata of commercial success, economy and despatch, Avhich are attained by ingenious and skilful contrivances, both in the general plan and in the application of mechanical resources. The defects Avhich experience had detected in the older docks were, of course, avoided. The ground-floors of the Avarehouses present an opening towards the basin eighteen feet high ; and cargoes are raised into them out of the hold of a ship Avithout the goods being deposited on the quay. A cargo Avhich could not be placed in the Avarehouse in less than fifteen days in one of the earlier-constructed docks, can be raised from the ship's hold into the warehouses at St. Katherine's in one-fifth of the time ; but, before there Avere any docks at all, an East Indiaman of 800 tons was not usually delivered of her cargo in less than a month; or if of 1200 tons, six weeks were required ; and then the goods were to be taken in lighters from Blackwall nearly to London Bridge, where they were placed on the quay, and thence transferred to the warehouses. Another calculation Avas, that for the delivery of a ship of 350 tons eight days Avere necessary in summer and fourteen in winter, which the pro jectors of docks in 1796 contended could be accomplished in wet docks in exactly one- half of the time for each season. At St. Katherine's, the average time occupied in discharging a ship of 250 tons is twelve hours, and for one of 500 tons two or 76 LONDON. three aays, the goods being placed at the same time in the Avarehouse. Indeed, there have been occasions when still greater despatch has been used, and a cargo of 1 100 casks of tallow, averaging from nine to ten cwt. each, has been discharged in seven hours. This would have been considered little short of a miracle on the legal quays less than fifty years ago. One of the cranes in these docks cost about 2000/., and will raise from thirty to forty tons. It is worked by ten or a dozen men, and is chiefly used in raising large blocks of marble, &c. The height of the warehouses, and their being close to the water, renders the appearance of the St. Katherine's Docks very compact ; and, though the water room is small as compared with other docks, a larger amount of business may be transacted in an equal space than at any other. Before the construction of docks so high up the river, vessels of above 250 tons Avere scarcely ever seen so near the Bridge ; but ships of 800 and 900 tons have been safely towed iiito St. Katherine's. The lock leading from the river to the dock is 185 feet long and 45 feet broad; and the depth of Avater at spring tides is about 28 feet. In 1841 about 1000 vessels and 10,000 lighters were accommodated at St. Katherine's Docks. The capital expended by the Dock Company exceeds 2,000,000/. The London Docks are separated from St. Katherine's by Nightingale Lane. This magnificent establishment comprises an area of above one hundred acres, and cost about 4,000,000/. sterling. "The two docks can accommodate 500 ships, and the warehouses Avill contain 232,000 tons of goods. The tobacco Avarehouses alone cover five acres of ground, and are rented by government at 14,000/. a year. They will contain about 24,000 hogsheads, averaging 1,200 lbs. each, and equal to 30,000 tons of general merchandise. Passages and alleys, each several hundred feet long, are bordered on both sides by close and compact ranges of hogsheads, generally tAvo in height, or eight feet, Avith here and there a small space for the counting-house of the officers of customs, under whose inspection all the arrangements are conducted. Near the north-east corner of the ware houses is a door inscribed, " To the kiln," Avhere damaged tobacco is burnt, the long chimney which carries off the smoke being jocularly called " the Queen's pipe." There is a small dock of one acre exclusively appropriated to ships laden Avith tobacco. Still more beAvildering for their extent and the immense quantity and value of the property Avhich they contain are the wine and spirit vaults, Avhich can accommodate 60,000 pipes of Avine. One of the vaults has an area of seven acres. The Avarehouses around the Avharfs are imposing from their extent, but are nothing near so lofty as those at St. Katherine's; and, being situated at some distance from the dock, goods cannot be craned out of the ship's hold and stoAved away at one operation. The Avails surrounding the docks cost 65,000/. The annual net receipts of the company in 1824Avere about 162,000/., and 96,000/. Avas paid in salaries and Avages. At the same period upAvards of 42,000/. a year was paid to the officers of Customs and Excise em ployed by these Revenue Boards in the same establishment. The business of these docks Avas never so well managed as at the present time, competition and the termination of their exclusive privileges In 1826 having led to many important improvements. The West India Docks are about a mile and a half from the London Docks, and they may be most .conveniently visited from the City by taking the Blackwall THE DOCKS. 11 Railway from Fenchurch Street. Their extent is nearly three times that of the London Docks, the entire ground Avhich they cover (including the canal made to avoid the bend of the river at the Isle of Dogs) being 295 acres. The canal is [West India Dock.] nearly three-quarters of a mile long, and Avas constructed at the expense of the City, but was afterwards sold to the Dock Company, Avho make use of it as a dock for timber ships. The northern or import dock is 170 yards long by 166 wide, and the export dock is of the same length, and 135 yards wide. These two docks, Avith the Avarehouses, are enclosed by a lofty wall five feet in thickness. The warehouses avIU contain above 180,000 tons of merchandise, and there has been at one time, on the quays and in the sheds, vaults, and Avarehouses, colonial produce Avorth 20,000,000/. sterling, comprising 148,563 casks of sugar, 70,875 barrels and 433,648 bags of coffee, 35,158 pipes of rum and Madeira, 14,000 logs of mahogany, and 21,000 tons of logAvood, besides other articles. Since the privileges of the company expired the docks have been used by every kind of shipping. The East India Docks at BlackAvall may also be most conveniently reached [East India Import Dock.] by the raihvay. They Avere at one time under the management of a certain number of the East India Directors; but, since the opening of the trade to India, 78 LONDON these docks have been purchased by the West India Dock Company. The import dock has an area of nineteen acres, the export dock of ten acres, and the basin three ; and as they were constructed for vessels of the largest size, thev /4 ' 1 ¦J [East India Export Dock.] have never less than twenty-three feet of water in depth. The Avarenouses for East India produce were chiefly In the City, and those at the docks Avill not contain more than 15,000 tons. Neither the East nor West India Docks Avere open to strangers Avithout per mission being first obtained, but at all the other docks the gates are freely open during the hours of business. The system of exclusion Avas at one period so rigid, that the croAVs were discharged on the ship entering the dock. They are now alloAved to remain on board, subject, of course, to strict regulations respect ing the use of fires. The number of persons employed in each of the docks is very great, and a large proportion of the labourers are taken -on only by the day. The other classes employed comprise revenue officers, for whom small offices are fitted up, clerks, Avarehousemen, engineers, coopers, and various others. The number of persons employed on an average at the four docks already described is, perhaps, about five thousand. At the entrance of the St. Katherine's and the London Docks are " stands " of carts and Avaggons waiting to be employed by Avhoever has merchandise to be removed from the Avare houses. The advantage of bonded goods being warehoused at a convenient distance for the Avholesale dealers is so important, that cargoes Avhich have been dis charged in the docks farthest from the metropolis have been brought up in lighters to those nearest the City. The Blackwall Raihvay Avill enable the former to retain some of their advantages, as a foAv minutes Avill take a pur chaser from the heart of the City. St. Katherine's Docks are about fifteen minutes' walk from the Royal Exchange ; the West India Docks are three miles from the Exchange, and the East India Docks three miles and a half. The East India Dock Road and the Commercial Road Avere made for the purpose of facili tating the communication betAveen the City and the different docks. The charge for cartage from Blackwall to the City is 5s. per ton. THE DOCKS. 79 The docks in London Avhich have the privilege of legal quays, and are places of " special security," are capable of receiving in their warehouses and other places for stores about 500,000 tons of merchandise, AvhIch are placed in bond under the inspection and care of officers of the revenue, and the duty need not be paid until the goods are taken out for home consumption. These advantages render London a free port, and, Avithout them, its character as a great entrepot for the produce of the world could not be maintained. The gradual extension of the warehousing system is one of the most important commercial reforms of the present century. Previous to 1804, that is, before there were any docks, the duties on almost every species of merchandise Avere paid when imported, a draAV- back to the amount being allowed on re-exportation. Besides raising prices, this system encouraged frauds on the revenue, by which fortunes were dishonestly realised. On the opening of the West India Docks the produce of the West Indies Avas admitted at those docks without the payment of duty being required at the time ; and, when the London Docks Avere opened, rice, tobacco, Avine, and spirits were admitted there also on the same terms. Until the out-ports obtained warehouses of equal security, London enjoyed advantages which have since been partially extended to all the ports of any consideration. Before passing to the other side of the river, we must notice the Regent's Canal Dock, between Shadwell and Limehouse; and, though it is a place for bonding timber and deals only, it affords great accommodation to the trade of the port by Avithdrawing shipping from the river. The docks on the southern banks of the Thames are — 1 . The Grand Surrey Canal Dock at Rotherhithe, about two miles from London Bridge by water. 2. The Commercial Docks and Timber Ponds. 3. The East Country Dock. These have only the privilegs of sufferance Avharfs. At the tAvo latter docks timber, corn, hemp, flax, tallow, and other articles, Avhich pay a small duty and are of a bulky nature, remain in bond, and the surrounding warehouses are chiefly used as granaries, the timber remaining afloat in the dock until it is con veyed to the yards of the wholesale dealer and the builder. The Surrey Dock, like the Regent's Dock, is merely an entrance basin to a canal, and can accommodate 300 vessels : the Avarehouses, chiefly granaries, will not contain more than 4000 tons of goods. The Commercial .Docks, a little lower down the river, occupy an area of about forty-nine acres, of which four-fifths are water ; and there is accom modation for 350 ships, and in the Avarehouses for 50,000 tons of merchandise. They were used originally for the shipping employed in the Greenland fishery, and provided Avith the necessary^ apparatus for boiling blubber ; but, the Avhale fishery being given up, the docks were, about the year 1807, appropriated to vessels engaged in the European timber and corn trades, and ranges of gra naries were built. The East Country Dock, Avhich adjoins the Commercial Docks on the south, is capable of receiving twenty-eight timber ships, and Avas con structed about the same period for like purposes. It has an area of six acres and a half, and warehouse-room for 3700 tons. NotAvithstanding this ample dock accommodation, it Avill probably at some time be still further extended by the formation of collier docks, as none of the existing docks admit colliers to discharge their cargoes, in consequence of the 80 LONDON. injury Avhich Avould be done to most articles of merchandise by coal-dust. The number of colliers which entered the river in 1790 Avas 3897 ; and in 1841, 10,31 1, so that their increase has more than filled up the vacancies occasioned by the operation of the docks in withdrawing shipping from the overcrowded riverj besides which steam navigation has been greatly extended, demanding a larger space for free and unobstructed passage. The formation of a harbour on the Essex side of the river, Avith a railway for the conveyance of coal to London, IS another mode by Avhich it is proposed to prevent the resort of colliers in the most crowded parts of the river. Again, steam navigation was so comparatively unimportant even at the time of the construction of the St. Katherine's Docks, that it is scarcely a matter of surprise that none of the docks are calculated for steamers of the largest class Avithout the paddle-wheels being taken off; and yet vessels of this description are gradually obtaining possession of a trade formerly employing sailing vessels of comparatively small burthen. Between London and Hamburgh, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne. Havre, Oporto, Lisbon, and even the Mediterranean, they already are ia/ge carriers oi every kind of merchandise, and, as they do not enter docks, but discharge their cargoes Avhile lying in the river, they necessarily occupy a large part of the stream. One of the chief objections to the accommodation of steam- vessels in the fioclrs 19 the risk from fire. "3-'£.** '. " * •» 9^ *.^t«^^ [Westminster Bridge, 1842.] LVI.— WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. The metropolitan world of the present and the latter half of the last century seems to have been seized with a very sudden and sweeping determination to get rid of a variety of circumstances which however annoying or mischievous in themselves, had been borne most patiently by our forefathers from time imme morial. It is truly surprising to walk through the principal thoroughfares of London and mark how entirely everything in the shape of street magnificence, street cleanliness, or street comfort that meets the eye, belongs to the existing or the preceding generation. Let accident or necessity take us where innovation has not yet appeared, — to any of those spots or districts, growing smaller and fewer every day, which yet preserve for our instruction a few glimpses of the overhanging houses, the alley-like streets, the din, the danger, and the filth sur rounding the whole like another atmosphere, which so recently characterised London generally, — and it seems difficult to understand how senses of vision, hearing, or smell, constituted like our OAvn, could have ever regarded such nuisances with complacency. It may be supposed that only the poorer and less prominent neighbourhoods or thoroughfares were of this kind : so far, however, was this from being the case, that the highway to, and precincts of, the chief courts of justice, of the houses of legislature, and of the great Abbey, the foremost objects of attention to all foreign visitors, the constant places of resort of all the most distinguished Englishmen, were but a century ago in a condition VOL. HI. G 82 LONDON. Avhich Ave should say St. Giles's or Bethnal Green now but faintly emulates. Our evidence will satisfy the most incredulous. On the 27th of January, 1741, Lord Tyrconnel, in moving " fcfr leave to bring in a bill for the better paving and cleansing the streets AvithIn the city of Westminster and the liberties thereof, and for preventing nuisances therein," said, "It is impossible. Sir, to come to this assembly, or to return from it, Avithout observations on the present condition of the streets of Westminster— observations forced on every man, however in attentive, or however engrossed by reflections of a different kind The filth. Sir, of some parts of the toAvn, and the inequality and ruggedness of others, cannot but in the eyes of foreigners disgrace our nation and incline them to imagine us a people not only Avithout delicacy but Avithout government — a herd of barbarians or a colony of Hottentots." From other notices also Ave learn that the Houses of Parliament Avere obliged, from session to session, to publish an order for the keeping clear the way for the members ;* and that when the Monarch came by land to visit them it was necessary to throw fagots into the ruts to enable the uuAvieldy vehicle of state to pass along Avith moderate ease. Who that noAv passes from Charing Cross into Westminster Avould suspect he Avas traversing the very localities which Lord Tyi'connel had in view in his descrip tion? And the reformation of the evils more particularly referred to by the noble lord, connected with the surface of the ground, is but a type of the greater changes that have here been Avrought. Let us imagine ourselves following some foreign visitor from the City to Westminster a century ago. As soon as he turned the corner at. Charing Cross he entered a narrow street occupying the right side only of the space noAV forming Whitehall and Parliament Street, and Avhich, noAvhere very broad, measured in some parts scarce eighteen feet. Con tinuing his route between the Avails of Whitehall on the left and the Park on the right, near the Horse Guards he stopped to admire the stately proportions of the Banqueting House, almost the only part of the famous Palace which the fire of 1697 had left entire; or to take a last look of Holbein's beautiful gate, Avhich he Avould hear Avas likely before long to be removed — the one loss among all the buildings and places to be SAvept aAvay. Thinking of this gate, he Avould care little for the absence of the other, also belonging to Whitehall, Avhich had stood but a few years before at the corner of King Street and Downing Street, and over Avhich Henry VIII. had been accustomed to pass from the chambers of the Palace to regale himself Avith the pleasures of his tennis-court, his bowling-green, his cock-pit, or his tilt-yard, or merely Avith a simple Avalk in the Park. As the stranger passed along King Street (presenting here and there to this day the same aspect as of old) he had reason to be thankful if he got safely through without injury to person or apparel from the confused throng of pedestrians, horsemen, carts, and coaches jammed together in that narroAv space ; still more fortunate was he if some occasion of public ceremony, such as the King going tc open parliament, had not draAvn him thither. It makes one's sides ache to think of being borne along Avith such a procession through such a place. Forgetting for a moment the disagreeables of the Avay and the astonishment they bred in him, he Avould find the neighbourhood an interesting one. Near the end of Kin" Street (Avhich then extended to some little distance on the other side of the * This form is, indeed, still retained. WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 83 present Great George Street, Avhich was not yet in existence) he beheld the place rejoicing in the name of Thieving Lane, through Avhich felons had been formerly conducted (somewhat circuitously, in order to avoid touching the Sanctuary of the Abbey, where they must have been freed) to the Gate-house or Prison of the Abbot of Westminster, standing just by the beginning of Tothill Street; and close by was the famous Sanctuary itself, occupying the space Avhere now stands the Sessions House. From King Street the road to the Abbey and the houses of Parliament diverged to the left towards the Thames ; but then, again turning to the right, passed between Noav Palace Yard and the old decaying houses which stood on that pleasant green SAvard Ave uoav see opposite the former, with the statue of Canning conspicuous in front. This part Avas called St. Margaret's Lane, and a lane truly it Avas, hemmed in closely by the old " Fish-yard" and by parts of the ancient Palace of Westminster, Avhere, among other curiosities about shortly to disappear, our visitor would see tAvo old prisons of the regal habitation, known respectively as Heaven and Purgatory, in the last of which " was pre served the ducking-stool which Avas employed by the burgesses of Westminster for the punishment of scolds. The lady," he Avould be informed, if he was curious in such matters, " was strapped Avithin a chair fastened by an iron pin or pivot, at one end of a long pole, suspended on its middle by a lofty trestle, Avhich, having been previously placed on the shore of the river, allowed the body of the culprit to be plunged ' hissing hot into the Thames.' When the fervour of her passion Avas supposed to have subsided by a few admonitory duckings, the lever Avas balanced by pulling a cord at the other end, and the dripping Xantippe Avas exposed to the ridicule of her neighbours,"* The dif ferent buildings Ave have mentioned rendered St. Margaret's Lane so narrow that it has been thought worthy of note that palisades became absolutely necessary between the footpath and the roadway for the safety of passengers. And when — strange contrast of magnificence and meanness! — the royal vehicle Avith its eight gorgeously caparisoned horses floundered along this miserable road, it had, after setting doAvn the king at the entrance to the House of Lords, to drive into the court-yard of Lindsey or Abingdon House, then standing at the west comer of Dirty Lane (now Abingdon Street), in order to be able to turn. Wherever the visiter looked it was the same. The beautiful architecture of Henry VII.'s Chapel required an effort in order to get to see it ; and Westminster Hall was in a still worse condition, some of the niches of the loAver part of its front being hidden behind public-housesf and coffee-houses, Avhich were propped up by it, and which but for its support would have spared all trouble of taking doAvn. The gate of the Woolstaple opposite the Hall, the last remains of the establish ment to Avhich old Westminster OAved so much, he Avould be too late to see, as it had lately (in 1741) been removed — and noticeable was the occasion of that re moval. The last relic of the old monopolising principles of business, which confined certain advantages to certain places, was displaced to make room for a structure which, long desired, was at last only achieved by a triumph over similar principles, and which Avas to open to Westminster a new career of im- * Smith's 'Antiquities of Westminster,' vol. i. p. 262, t The two public-houses which concealed some portion of the Hall were only removed in the beginning of the present century, when the fragments of eight figures, in niches of exquisite workmanship, were discovered. g2 84 LONDON. provement, not less important and much more brilliant than even the Staple had done, which originally raised Westminster from a village to a town : m a word, our stranger, stepping from the Palace Yard into a narrow lane leading to the water (the site of which now forms one side of Bridge Street), beheld the work in progress which was the immediate cause of all the changes that rumour said were about to be made in the route through which he had passed— he beheld the rising but unfinished piers and arches of the Bridge. "The change wrought on the other side of the Thames has been still more ex tensive, though none of the interest attached to the removal of ancient and well-known buildings belongs to it. In lieu of the present Westminster Road, and the streets ramifying from it in all directions, gardens extended neariy the whole way to Kennington Common. It will be seen from what we have stated that the present approaches of the Bridge formed no part of the ancient route used by travellers in crossing from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore at this part of the Thames. Those who may have occasion to cross the river by. a Avherry from the stairs at the foot of the fine old gateway of Lambeth Palace to Millbank on the oppo site side, are landed on a shelving slope directly opposite the end of Market Street, and a little southward of the church of St. John the Evangelist. At the top of the slope stands a little wooden house ; that is the old ferry -house, and the place is that of the old horse-ferry. Directly opposite, some hundred yards or so from Lambeth Palace, is an opening to an obscure street, still knoAvn as . Ferry Street ; and one, if not both, of the houses, which then formed consider able inns, still stand there, where travellers were accustomed to wait for the return of the boat, or for better weather than prevailed at the moment of their arrival, or to stay all night and sleep there if the day were far spent and them selves somewhat timid. How primitive all this seems ! One can hardly be satis fied that Ave are really speaking of the Thames at Westminster, and a time so little removed. The horse-ferry, it appears, belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury from time immemorial, by whom it was leased at a rent of 20/. at the time of its suppression on the opening of the Bridge, Both the archbishop and the lessee received compensation. We have incidentally referred to the opposition long shown to the project of a better mode of transit over the river, one more in accordance with the skill and enterprise and capital of the eighteenth century, as well as with the de mands of industry, trade, and commerce. The obstinacy of the principles which actuated the opposers may be judged from the long duration of the contest which OUT local reformers had had to maintain. Their first movements took place so early as the reign of Elizabeth, and were followed up during almost every suc ceeding reign, and particularly during the periods of James I., the two Charles', and George I., in each of Avhich the matter was brought before Parliament. On one of the latest of these unsuccessful attempts the petition presented to the House was met by a counter-petition from the Londoners, who exhibited great alarm and anxiety on all such occasions, and now remonstrated in language that might imply they felt the very existence of the trade and welfare of London depended on keeping Westminster without a bridge for ever. The Company of Watermen also warmly opposed the project, saying it would be highly preju- WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 85 dicial to its njembers, by greatiy lessening, if not totally destroying, several ferries between Vauxhall and the Temple, which they had power to work on Sunday, and which produced a very considerable sum yearly, for the benefit of poor, aged, decayed, and maimed watermen and their widows. This opposition was somewhat more rational, and was rationally set aside by compensation. It ex cites a smile to read of some of the other enemies of the proposed Bridge : side by side with the petitions of the City of London, the Borough of Southwark, and the Watermen's Company, was the petition of the fVest Country Bargemen. On the third reading of the Bill in the House of Commons the petitions from all these parties came pouring in together, and the similarity of their language shows that their unanimity was indeed wonderful. It " will be a great prejudice to the navigation of the river of Thames, so as to render it dangerous, if not im practicable," says the City; it "will tend to obstruct the navigation of the river Thames," says the Company of Watermen ; it " will greatly obstruct the naviga tion of the said river," say the lightermen and bargemen : but these last had an additional horror in store. It " will," they add gravely, " endanger the lives of the petitioners and the loss of goods or merchandise by them carried." " How, in the name of common sense?" might have been well' asked; but the thing was too farcical to be worthy of any serious notice. Assured, however, of com pensation, as all the parties were who had the slightest right to it, before the Bill Avas passed, there seems to have been an intense bitterness of feeling ex cited ; and if we may judge from a clause in the Act, some danger was appre hended that, in the failure of all fair means, foul would be resorted to. The clause In question provides that persons wilfully destroying or damaging the said bridge should suffer death. The Act passed, after counsel had been heard for and against the measure, on the 3 1st of March, 1736, by a vote of 117 to 12. It was odd enough that, whilst the first debate AVas going on, the Thames, as if anxious to know Avhat was determined in a matter so nearly affecting its interests, came up almost to the very doors of the Parliament House, and left the lawyers in Westminster Hall a foot deep of Avater to wade through. The' site chosen for the Bridge, after much consideration, was from the Woolstaple or there abouts, in the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, to the opposite shore in Lambeth. The erasure of the last vestige of the once celebrated market for Avool, to which, generally in common with a few other places, all staple commo dities were obliged to be brought and weighed for the payment of the customs, noAv followed, and demands a few words of notice. " It seemeth," says Stow, speaking of matters as they remained to his day, " that the merchants of the staple be the most ancient merchants of this realm, and that all commodities of the realm are staple merchandises by law and charter, as wool, leather, wool-fels, lead, tin, cloth," Sec. So early as the time of Edward I. the staple was held at Westminster, and princely Avere the merchants who belonged to it. The church of St. Margaret, first erected by the Confessor, to prevent a too great concourse of people to his new and beautiful abbey, Avas almost entirely rebuilt by them in the reign just mentioned : a noticeable cir cumstance, because they could hardly^ have been permanent inhabitants of the parish ; with every change of the locality or localities of the staple — and such changes were continually taking place — they must have shifted too. Thus 86 LONDON. during the reign of the third Edward, in one year the staple of wool was ap pointed to be at Canterbury only, for the honour of Thomas a Becket ; and yet but two years later the woolstaple of Bruges, on the continent, was removed to several places in England, among which Westminster Avas again chosen. The general reason of these changes, with trifling differences as to the individual case, is pointed out by Stow in connexion AvIth this last-mentioned occurrence. It was done, he says, " to the great benefit of the King, and loss unto strangers and merchants." The staple at that time, he adds, began on the next morrow after the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula. It is positively ludicrous to follow the Kings of that period through the turnings and windings of their policy with respect to the staple, seeing " As from a lower the end of all," the addition of a foAv extra thousands into the royal pocket. In the thirty-seventh of Edward III. the staple of wool Avas again removed from England to the con tinent, Calais being now the favoured place. Six-and-twenty of our best and wealthiest merchants Avere appointed the farmers ; and the record of this inci dent gives an additional illustration of the rank and consequence of this class in the fourteenth century. Every merchant had a train of six men at arms and four archers, and all at the King's cost. Into the subsequent shiftings to and fro it Avere useless to enter ; Ave therefore conclude our notices of the woolstaple by observing that, at the time of Henry VI., there were six wool-houses at Westminster, AvhIch Avere granted by that King to the Abbey ; that the bounda ries of the staple extended from Temple Bar to Tothill, within which the court of the staple alone had jurisdiction, consisting of a mayor and two con stables (chosen by the merchants), associated with two alien merchants, and six [Westminster, about 16G0.] Others, alien and native, to act as mediators; and, lastly, that the staple fell into disuse, like Its follows in other places, as commerce increased, and became in- WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 87 formed by better principles. We may now pursue without interruption the history of the erection of the structure that forms our subject. The mode of raising the money required was by lottery, that ever-ready resource of the last century, when noAV Avorks had to be buUt, or old ones that had failed in their object to be paid for, and Avhich statesmen did not hesitate as in the present instance, to adopt as the readiest mode of obtaining finances for extraordinary occasions. The act authorised the raising of 625,000/. ¦ from which the prizes having been paid, the residue, calculated at 100,000/,, Avas for the new Avork. In casually turning over the pages of the Act, after a glance at the title, one would suppose some curious mistake had been committed, so much is there about the lottery, and so little about the Bridge, Page after page is filled with minute details, describing Avho are to be the managers of the lottery, the form of the oath to be taken, the number and form of the tickets, including those distinguished as " the fortunate," the rolling, the cutting, the drawing, &c. The next year it became necessary to pass a ncAv Act, continuing the lottery ; for only 43,000/. had been raised in the time allotted : the sum Avas then raised from 625,000/. to 700,000/, The tickets Avere fixed at 10/. each, but those who took a certain number had a reduction made. In connexion with lotteries and the Bridge may be mentioned a curious incident, Avhich gives a somoAvhat amusing glimpse of the legislation of the last century. On the 2nd of March, 1735, Avhilst the bill for the Bridge Avas in progress, one Henry Jernegan, goldsmith, petitioned the House, stating that he had made a silver cistern, that had been acknowledged by all persons of skill, Avhd had seen the same, to excel Avhatever of the kind had been attempted in this kingdom ; that, after an expense of several thousand pounds on the workmanship alone, exclusive of the weight in silver, and after great hazards in the furnace, and four years of application to the raising and adorning the model, the cistern noAv remained on his hands. Our readers may wonder Avhat this had to do Avith the building of Westminster Bridge, as Ave did ourselves in reading the passage referring to it in the journals of the House of. Commons. But the House, it appears, not only thought the proposed connexion was in due course of propriety, but actually voted an instruction to the committee on the bill to make provision in it for the petitioner — by directing, Ave presume, the disposal of the cistern by lottery. Whilst the managers of the Bridge lottery Avere about their magnificent scheme, it Avas thought, it seems, they might very Avell undertake the Little-Go of Henry Jernegan, goldsmith. The second lottery had better fortune than its predecessor, and funds poured into the hands of the Bridge Commissioners. This body consisted of tAvo hundred peers and members of the House of Commons, to Avhom was intrusted the direc tion of affairs, " and Avho," says Labelye, the architect of the Bridge (Avriting at the period of its erection), " notAvithstanding their great trouble, care, and Avearlsome attendance in the discharge of the several important trusts reposed in them by the Legislature, have absolutely no kind of salaries, perquisites, fees, rewards, or consideration Avhatsoever, except, as a nobleman among them nobly expresses it, the honour of doing what was thought imjjossible." Why the erection of a bridge over the Thames should be thought a Avork of such great difficulty as to be spoken of in these terms, Ave can noAv hardly understand ; Ave have groAvn fami liar Avith this kind of architectural greatness. But Avhen Westminster Bridge 88 LONDON. Avas undertaken England had seen no work of corresponding magnitude per formed since the building of Old London Bridge, six centuries before, and that structure, making every allowance for the difference between ancient and modern engineering, was a work, by comparison, as easy to build, as it was awkward and dangerous when accomplished. Having referred to the architect of the Bridge, Ave may here say a few words on him and his publication. He was by birth' a Swiss, who appears to have been patronised, if he was not brought over to Eng land, by the Earl of Pembroke, the chief of the acting commissioners, but who became a naturalised subject of England, and proud of his adopted land. He was a man highly esteemed, it is said, for his honour and probity. On the com pletion of the Bridge he retired to spend his latter days in the more congenial atmosphere of France, where, it has been stated, he would not engage in any work that he thought would offend the English, and there he died in 1762. Such is the entire amount of the biography of this able man that we have met with. Neither Horace Walpole nor Mr. Allan Cunningham mention him among their other notices and lives of architects, in their respective works on the sub ject. But his biography is the Bridge itself; and no man need desire to have a more honourable or permanent record. Of all the particulars respecting the erection of this great work Labelye has left us a full and interesting account in a publication prepared by him at the desire of the commissioners.. We shall borrow pretty largely from its pages, not only because they are so evidently the proper materials, but also on account of the strange and not very creditable neglect with which it has been treated by those who have since written on the edifice ; and the consequence has been, the perpetuation of the most absurd mistakes, and the continual repetition of the same errors from one writer to another. The author of the account in the edition of Maitland's ' History,' pub lished in 1 756, was perhaps excusable ; he may have written before Labelye's publication appeared (in 175 1). But others since then have gone on copying that account, or, if they did depart from it, it was to add new errors of their own. For instance, in the history we read, " all the piers are laid at a considerable depth under the bed of the river, in a hard bed of gravel, which never requires piling;" and in the • Gentleman's Magazine' for 1738, under the date of Sep tember 13, that the first pile was driven by a ncAvly-invented machine in the presence of a vast crowd of spectators ; whilst Pennant, by a stroke of the pen, reduces the arches from fifteen to fourteen. On looking at the spot chosen, Labelye found the width of the river to be about 1220 feet, or 300 feet wider than London Bridge. The line across the Avater Avas almost due east and west. As to the water, Labelye saw that he could so place his bridge as to alloAv the stream of the tide both at ebb and flood to pass straight through the arches, except during the first quarter of the flood, when the stream runs from Whitehall to Lambeth, and a period when of course large and heavily-laden boats Avould avoid passing through. He then examined the ground by repeated borings, which satisfied him of the existence of a bed of gravel quite across the Thames, and which was generally so hard, " and as it were, petrified," that the boring-drills would not penetrate far into it, and the ballast-men found it difficult to dig when they prepared the foundation of the piers. Most people are aware that the general mode of erecting piers of bridges WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 89 is by the cofferdam, a kind of wall of wood formed of piles separately driven in, enclosing the space required, from which the water may then be drawn ; but Labelye's method was different, and in England, we believe, at the time, new. He proposed to the commissioners that the foundation of every pier should be laid on a strong grating of timber planked underneath; that this grating of timber should be made the bottom of a vessel, such as Is called caisson by the French ; that the sides of this caisson should be so contrived as to be taken away after the pier should be finished ; that the bed of the river should be dug to a sufficient depth and made level, in order to lay thereon the bottom of the caisson; that wherever the ground under the excavation or pit should prove good, there would be no necessity for piling it ; but that, in case the ground under the foundation-pit should not prove of a sufficient consistence, it should be piled all over as closely as necessary ; the heads of these piles then to be sawn level, close to the bottom of the pit, and on their tops the grating and foundation of the pier should be laid as is usual in such cases. And this description accu rately explains the method followed. The caissons used by Labelye were the largest ever known, containing each one hundred and fifty loads of fir timber. The piers also he proposed should be built in an uncommon manner. Instead of an outward shell of hard stones, filled in the inside with rubble or brick-work, he determined to build them quite solid, and of large blocks of Portland stone. The first stone of the first pier Avas laid by the Earl of Pembroke, January, 1739, and whilst the latter was in progress many were the predictions of failure ; but Labelye heeded them not, satisfied with his OAvn conviction of success, and the knowledge that with the greater part of his opponents their wish with regard to the work was the father to their thought. Still they tried his temper, if they could not shake his confidence, and some of the principal personages appear to have had the ear of the commissioners ; and, indeed, among the commissioners themselves there were some who caused the architect great trouble and anxiety. We need not wonder, therefore, at the tone of gratification in which he records the completion of different parts of his work, showing as they did from time to time the success that awaited the whole. It was on the 23rd of April, he tells us, " the festival of St. George, the first pier was entirely completed, having been executed with all the success that could be desired, without loss either of life or limb, and attended with a much less expense than would have attended any other method of building the piers ; to the great mortification of many evil- minded persons, especially some disappointed projectors and artificers, who, with out knowing what was really intended to be done, or being capable of putting it in execution, roundly asserted everywhere that this method of building was entirely impracticable, or at least would prove so expensive, that the charge of laying the foundation of one single pier would amount to more than the whole amount of the superstructure !" In excavating the foundation for the second pier a copper medal Avas found, about the size of a halfpenny, in tolerable preservation, having the head of the Emperor Domitlan on one side, and a woman with a pair of scales and a cornucopia on the other, Labelye, mentioning the occurrence, says, " it is easily accounted for, if it be true that there Avas a ferry abo.ut this place in the time of the Romans; and there are many things which confirm this opinion." By the time they got to the fourth pier the work proceeded with great celerity, and that part of the bridge was finished in twenty days. 90 LONDON. Up to this period the intention of the commissioners was to erect a timber superstructure of very peculiar and ingenious construction, which the curious reader may find engraved in the ' Gentleman's Magazine' for 1750, and Avhich Avas the design of a Mr. King. But though they thus far gave way to the busy Avhisperers Avho said a stone structure AAfould be too expensive, the whole thing too hazardous, and (very likely) the architect too unfit, they allowed Labelye, as Ave have seen, to commence in his OAvn mode, Avisely considering that, if the foun dation and the piers Avere duly cared for, it Avould be easy at any time to replace the timber of the remaining part Avith stone. But an accident gave Labelye the power of carrying out his entire design, and the metropolis a bridge Avorthy of it. This Avas the great frost, Avhich, commencing on Christmas-day, 1739, continued Avith extraordinary severity for several Aveeks. The Thames soon began to be impassable on account of the floating masses of ice, Avhich, gradually becoming fixed, gave a strangely wild and picturesque character to the scene. The river appeared like a far-stretching snoAvy field, covered with huge icy rocks. People began to pass to and fro, then booths Avere erected, until the whole became a kind of continued fair, and the printing presses scattered about were busily employed, in diffusing records of so novel an occurrence. The frost was as extensive in its sphere of operations as it Avas severe. In Ireland persons passed across the fresh- Avater lake Lough Neagh on the ice, a distance of tAventy miles. In Poland and Lithuania the very bears and Avolves Avere driven from their hiding-places into the open country, and became a noAV calamity to the inhabitants. Trees were split, bread and most other eatables had to be thaAved by the fire before they co'uld be cut, Avater still liquid froze in the very act of pouring it from one vessel into another, and stood up in the glass like an icicle ; the warm blood stiffened in the veins ; persons Avere found dead on the highways, and some of the poor even in their houses. The damage to the shipping. Sec, on the Thames Avas very great ; vessels Avith valuable ladings sunk, and others, Avith lighters and boats innumerable, Avere greatly injured. The Avorks of the bridge Avere not destined to escape. All the piles then standing, one hundred and forty in number, Avere torn aAvay from their strong fastenings, and above half of them snapped in two, and other mischief of less importance Avas done. But the apparent evil Avas in this case a great good. It set the minds of the commissioners to work to re-consider their purpose. Whilst the frost continued no advance could be made, and, says Labelye, " during that interruption some commissioners observed at the Board that the goodness of the method made use of in build ing the piers was then sufficiently tested ; that the public in general was highly disgusted at the thoughts of having a wooden bridge," and spoke freely of its disadvantages, among Avhich Avas the liability of " being carried aAvay or greatiy damaged by any future heaps of ice, such as was then on the frozen Thames." The subject of the repairs of a Avooden bridge Avas now agitated,. and that soon decided the question. Its contractors declined undertaking to keep it in repair at any fixed price. Before the labourers were able to recommence the work, on the discontinuance of the frost In February, 1740, Labelye had obtained the sanction of the commissioners to a bridge of stone, with fifteen arches, and abutments, all on Avhat was then esteemed a peculiarly grand scale ; the former, for instance, increasing from a span of 52 foot (excluding the small abutment arches) on each side, to one of 76 for the centre arch, and the piers from 12 feet WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 91 broad to 17. The entire length of the bridge was to be 1220 feet, its breadth 40. The same originality of thought and independence of action that excited the fears of the timid, and appeared to justify the doubts and censures of the hostile, in the commencement, Avith the piers and foundations, were still more strikingly shown when the superstructure began to appear, " In order to give the utmost strength to the arches of the bridge," says Labelye, " I designed their construc tion very different from the common way of building such arches ; for, in order to destroy or counterbalance the thrust or lateral pressure with which all arches (even the semicircular ones) do endeavour to separate or overset their piers, every arch of Westminster Bridge (except the two small ones at the abutments) is double. The first arch Is semicircular, built with great blocks of Portland stone, from three to five feet in height or depth ; over which there is another arch built Avith Purbeck stones, bonded in with the under semicircular arch. This upper arch is of a particular figure or curve, four or five times thicker in the reins, or toAvards the bottom, than at the key or top. Both these arches, taken together, do form a kind of arch Avhich can be demonstrated to be in equi- librio in all its parts. By means of these secondary arches, and the proper dis position of the superincumbent materials, every arch of Westminster Bridge is able to stand by itself, independent of the abutments or any other arch. I asserted, above twelve years ago, that arches thus constructed must have that property, as a necessary consequence, from a mathematical proposition as clearly demon strated as any one proposition in Euclid or ApoUonius ; and the truth of my assertion has since been put out of all doubt, for when, by the settling of the Avestern fifteen-foot pier, in 1747, it became necessary to take down the tAvo ad joining arches, and to rebuild them, all the other arches, even the next to them on each side, stood firm and well (though unsupported on one side) ; nor Avere they at all affected by two severe shocks of earthquakes that were felt in London in February and March, 1749, to the great amazement of many, and to the no less confusion and disappointment of not a foAV malicious or ignorant people, Avho had confidently asserted, and propagated the notion, that upon unkeying any one of the arches the whole bridge would fall." The " people" here referred to, hoAV- ever, had had a great triumph Avhen the accident Labelye mentions occurred to the Avestern fifteen-foot pier. The Bridge Avas thought to be almost finished in 1 747, and preparations Avere making for the opening, Avhen suddenly the pier in question began to sink, and it became necessary to take doAvn one of the arches. In a spirit of bitter indignation Labelye records the annoyance this unfortunate and, to him as well as other persons, incomprehensible circumstance caused him. " NotAvithstanding most of the considerable bridges of Avhich Ave have any account have, in the course of their building, met Avith some accident like this, it is certain that never Avas an accident so much taken notice of. It Avas very sincerely deplored by all those who had any good nature or public spirit, and as heartily rejoiced at by those of a contrary disposition, such as the Avatermen, ferrymen, and a great many others : nay, by some who were fed and maintained by the com missioners Avith much better bread than they ever deserved or ever could earn." The arch being removed, heavy Aveights were laid on the pier, consisting of some 700' * AH the accounts we have seen but Labelye's own give the weight as 12,000 tons, vrhich he himself refers to as a mistake of the " daily newspapers and monthly magazines." 92 LONDON. ton« of stone in blocks, and iron cannon condemned as unserviceable ; and .Labelye was going on to add 1400 tons more when he was stopped by the eommissioners, who were frightened by the representations of a " wicked cabal bent upon mischief for mischief's sake." These persons must have been hard pushed for arguments before they could have talked in the following ludicrous style :- They told the commissioners that the further loading might not only be dan gerous to the adjoining arches, but crush the centres and make them fall into the river, and even draw after them a considerable part of his Majesty's ordnance. These men must have been born diplomatists. Was ever so magnificent a phrase made out of such small materials ! This was the only instance in which the com missioners prevented Labelye from folloAving his own designs. After some delay the affair was settled by a sort of compromise, Labelye adopting another plan for the repair. Recent circumstances enable us to add a useful appendix to this narration. An extensive reparation of the Bridge has been for some time going on, having for its object to strengthen the foundations of the pier undermined by the flow of the Thames since the removal of Old London Bridge ; to lower the roadway in the centre and raise the approaches ; and (there is little doubt) to widen the Bridge, for the preliminary step of lengthening the base of the pier Is already in progress. In making these alterations much interest has been excited among professional men by the knowledge that the cause of the sinking of thei pier in 1747 would noAV most probably be discovered. They have not been dis appointed. " On the removal of the ground within the sheet piling the projecting part of the timber bottom of the caisson Avas found to be broken and separated from that part underneath the pier : this had arisen from the space intended for the cais son not having been dredged sufficiently large to receive it, so that it was resting on the slope of the excavation, the centre part being hollow, until the weight of the masonry broke away the sides and allowed the pier to settle on the loose sand and o-ravel which had run in ; the level of the blue clay being nearer the surface at this pier than the adjoining one, the excavation was principally in that material, and its intense stiffness will account for the dislocation that took place in the timber-work.''* Such was the cause of the accident which gave Labelye so much annoyance and postponed the opening of the Bridge for three years. It was observed that the caissons were found in so perfect a state, that the fir retained even its resinous smell. The semi-octagonal turrets must not be passed without a few words. Labelye says they were not only built for their evident accommodation to passengers desiring or obliged to stop without interfering with the roadway, or for the relief they afford to the eye in breaking so long a line, but for the additional security they gave to the bridge, by strengthening the parts between the arches, and thereby offering so much more weight to repel the lateral pressure. He calls the common idea, that the more an arch is loaded the stronger it will be, a vulgar error. Presuming that the architect ought to be a fair judge of his own inten tions, we may with confidence repel the satire of the French wit or traveller referred to by Pennant, M. Grosley, who, in his ' Tour to London,' assures us that the cause of their erection was to prevent the suicide to which the English have so strong a propensity, particularly in the gloomy monthof November ; for, had they been low, he thoughtfully observes, how few could resist the charming Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal, May, 1841. WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 93 opportunity of springing over ! Avhereas, at present, the difficulty of climbing up these heights is so great that the poor hypochondriac has time to cool, and, desisting from his purpose, think proper to give his days their full length, and end them like a good Christian in his peaceful bed. Maitland mentions a more serious purpose to which these recesses might have been put, and one that gives us a pregnant illustration of the social state of the neighbourhood in the last century. He says they might have " served for places of ambush for robbers and cut-throats," but for the establishment of a guard of twelve watchmen spe cially appointed for the security of the passage during the night. " We walk the public streets with so much danger in these hours," he continues, " that this provision was extremely necessary." Altogether, Westminster at this time was certainly a pleasant neighbourhood to live in, where you could not move in the day without the danger of stumbling in some deep rut, or of having some car riage-wheel rubbing off its superabundant mud on your clothes as it passed yon; whilst at night there were the additional comforts of unlighted ways and lurking robbers ; and, night and day, intolerable stenches stealing across your path, in every possible variety, each suggestive of its own agreeable origin. How much do we not owe to the Bridge ! But for that structure there is no saying how much longer Westminster would have remained lagging behind, its neighbour city in the path of improvement. The writer of the account of Middlesex In the ' Beauties of England and Wales,' mentions a peculiarity of these recesses, which we have not ourselves tried, but which some of our readers may. He says, " So just are the proportions, and so complete and uniform the symmetry, that, if a person whispers against the Avail of the alcove on one side of the way, he may be plainly heard on the opposite side, and parties may converse without being prevented by the interruption of the street or the noise of the carriages."* The work Avas finally completed in November, 1750, having been erected, as Labelye informs. us, without turning of the whole or any part of the river, with out stopping, or even hindering, the free navigation one single moment, and without having any sensible fall under its arches. Great Avas the triumph of friends, melancholy the disappointment of enemies. By the former it was em phatically designated as the noblest bridge in the world, and the public voice ratified the judgment. A day of public rejoicing, on the occasion of the -opening, was named by the commissioners, which, by an odd piece of neglect, was dis covered, when too late, to fall on a Sunday. They then determined to commence at tAvelve o'clock on the Saturday night, and hurry the thing over, so as to avoid scandal. Accordingly on the 17th of November, or rather the 18th, just after midnight, a procession was formed of gentlemen of Westminster, Labelye and his chief assistants, and a large concourse of spectators, who enjoyed the novelty of such a torchlight ceremonial. These were preceded by kettle-drums and trumpets. Guns also fired from time to time. All the next day the Bridge was like a fair. The cost of the Avhole edifice, including the " several conveniences requisite thereto,'' was, according to Maitland's work, 389,500/., which was raised from no less than twelve lotteries ; but Labelye gives the entire cost, on what he believed to be good information, for all the materials delivered, work done, and labour of all sorts in and about Westminster Bridge, at 218,000/. only. The difference is •• Beauties of England and Wales, vol. %., part 4, page 529. 94 LONDON. probably to be accounted for by the circumstance that the same commissioners had the care reposed in them, by successive Acts of Parliament, of all the great improvements we have pointed out as following the erection of the Bridge, and some portion of their expenses may be included in Maitland's estimate." One of the most interesting features of Labelye's pamphlet is the variety of curious illustrations he gives of its size, and the quantity of materials used. Sec. He does this evidently with all the gusto of an artist— retiring first m this direction, then in that, from the painting on his easel, in order that he may enjoy his favourite picture in all lights. As the result of his Inquiries, he tells us that above 50,000/. worth of stone and other materials are always under the ground, or concealed by the water; that each of five arches is wider than the largest hall in Europe— that of Westminster adjoining, of Avhich he gives a careful admeasurement ; that the quantity of stone in the middle arch only, above the piers, and exclusive of all its ornaments, is full 500 tons more than Avas used in the Banqueting House, Whitehall; and, lastiy, that the whole Bridge contains nearly double the quantity of stone materials to those employed in the erection of St. Paul's. Even these notices add to our comprehension of the high character of the structure, which a writer in a scientific publication of the present day says was " unquestionably the greatest and most difficult Avork that had ever been attempted in this country." We have purposely left our mention of the abutments of the Bridge to the conclusion of our paper. These are certainly noble and stately works, and Labelye kncAv it, and Avas proud of them, and takes pains to enumerate their several advantages ; but Ave here transcribe the passage only for the sake of one re mark, at its conclusion, which shoAvs hoAV earnestly he had thought about a subject Avhich yet remains a standing reproach to the metropolis — the state of the Thames banks, made only the more glaring by the glorious works that connect them. Of the abutments Labelye says, " The stairs and causoAvay are properly placed for the conveniency of -water-passengers ; and the loading and landing of goods Avill be at all times out of the indraught of the arches, besides leaving convenient room for boats, and for the watermen to ply for fares, without embarrassing the Streets leading to and from the Bridge. Lastly, these abutments may in time lead the Avay to the making of most useful and beautiful quays along the river, betAveen high and Ioav Avater mark, than Avhich nothing can more contribute to the trade and ornament of the city and liberty of Westminster, and to the preservation and improvement of the navigation of the river, which would thereby haA^e always sufficient stream to clear its bed from sand, mud, and shoals ; and Avould always retain water enough for Avorking and navigating of boats, and other crafts and vessels, and for the loading and unloading them at all times Avith ease." We have here in brief the essence of all the reports and pamphlets that have been since issuing from time to time on this fruitful subject ; and, considering how few there must have been who then shared In such comprehensive views, it is a viH- able illustration of the architect's mind. And Avhat he so much desired, Ave Av^ip are now living shall yet most probably see accomplished ; and the Thames, whiih in itself has experienced no improvement deserving the name ot great, from the time the ancient Britons, under the direction of the Romans, first made those admirable embankments which remain secure to this hour (for such is the origin ascribed to them by a first-rate authority, the President of the Institution jf WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. 9.^) Civil Engineers), will nave commercial utility and artistical ornament at last added. The embankment of the river Avould give the completing touch to the magnificence which surrounds this Bridge, Here is Lambeth Palace, with a thousand historical memories ; there the new Houses of Parliament, the beautiful buttresses of which already begin to overtop the Bridge ; and the Abbey. In other directions, the graceful Bridge of Vauxhall, and the perfectly beautiful and splendid Waterloo, meet the eye. But amidst all this, there are the slimy and black shores of the river, remaining almost as uncared for— now that it is the daily medium of supply to some of the most necessary of the wants of one of the largest town populations in the Avorld — as it Avas when the two ferries of Westminster and London (the last immortalised by Mary Overy),* in cluded most probably the entire amount of communication betAveen the tAvo shores, and when the occasional vision of a Roman-built galley (in which we may imagine our coasting-trade to have commenced) droAV forth the sIght-seers of primitive London. We are, Ave hope and believe, on the eve of amendment. A Report has just appeared from the pen of Mr. Walker, the eminent engineer before referred to, which promises greatly to forAvard the " consummation " so " devoutly to be wished," A passage from this document, describing in detail the particulars of the improvements projected, with a fair likelihood of being carried into execution, and which Avill make a reality of Labelye's ideal per spective, will be interesting to our readers. Mr. Walker says — " As regards the embanking of the river, it might be sufficient to say that the recommended line does not interfere to prevent the formation of any of the terrace or road schemes, Avhich is the case ; but, as our attention has been draAvn to the road improvements upon the banks of the river above Vauxhall Bridge, it would be improper not to refer to this as a result of the projected embankments, Avhich Mr. Cubitt avIU probably be the first to carry into effect on an enlarged scale, upon the estates of the Crown and the Marquis of Westminster. So far as Ave have been able to judge from the opinions of those most largely interested, there appears a probability that a carriage-Avay Avill be formed along the bank of the river from Chelsea nearly to the new Houses of Parliament. The east side of Millbank is the first interruption. If upon the site of the Avorst part of West minster, the property of the Dean and Chapter, or upon the vacant Crown land round the Penitentiary, a basin or dock was formed, AvIth an entrance near the horse-ferry, for the trade of the present Millbank Street Wharf, the houses in that street, Avhich are of value chiefly as connected with the wharfs, might be taken down, and the site of them, AvIth the embanked ground of the river, applied to form a terrace attached to the Houses of Parliament. The view of the river from the drive would be uninterrupted from Chelsea until reaching the Houses of Parliament, when the road would necessarily leave the Avater-side for Palace Yard, Parliament Street, and Whitehall. It might then turn down Whitehall Place or Scotland Yard, whence it could be carried upon arches springing from piers in the new embanked ground, down to Blackfriars Bridge, and thence by a direct street to St. Paul's and the Royal Exchange, or might fall into some of the noAv and improved streets in progress or projected by the City authorities. A splendid communication would thus be formed from Chelsea, or from above it * See the account of St. Mary Overies, vol. i. p. 113. ^^ LONDON. along the river, into the heart of the City. It may be some time before all this can be aecomphshed ; but it would be easy to show that from Chelsea to Mill- bank, and from Millbank to Blackfriars, it would not be a very difficult or expensive work, that it would not interrupt the trade of ihe wharfs between Whitehall and Blackfriars, and that the proposed line of embankment would be in furtherance of this object." [The Building of Westminster Bridge.] [View (rom the Garden of Strawboriy IliU.] LVIL— STRAWBERRY HILL.—WALPOLE'S LONDON. " When I was very young, and in the height of the opposition to my father, my mother Avanted a large parcel of bugles ; for Avhat use I forget. As they Avere then out of fashion, she could get none. At last she Avas told of a quantity in a little shop in an obscure alley in the City. We drove thither ; found a great stock ; she bought it, and bade the proprietor send it home. He said, ' Whither ? ' ' To Sir Robert Walpole's.' He asked, coolly, ' Who is Sir Robert Walpole V "* " What is Strawberry Hill?" might be a similar question with many persons, were Ave not living in a somewhat different age from that of Sir Robert Walpole. But it may be asked, with some propriety, "What has Strawberry Hill to do with London ?" The maker of Strawberry Hill — the builder-up of its galleries, and tribunes, and Holbein-chambers — the arranger of its " painted glass and gloom " — the collector of its pictures, and books, and bijouterie, says of himself, " I am Avriting, I am building — both works that Avill outlast the memory of battles and heroes ! Truly, I believe, the one will as much as t'other. My buildings are paper, like my Avritings, and both Avill be blown aAvay in ten years after I am dead : if they had not the substantial use of amusing me while I live; they would be AA'orth little indeed." f Horace Walpole himself prevented the realization of his own prophecy. It Avas said of him, even during his lifetime, " that he had * Horace Walpole to the Miss Berrys, March 5, 1791. t Horace Walpole to Conway, August 5, 17G1. VOL. 111. H 98 LONDON. outlived three sets of his own battlements ;" but he nevertheless contrived, by tying up his toy-warehouse and its moveables with entails and jointures through several generations, to keep the thing tolerably entire for nearly half a century after he had left that state of being where " moth and dust do corrupt." And though the paper portion of his " works " — his ' Royal and Noble Authors,' his ' Anecdotes of Painting,' his ' Historic Doubts,' Sec. — are formed of materials not much more durable than his battlements, he was during a long life scattering about the world an abundance of other paper fragments, that have not only lasted ten, tAventy, thirty, forty years after he Avas dead, but Avhich aftertimes Avill not . willingly let die. It was in Strawberry Hill that the everyday thoughts and ex periences for the most part centred that have made the letters of Horace Walpole the best record of the manners of the upper ranks during half a century, when very great social changes were Avorking all around. Strawberry Hill and Horace Walpole are inseparably associated In our minds. The house in Arlington Street from which he sometimes dates, is, like most other West-end houses, a thing dis tinguished only by its number ; and Avhich has no more abiding associations than the chariot Avhich rolls on from its first drawing-room through the necessary decay of cracked varnish and split pannels, until its steps display the nakedness of their original iron, and the dirty rag that Avas once a carpet is finally succeeded by the luxury of clean straw once a-week. We cannot conceive Horace Walpole in a house with three Avindows upon a floor, in a formal row of ugly brick brethren. It Is in Strawberry Hill, in the " littie parlour hung Avith a stone-colour Gothic paper, and Jackson's Venetian prints " — or in the " charming closet hung with green paper and water-colour pictures"— or In " the room where we ahvays live, hung with a blue and Avhite paper in stripes, adorned with festoons "—that Ave fancy him writing to Montagu, Mann, Chute, and Conway, in the days when " we pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity," and Lady Townshend ex claimed of the house, " It is just such a house as a parson's, where the children lie at the foot of the bed." In a foAV years the owner had visions of galleries, and round towers, and cloisters, and chapels ; and then the house became filled' with kingly armour, and rare pictures, and cabinets of miniatures by Oliver andPetitot, and Raffaelle china. Then, when Stiawberry Hill came to the height of its glory! the owner kept " an inn, the sign the Gothic Castie," and his whole time Avas passed in giving tickets for seeing it, and hiding himself while it was seen.* Lastly came the time when the old man was laid up for weeks with the gout and the building and curiosity-buying was at an end; and after the Duchess of York had come to see his house in 1793, when he put a carpet on the step of his gate, and matted his court, and presented chocolate upon a salver he says here "TfiU end my connexions with courts, beginning with George the First, great-great- great-grandfather to the Duchess of York ! It sounds as if there could not have been above three generations more before Adam." There never was a place so associated with the memory of one man as Strawberry Hill is with Horace -VValpole There is nothing to confuse us in the recollection. We are not embarrassed with the various branches of the genealogical tree. Horace the first or Horace the -second, Horace the great or Horace the littie, do not jostie in our memories Imagmation has no great room to play, Avith a catalogue in hand, and a porter * Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 3, 1763. STRAWBERRY HILL. 99 watching that no trinkets are stolen, and a mob of people about us, Avho " admire a lobster or a cabbage in a market-piece, dispute Avhether the last room Avas green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be over-dressed." * Even as the author of ' The Castle of Otranto ' saw the portrait all in white of Lord Deputy Falkland Avalk out of its frame in the great gallery at Strawberry Hill, so if Mr. Robins had permitted us to wander about the house in the cold twilight, we should most assuredly have seen a dapper little gentleman in embroi dered velvet, who Avould have told us something new worth communicating to our readers. As it is, Ave must be content without any revelations from StraAvberry Hill. The world ought to be content. It possesses some three thousand closely printed pages of private history, gossiped over and committed to paper in great part within those walls. StraAvberry Hill has a Avonderful resemblance to " the House of Tidings " of Chaucer ; and that house " Ne half so quaintly was ywrought." Like each other — " Al't was the timher of no strength. Yet it is founded to endure." But the uses of the poetical and prosaic " House of Tidings" were identical, " And by day in every tide i Be all the doores open wide. And by night each one is unshut ; Ne porter is there none to let No manner tidings in to pace,J Ne never rest is in that place. That it n' is filled full of tidingn, Either loud or of Avhisperings, And ever all the house's angles Is full of rownings} and of jangles, Of wars, of peace, of marriages. Of rests, of labours, of viages, Of abode, of deathe, and of life. Of love, of hate, accord, of strife,. Of loss, of lore, and of winnings. Of heal, of sickness, or leasings,|l Of fair weather and tempestis. Of qualm, of folk, and of beast^B, Of divers transmutations. Of estates and of regions. Of trust, of drede,* of jealousy. Of wit, of winning, of folly. Of plenty and of great famine. Of cheap, of dearth, and of ruin. Of good or of misgovernment. Of fire and divers accident." Chaucer's house Avas for all time, but it has left very few minute records : Straw berry Hill has reference to a fraction of existence ; but for half a century it can boast of the most delightful historiographer of the London Avorld of fashion — a noisy, busy, glittering Avorld at all periods, but in Walpole's pages something more amusing than the respectable monotony of the same Avorld in our better days of prudence and decorum, * Horace Walpole to Montagu, March 25, 1761, t ^l' — although. J Pace— paes. § Rownings — ^mutterings. || Leasings — lyings. fl Drede — doubt. h2 100 LONDON. The letters of Horace Walpole cannot at all be regarded as a picture of so- ciety in general. He has no distinct notion Avhatever of the habits of the middle classes. Society Avith him is divided into two great sections — the aristocracy and the mob. He was made by his times ; and this is one of the remarkable features of his times. With all his sympathy for literature, he has a decided hatred for authors that are out of the pale of fashion. Fielding, Johnson, Sterne, Gold smith, the greatest names of his day, are with him ridiculous and contemptible. He cannot be regarded therefore as a representative of the literary classes of his times. As the son of a great minister he Avas petted and flattered till his father fell from his power ; he says himself he had then enough of flattery. When he mixed among his equals in the political intrigues of the time, he displayed no talent for business or oratory. His feeble constitution compelled him to seek amusement instead of dissipation ; and his great amusement was to look upon the follies of his associates and to laugh at them. He Avas not at bottom an ill- natured man, or one without feeling. He affected that insensibility which is the exclusive privilege of high life — and long may it continue so. When Lord Mountford shot himself, and another Lord rejoiced that his friend's death would allow him to hire the best cook in England, the selfish indifference Avas probably more affected than real. Walpole himself takes off his own mask on one occa sion. When he heard of Gray's death, in Avriting to Chute he apologises for the concern he feels, and adds, " I thought that what I had seen of the Avorld had hardened my heart ; but I find that it ha.d fo7-med my language, not extinguished my tenderness." When he speaks of individuals we may occasionally think that the Avorld had formed his language ; he Is too often spiteful and malicious : but Avhen he describes a class he is not likely much to exaggerate. The esprit de corps would render him somewhat charitable: if he did not "extenuate" he would not set down "in malice," when he Avas holding up a mirror of himself and of the very people with whom he Avas corresponding. In the early part of the last century London saw less of the Avealth and splen dour of the aristocracy than previous to the Revolution. The great political divisions of the kingdom kept many families aAvay from the Court; and the habits of the first Elector of Hanover who walked into the ownership of St. James's, and of his son and successor, were not very likely to attract the proud and the discontented from the scenes of their own proper greatness. Walpole, writing from Newmarket in 1743, says, "How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look ; and yet it has actually a street of houses better than Parma or Modena ! Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now ; and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, Sec. But from that grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country," It was some time before the large houses of the nobility once more made London the magnificent capital which it subsequently became. In the mean time the lordly tenants of the " coops" above described spent a vast deal of their time in places of public resort. Let us cast STRAWBERRY HILL. 101 a rapid glance at the fashionable amusements of the second half of the last century. The year 1741 presents to us a curious spectacle of the aristocracy and the people at issue, and almost in mortal conflict, not upon the question of corn or taxes, but whether the Italian school of music should prevail, or the Anglo- German. " The opera is to be on the French system of dancers, scenes, and dresses. The directors have already laid out great sums. They talk of a mob to silence the operas, as they did the French players ; but it Avill be more diffi cult, for here half the young noblemen in town are engaged, and they avIU not be so easily persuaded to humour the taste of the mobility : in short, they have already retained several eminent laAvyers from the Bear Garden to plead their defence."* The fight had been going on for nearly tAventy years. Everybody knows Swift's epigram v " On the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini," " Strange, all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedle-Dum and Tvveedle-Dee." Walpole naturally belonged to the party of his "order." Handel had produced his great work, the 'Messiah,' in 1741, at Covent Garden. Fashion Avas against him, though he was supported by the court, the mob, and the poet of common sense. He went to Ireland; and the triumph of the Italian faction Avas thus immortalized by Pope : — " O Cara ! Cara ! silence all that train : Joy to great Chaos ! let Division reign : Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence. Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense : One trill shall harmonise joy, grief, and rage. Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage : To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore. And all thy yawning daughters cry encore. Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns, Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains. But soon, ah soon. Rebellion will commence. If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense : Strong in neAv arms, lo ! giant Handel stands, Like bold Briareus, Avith a hundred hands ; To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes. And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drunis. Arrest hira, empress, or you sleep no more — She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore." t Handel came back to London in 1742, and the tide then turned in his favour. Horace Walpole shows us how fashion tried to sneer him doAvn ; he is himself the oracle of the divinity. " Handel has set up an oratorio against the operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces, and the singers of Roast Beef from betAveen the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever a one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelu jahs ; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune."J The Italian Opera House in the Hay- market itself went out of fashion in a few years, and the nobility had theii * Horace Walpole to Mann, Oct. 8, 1741. t Dunciad, Book IV. X Horace Walpole to Mann, Feb. 24, 1743. 102 LONDON. favourite house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. What the Court then patronised the aristocracy rejected. " The late royalties Avent to the Haymarket, when it was the fashion to frequent the other opera in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lord Chester field one night came into the latter, and was asked if he had been at the other house? 'Yes,' said he, 'but there Avas nobody but the king and queen; and as I thought they might be talking business, I came aAvay.' "* HoAvever, amidst all these feuds the Italian Opera became firmly established in London; and through that interchange of taste which fortunately neither the prejudices of exclusiveness nor ignorance can long prevent, the people began gradually to ap preciate the opera, and the nobility became enthusiastic admirers of the oratorio. In the days of Walpole the Theatre Avas fashionable ; and in their love of theatrical amusements the nobility did not affect to be exclusive. In not liking Garrick Avhen he first came out, Walpole and his friend Gray indulged probably in the fastidiousness of individual taste, instead of representing the opinions of the fashionable or literary classes. Gray writes, "Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that the town are horn -mad after ? There are a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman's Fields sometimes ; and yet I am stiff in the opposition." Walpole, in May, 1742, six months after Garrick's first appearance, says, "All the run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, Avho is turned player, at Goodman's Fields. He plays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it ; but it is heresy to say so : the Duke of Argyle says he is superior to Better- ton. "f From some cause or other, Walpole hated and vilified Garrick all his life. His pride Avas perhaps Avounded Avhen he was compelled to jostle against the actor in the best society. In the instance of Garrick, Pope's strong sense Avas again opposed to Walpole's super-refinement. The great poet of manners said to Lord Orrery on witnessing Garrick's Richard III., "That young man never had his equal as an actor, and Avill never have a rival." As a manager Garrick did not scruple to resent an injustice, however offensive to the leaders of the ton. " There has been a new comedy, called ' The Foundling,' far from good, but it took. Lord Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely for the love of damnation. The Templars espoused the play, and Avent armed with syringes charged Avith stinking oil and with sticking- plasters; but it did not come to action. Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their plot the moment they grew to be in the right."t The Templars with their syringes and stinking oil, and Lord Hobart Avith his ready " damnation," give one a notion of the mob-legislation of the theatres at that period, for boxes, pit, and gallery constituted one mob. There was a calm awhile, but in 1 755 Walpole writes : "England seems returning: for those who are not in Parliament there are nightly riots at Drury Lane, Where there is an Anti-Gallican party against some French dancers. The young men of quality have protected them till last night, when, being opera-night, the galleries were victorious." Walpole tells us a most amusing story of the mannet m Avhich these things were managed in his earlier days. " The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously; for ¦• Horace Walpole to Conway, Sept. 25, 1761. t Horace Walpole to Mann. J Horace Walpole to Mann, March 11, 174s. STRAWBERRY HILL. 103 it is the way nere to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of Bear Garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out. I Avas sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain floAv up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed Avith bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar ; and among the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philosopher ! In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarce begun to say, ' Mr. Fleetwood ' when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, ' He is an impudent rascal !' The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator ! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box Avhere I sat, and pulling off liis hat, said, ' Mr. Walpole, Avhat would you please to have us do next ? ' It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe throAV me. I sank doAvn into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, ' Where's Mr. W. ? Avhere's Mr. W. ? ' In short, the whole town has been entertained with my proAvess, and Mr. CouAvay has given me the name of Wat Tyler."* The participation of people of fashion in theatrical roAvs is a sufficient evidence of the interest which they took in the theatre. They carried the matter still farther in .2751, by hiring Drury Lane to act a play themselves. " The rage was so great to see this performance, that the House of Commons literally adjourned at three o'clock on jnirpose."^ Vauxhall and Ranelagh figure, as Ave have seen, in the descriptions of the ' Spectator' and the 'Citizen of the World,' in the 'Connoisseur' and in 'Eve lina.' J But none of these writers give us an adequate notion of the fashion of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Addison, and Goldsmith, and Miss Burney looked upon the great croAvd of all ranks as they Avould look upon life in general. Walpole saAV only his OAvn set ; but how graphically has he described them ! The mere surface of the shows, the gilding'and varnish of the gaiety, fills the imagination. At Vauxhall we see Prince Lobkowitz's footmen, in very rich new liveries, bearing torches, and the Prince himself in a noAV sky-blue watered tabby coat, Avith gold button-holes, and a magnificent gold waistcoat ; and Madame I'Ambassadrice de Venise in a green sack, Avith a straw hat ; and we hear the violins and hautboys, the drums and trumpets, of the Prince of Wales's barges. § Imagine such a sight in our own days ! And then, one-and-twenty years later in life, Walpole is again going to Vauxhall to a ridotto alfresco, with, a tide and torrent of coaches so pro digious, that he is an hour and a half on the road before he gets half way from Arlington Street. " There is to be a rival mob in the same Avay at Ranelagh to-morroAv; for the greater the folly and imposition, the greater is the crowd." |! * Horace Walpole to Mann, November 26, 1744. t Horace Walpole to Mann; X London, vol. i. No. 23. § Horace Walpole to Conway, June 27, 1748; II Horace AValpole to Montagu, May 11, 1769. 104 LONDON. But for a littie, quiet, domestic party at Vauxhall, composed of the highest in rank and fashion, Walpole is the most delightful, and, we have no doubt, the most veracious of chroniclers. Mrs. Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow of Goldsmith are mere pretenders to coarseness by the side of Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe. Walpole receives a card from Lady Caroline in 1750 to go with her to the Gardens. When he calls, the ladies " had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them." All the town had been summoned ; and in the Mall they picked up dukes and damsels, and two young ladies especially, who had been " trusted by their mothers for the first time of their lives to the matronly care of Lady Caroline." They marched to their barge with a boat of French horns attending. Upon debarking at Vauxhall they " picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from ' Jenny's Whim ;' where, instead of going to old Strafford's catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny, and left her and eight other Avomen and four other men playing at brag." " Jenny's Whim " Avas a tavern at Chelsea Bridge. The party assemble in their booth and go to supper, after a process of cookery which would rather astonish a Lady Caroline of our own day : " We minced seven chickens into a china dish, Avhich Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our ears. She had brought Betty, the fruit- girl, Avith hampers of strawberries and cherries from Rogers's, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. The conversation Avas no less lively than the whole transaction." Lady Caroline was not singular in her tastes. Before the accession of George III. it was by no means uncommon for ladies of quality to sup at taverns, and even to invite the gentlemen to be of the company. Walpole says that in 1755 a Frenchman, Avho Avas ignorant of the custom, took some liberties AvIth Lady Harrington, through AvhIch mistake her house Avas afterwards closed against him. This practice, Avhich to us seems so startling, was a relic of the manners of a century earlier. The decorum of the court of George III. banished the custom from the upper ranks ; but it lingered amongst the middle classes : and Dr. Johnson thought it not in the slightest degree indecorous to say to two young ladies who called upon him, " Come, you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre ;" to which the ladies, who wished to consult the philosopher upon the subject of Methodism, very readily assented. In the reign of the second George, and perhaps a littie later, the great ladles, Avhether at taverns or in private houses, carried their vivacity somewhat farther than we should now think consistent with perfect propriety. Lady Coventry, at a great supper at Lord Hertford's, "said, in a very vulgar accent, if she drank, any more she should be muckibus." How the Americans of our own day must be shocked at the vulgarity of our aristocratic predecessors; for they y/ill not tolerate even the Avord drunk, and describe the condition which that word conveys by the pretty epithet excited ! We are adopting the term ; and It may be expected that the refinement in our nomenclature may lead to a revival of a littie of the old liberty in our practice. Walpole explains that muckibus was " Irish for senti mental." He did not foresee the change in our English, He calls things by their right names. He tells us that " Lord Cornwallis and Lord Allen came drunk to the Opera;" and, what is harder to believe, that the Chancellor, Lord STRAWBtlRRY HILL. J 05 Henley, being chosen a governor of St. BartholomoAv's Hospital, " a smart gentle man who was sent with a staff carried it in the evening when the Chancellor hap pened to be drunk." These exhibitions were in 1763. We might believe, from the Avell-known lines of Pope, that the amusement Avhich was invented for the solace of a mad king was the exclusive inheritance of an aged aristocracy : "See how the ivorld its veterans rewards, A youth of folly, an old age of cards." Not so. The cards were a part of the folly of youth as well as of age. Walpole never appears to have had the passion of a gambler ; but Ave learn from his fifty years' correspondence that he was ahvays Avell content to dabble Avith cards and dice, and he records his Avinnlngs with a very evident satisfaction. The reign of [Horace Walpole.] ombre, whose chances and intrigues interested the great quite as much as the accidents and plots of the reign of Anne, Avas supplanted by the noAV dynasty of whist; and then w/m/ yielded to the more gambling excitement of /oo ; to which faro succeeded ; and the very cards themselves Avere at last almost kicked out by the ivory cubes, which disposed of fortunes by a more summary process. In 1742 whist Avas the mania, though Walpole A'oted it dull : " Whist has spread a uni versal opium over the whole nation." Again : " The kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth The only token of this new kingdom is a Avom an riding on a beast, Avhich is the mother of abominations, and the name In the forehead is Whist ; and the four-and-tAventy elders, and the Avoman, and the Avhole town, do nothing but play with this beast."* Whist had a long reign. In 1749 Walpole writes : " As I passed over the green [Richmond], I saAv Lord Bath, Lord Lons dale, and half-a-dozen more of the White's club, sauntering at the door of a house •* Horace Walpole to Mann. 106 LONDON. which they have taken there, and come to every Saturday and Sunday to play at whist. You will naturally ask Avhy they can't play at Avhist in London on those days as well as on the other five?. Indeed I can't tell you, except that.it is so established a fashion to go out of town at the end of the week, that people do go, though it be only into another town." * Ministers of state, and princes Avho had something to do, were ready to relieve the cares of business by gambling, as much as other people gamed to vary their idleness. Lord Sandwich " goes once or twice a-week to hunt AvIth the Duke [Cumberland] ; and as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, SandAvich, to make his court— and fortune— carries a box and dice in his pocket ; and so they throw a main, whenever the hounds are at fault, ' upon every green hill, and under every green tree.' "f Five years later, at a magni ficent ball and supper at Bedford House, the Duke " was playing at hazard with a great heap of gold before him : somebody said he looked like the prodigal son and the fatted calf, both." t Amongst the royal and noble gamblers, swindlers par excellence sometimes found their Avay. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that he Avould be the first baronet that would be hanged. He and a lady, " dressed foreign as a princess of the house of Brandenburg," cheated Lord Castledurrow and Captain Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet at Ranelagh, and thus apostrophised him : " Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night ; since that, I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore desire to have no farther- acquaintance with you." The Baronet took the money Avith a respectful bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without Avaiting for an answer whipped into the chariot. § No doubt the Baronet prospered and was smiled upon. Walpole tells another story of a hanger-on upon the gaming-tables, Avhich has a dash of the ti-agic in it : " General Wade was at a Ioav gaming-house, and had a very fine snuff-box, Avhich on a sudden he missed. Everybody denied having taken it : he insisted on searching the company. He did : there remained only one man, who had stood behind him, but refused to be searched, unless the General Avould go into another room alone with him. There the man told him that he Avas born a gentleman, Avas reduced, and lived by what little bets he could pick up there, and by fragments Avhich the Avaiters sometimes gave him. ' At this moment I have half a fowl in my pocket ; I was afraid of being exposed : here it is ! Noav, sir, you may search me.' Wade Avas so struck that he gave the man a hundred pounds." || The genius of gambling might be painted, like Garrick, betAveen the tragic and the comic muse. We turn over the page, and Comedy again presents herself, in an attitude that looks very like the hoyden step of her half sister. Farce : " Jemmy Lumley last week had a party of AvhIst at his oAvn house : the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Prijean, and a Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening till twelve next day ; Jemmy never winnino- one rubber, and rising a loser of two thousand pounds. Hoav it happened I know not, nor why his suspicions arrived so late, but he fancied himself cheated, and refused * Horace Walpole to Mann, June 4, 1749. f Horace Walpole to Mann, January 31, 1750, I Horace Walpole to Bentley, 1755. ' ^ Horace Walpolfe to Mann, 1718. II Horace Walpole to Mann, Jaimory lO, 1750. STRAWBERRY HILL. 107 to pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises : on the contrary, a day or two afterwards, he promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her virtuous sister. As he went to the rendezvous his chaise Avas stopped by somebody, who advised hiin not to proceed. Yet, no Avhit daunted, he advanced. In the garden he found the gentle conqueress, Mrs. Mackenzy, who accosted him in the nost friendly manner. After a foAV compliments, she asked him if he did not intend to pay her. ' No, indeed, I shan't, I shan't ; your servant, your servant.' ' Shan't you ?' said the fair virago ; and taking a horsewhip from beneath her hoop, she fell upon him with as much vehemence as the Empress-Queen Avould upon the King of Prussia, if she could catch him alone in the garden at Hampstead."* There was deep philosophy in a saying of George Selwyn's, when a waiter at Arthur's Club House Avas taken up for robbery : " What a horrid idea he Avill give of us to the people in Newgate ! " It may be doubted whether the gentle men-highwaymen who peopled NeAvgate at that era had a much looser code of morals than some of the great folks they pillaged. The people of London got frightened about an earthquake in 1750, and again in 1756, There Avas a slight shock in the first of those years, which set the haunters of White's furiously betting whether it was an earthquake or the blowing-up of the powder-mills at HounsloAV. Bishop Sherlock and Bishop Seeker endeavoured to frighten the people into piety; but the visitors at Bedford House, Avho had supped and stayed late, Avent about the town knocking at doors, and baAvling in the Avatch- man's note, " Past four o'clock and a dreadful earthquake." Some of the fashion able set got frightened, however, and went out of town ; and three days before the exact day on which the great earthquake was prophesied to happen, the crowd of coadhes passing Hyde Park Comer with whole parties removing into the country Avas something like the procession already described to Vauxhall. " Several women have made earthquake gowns — that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One AVoman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose ; she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But Avhat Avill you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, Avhere they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back — I suppose to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish? "f When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion, of public terror, took a fit of hypocrisy and ordered a general fast, the gambling-houses used to be filled with senators who had a day of leisure upon their hands. Indifference to public opinion, as Avell as a real insensibility, drew a line between the people of fashion and the middle classes. Walpole tells a story which is characteristic enough to be true, though he hints that it Avas invented : — " They have put in the papers a good story made on White's : a man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in ; the club immediately made bets Avhether he Avas dead or not ; and Avhen they Avere going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet." X A great deal of this reckless spirit of gambling, Avhich lasted through the century, and which probably has only * Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 14, 1761. f Horace Walpole to Mann, April 2 1750. I Horace Walpole to Mann, September 1, 1750. 108 LONDON. clothed itself more decently in our own day, must be attributed to the great increase of the wealth of the aristocracy, through the natural effects of the great increase of the profitable industry of the middle classes. But it cannot be denied that much of the increase flowed back to the sources from which it was derived, in the form of bills, bonds, post-obits, and mortgages. The financial maxim of Charies Fox, that a man need never want money if he was willing to pay enough for it, tended to keep matters somewhat equal. The idea from which Ave cannot escape, Avhen we trace the history of fashion in the middle of the last century, is, that the prevailing tone indicated something like a general moral intoxication. A succession of stimulants appears necessary to the upholding of social existence. This must be always in some degree the case with the rich and idle, whose vocation is chiefly to Avhat they call pleasure. But we have few glimpses in the letters and memoirs of that period of the disposition to those calm domestic enjoyments which are principally de rived from the cultivation of a taste for reading and the arts, and which, in our OAvn day, equally characterises the middle and the upper classes. Of course, under the loosest state of manners, even in the profligate court of Charles IL, there must have been many families of the upper ranks who despised the Ioav vices and unintellectual excitements of their equals In birth; and under the most decorous and rational system of life there must be a few Avho Avould gladly restore a general licence, and Avho occasionally signalise themselves by some out break. But neither of these constitute a class. In the youth and middle age of Walpole the men and women of fashion appear to have lived without restraint imposed by their own sense of decorum, Avithout apprehension of the opinions of their associates, without the slightest consideration for the good or evil Avord of the classes below them. " In a regular monarchy the folly of the prince gives the tone ; in a doAvnright tyranny folly dares give itself no airs ; it is in a Avanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue together." * Every lady or gentleman of spirit was allowed to have a whim, whether it in clined to gambling, or intrigue, or drunkenness, or riots in public places. What Walpole said of the Duke of Newcastle, that he looked like a dead' body hung in chains always wanting to be hung somewhere else, gives one a notion of the perpetual restlessness of the fashionable class. The untiring activity of some leaders lasted a good deal longer ; and no doubt occasionally displays itself even noAV in a preternatural energy, which makes the cheek pale in the season of bloom and freshness. But there is noAV some repose, some intervals for reflection; the moral intoxication does not last through sixteen of the four-and-twenty hours. The love of sights, the great characteristic of the vulgar of our OAvn day, Avas emphatically the passion of the great in the last century. The plague was reported to be in a house in the City ; and fashion Avent to look at the outside of the house in Avhich the plague Avas enshrined. Lady Milton and Lady Temple on a night in March put on hats and cloaks, and, sallying out by them selves to see Lord Macclesfield lie in state, " literally Avaited on the steps of the house In the thick of the mob, Avhile one posse Avas admitted and let out again for a second to enter." f The "mob" (by Avhich Walpole usually means an assemblage of people of any station below the aristocracy) paid back this ¦* Horace Walpole to Mann. f Horace Walpole to Lord Hertford, Maich 27, 1764. STRAWBERRY HILL. 109 curiosity with interest. The two Miss Gunnings lighted upon the earth of London in 1751, and were declared the handsomest women alive, " They can't walk in the Park or go to Vauxhall, but such mobs follow that they are gene rally driven away." It is difficult to understand how a real plebeian mob should know anything about the Miss Gunnings, at a time when there were no para graphs of personality in the meagre newspapers. The Gunning mob was pro bably a very courtly one. At any rate the curiosity Avas in common between the high and the low. One of these fair ladles became Duchess of Hamilton. " The Avorld is still mad about the Gunnings : the Duchess of Hamilton was presented on Friday ; the crowd Avas so great that even the noble mob in the draAving- room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs ; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is known they Avill be there." * Ten years later there Avas another great sight to which all resorted — the Cock-lane Ghost. How charac teristic of the period is the following description of a visit to the den of the ghost ! — " We set out from the Opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney-coach, and drove to the spot : it rained torrents ; yet the lane Avas full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in ; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to "which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable. When we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, Avith no light but one tallow-candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insuf ferable heat and stench. At' the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts ? We had nothing. They told us, as they would at a puppet- shoAv, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there are only 'prentices and old Avomen. We stayed, however, till half an hour after one.''f Imagine a prince of the blood, tAvo noble ladies, a peer, and the son of a prime minister, packing in one hackney- coach from Northumberland House on a winter's night, and in a dirty lane near Smithfield watching till h.ilf-past one by the light of a talloAv-candle, amidst fifty of the " unwashed," for the arrival of a ghost ! In those days the great patron of executions was the fashionable George Selwyn ; and this was the way ne talked of such diversions : — " Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution [of Lord Lovat], and asked him, ' how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off? ' ' Nay,' says he, ' if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends^ for I Avent to see it sewed on again.' " J When M'Lean, the highwayman, was under sentence of death in Newgate, he was a great attraction to the fashionable world. "Lord Mountford, at the head of half White's, went the first day But the chief personages who have been to comfort and Aveep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe."§ These were the heroines of the minced chickens at Vauxhall; and we presume they did not visit the condemned cell to metamorphose the thief * Horace Walpole to Mann, March 23, 1752. f Horace Walpole to Montagu, February 2, 1762. { Horace Walpole to Conway, April 16, 1747, J Horace Walpole to Mann, August 2, 1750. no LONDON. into a saint, as is the "whim" o' our oAvn times. The real robbers were as fashionable in 1750 as their trumpery histories Avere in 1840. "You can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate ; and the prints thai are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as— as— Marshal Turenne's— we have no generals worth making a parallel." * The visitors had abundant opportunities for the display of their sympathy :—" It is shocking to think what a shambles this jountry is grown ! Seventeen were executed this morning" f Amidst such excite ments, Avho can Avonder that a man of talent and taste, as Walpole was, should often prefer pasting prints into a portfolio^ or correcting proofs, at " poor little Strawberry? " The reckless and improvident spirit of the period wnen Horace Walpole was an active member of the world of fashion is strikingly shown in the rash, and Ave may say indecent, manner in which persons of rank rushed into marriage. The happiness of a life Avas the stake which the great too often trusted to some thing as uncertain as the cast of a die or the turn-up of a trump. It seems almost impossible that in London, eighty or ninety years ago only, such a being as a Fleet parson could have existed, who performed the marriage ceremonial at any hour of the day or night, in a public-house or a low lodging, without public notice or public witnesses, requiring no consent of parents, and asking only the names of the parties who sought to be united. We might imagine, at any rate, that such irreverend proceedings were confined to the lowest of the people. The Fleet parsons had not a monopoly of their trade. In the fashion able locality of May Fair was a chapol fn which one Keith presided, who adver tised in the newspapers, and made, according to Walpole, " a very bishopric of revenue." This worthy Avas at last excommunicated for " contempt of the Holy and Mother Church ;" but the impudent varlet retaliated, and excommunicated at his own chapel Bishop Gibson, the Judge of the Ecclesiastical Court, and two reverend doctors. Keith was sent to prison, where he remained many years ; but his shop flourished under the management of his shopmen, called Curates; and the public Avere duly apprised of its situation and prices : — " To prevent mistakes, the little uoav chapel in May Fair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner-house opposite to the City side of the great chapel, and Avithin ten yards of it, and the minister and clerk live in the same corner-house where the little chapel is ; and the license on a crown stamp, minister and clerk's fees, together Avith the certificate, amount to one guinea, as heretofore, at any hour till four in the afternoon. And that it may be the better known, there is a porch at the door like a country church porch."J Keith issued from his prison a manifesto against the Act to prevent clandestine marriages, to which we shall presently advert, in which he gravely puts forth the following recommendation of his summary process with reference to the lower classes : — " Another inconveniency Avhich will arise from this Act Arill be, that the expense of being married will be so great that few of the lower class of people can afford ; for I have often heard a Fleet parson say that many have come to be married when they have * Horace Walpole to Mann, October 18, 1750. f Horace Walpole to Mann, March 23, 1752. t Daily Post, July 20, 1744; quoted in Mr. Burn's valuable work on ' The Fleet Registers.' STRAWBERRY HILL. Ill had but half-a- crown in their pockets, and sixpence to buy a pot of beer, and for which they have pawned some of their clothes." * But exclusive fashion did not care to be exclusive in these practices; Sometimes a petticoat without a hoop was to be led by a bag- wig and SAvord to the May Fair altar, after other solicitations had been tried in vain. The virtue of the com munity was wonderfully supported by these easy arrangements, as Walpole tells us, in his best style : " You must knoAt, then — ^but did you know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? He was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls ; one was very pretty : they followed them ; but the girls ran away, and tiie company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. He folloAved to Whitehall Gate, where he gave a porter a croAvn to dog them : the porter hunted them — ^he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him ; and, after much disputing, went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park ; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered tAvo hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hun dred a-year to Signora la Madre. Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's Avife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers. ' Ay,' says she, ' but if I should, and should lose him by it.' However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue ; and Avhen she met Tracy the next morning in the Park, she Avas convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing; she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he Avould accept such a dinner as a butterAvoman's daughter could give him, he should be Avelcome. Away they walked to Craven Street : the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, Avhen a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May Fair. The doctor Avas in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the king ; but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did."-f But "the butterwoman's daughter" had no lack of high example to teach her how to make a short step into the matrimonial "ship of fools.^' The Meet Registers, and those of May Fair, are rich in the names of Honourables and even of Peers. For example: "February 14, 1753, James Duke of Hamilton and Elizabeth Gunning." Walpole has a pleasant comment upon this entry. "The event that has made most noise since my last, is the extempore wedding of the youngest of the two Gunnings, who have made so vehement a noise About a fortnight since, at an immense assembly at my Lord Chesterfield's, made to show the house, which is really most magnificent, Duke Hamilton made violent love at one end of the room, while he was playing at faro at the other end ; that is, he saw neither the bank nor his own cards, which were of three hundred * Daily Post, July 20, 1744 ; quoted iu Mr. Burn's valuable work on ' The Fleet Kegisters,' t Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 3, 1748. 112 LONDON. pounds each ; he soon lost a thousand Two nights afterwards, he found himself so impatient, that he sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without license or ring : the Duke SAVore he Avould send for the Archbishop. At last they Avere married with a ring of the bed-curtain, at half-an-hour after twelve at night, at May Fair chapel,"* The people of rank at last groAv frightened at their own practices. The Act against Clandestine Marriages came into operation on the 26th of March, 1 754, On the 25th there Avere two hundred and seventeen marriages at the Fleet entered in one register ; and on the same day sixty-one ceremonies of the like agree able nature took place at May Fair. After the Act Avas passed in 1753 there Avas to be an interval of some months before its enactments were to be laAV. Walpole says, "The Duchess of Argyle harangues against the Marriage Bill not taking place immediately, and is persuaded that all the girls will go off before next Lady Day." i i^ ¦* Horace Walpole to Mann, Feb. 27, 1752. t Horace Walpole to Montagu, July 17, "1753 *"*« rjy.'gy -^-Ls,. CThe CiUcry, Straivberry HilL] To he concluded in another Number,^ [Blackfriurs Bridge, 1842.] LVIII.— BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. In our account of Westminster Bridge we have shown the strenuous opposition offered by the City authorities to every proposal for that structure : it seems something strange, therefore, as well as amusing, to find their opinions undergo so sudden a change as is apparent in the history of their acts only four years after its erection. About that time, finding no hapless victims In the shape of West- country bargemen had been drowned, and that the Thames, however it might sympathise in the civic feelings, had eschewed all violent proceedings, and rolled along with its burdens as placidly as ever beneath even the very arches ; finding no noAvs come that the Docks or the Custom House had performed the miracle predicted of them, and appeared one fine morning off Westminster, the City took " heart of grace :'' the idea which had made the innovation seem so peculiarly terrible — the impossibility of saying Avhere such proceedings would stop — grew less and less formidable ; so all of a sudden it determined not merely to be even with its late antagonists, but to steal a march upon them : it very Avisely resolved to have a new bridge of its own. This Avas towards the close of the year 1753. We may imagine how the City's former coadjutors, in the course of things as they Avere, Averc confounded. It Avas not merely the great diminution of strength for opposition, but the quarter from Avhence the proposal came that was to be op VOL. Ill I 114 LONDON. posed :—Et tu, Brute ! So, after one gallant struggle in the enemy's own quarters in 1755, when they obtained a favourable committee of the Common Council, Avho reported that the construction of a uoav bridge Avould prejudice the navigation, and be very injurious to the interests of the City, but Avhose report was condemned by a majority of 132 to 106, their movements were but of a faint and melancholy character. They appear to have been led on this occasion by the Company of Watermen, who, when the proposed Act was before Parliament, once more mus tered the West-country bargemen, now re-inforced by the market-gardeners, and a number of other witnesses, in order to make as goodly a show as possible in sup port of the allegations of its petition ; which declared, as in the previous instances (Avith a constancy of purpose Ave cannot too much admire Avhen we consider how peculiarly vexatious the facts had since proved), that all sorts of dangers to the navigation were to be apprehended. But the opposition had little of the warmth that had characterised the previous case : the Company was, in all probability, shreAvd enough to see that the measure Avould be successful, but then another and more valuable , Sunday ferry Avas about to be destroyed ; so, as it Avas also shreAvd enough to see the utility of a bold front, it demanded more than Avas expected, and Avas thus enabled to retire from the contest Avith a very handsome compensation. The Act passed in 1756. One of the reasons Avhich induced the City to adopt this unexpected course was the dangerous condition of London Bridge, and the possibility of its being shut up for a considerable period, of course to great and general inconvenience and loss. Another reason Avas the advantages anticipated from the increase of good houses, and consequent improve ment In the value of the land around the extremities of the proposed bridge, AvhIch would tend to enable it the better to bear its quota of the land-tax (one- sixteenth the assessment of the Avhole kingdom). But the moving impulse, Ave suspect, is to be found in the jealousy of the groAving prosperity of Westminster. In an able scheme for the general improvement of the City published in the year 1 754, and which is given at large in Maitland, the writer, in one part, says, " Many Avell-Avishers to the City, by way of retaliation, or rather of self-preservation, begin to think no less than an absolute necessity " the business of erecting a uoav stone bridge ; and, in another part, in enumerating the advantages of such a structure, says, "At present the City have the justest grounds for being alarmed at the schemes already laid or laying for noAV and magnificent streets, new inns, stage coaches, livery-stables, and trades of all kinds in the neighbourhood of West minster Bridge. And it is of the last importance for the city of London seriously to reflect that Avhen these schemes, AvhIch are noAV little more than embryos, shall come to maturity, it will be too late to hope for bringing back those advantages into the City AvhIch may noAv be affected by their proposed bridge, if very speedily resolved on," The citizens determined that no blame for. Avant of speed should apply to them ; a few Aveeks after the appearance of this document proceedino-s Avere commenced. The spot chosen Avas a memorable one in the history not only of London, but of our country generally. Often, no doubt, has the question arisen in the minds of persons unversed in metropolitan historical lore, as the appellation of the bridge they were crossing struck their attention, Avhence the nature of the connection between things raising ideas so strangely constrasted as monasteries and friars, and bridges, omnibuses and cabs ? We can only answer GLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 115 tha. here was one of the most magnificent of the great religious establishments Avhich formed, at one period, so marked a feature of London ; and that it has left to the locality a long train of the most interesting and important recollections, of which the name given to the district, the bridge, and the adjoining road, is now the only existing memorial. The order of Black Friars came into England in 1221, the year of their founder Dominic de Guzman's death. Their first house was at Oxford, their second in London at Holborn, or Oldbourne, on the site now occupied by Lin coln's Inn. The cause of their removal from thence does not appear ; but in 1276 Gregory B.ocksley, then mayor, in conjunction with the barons of the city, gave to Robert Kilwarby, Archbishop of Canterbury, a cardinal of Rome and an ecclesiastic, eminent not merely for his rank, " two lanes or ways next the street of Baynard's Castle, and also the tower of Montfichet, to be destroyed " for the erection of a house and church for the Black Friars ; and there they set tled. The materials of the Castle of Montfichet, Avhich had been built by and derived its name from a relative and one of the followers of the Conqueror, were used for the noAv church, which Kilwarby made a magnificent structure. A striking instance of the favours shown to the brotherhood was given In the per mission of EdAvard I. for the taking down of the city Avail from Ludgate (stand ing just above the end of the Old Bailey) to the Thames for their accommodation, Avhich had then to be rebuilt so as to include their buildings within its shelter. The expenses of this rebuilding and of a " certain good and comely toAver at the bend of the said wall," wherein the king might be " received, and tarry Avith honour" to his ease and satisfaction in his comings there, were defrayed by a toll granted for three years on various articles of merchandise. Nor did Edward's liberality rest here. Every kind of special privilege and exemption was granted to the house and the precincts. Persons could open shops here without being free of the City ; malefactors flying from justice found sanctuary AvIthin the Avails ; and the inhabitants Aveie governed by the prior and their own justices. A surprising list of names of eminent personages is given by our historians as having been buried in the church of the Black Friars ; and the circumstance is not to be Avondered at if, as Pennant observes, " to be burled in the habit of the order Avas thought to be a sure preservative against the attacks of the devil," Here lay the ashes of Hubert de Burgh, the great Earl of Kent, translated from the church at Oldbourne, and his Avife Margaret, daughter of the King of Scot land; Queen Eleanor, Avhose heart alone was interred here, Avith that of Alphonso her son ; John of Eltham, Duke of CornAvall, brother of EdAvard III. ; Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, so distinguished for his intellectual accomplishments, who Avas beheaded In 1470, one of the victims to the Avars of the Roses; Sir Thomas Brandon, 1509, the uncle of the Duke of Suffolk, Avho took Henry VIII.'s beau tiful sister Mary into France as the bride of the French king, and after the death of the latter, a fcAV months later, brought her back as his own ; Sir Thomas and Dame Parr, the parents of Henry VIII.'s lastAvIfe; and earls, knights, ladies, and other persons of rank too numerous to mention. But historical memories of still greater moment belong to the church of the Black Friars. Here, in 14.50, met that famous Parliament of Henry VI., in AvhIch his queen's favourite Suffolk, was impeached, and Avas about to be tried, when by a manoeuvre i2 116 LONDON. previously arranged between him and the Aveak king, he preferred placing him- self at the disposal of Henry, by Avhom he was banished for five years. Suffolk hugged himself too soon on his escape. Encouraged by the general detestation in which he was held, some of his rivals about the court most probably, (for it was never exactly known who,) caused him to be waylaid as he was crossing from Dover to Calais by a great ship of war, the captain of Avhich greeted his appearance on his deck with the significant salutation " Wel come, traitor!" Three days after he Avas, as is Avell known, executed in a cock-boat by the ship's side. It is a startling illustration of a man's character, as well as of a time, to find no inquiry, much less punishment, following such an act. In this church another Parliament made itself noticeable by its daring to have a will of its OAvn in opposition to that of Henry VIII,, when that mo narch, in 1524, demanded a subsidy of some eight hundred thousand pounds to carry on his unmeaning Avars in France, but was obliged to content himself with a grant cut down into much more reasonable limits. Of this Parliament Sir Thomas More Avas speaker, and to his honour be it said, that although he Avas a great personal favourite with the court, and treated there with extra ordinary marks of respect and affection, he acted Avith admirable firmness and dignity both tOAvards his overbearing royal master, and that master's equally overbearing servant, the Chancellor Wolsey. In ansAver to the latter's applica tion. More thought it would not "be amiss" to receive the Chancellor as he desired, Avho accordingly came into the house AvIth his maces, poleaxes, cross, hat, and great seal, and with a retinue which filled every vacant part of the place. But Avhen Wolsey, after explaining his business, remained silent, expecting the discussion and business to proceed, he was surprised to find the assemblage silent too. He addressed one of the members by name, who politely rose in acknow ledgment, but sat down again without speaking : another member Avas addressed by Wolsey, but Avith no better success. At last the great Chancellor became impatient ; and looking upon him Avho Avas to be his still greater successor, said, " Masters, as I am sent here immedi ately from the King, it is not unreasonable to expect an ansAver : yet there is, Avithout doubt, a surprising and most obstinate silence, unless indeed it may be the manner of your House to express your mind by your Speaker only," More immediately rose, and, Avith equal tact and courage, said the members Avere abashed at the sight of so great a personage, Avhose presence Avas sufficient to over whelm the Avisest and most learned men in the realm; but that that presence Avas neither expedient nor in accordance with the ancient liberties of the House, They Avere not bound to return any answer ; and as to a reply from him (the Speaker) individually, it Avas impossible, as he could only act on the instructions from the House. And so Wolsey found himself necessitated to depart. Although much modified, the demands of the King were still so heavy that the people Avere dis satisfied. They Avere indeed greatly distressed, and no doubt thought the paying of any taxes to be but a dark piece of business : so, as the Parliament had com menced among the Black Friars, and ended among the Black Monks (at West minster), they kept the Avhole affair in their recollection by the name of the Black Parliament. The next event, in the order of time, is one of the deepest interest in the history BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. 117 of the place. It Avas here that, on the 21st of June, 1529, Wolsey and his felloAv Cardinal, Campeggio, appointed by the Pope to act Avith him in the matter of the proposed divorce of Henry and Catherine, sat in judgment, with the King on their right, and Catherine, accompanied by four bishops, on their left. When the King's name Avas called, he ansAvered " Here !" but the Queen remained silent Avhen hers Avas pronounced. Then the citation being repeated, the un happy Queen, rising in great anguish, ran to her husband, and prostrating herself before him, said, in language thatAvould have deterred any less cruel and sensual [Trial of Queen Ciitherine.j nature from the infamous path he Avas pursuing, " Sir, I beseech you, for all the love that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right : take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger, born out of your dominions. I have here no assured friend, much less impartial counsel ; and I flee to you as to the head of justice within this realm, Alas! Sir, Avherein have I offended you, or on Avhat occasion given you die- 118 LONDOlN'. pleasure ? Have I ever designed against your will and pleasure, that you should put me from you ? I take God and all the Avorld to Avitness that I have been to you a true, humble, and obedient wife, ever conformable to your avIU and plea sure," &c. At the conclusion of a most admirable, womanly, and yet dignified address, she rose, left the court, and never entered it again. She died at Kim- bohon in 1536, heart-broken, but refusing to the last to renounce her rights and titie of Queen, Even in that period, AvhIch so often awakes the injurer to a sense of the Avrongs he has committed, and crowds Into a foAV hours or days a Avorld of unanticipated and then useless anguish, her royal husband remained consistent in cruelty, refusing her permission even to see her daughter once— but once— before she died. One of Catherine's judges had scarcely less reason than herself tc remember that eventful day in the Black Friars. Wolsey, unable to prevail Avith Campeggio to give a decision at the time, seems to have been suspected by Anne Boleyn (then waiting the Queen's degradation to fill her place) to have •acted but lukeAvarmly in the matter. Henry, too, had grown tired of his gorgeous Chancellor, and began to think of the value of his trappings. To sum up shortly the result : in that same Black Friars, where he had endeavoured to bully one Par liament, the sentence of premunire Avas passed against him by another ; and the man Avho had there sat in judgment upon Catherine, and been throughout the chief instrument in Henry's hands to doom that noble and virtuous lady to a Hugerlng death, found that day's proceedings the immediate cause of his OAvn doAvnfall, and still speedier dissolution. The bloAV AvhIch Catherine's innocence, and moral fortitude and pious resignation, enabled her for a time to bear up against, killed Wolsey at once. Such are the chief historical recollections of the great House of the Black Friatisi There are some minor matters connected Avith Its history, Avhich are also deserving of notice, as bearing indirectly on the subject of our paper. The privileges before mentioned, it appears, produced continual heart-burnings betAveen the city and the inhabitants of the favoured part, and violent quarrels were the consequences. We have an illustration of the* feelings Avhich prevailed in the circumstance that one of the priors having found himself obliged to pave the streets Avithout the wall joining to the precinct, and a cage or small prison being afterwards there set up by the city, the prior pulled it down, saying, " Since the city forced me to pave the place, they shall set no cage there on my ground." At the dissolution. Bishop Fisher, Avho held it in commendam, resigned the house to the king. The revenues Avere valued at the very moderate sum of 100^. 15*. ^d. The prior's lodgings and the hall were granted to Sir Francis Bryan in 1547. We need scarcely add that these, with the church, and all the old privileges, have long since been swept aAvay; although in 1586 a protracted, and for a time successful, struggle Avas maintained for the latter, by the inhabitants both of the Black aud the White Friars (adjoining) in the courts of laAV in opposition to the city. Tavo or three passages of the statements made on this occasion will not be without interest for our readers. The city claimed the hberties, on the ground that the precincts were in London, offering, as a kind of proof that their right had been acknowledged, the circumstance that divers felons had been tried by the city for crimes committed within the precincts during the friars' time. Accordingly they now claimed from the crown all waifs, strays, felons' goods, amwcements, Escheats, BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. 119 &c., the execution of all processes, the expulsion of all foreigners, the assize of bread, beer, ale, and wine, the Avardmote-quest, and such other jurisdictions as they had in the rest of the city. The answer Avas very long and elaborate. With regard to the felons it was observed, that they Avere probably apprehended in London with the stolen things on them, and, therefore, Avere properly arraigned in the city ; or that they Avere arraigned by the king's special commission, which Avould have been no infringement of the friars' rights. In another part of the docu ment various st-atements Avere made of the rights and privileges granted to the house, and of the complete failure of the city at various times to encroach upon them : thus, as to the first, it appears that in addition to the favours lavished upon their house by EdAvard I., the succeeding monarch made them free of all tenths, fifteenths, subsidies, quotas, taillages, or other burdens Avhatsoever granted, or to be granted, by the clergy or commons ; and as to the latter, that besides numerous instances of successful resistance during the existence of the House, " Sir John Portynarle reported in his Life, that immediately after the dissolution the Mayor pretended a title to the liberties, but King Henry VIII., informed thereof, sent to him to desist from meddling Avith the liberties, saying, ' He was as well able to keep the liberties as the friars were.' And so the Mayor no further meddled, and Sir John Portynarle had the keys of the gates delivered to him, and a fee for keeping the same." Among the other arguments used Avere the loss to the croAvn — " Her Majesty may lose ten thousand pounds a day by lands within the said precincts, which may escheat to her, Avhich, if the city will have it, is reason the city should give Her Majesty a good fine for it;" [this looks a little like spite :] and a bold ansAver to the allegations of the city as to the social state of the neighbourhood in question: — "They pretend to Avin favour to their cause, that they seek their liberties only for reformation of disorders, " when gain is the mark they shoot at. But the Black Friars, for good order of government, may be a lanthorn to all the city, as shall be plainly proved, and is noAV inhabited by noblemen and gentlemen." The respectability here claimed for the neighbourhood of the Black Friars in 1586 does not appear to have been a mere counsellor's flourish, for among other residents about the period Avere Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester, to Avhose mansion, on the occasion of his marriage Avith an heiress of the house of Bedford in 1600, Queen Elizabeth came as a visitor. She Avas met at the Avater side by the bride, and carried to her house in a lectlca* by six knights, Avhere she dined. Lord Cobham also, it appears, had a house in the neighbourhood, with whom her Majesty supped the same day, Avhen a characteristic incident occurred, in connexion with Essex, then fast losing ground in the favour of his royal mistress. It appears from the Sydney Papers, transcribed in Pennant, that " there Avas a memorable mask of eight ladies, and a strange dance new invented Mistress Fitton went to the Queen and wooed her dance. Her Majesty (the love of Essex rankling in her heart) asked Avhat she Avas ? ' Affection,' she said, ' Affection !' said the Queen : ' Affection is false.' Yet her Majesty rose up and danced." The French ambassador also resided in Blackfriars during the suc ceeding reign, as we learn from the record of a terrible accident Avhich happened * Lectica, a kind of litter, the Roman bier. 120 LONDON. in his house, and which seems to have sadly alarmed honest Stow with the idea that it Avas not merely a kind of judgment for our national sins, but a Avarning to be heedfully observed, lest still worse should folloAV. ' It appears that a celebrated Jesuit preacher. Father Drury, addressed a large audience in a room in the upper part of the house, and that during the sermon, the place being badly built or decayed, fell, and nearly a hundred persons perished. Seeing, then, that Blackfriars was a place of such repute in the beginning of the seventeenth century, one would hardly expect to find it by the latter part of the eighteenth so altered, that one of the recommendations of the new bridge should be the certainty of its working a purification of the district, and redeeming it from the state of poverty and degradation into Avhich it had fallen. In a pamphlet ' On the Expediency, Utility, and Necessity of a Noav Bridge at or near Blackfriars, 1756,' the site of the approach on the Middlesex shore is de scribed as being occupied on both sides of the Fleet-ditch by a " body of miser able ruins in the back of Fleet Street, betAveen that and Holborn on one side, and between the other and the Thames, and so again from each side of Ludgate." And a builder examined before a committee of the House expressed his opinion that the houses and ground included Avere not Avorth five years' purchase. A question put to another Avitness examined on the same occasion seems to shoAv the cause of this state of things. He was asked whether, in case the bridge Avas built as desired, the vicinity of the Fleet, Ludgate, Newgate, and Bride- Avell Avould not be an objection to the building better houses ? and he OAvned in some parts it might. The Fleet and Newgate prisons are subjects too large to be touched upon here ; the others Ave shall have occasion to mention in a sub sequent part of our paper. We close this part of our subject, therefore, Avith a picturesque glimpse of the predecessor of Farringdon Street, at a time Avhen the ditch yet reached up to the foot of Ludgate Hill ; and beyond, the old Market extended through the centre of the present area to the bottom of Holborn. " In walking along the street in my youth," says Pennant, " on the side next to the prison, I have often been tempted by the question, ' Sir, will you please to Avalk in and be married ?' Along this most laAvless space Avas hung up the frequent sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with ' Marriages performed within ' written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in. The parson was seen Avalking before his shop ; a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered night-goAvn, Avith a fi^-ry face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of tobacco."* We have noticed the most thriving trade of the district, that of the "Fleet-parsons," in our last number. At the extremity of this street the City then determined to build its ncAV bridge. On the other side of the river the aspect of affairs was still more favourable. In the maps of the reign of Elizabeth Ave perceive opposite the Black Friars, on the Surrey shore, one long but single line of houses, Avith handsomely lald-out gardens at the back, and here and there a few other scattered habitations, surrounded by extensive fields, with trees, &c. And although, no doubt, this as well as every other part In the immediate neighbourhood of the City had become much more populous a century later, Avhen the Bridge was built, yet the amount of the pur chase-money for houses and land, on the Surrey as compared with the Middlesex * Pennant's London, 3rd ed. p. 224. BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. 121 side, shoAvs how much the Bridge has done for all this part : for the first, Avas paid 1500/.; for the last, 7500/.; whilst the ferry alone cost 12,500/. The first step taken by the committee to whom the direction of the noAv work Avas intrusted was that of advertising for plans; and there Avas no lack of communications. They were for a time fairly puzzled between the different schemes laid before them, and had a heavy task to investigate the separate claims of bridges Avith semi- oval, and bridges with semi-circular arches; bridges Avith iron railings, and bridges with stone balustrades. They had every possible motive to decide care fully ; for not only was the good taste and judgment of the City at trial — as, according to their choice, the attempt might end in failure and disgrace, or in success and honour — but the competitors were evidently the elite of their class, and the affair altogether was attracting much attention. It may be sufficient to say that Smeaton Avas among the rejected, and that Samuel Johnson engaged in the controversy raised Upon the merits of the different kinds of arches. The plan which roused the opposition of the learned moralist Avas that of a young man of six-and-twenty, named Mylne, Avho Avas unknoAvn to most, if not all, of the chief persons of influence connected with the management of the affair, but who, it Avas said, possessed unusual ability and attainments. His father Avas an archi tect of Edinburgh, descended from a family Avho had been master-masons to the sovereigns of Scotland for several generations. At an early period he had been sent to Rome to pursue his studies, Avhere he had gained the first prize in the first architectural class, and had subsequently made the tour of Europe, from which he Avas but now returned. His plan described a bridge of nine elliptical arches, the centre a hundred feet Avide, and the others on each side decreasing towards the extremities of the structure, till the breadth of the last should be seventy feet. The length of the bridge was to be nine hundred and ninety-five feet, the breadth forty-two. In general form, the whole bridge presente'd one con tinuously rounded line or arch, which had a particularly beautiful effect, and which Avas still further enhanced by the double Ionic columns adorning the face of every pier, though their introduction may be thought an architectural license barely admissible, considering how little the duty they had to do — that of sup porting small projecting recesses, evidently placed there for the purpose. No sooner was it knoAvn that this plan had been received Avith the greatest favour by the judges (to whose credit be it recorded that, Avhilst Mylne's talents alone pleaded for him, there were among the other competitors men whose cause Avas forwarded, as much as it Avas possible, by noblemen and others of the highest per sonal influence) than assailants rushed forward from all quarters, Avho Avere as spiritedly met by defenders ; and a paper Avar raged, Avhich, commencing with the form of the arches, ended with the propriety of the sentiments and the accuracy of the Latinity of the inscription placed beneath the Avork on the occa sion of laying the first stone. Johnson, as Ave have said, was an opponent of Mylne's ; and answer and counter-answer came thick and fast. We should haAi^e been glad to have transcribed a passage from Johnson's part of the controversy ; but it is so entirely technical in its tone, as well as scientific in its nature, that we can find nothing of sufficient interest. We need only therefore say, that, in his accustomed vigorous style, he proved so completely the evils of the elliptical arches of Mylne, that one does not knoAV whether to be most surprised at the 122 LONDON. audacity of tne arcnuect in thereafter going on to erect them, or at the presump- tion of the arches themselves in venturing to stand for so many centuries, as they yet promise to do, in opposition to such an expression of opinion. These debates, it appears, led very properly to an impartial examination of the subject by eight competent gentlemen, who, in 1760, reported in favour of the plan. " The form of the elliptical arch was then considered not only best adapted to the navigation at all times of the tide, without raising the carriage-way to an inconvenient height, but also much stionger than the semicircular arch constructed in the common way, Avhilst at the same time its great width rendered fewer piers necessary. Mr. Mylne was accordingly chosen surveyor on the 27th of Febru ary, 1760."* The first pile Avas driven in the middle of the Thames on the 7th of May in the same year, and was broken in the course of the ensuing week by one of our old friends, a West-country bargeman. As it appeared, hoAvever, to be from neglect only that his barge had been alloAved to drive against it, he Avas let off with a fine. The foundations of every pier Avere to be piled, in order to guard against the recurrence of such accidents as the sinking of the pier at Westminster Bridge a foAV years before. Mylne, like Labelye, built his piers Avith caissons ; and it appears the latter Avere laid somewhat carelessly, as they are uoav in a very dis torted position. There is lying in the British Museum (the gift of the architect himself) a model of a part of his bridge, representing the plan of his centre frames (the Avood-Avork on which the stone is laid during the formation of the arch), which shoAvs that in this part of his work he Avas original and eminently happy. The first caisson was "launched Avith great dexterity " on the 19th of May, but the tide was not high enough to float it off to its destined station, and the populace assembled were greatly disappointed. On the 2nd of June it was conveyed to its moorings within the piles, and duly descended to its place. The first stone was laid on the 31st of October by the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Chitty, attended by the members of the Committee, and a brilliant assemblage of other personages, when various coins were deposited in the proper place, and certain large plates, of pure tin, Avith an inscription in Latin stating that the Avork Avas undertaken " amidst the rage of an extensive Avar," and ending with the following glowing eulogy on the minister : " And that there might remain to posterity a monu ment of this City's affection to the man who, by the strength of his genius, the steadiness of his mind, and a certain kind of happy contagion of his probity and spirit (under the Divine favour, and fortunate auspices of George II.), recovered, augmented, and secured the British empire in Asia, Africa, and America, and restored the ancient reputation and influence of his country amongst the nations of Europe, the citizens of London have unanimously voted this bridge to be inscribed Avith the name of William Pitt." Among the other medals deposited in the stone Avas a silver one, Avhich had been cherished as the memorial of the young architect's first triumph, the medal given him by the Academy at Rome. Should some future antiquary, say in the year of Our Lord 5842, have the rum maging of these stores, AVe may imagine the delight with which he would arrive at this. We have little more to say concerning the erection of the Bridge. It appears, ? Condensed account of a Report to the Common Council, 1784, in ' Penny Cyclopedia,' vol, ir. p, 484. BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. 123 from the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' that on the 1st of October, 1764,. the great arch Avas opened, and that the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, &c., in the City barge, " with her oars in full play, passed through it. The Avorkmen ranged themselves round the riiii of the arch, one man to each stone, on the occasion, which had a very pretty effect in shoAving the magnificence of the arch, by a (Mnn- parative view of the men and the stones." It was opened for foot passengers In 1766, a temporary footway having been made across the arches ; for horses in 1768 ; and completely on the 19th of November, 1769. The embankments and approaches, Avhich were works of considerable difficulty, occupied some years longer. The funds for the Avork had been raised by loan, on the security of the City, the loan to be repaid by tolls levied on the bridge. These were very successful, producing, in the first twelve Aveeks, 768/., and in a subsequent year (from Lady-day, 1782, to Lady-day, 1783) above 8000/.: ultimately Government bought the tolls, and made the bridge free. The entire ex pense Avas nearly 300,000/., but it is greatly to the credit of the architect that he built the bridge itself for some 160/. less than his estimate; he said the expense should not exceed 153,000/.; it Avas just 152,840/. 35. 10c/. Our leaders, after this statement, Avill be surprised to hear hoAv shabbily he Avas treated. He had been engaged during the progress of the work at a salary of 300/. a-year, Avith the promise of a further remuneration of five per cent, on the money laid out. Some honest gentlemen, hoAvever, objected to the payment of the per centage ; and Mylne Avas obliged to assume a hostile position before he could obtain it in 1776. So entirely is this gentleman's name noAv connected with Blackfriars Bridge, that we shall make no apology for giving two or three further notices of his career. The Bridge, of course, brought him into great repute ; and among many other agreeable proofs of public estimation Avas that of his filling the post once occupied by Wren, the Surveyorship of St. Paul's. He has left there a memorable record of himself. He it was who first suggested the placing over the entrance into the choir the magnificent epitaph or inscription on Wren, Si monumentum requiris circumspice. Here, too, lie his remains, near the tomb of him he so much revered. He died on the 5th of May, 1811. Having mentioned his con troversy with Johnson, it is pleasant to have to add that the latter afterwards acknowledged his full merit, and they became intimate. With an interesting anecdote we conclude these brief notices of an able architect and high-prin cipled man : " Mr. Mylne made some very great alterations and improvements at King's Weston for the late Lord de Clifford, then Mr. Southwell, Avho knoAv him at Rome, and from his bridge at Blackfriars conceived a very high idea of his talents. Concerning this seat, Mr. Mylne's clerk used to relate the following anecdote. On Mr. Mylne's arrival there he commenced making a plan, by Avhich he discovered a small room in the house to Avhich there were no means of access, and, in cutting into it, they found to their great astonishment a quantity of old family plate, together Avith the records of a barony granted in the reign of Henry III. to that family, in consequence of Avhich Mr. SouthAvell took the title of Lord de Clifford. This room was probably shut up during the rebellion in the reign of Charles I."* * Chalmers's Gen. Biog. Dictionary, vol. xxii., p. 549, 124 LONDON, Among the buildings removed in the formation of the approaches to the Bridge were two that Ave must not pass unnoticed. In the periodical publications of the time we read that on the 30th of July, 1760, the Commissioners of City Lands sold Ludgate, near the new bridge, for 148/., or, in other words, for the presumed value of the materials ; and it Avas then taken down. Such is the brief record of the destruction of the once famous gate, said to have been first built by the barons during the reign of King John, from the stones of the houses of a number of Joavs they caused to be pulled down ; but Avhich, if Geoffrey of Monmouth is to be be lieved, had a right to date its origin from no less a personage than the redoubted British king Lud, who, according to the same particular authority, erected it in the year 66 before Christ. A curious evidence of the truth of the first-mentioned circumstance Avas discovered Avhen the gate Avas rebuilt in 1 586, in the shape of a stone with the following Hebrew inscription : " This is the Avard of Rabbi Moses, the son of the honourable Rabbi Isaac;" and Avhich had no doubt been fixed ori ginally upon the front of one of the Jews' houses. An equally curious evidence of the faith of the City in Geoffrey's story was presented both by the old and the neAv gate, each of which had on one side statues of King Lud and his two sons, Androgeas and Theomantius, or Teomanticus. Other authorities think the ori ginal name Avas Fludgate, derived from the Saxon appellation of the Fleet, Ludgate Avas turned Into a prison during the reign of Richard II. ; when it was ordained that all free men of the City should, for debt, trespasses, accompts, and contempts, be imprisoned in Ludgate, whilst traitors, felons, &c., Avere to be com mitted to NcAvgate. About 1454 the gate Avas enlarged, and had a chapel added to It by Sir Stephen Forster, Avho, it is said bj' Pennant, Maitland, and others, Avas moved to that Avork by the grateful remembrance of its connexion with a touching and romantic incident of his own history. According to them he Avas once a prisoner In Ludgate, and Avas " begging at the grate," * when he Avas by a certain rich AvidoAV interrogated Avhat sum would discharge him. He replied tAventy pounds, Avhich she generpusly disbursed, and, taking him into her service, ho, by an indefatigable application to business, gained the affections of his mistress to such a degree, that she made him her husband ; and, having greatly enriched himself by commerce, amidst his affluence bethought himself of the place of his confinement,'!- It appears, from the same authority, the merchants and trades men were accustomed to place themselves here in their pecuniary misfortunes (to avoid, Ave presume, being sent to a Avorse gaol by their creditors) ; and that, Avhen Philip of Spain came through London on his first visit in 1 554, the year of his marriage Avith Mary, there Avere thirty of these prisoners In confinement, Avhosc united debts amounted to 10,000/., and Avho presented to that monarch a remark ably well-Avritten Latin document, begging him to redress their miseries and free them. They asked this " the rather, for that that place was not a gaol for villains, but a place of restraint for poor unfortunate men ; and that they were put in there, not by others, but themselves fled thither, and that not out of fear of punishment, but in hopes of better fortune." The friendly author of this address was no less a person than Roger Ascham. The other building to Avhich we have referred Avas the beautiful bridge erected by Sir George Waterman, in the year of his mayoralty, • Most readers will remember the existence of this shameful custom in connexion with the present Fleet prison, t Maitland, vol. i. p. 27, BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 125 i672, over Fleet ditch, and opposite Bridewell hospital. This was removed during the formation of the Bridge approaches, October 19, 1765, and on the same day that the seAver extending from thence to the Thames was completed. Among the public buildings alluded to in the Committee of the House of Commons as tending to keep respectable persons from the neighbourhood of the Black Friars Avas that of Bridewell. It Avill perhaps be remembered that in our account of Christ Church we stated that in the comprehensive plan presented by the City to Edward VI, the rioters, vagabonds, strumpets, &c., of the metropolis were to be sent to this place. This was a sad degradation of the once-regal palace, the occasional home of a long succession of monarchs from the very earliest periods. The original building Avas formed in part from the remains of an old Saxon castle which Stow supposes to have stood on the same site. The name is derived from a well in the neighbourhood dedicated to St, Bride or Bridget. The place having fallen to great decay, Henry VIII., on the occasion of the announced visit of the Emperor Charles V., rebuilt the Avhole in the space of six weeks, and in a truly magnificent manner. But after all the expense and trouble, the Emperor, when he came in 1522, preferred lodging in the Black Friars, and leaving the noAV palace to his suite. A gallery of communication Avas then throAvn right across the Fleet from one house to the other, and an opening cut through the City Wall. Henry himself subsequently resided here occasionally, and in particular during the period of the trial of Catherine in the Black Friars. When EdAvard VI. devoted it to the purpose already pointed out, it is said to have been once more in a dilapidated state : if so, Ave need not much Avonder at the speed Avith which the builders had "run it up." Bridewell Avas thencefor- Avard used as a house of correction for rogues and vagabonds, and for disobedient and idle apprentices, all parties being employed chiefly in beating hemp or picking oakum. The treadmill is noAV used there, and the silent system has been introduced. It is to be observed that as a prison BridoAvell has the high distinction of having been the first place of the kind in England where reform ation Avas a leading object. There Avere confined in the prison, during the year 1837, 770 males and 352 females. It Avas also made a house of industry, and a place of education for poor children, who Avere taught different trades by certain persons dignified by the title of arts masters, but Avho Avere merely so many poor broken-down tradesmen. The boys wore a peculiar dress, and in that guise made themselves so great a nuisance to the neighbourhood that in 1755 a report was made to the governors. This, be it observed, is almost the precise period Avhen the Act of Parliament for the Bridge was being obtained. From the time- of their change of dress an improvement is said to have taken place. The boys are uoav removed to the "House of Occupation" near Bethlehem Hos pital. The jurisdiction of Bridewell and of Bethlehem Hospital are in the hands of the same body of governors. The site of Bridewell is noAv greatly limited. When Pennant wrote, it appears, much of the original building (by Avhich Ave presume he means that of Henry VIII.) remained; such as " great part of one court with a front, several arches, octagon toAvers, and many of the walls ;" also "a magnificent flight of ancient stairs" leading to the Court of Justice, "a handsome apartment." All this has uoav disappeared Avith the exception of one of the octagonal towers. A dark-coloured stone front about the middle of 126 LONDON, Bridge Street marks the entrance to Bridewell, with a head of the youthful Ed Avard VI. over the door of the vaulted passage. At the end of this passage a door on the left conducts up to the hall, &c., and the iron gateway in front, down a flight of steps, into the court of the ancient palace, noAV a large quad rangle, with two of its sides mostly occupied by gloomy prison-walls and barred AvIndows. In one corner of this place is the octagonal tower referred to, of brick, Avhich has been newly faced in comparatively recent times, and Avhich is pierced with narrroAv slit-holes, giving light to the interior. The top, no doubt, com manded a fine prospect of London in the time of Henry : it is noAv so surrounded Avith loftier buildings that one sees nothing more picturesque than house-tops and chimneys. The hall Is entered through tAVO or three fine apartments, of which it forms the suitable termination. It is a noble room, lighted by a handsome range of AvindoAvs on each side, the centre AvIndoAvs being set in alcoves. The walls round the loAver part of the room, at a certain height, are covered with tablets containing the names of benefactors to the united hospitals. Above these tablets, betAveen the AvindoAvs, pictures occupy all the vacant spaces, of different de grees of merit, from the AVorthy alderman on his horse, which forms the subject of the gigantic picture over the fireplace at one end of the room, to the tAvo Lelys, and the one famous Holbein, Avhich occupy the corresponding place at the other extremity. Lely's pictures are portraits of Charles II. and James II., Holbein's represents the grant of the charter of BridoAvell to Sir George Barnes, the then Lord Mayor. Among the other personages introduced are V/Illlam Earl of Pembroke, Thomas Goodrich Bishop of Ely and Lord Chancellor of England, and the painter himself, Avhose name, at least, is said to be given to the figure in the right corner. It is uncertain whether this picture Avas completed by Holbein, as he, as well as the young king, died very soon after the event here represented. The chapel is quite modern, and in no way noticeable. The repair of Blackfriars, like that of Westminster Bridge, has been of late years a most expensive and laborious business; we scarcely rememberthe time Avhen one or other of these bridges has not been under the hands of the engineers and builders. This arises from the soft nature of the Portland stone of which both bridges are erected, and its peculiar unfitness to resist the action of Avater. Blackfriars being examined in 1833 by Messrs. Walker and Burgess (the found ations by means of Deane's patent helmet), it Avas found that almost every part of the work required reparation — new piling, for Avhich coffer-dams had to be made, ncAV cutwaters, new arch-stones, &c. The extent of the repair needed may be best understood from the estimated expense, 90,000/. ! But it- Avas inevitable, so an Act of Parliament Avas obtained, and the Avork proceeded Avith. The foundations of the piers Avere first rendered secure by a casing of sheet piling covered Avith granite masonry. The cutwaters were then raised as well as repaired, so as to shorten the Ionic columns above, which is considered to be an improvement in the general appearance of the Bridge. In the Avay of repa ration the accompanying draAving Avill shoAV at a glance Avhat has been done. The dotted line marks the extent to Avhich decay had penetrated, and the parts that had to be removed. The replacing the old decaj^ed arch-stones Avith noAV was a Avork of consider- BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. 1-27 [Cut showing: the pl.iu of the ciitwjitev lestored.] able difficulty ; and most ingenious Avas the method by Avhich the difficulty Avas overcome. In the room of the single stone taken away, tAvo were driven in, and the manner in Avhich these Avere afterAvards united may be best understood from the subjoined cut : — "Figure A shows a stone just ready to be driven to its place ; tMi^ I is the Avedge in which the plug a is kept steady by a cord which comes through a hole to the chamfer, and is made fast round a piece of Avood at 2 ; 3 is the other half already set, with its hole 4 to receive the plug Avhen 1 is driven home ; 5 is a weight (most commonly a mason's chisel, which keeps the cord tight that is attached to the end of the plug marked a, by Avhich it is dp awn into the hole 4. Figure B shows a stone finished, with the plug drawn into the hole of the stone Avhich was first set. Soft mortar is then forced through the hole b so as to fill up the whole of the space round about the plug, Avhich being thus imbedded, it is impossible for it to move."* The improvements of the Bridge (only terminated in November, 1840), Avere well purchased at the inconvenience of the latter being rendered for some time impassable except on foot. In the interim it Avas found that the roadAvay of the croAvn had been lowered several feet, and the approaches raised. Those only Avho have been accustomed to mark the dangers of the old descent in slippery Aveather, or the severe and painful exertion imposed on horses drawing heavy loads, can fully appreciate the advantages of this change. In architectural beaut}'-, hoAvever, the alterations appear to some to have been for the Avorse. The beautiful arch, extending from shore to shore, formed by the upper line of the iDridge is lost by the raising of its ends : that sacrifice Avas perhaps necessary, and * ' Penny Cyclopffidia,' article ' Blackfriars,' vol. iv. 128 LONDON. therefore must be quietiy submitted to. But Avhy, it is asked, was the picturesque open balustrade, which gave to the Bridge, as seen from the water or the neigh bouring banks, such an inconceivable lightness and grace, why was this to be exchanged for the dull heavy parapet which now usurps its place? Since there was so littie regard paid to Mylne's design, the propriety may be doubted of allowing the Ionic columns to remain at the expense of another great im provement that was proposed, the widening of the Bridge ; particularly as the columns now seem more out of place than ever. [BUcklriacE Briilfits, \ficB.) [Cromwell's House.] LIX.— CLERKENWELL. Sir Walter Scott, in the last chapter of 'Waverley,' while alluding to the imperceptible gradations by which national and political changes are wrought, remarks, " Like those Avho drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river, we are not aAvare of the progress Ave have made until we fix our eye on the now distant point from which Ave have been drifted." As Avith political changes, so is it with the topographical features of a country, a district, or a parish. We may see houses and streets springing up around us ; we may see green fields turned into brick-fields, and pleasant paths into paved streets ; Ave may find a little road-side inn transformed into a dazzling " gin- palace," and direction-posts and mile-stones replaced by gas-lamps ; the stage coach may be superseded by the " cab" and the omnibus, and the drowsy and de crepit Avatchman by the active policeman. These changes, if watched as they proceed, become familiar to us : we are rendered accustomed to one change before another occurs ; and, like the growth of a brother or sister with whom Ave live, Ave are hardly conscious that the change is really occurring. But if Ave direct a glance back to a former period, forgetting the steps by which the present has resulted from the past — if Ave " fix our eye on the now distant point from which we have been drifted " — we regard the amount of change as something almost inexplicable, and wonder how such things can be VOL, in. K 130 LONDON. Those who reside in the outskirts of London have such changes as these pre sented to them in a very marked degree. North, south, east, and west— on all sides— a period of twenty years is sufficient to change the whole appearance of the border of London, if such a border can be found. The parish of Clerkenwell was, two generations ago, a part of this border ; for it was separated very deci dedly from the village of Islington, green fields and country paths forming the communication from one to the other. But now Avhere are the fields or the paths? And where are the fields and gardens which, even fifteen or twenty years ago, lay at the north and the west of the New River Head? They are gone, or going so rapidly that we can scarcely trace them. Let any one now look around him from the " Angel " at Islington, and remember that it Avas this spot which was thus alluded to in 1780:— "It was customary for travellers approaching London to remain all night at the Angel Inn, rather than venture after dark to prosecute their journey along ways which were almost equally dangerous from their bad state and their being so greatly infested witii thieves." Let him then turn his attention to the western end of Perceval Street, in St. John's Street Road : here, in 1780, "persons walking from the City to Islington in the evening Avaited near the end of St, John's Street, in Avhat is now termed Northampton Street (but Avas then a rural avenue, planted with trees, called Wood's Close), until a sufficient party had collected, who were then escorted by an armed patrole appointed for that purpose." * Not only has this important hIghAvay ceased to present the discouraging characteristics here mentioned, but the Avhole vicinity on both sides has since become crowded with streets. Although the parish of ClerkeuAvell extends beyond the New or Paddington Road towards the north, yet the district to Avhich the name of Clerkenwell was more particularly attached in past times is that immediately surrounding the Green, the Close, and St. John's Square. The village of Clerkenwell ramified from the Priory of St. John as a centre, and Avas for many ages included AvIthin a small circuit around it : nearly all which is northward of the Close may be regarded as modern. Before taking a rapid glance at the changes Avhich this part of London has undergone, and showing its chief peculiarities at the present day, it may be Avell to mention the limits Avithin Avhich Clerkenwell as a parish IS bounded. The Goswell Street Road, from the Charter House to the " Angel " at Islington, forms the eastern boundary of the parish ; the northern boundary lies at about one-sixth of a mile northward of the Paddington Road, from High Street, Islington, or rather the Liverpool Road, to near King's Cross : the River Fleet then forms the western limit of the parish, from King's Cross (once Battle Bridge) to Saffron Hill ; and an irregular line from Saffron Hill, past the south-end of St. John's Lane, to the Charter House Garden, completes the boundary. This district is supposed to have been formerly a continuation of the great moor or morass Avhich extended from Spitalfields to Moorfields and Finsbury; not itself actually a morass, but a succession of gentle pastures and slopes, bounded on the east by the morass, and on the Avest by the "River of Wells," afterwards the " River Fleet," then the " Fleet Ditch," and, finally, the common =* J. and H, S, Storer, and T. Cromwell, "Histoi-y and Description of the Parish of Clerkenwell,"— a book to which we shall be much indebted in the following pages. ' CLERKENWELL. 131 sewer.* There is evidence, from a consideration of the relative levels of the surrounding spots, that there must have been here a pleasant alternation of hill and dale : the River of Wells flowing along a depressed channel betAveen tAA'o hills, where are noAV the abodes of filth and Avretchedness ; and the Holeburne or Oldbourne, with vineyards on its banks, flowing into the former at the spot noAV knoAvn as Holborn Bridge, Fit^stephen, in the year 1190, speaks, of the " open, pleasant meadoAvs, the flowing rivulets, and the noise of the water-wheels," in the suburbs on the northern side of the City wall. We have reason to believe, from details given in a former chapter,t that the site of the assemblage of streets now forming Clerkenwell Avas, six hundred years ago, a green and pleasant country spot, having numerous springs and Avells, Avhich Avere resorted to in holiday fashion. About the same period were founded those two monastic or ecclesiastical establishments, which formed a nucleus for the dwelling-houses built on the spot : we mean the Priory of St, John of Jerusalem, and the Nunnery of St. Mary. These were situated on the two opposite sides of Avhat is noAV Clerkenwell Green, the Priory on the south, and the Nunnery on the north ; and Mr. Cromwell gives the following imaginary picture of the scene by Avhich the inmates Avere surrounded : — " On every side but that toAvards the City they had the prospect of wooded hills and uplands, intermingled with vales of luxuriant verdure ; contiguous Avas the Avell- dressed, and, Ave Avill doubt not, richly productive vineyard ; and at unequal distances from their precincts, towards the west, the ground fell into those romantic steeps and secluded dells amongst Avhich the river took its course, and created, as it rushed through the numerous mills erected over it, the ' delightful ' sounds which enkindled the de scriptive enthusiasm of Fitzstephen. In the contemplation of such a scene, Ave tould for the moment forego all the advantages resulting from that altered state of things which has closed the view of it for ever, and almost sigh for the return of times, Avhen the spread of commerce and the improvements of civilisation had not deprived our suburb of natural beauties of so rich an order." J There is very little evidence remaining to show the rate or the manner in AvhIch buildings gradually sprang up around the Priory and the Nunnery, In Aggas's Map of London, dated 1563, very few streets or houses are represented in this neighbourhood, except those immediately contiguous to, or occupying the site of, the monastic buildings. Cow Cross, Turnmill Street, and the southern end of St, John Street, are represented ; but bounded on three sides by little else than fields. By the year 1617, according to Malcolm, § a number of fine houses had been built in the district, which Avere inhabited by persons of xank and fashion. A list of tAventy-three "Lords," "Ladies," and "Sirs" is given, as having lived in Clerkenwell Close, ClerkenAvell Green, St. John's Square, St. John's Lane, and St. John Street, in that year. Hoav large Avould be the circle, round the same centre, which would include an equal number of the titled and the high-born at th,e present day ? In the year 1708 the number of houses in ClerkeuAvell were reckoned at 1146 : in 1724, 1529; and in 1772, 1889. The changes which occurred during these intervals were of tAvo kinds, viz. the increase of buildings generally northAvard of * See ' London,' Chap. xiii. ; " Underground," p. 329. + Ibid. p. 226. J History of Clerkenwell, p. 13. § Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 225. k2 132 LONDON. the site of the Priory ; and the departure of titled and wealthy persons to other parts of London. It is probable that Ave may place at the beginning of the last- century, or the latter end of the preceding one, the commencement of that re markable localisation which has ever since distinguished the spot. What was the circumstance Avhich led to the establishment of the Watch-makers, Clock-makers, and Jewellers of the metropolis in the parish of ClerkeuAvell we do not knoAv ; nor have we heard any plausible reason assigned by those who, residing on the spot, and carrying on these branches of manufacture, might be supposed to be best informed on the matter. But be the case Avhat it may, the fact is certain. Although there are dealers in these articles of traffic in other parts of the metro polis, the real makers are to be found in ClerkeuAvell ; not Avithout exception, certainly, but with exceptions so few as to render the rule more striking. From St. John's Square to the New River Head, and from Goswell Street to Coppice RoAV, there is scarcely a street Avhich does not contain some artisans in these de partments of handicraft ; and in many of the streets nearly the Avhole of the houses are thus occupied. Let any one, as a matter of curiosity, make a tour of inspection, and glance at the door-plates and inscriptions : he will see a curious exemplification of what is here stated. He must not, when he sees the designations, " escapement-maker," " engine-turner," " fusee-cutter," " springer," " secret- springer," " finisher," " joint-finisher," &c., imagine that these are avocations of totally different kinds from those alluded to above : they all form, as we shall endeavour to show in a future page, only a small part of] the subdivisions to Avhich the watch-manufacture has been subjected. There are not, as in Bermondsey, large buildings and open yards to indicate the nature of the staple manufacture carried on ; nor are there, as in Spitalfields, humble private dAvellings> whose AvindoAvs present a characteristic appearance. The house of a Clerkenwell watch maker is simply a " private house," in the common English acceptation of the term ; having in some cases a workshop constructed in the rear. There are a foAv of these houses which have an open shop at the ground-story, for the sale of articles connected Avith Avatches and jeAvellery ; but in by far the greater number of instances the inscription on the doorplate alone indicates the nature of the business carried on Avithin. As the present is best illustrated by comparing it with the past, we will take a rapid circuit of the district chiefly occupied by these manufacturers, and shew what are the changes Avhich the principal streets have undergone, and how they are uoav occupied. Let us begin at the " spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood." There is a part of St. John Street, not very far from Smithfield, which presents a much greater Avidth than any other portion of the street, and greater than we customarily find in London. It occurs at the spot Avhere St. John's Lane terminates at St. John Street. In Avhat is now the roadAvay of this wide portion of the street once stood Hicks's Hall, having a carriage-way on all four sides of it, in the same manner as the Sessions House now has on ClerkeuAvell Green. This Hall was built in the year 1610, for the accommodation of the Justices of the Peace for the county of Mid dlesex, who had previously met at a common inn called the " Castle," in St. John Street, where they were much inconvenienced by "carriers, and many other sorts of people." CLERKENWELL. 133 The place here indicated is the southernmost extremity of Clerkenwell parish, and is not unworthy of notice from the associations connected Avith its vicinity. SouthAvard of it Ave have the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew ; eastward, the Charter House ; and northAvard the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem all of Avhich have occupied our attention in former chapters of this work. Within a short distance, too. Is the busy market of Smithfield, the supply of AvhIch gives rise to some of the busiest scenes which St. John Street presents. On the even ings of Thursday and Sunday, and on the mornings of Friday and Monday, the whole length of St. John's Street, from end to end, is rendered bustling and di versified by the passing of cattle and sheep to Smithfield.* The portion of Clerkenwell included betAveen St. John's Street and Goswell Street, and terminated at the north by Islington, and on the south by the Charter House, comprises probably about one-fifth of the area of the parish, the southern half of- it being much more ancient than the northern. Wilderness Row, leading from one of the above-named streets to the other, separates the parish of ClerlceuAvell from the grounds of the Charter House ; and this is the locality of the " Pardon Churchyard," alluded to in our account of the Charter House f as having had such celebrity soon after the plague of 1349. The streets immedi ately north of this spot do not partake, in any great degree, of the character Avhich we have assigned to modern Clerkenwell : they are in general small and humble. When we arrive northAvard as far as Compton Street, Avhich is one of the nume rous streets leading from one of the great thoroughfares to the other, we approach a district Avhich, until the present century, presented but a sprinkling of houses here and there, instead of the compact mass of streets noAV exhibited. The names of Compton, Northampton, Perceval, Spencer, Wynyate, and Ashby, which these noAv streets present, are given from various names and titles pertaining to the Marquis of Northampton, the principal ground-landlord of the district. There is still to be seen, at the corner of Ashby Street, a large house AvhIch Avas once the town residence of the Northampton family, and the vicinity of Avhich has undergone singular changes since the period Avhen the house was thus occuijied. The plot of ground Avhich uoav forms Northampton Square was then a garden,. or part of a garden, situated behind and belonging to the mansion. On every other side were open fields and rural paths. Now how great is the difference ! The house itself has undergone various changes and subdivisions, the garden is an in habited square, and the fields and paths are transformed into streets which are in habited principally by the class of persons before alluded to. The sameness, the dulness, the quiet respectability, Avliich distinguish the " Avatchmaking " streets of ClerkeuAvell, are noAvhere more observable than within the quadrangular space bounded by Goswell Street Road, Wynyate Street, St. John's Street Road, and Compton Street. We may here observe that a small portion of the parish of St. Luke, immediately eastAvard of the district here described, is occupied in a similar manner. Immediately adjacent to the Northampton estate, and occupying the principal portion of the ground from thence to the "Angel" at Islington, is a valuable estate belonging to the BreAvers' Company, the acquisition of which is traced to a *¦ See ' London.' 'Smithfield.' t ' Loudon,' vol. ii. p. 114. 134 LONDON. circumstance tinged Avith much of the air of a romance. Stow mentions the popu lar notion entertained on the matter ; while subsequent documentshave tended to confirm it. In the latter end of the sixteenth century the spot of ground here indicated Avas used as a coAV-lair. One morning a Miss Wilkes, daughter of a gentleman Avho owned this property, Avas walking here with her maid, and ob serving a Avoman milking a coav, was seized Avith a Avhim to try her own skill in a similar manner. She had scarcely stooped in the act of putting her Avish into execution, Avhen an arroAv, from the boAv of a gentleman who Avas exercising himself in archery in the neighbourhood, pierced and carried aAvay her high-crowned hat. Impressed Avith an agitated consciousness of the narroAV escape AvhIch her life had had, she resolved to raise some monument of her gratitude on that same spot, should she ever become its possessor. After an interval of many years, and when she had become the Avife of Sir Thomas Owen, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, she purchased the field, and built thereon ten alms-houses, and a free grammar-school, which she afterAvards bequeathed to the Brewers' Com pany. On the gable front of the school Avere fixed three arroAvs — one on the apex, and the other tAvo on the corners — as a memorial of the event. That the alms houses and the school were built by Lady OAven, and by her presented to the Brewers' Company, is a matter of no doubt ; and the story of the arrow is so pretty a one that it deserves to be true likeAvise. [Lady Owen's School.] Let us now pass over to the western side of St. John's Street, and see what are he changes Avhich time and manufactures have made. Beginning again at the place Avhere Hicks's Hall formerly stood," and passing up^St. John's Lane W " come to the time-honoured spot Avhich occupied our attention in a former chapter * Not only has the buildmg over the Gate, as was there detailed, been transfoVmed into a public-house, but the Square, Avhich was at one time ^art of the Zry precincts, and afterwards a place of residence for the titied and tL wealthv has become a region of Avatchmakers and jewellers. The " secret sprTngrr ' S the * ' London,' Chapter XXXIV., ' St. John's Gate.' CLERKENWELL. 135 "hand-maker," the "enameller" and the "lapidary,' nave usurped the place of the Hospitallers of St. John : romance and chivalry have departed, and have made Avay for the apron and the Avork-bench. Each is fitted for a certain stage in the progress of society ; and Avhile Ave acknoAvledge that the former Avrought some good in their day, Ave have scarcely a right to regret that such times are passed aAvay. When passing through the little avenue called "Jerusalem Passage," Avhich leads from St. John's Square to ClerkenAvell Green, or rather to Aylesbury Street, Ave have on the left a mass of houses Avhich occupy both sides of the site of the northern Avail of the Priory. Imagine Clerkenwell Green to be really a green, bounded on the south by a wall, through a postern-gate in Avhich the priors and monks had ingress and egress ; and on the north by the Avail of the Nunnery, also Avith its postern-gate. Imagine also a fine open country on all sides (except per haps on the south), with vineyards and meadoAvs, and springs and rlA'^ulets. We shall then have an idea of what this spot once was. The subsequent changes tell their oAvn tale. Red Lion Street, branching out southAvard from the Green, passes through Avhat was once the garden of the Priory, and exhibits, even to a greater extent than St. John's Square, the peculiar features of modern ClerkenAvell. In order to convey to those Avho are not familiar Avith this district an idea of the peculiarity to which Ave have so often alluded, Ave perhaps cannot do better than instance the street here mentioned. Out of about eighty houses in this street, between fifty and sixty are occupied by manufacturers of clocks, Avatches, or jewellery, either under those designations, or some of the many subdivisions to Avhich the manufacture is subjected. Aylesbury Street, noAv^a street of middle-class shops, once boasted of its man sions and its gardens. In the space Avhich now separates this street from St. John's Church once stood Aylesbury House and Gardens, the tOAvn-residence of the Earls of Aylesbury in the reign of Charles II. By the year 1720 it Avas spoken of as being " still standing, but let out in tenements ;" and a portion of it is still sup posed to form the house at the north-east corner of St. John's Square. But Aylesbury Street derives something like celebrity from another circum stance, which connects it Avith the Shaksperian times. In a small street, branch ing from it on the north, called Woodbridge Street, but formerly knoAvn as Red Bull Yard, once stood the celebrated " Red Bull Theatre," one of the many AA'hIch existed in London during the latter part" of the sixteenth and the begin ning of the seventeenth centuries. It is said to have rivalled in size the "Globe" theatre at Bankside, and the "Fortune" near Whitecross Street; and to have excelled all the others. There are many scattered notices of the theatre in the writers of that period, from Avhich it appears to have been held in much repute. During the puritanical furor of a later date, this theatre, like the others, seems to have fallen in the shade : but it Avas not, like some of them, actually destroyed ; for we find that short comic pieces were acted there diiring the reign of Charles II. In a small octavo volume, of which two copies exist at the British Museum, called ' The Wits, or Sport upon Sport,' Avritten by Francis Kirkman in 1673, there is a frontispiece representing the interior of the Red Bull Theatre, with actors on a square platform, and audience on all four sides. In the preface to the book is a paragraph which throws some light on the con ¦ 136 LONDON, dition of the theatre at that tune :— " When the publique theatres Avere shut up, and the actors forbidden to present us with any of their tragedies, because Ave had enough of that in earnest, and comedies, because the vices of the age were too lively and smartly represented, then all that Ave could divert ourselves Avith Avere these humors and pieces of plays " (alluding to several which the volume contains), " which, passing under the name of a merry, conceited felloAV, called Bottom the Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John SAvabber, or some such title, were only alloAved us, and that but by stealth too, and under pretence of rope- dancing or the like ; and these being all that Avas permitted us, great Avas the confluence of the auditors; and these small things Avere as profitable, and as great get-pennies to the actors, as any of our late famed plays, I have seen the Red Bull playhouse, which Avag a large one, so full, that as many went back from want of room as entered ; and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and uoav in being." It is supposed to have been at this theatre that the first woman ever acted on the English stage, the female characters having been played by boys and youths till about the time of the restoration ; for one Thomas Jordan, an actor at the Red Bull, wrote a prologue to introduce " the first woman that came to act on the stage" as Desdemona. At what time this theatre Avas destroyed does not clearly appear ; but its site is probably now occupied by part of a distillery, Avhich extends from thence into St, John Street. At the corner of Jerusalem Passage and Aylesbury Street, according to Messrs, Storer (Malcolm places it " next to St. John's Gate," Avhich may perhaps mean the same thing), resided the eccentric Thomas Britton, Avho was known to high and Ioav as the "Musical small-coal man." The loAver part of his house Avas a receptacle for small-coal, in AvhIch he Avas a dealer ; but the upper floor was a concert-room, where he indulged a taste, or Ave may properly call it a passion, for music in a very singular Avay. There were but few concerts In London at that time (about a century and a half ago), and the novelty of the thing was, no doubt, quite as attractive as Its excellence. The concert-room, which Avas ascended by a kind of ladder in the open air, attracted, as Dibdin relates, " all the fashion of the age, who flocked regularly every week to taste a delight of AvhIch the English Avere grown so fond, that it was considered as vulgar then not to have attended Britten's Concert as it would be noAV not to have heard Banti." These concerts were " got up" by certain lovers of music, Avho, desirous to encourage merit in one of humble station, and struck, probabh', Avith the whimsicality of the circumstance, formed themselves into a musical club, whose meetings Avere held In Britton's house, he himself playing the viol-di- gamba. The celebrated Dubourg, the violinist, made his first appearance before the public as a child, standing upon a stool In this room. Britton Avas not only a lover of music ; he Avas also a collector of draAviugs, prints, books, manuscripts, and musical instruments of rare or obsolete forms. Some of these he collected for distinguished noblemen, who made him their agent ; and he is said to have frequentiy met his employers in a bookseller's shop at the corner of Ave Maria Lane, on which occasions he would " pitch his coal-sack on a bulk at the door " (for he Avas an itinerant vendor), " and, dressed in his blue frock, AvhIch was necessarily somcAvhat discoloured by his occupation, step in and spend an im- CLERKENWELL, 137 proving hour Avith the company." This singular character died in the year 1714 ; and the site of his " musical small-coal warehouse " is noAV occupied by a public-house. We have spoken of a Nunnery which once bounded ClerkenAvell Green on the north. This occupied the site of what are now the parish church and the Close ; indeed, the latter Avas the Nunnery Close, and the former, before it was rebuilt about half a century ago, Avas part of the ancient conventual church. The Nunnery was built nearly at the same period as the adjacent Priory of St. John, and continued in existence till the dissolution by Henry VIII. Scarcely anything is known of its history, its architectural features, or its historical associations ¦ differing very Avidely, in this respect, from the Priory. After the Reformation, Avhen that great event, as well as the dissolution of the monastic establishments, had rendered necessary a remodelling of the parochial affairs of so many parts of England, the church of St. Mary's Nunnery was made a parochial church, and dedicated to St. James, the other portions of the Nunnery enclosure jjassing into the hands of the Duke of Newcastle ; while the choir of the church of the Priory became known as St, John's Church. [St. James's Clmrch.] The Duke (then Earl) of NeAvcastle built a family mansion on the site, and partly out of the ruins, of the Nunnery, a little northward of the old church. Who ever Avould now look for this, one among many large mansions once to be found in ClerkenAvell, or rather for the site Avhich it once occupied, must pass from the Close through Newcastle Street in the direction of the church, leaving the entrance to the Noav Prison on his left. He will then be standing where NeAv castle House stood until about half a century back. The Earl of Newcastle, on Avhose. estates the enormous sum of three-quarters of a million sterling Avas levied by Cromwell's Parliament, and who returned to England from exile at the 138 LONDON. Restoration, " spent nearly the Avhole remainder of his life m the retirement afforded by his seat at Clerkenwell, where he took much pleasure in literary pursuits, and paid some necessary attention to repairing the injuries sustained by his fortune." On the opposite side of the Close once stood a large house called Cromwell House, said traditionally to have been inhabited by Oliver Cromwell. In the last century, according to Storer, it was " in the occupation of William BlackboroAv, Esq., many years in the commission of the peace for the County of Middlesex, Avho died here, at an advanced age, September 16, 1794. It was destroyed by fire some years since, and the spot on Avhich it stood is occupied by the modern buildings of Cromwell Place." All the antiquities of what was once the Nunnery Close are gone,— the Nunnery itself, the old church, NeAvcastle House, Cromwell House, all have given Avay to the present narroAV streets, filled with the private houses of AVorking tradesmen. The Nunnery Close and Clerken well Close are the same ; yet how different ! The modern St, James's Church and the ClerkeuAA^ell BrideAvell are the only tAVO erections in or around it worth a glance in respect to aught save manufiacturing industry. There is a narroAv belt of the parish of Clerkenwell, Avhich, as Ave stated in a former page, is bounded on the Avest by the Fleet ditch ; indeed, the ditch sepa rates it from the parish of St, Andrew, Holborn. This part of the parish, lying Avestward of Turnmill Street and Coppice Roav, differs greatly from most of the districts Avhich Ave have passed through. There are few " watchmakers," few " jeAvellers," fcAv respectable streets, fcAV associations by Avhich Ave may look back upon the past through the present. The streets, the houses, and the inhabitaiits are generally of a humble class. There is, however, a little northAvard of the Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green, a spot which has given no less than a name to the whole parish. It must be remembered that the district or belt now under consideration slopes down very rapidly from the Green to the Fleet ditch, as any one may see Avho Avishes to reach Hatton Garden by this route ; and along this slope the Avater Avas Avont, in ancient times, to floAv from certain springs to the "River of Wells.'' One of these springs, called " Fay's Well," is believed to have been situated near the junction of Turnmill Street and Cow Cross Street, and Avas closed over about the middle of the last century. Westward of this, at a little distance from ClerkenAvell Green, in Ray Street, was the " Clerks' Well," from which the parish is named. Of the early history of this Avell, and of the dramatic performances Avhich are said to have been held around its brink, we have before spoken.* We need, therefore, here merely state that it Avas situated just Avithout the Avestern wall of the Nunnery ; and Avas In after, years presented to the parish by the then OAvner of the ground. Whoever Avould wish to see a record of this ancient well, let him proceed from ClerkenAvell Green through Ray Street towards Coppice Row ; and by the side of a tiny shop, occupied by a "Dealer in singing- birds," he will see a misshapen and rudely- constructed pump, Avith an inscription denoting that the water AvhIch floAVs from that pump is derived from the " Clerks' Well." Of those who have Avitnessed and admired (or perhaps censured) the ' Beggar's Opera,' few would now knoAv the locality there mentioned by the name of " Hockley-in-the-Hole." It Avas a Bear Cfarden situated near the northern end * Vol. i, p, 226, CLERKENWELL. 139 if Avhat noAV constitutes Ray Street; and as Mrs, Peachum says to Filch, " You must go to Hockley-in-the-Hole, and to Marybone, child, to learn valour," Ave may draw a probable inference of the degree of respectability attached to its name. 1 i' m Bear-baiting in the Seventeenth Century.] Westward of this spot, and extending in the direction of Bagnigge Wells, is a district once knoAvn as the Jervoise Estate, On the site of the roAv of houses noAv called Cobham Row, at the eastern end of Mount Pleasant, formerly resided Sir John Oldcastle, afterwards Lord Cobham, a distinguished nobleman in the reign of Edward III. He it Avas Avho promulgated Wickllffe's writings among the people, an act for Avhich he was burnt in the year 1417. His memory was held in great respect by the public at large, and for a long period afterwards the plot of ground on Avhich his house stood Avas named after him. At a subsequent period a house of entertainment, called the " Sir John Oldcastle," Avas opened on this spot. About ninety years ago a portion of the Cobham Estate was presented by the then proprietor to the trustees of a Small-pox Hospital, the first of its kind in Europe. The institution, at its first establishment, consisted of three buildings : one in Old Street, one at Islington, and the one here alluded to ; but afterwards the arrangements Avere confined to tAvo Hospitals — that at Battle Bridge, St, Pancras, for preparing and inoculating patients ; and that on the Cobham Estate, for receiving the patients as soon as the disease appeared, and also those who caught the disease naturally. The Hospital at Coldbath Fields Avas held in the house formerly known as the " Sir John Oldcastle," which was itself supposed to comprise a part of the ancient mansion of that nobleman; but a noAv building was subsequently constructed, and used as a Small-pox Hospital till the year 1 795, when the operations of the charity Avere removed to St. Pancras. The estate, at 140 LONDON, a later period, passed into the hands of " Lady Huntingdon's Connexion," Avho occupy the neighbouring chapel in Exmouth Street, By degrees, streets have been built around the spot once occupied as the Hospital, and the Avhole neigh bourhood is knoAvn by the general name of Coldbath Fields. The name just given, as Avell as those of Bagnigge Wells, Sadler's Wells, the London Spa, and the "Wells " alluded to by the earlier topographers, point to one of the distinguishing characteristics of this locality. The tract of ground im mediately eastward of the Fleet River appears to have been singularly rich in springs, many of AvhIch were medicinal. A " cold spring " Avas discovered near the top of Mount Pleasant, about a century and a half ago, and Avas, by the pro prietor of the estate on Avhich it Avas found, converted into a bath, Avhich, under the name of the " Cold Bath," Avas said to be " the most noted and first, about London." The entrance to the bath may still be seen in a short street branching out of Mount Pleasant, but its appearance is very different from that represented in a picturesque view of the spot in 1811. Another of these spots, so well knoAvn as "Sadler's Wells," derives its name from a spring Avhich Avas discovered in the garden of one Sadler, Avho Avas the proprietor of a " music-room," the fore runner of the present theatre. The Avater was said to be ferruginous, and so valuable for certain complaints, that the avoU Avas visited by " five or six hun dred persons every morning." A third instance is the once famous " Ishngton Spa," situated a little southward of the theatre, in a street leading into St. John's Street Road. This spa Avas opened so long as two centuries ago, and was visited by persons of distinction from the west end of the town. Two of the daughters of King George II. Avere accustomed to drink the waters there daily. Even to the present day a glimpse may be obtained of the pretty gardens belonging to the " Islington Spa," AvhIch, like the " Cold Bath," has not yet lost all its once high reputation. A fourth instance is, or Avas, afforded by the "London Spa," a medicinal spring of much repute on the spot noAv occupied by a public-house of the same name, at the eastern end of Exmouth Street. With this may be asso ciated the " New Wells," situated a little southward of it, Avhere now is Rosoman Street; but both have long ceased to show any evidence of existence. Lastly, we may mention the " Bagnigge Wells," reputed to have been once the country residence of Nell GAvynne, and afterwards celebrated for a medicinal spring dis covered there. Our purpose, in this topographical sketch, being only to notice such matters as illustrate the changes Avhich Clerkenwell has undergone from age to age, and not to offer particular descriptions of churches, prisons, theatres, and private buildings we shall say but littie of the remaining parts of the parish. Nearly all the por tion northward of Exmouth Street and Rosoman Street was open fields until comparatively modern times, the New River Head,* and the buildings connected with It, being the only occupied spot of any importance from thence to the New Road ; but now there arc streets and squares in great number, either built or buildmg; and " Spa Fields," whose name is unfavourably associated with certain riotous proceedings in bygone days, are no longer to be met with. Valleys and depressions have been filled up; eminences have been lowered; water-pipes and gas-pipes, and pavements, have been laid down; brick and tile fields have been * See vol. i. u. 238. CLERKENWELL. 141 levelled; churches have been opened; wells and springs, spas and baths, are be coming less and less frequented ; and the whole district is losing, by the natural operation of commercial speculation, what little of romance once pertained to it. Of that portion of the parish which is situated northAvard of the Noav Road and which is more generally known by the name of " Pentonville," the same remark may be made : it is entirely occupied by streets of modern houses. It is scarcely possible to pass through the streets of Clerkenwell Avithout enter taining a wish to know someAvhat of the arrangements by Avhich the peculiar manufactures of the district are carried on. If Ave cannot obtain an answer to the question, " Why are so many manufacturers of one kind assembled in this spot ? " Ave may at least gain a little insight into the commercial economy by which the trade is regulated ; and to this Ave now draAV the reader's attention. Very little is knoAvn respecting the early history of the Avatch and clock manu facture in London, or even in England. It appears to have made a noiseless progress, and to have left but fcAV records of its advancement. A pamphlet, pub lished in 1704, purports to convey the 'Reasons of the English Clock and Watch Makers against the Bill to confirm the pretended noAv Invention of using precious and common Stones about Watches, Clocks, and other Engines ;' and another contains ' Reasons humbly offered by the JcAvellers, Diamond-cutters, Lapidaries, Engravers in Stone, &c., against the Bill for JcAvel-Watches.' These documents seem to point to the period Avhen the jewelling of watches was first introduced — a term Avhich relates, not to the outward adornment by means of joAvels, but to the use of hard stones as a material in Avhich to make pivot-holes for a Avatch move ment. It is plain that the manufacture of a Avatch must have attained a con siderable stage of advancement before such a refined improvement as this Avould be thought of; and Ave may reasonably conclude that the trade of watchmaking Avas an important one in England nearly a century and a half ago. From time to time parliamentary inquiries have been made into matters affecting in a greater or less degree this branch of manufacture ; and from these sources Ave gain a little information concerning the internal arrangements of the fraternity. The peculiar construction of a pocket- Avatch, Avhereby its qualities cannot be estimated by the purchaser except by experience, led to the custom of engraving the name of the maker on some part of the Avatch as a guarantee of its excellence ; and there Avere enactments making a neglect of this precaution a punishable offence. The trade was also placed under the control of a com pany, AvhIch was thus described by a witness examined before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1817 : — " All the clockmakers and other persons using that trade Avithin London and ten miles compass therefrom, are incorporated into one body politic, with poAvers to make bye-laws for the government of all those persons who should use the trade throughout England, and to control the im portation of foreign clocks and watches into this country, and mark such as were imported." By the custom of thus marking foreign Avatches Avith the stamp of the Clockmakers' Company — by the custom of marking the Avorks of each English watch with the name, of the maker, and by the custom of stamping the gold or silver cases at Goldsmiths' Hall, the number of watches produced in England became tolerably well ascertained, although the number of men em ployed therein appears never to have been determined. Mr. Jacob (" On the U2 I,ONDON. Precious Metals") estimates the average annual number of watches which pass through Goldsmiths' Hall at fourteen thousand gold and eighty-five thousand silver. This estimate is a good deal under that which is given in a Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, made in 1818. It is there stated that in the year 1796 there were 191,678 watches marked at Goldsmiths' Hall; but that in consequence of the imposition of a duty on clocks and watches, and also of a licence-duty for the sale of Avatches, the number marked was reduced, by the year 1798, to 128,798; from which it Avas estimated that sixty thousand Avatches less Avere made in London in 1798 than in 1796. These enactments Avere after wards repealed, but the number never again reached the standard of 1796. An ordinary gold or silver watch passes through considerably more than one hundred hands, each Avorkman performing a part of the operation to which his Avhole attention is directed, and differing from that of every other. It is perhaps still more surprising that this minute subdivision relates, after all, only to what may be termed the finishing of a Avatch; for the watch "movements" are made almost AvhoUy in Lancashire. On opening a pocket-Avatch, we see that there are two parallel brass-plates, having betAveen them the greater portion of the wheels belonging to the Avatch : this portion Is knoAvn by the manufacturers under the general name of the " movement," and is that to which Ave here refer. Whether it is that the Lancashire Avatch-movements excel those Avhich could be made in ClerkenAvell In. excellence or in price, Ave shall not attempt to decide ; but certain it is that almost every English watch, of Avhatever quality, has its " movement " made in Lancashire. Let us follow the "moA'ement" in its progress toAvards completion. On its arrival in London it is purchased by the " Avatch-manufacturer," a tradesman who hires the services of the numerous sub-branches alluded to aboA'e. It is to be supplied with the " motion-work " or mechanism in connection with the hands; Avith a "spring" and connecting mechanism; AvIth an "escapement," or apparatus for insuring the uniform " going " of the watch ; with a " case," generall)- of silver or gold; AvIth a " dial," generally enamelled, but sometimes of chased metal ; with a " glass," and Avith other appendages. The manufacturer gives these various parts to be made by certain persons Avho undertake definite portions ; and these parties further subdivide to a degree of minuteness scarcely credible. The " escaperiient-maker," for instance, so far from being one Avork- man Avho manufactures everything relating to an escapement, may be a "duplex- escapement maker," or a " lever-escapement maker," or a " horizontal-escape ment maker ;" he may also have under him many Avorkmen, each of whom is employed in, and is competent only to the manufacture of, some one particular part of some one kind of escapement. The enamelled dial of the Avatch, too instead of being perfected by one man, passes through the hands of several : one man forms the dial out of sheet copper ; another coats it with the beautiful enamel ; a third paints the letters and figures in enamel colours ; and a fourth adjusts the dial to the other parts of the Avatch. The case, in like manner, passes through many hands ; for besides the Avorkmen employed in actually making it, there is the "secret-springer," Avho forms the mechanism by which the two halves of the case close together ; the " engine-turner," who engraves those curious devices which ornament the cases of some wstchen ; the " pendant- CLERKENWELL, 143 maker," who constructs the loop and apparatus by which the watch is suspended from the chain, guard, or watch-ribbon. The " hands " of the watch form a branch of the manufacture totally distinct from the others ; so does that of the "watch-key;" and even that of the little "index," by which Ave regulate the " going " of the Avatch when too fast or too sIoav. Some of the wheels of the watch are considered so far distinct as to have their teeth formed by Avorkmen who do not cut the teeth of other wheels. The " fusee " likcAvIse, a conical piece of brass on Avhich the chain is Avound by the watch-key from the barrel, is made by one Avho is AvhoUy employed as a " fusee-cutter." In the " jewelling" of §, Avatch, some men are employed in preparing the stones, and others in making the pivot-holes. Thus we might go on dissecting a Avatch to its minutest parts, and showing that the more we do so, the more numerous shall Ave find the subdivision of Avorkmen who made the Avatch. The " watch-maker," or " Avatch-manufacturer," Is a tradesman who under stands the relative positions and the combined action of all the parts of a Avatch, an^ is therefore competent to bring into one Avhole all the various parts Avhich have been thus made. They are generally persons possessing some considerable capital, as occupying the channel through Avhich the purchaser deals with the actual makers. The Avatch-manufacturers of ClerkenAvell are the class to Avhich Ave here more particularly allude ; for many of the retail dealers in watches in other parts of London merely purchase the articles in a finished state, to sell again at a profit. We arc noAV enabled to form an idea of the manner in which this system of manufacture gives rise to the present condition of ClerkenAvell, as the centre of the watch-trade. There are not tAvo or three hundred men employed in a large factory, to make a Avatch throughout ; but there are thirty or forty distinct classes of tradesmen, comprising, perhaps, three times that number of minor subdivisions, all living and working at their OAvn homes, and contributing the various parts to a Avatch, which is finally completed by the " watch-manufacturer." Some of these thirty or forty are men possessing sufficient capital to employ in their Avorkshops a considerable number of Avorkmen, among whom they can carry out the principle of the division of labour to a still greater extent ; while others are humble arti- zans Avho Avork at their own homes, taking no more Avork than they can execute Avith their oaa'u hands, or perhaps with an apprentice. A writer on the clock- manufacture, some years ago,* makes the following observations on one of the results to Avhich this, system of minute subdivision is likely to lead : — " The cus tom of Avorking by piecemeal from established models, which, it must be alloAved, contributes greatly to expedition and cheapness, has no doubt conduced to exclude calculation and geometrical principles from the Avorkshops of the present day. Whence it arises that, if we wish to be introduced to the Avorkman Avho has had the greatest share in the construction of our best clocks, Ave must often submit to be conducted up some narrow passage of our metropolis, and to mount into some dirty attic, where Ave find illiterate ingenuity closely employed in earning a mere pittance, compared with the price which is put on the finished machine by the vendor." * Bees's Cyclopaedia, ' Clock.' 144 LONDON. It is curious to compare the condition and habits of life of the Clerkenwell Avatch-makers Arith those of the SavIss artisans. There are some districts in Switzerland, the' inhabitants of Avhich are almost wholly occupied in the Avatch manufacture. Dr. Bowring, in his Report on Swiss Manufactures (1836), states : " The Jura mountains have beer the cradle of much celebrity in the mechanical arts, particularly in those more exquisite productions of Avhich a minute compli cation is a peculiar character. During the Avinter, which lasts from six to seven months, the inhabitants are, as it Avere, imprisoned in their dwellings, and occupied ift those works AvhIch require the utmost developement of skilful ingenuity. Nearly a hundred and twenty thousand watches are produced annually in the elevated regions of Neufchatel. In Switzerland, the most remarkable of the French Avatchmakers, and among them one who has lauely obtained the gold medal at Paris for his beautiful Avatch-movements, had their birth and education ; and a sort of honourable distinction attaches to the watch-making trade." Without entering far into the question of the alleged injury Avhich the English manu facturer has been said to suffer from the importation of foreign watches, there is a remark which Avas made to Dr. BoAvring by one of the principal watch-manufac turers of Geneva, Avhich seems to us too important to be omitted : — " The Avatches of English manufacture do not come into competition Avitli those of Swiss produc tion, Avhich are used for different purposes, and by a different class of persons NotAvithstanding all the risks and charges, the sale of SavIss Avatches is large, and it has not really injured the English Avatch-making trade. The English Avatches are far more solid in construction, fitter for service, and especially in countries Avhere no good Avatchmakers are to be found, as the Swiss Avatches require delicate treatment. English Avatches, therefore, are sold to the purchaser Avho can pay a high price : the SavIss Avatches supply the classes to Avhom a costly Avatch is inaccessible."* It may perhaps be right to state that the making of a clock is not subjected to so many minute divisions as that of a Avatch ; but be they fcAV or many, the part of the metropolis to Avhich Ave must look for most of the makers of both these specimens of human ingenuity is Clerkenwell. • Hepoitj p.!* -. -^.L ^ i^erry Hill press, he would have seen littie imitation either of his philosophy or of his style. Voltaire, the most subtle of scoffers, was upon occasions an enthusiast. He had a heart. Walpole, even to his most intimate friends, was a scoffer and a scandal-monger ; never moved to any thing like warmth, except when talking about the' constitution (by which he meant the protection of certain privileged persons in the exclusive enjoyment of public wealth and honour); and only growing earnest in his old age when he was frightened into hysterics about the French Revolution, having in his greener years called the death-warrant of Charles I. ' Charta Major.' He hates authors, as we have seen, because " they are always in earnest, and think their profession serious." If this be a true description of the authors of Walpole's time, the world has lost something by a change ; for in our oavu day a writer who is in earnest is apt to be laughed at by those who conceive that the end of all literature is to amuse, and that its highest rcAvard is to have, as Sterne had, " engagements for three months" to dine some where, always provided that there is a lord's card to glitter in the exact spot of the library or drawing-room where the stranger eye can best read and admire. This is fame, and this is happiness. But the silent consolation of high and cheerful thoughts, — the right of entering at pleasure into a world filled with beauty and variety, — the ability to converse with the loftiest and purest spirits, who will neither ridicule, nor envy, nor betray their humble disciple, — the power of going out of the circle of distracting cares into a region Avhere there is always calm and content, — these great blessings of the student's life, whether they end or not in adding to the stock of the world's knowledge, are not the ends which are most proposed according to the fashion of our day to a writer's ambition. The " earnest author " is too often set down for a fool — not seldom for a madman. To the class of writers that Walpole shunned Rousseau belonged, with all his faults. Walpole's adventures with this remarkable man are characteristic enough of the individual and of the times. His first notice of Rousseau is in a letter from Paris to Lady Harvey, in 1 766 : — " Mr, Hume carries this letter and Rousseau to England. I wish the former may not repent having engaged with the latter, Avho contradicts and quarrels with all mankind in order to obtain their admiration. I think both his means and his end below such a genius. If 1 had talents like his, I should despise any suffrage below my own standard, and should blush to OAve any part of my fame to singularities and affectations." Walpole committed a mistake in not seeing that the singularities and affectations were an essential part of the man, and in not treating them therefore Avith charity and forbearance. After Rousseau had left Paris, Walpole, the hater of impostures, the denouncer of Chatterton as a forger and liar, Avrote a letter, purporting to be STRAWBERRY HILL, 153 from the King of Prussia to Rousseau, which had prodigious success in the French circles, and of course got into all the journals of Europe, This was at a time when the " genius" was proscribed and distressed. Walpole was very proud to his confidential friends of the success of this hoax :— " I enclose a trifle that I wrote lately, which got about and has made enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle after an event, like a parcel of hens after an accidental husk of a grape." * Walpole had no objection to Rousseau's principles ; he insulted him because he was a vain man who affected singularity, or, what was more probable, could not avoid being singular. There was honesty at least in Johnson's denunciation of him : — " I think him one of the worst of men ; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him, and it is a shame that he is protected in this countrv. Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man, I would sooner sign a sentence for his trans portation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like, to have him work in the plantations," Johnson would have banished Rousseau to the plantations in talk, but assuredly would have given him a dinner in Bolt Court, and, if his poverty had become extreme, would have admitted him amongst his odd pensioners. Walpole's success in the pretended letter was complete. He writes to Conway : " As you knoAV, I Avil- lingly laugh at mountebanks, political or literary, let their talents be ever so great The copies have spread like wildfire ; et me void a la mode ! " Rousseau, in deep affliction, wrote a letter to the editor of the ' London Chro nicle,' in which the fabrication had been printed, denouncing it as " a dark trans action." The vanity of Walpole, in regard to this letter, which consists of tAventy lines in decent French, in which there is very little humour and no wit, is almost as insane as the vanity of Rousseau. He writes to Chute, to Conway, to Cole, to Gray, to all mankind, to tell of his wonderful performance. To Cole he says, " You will very probably see a letter to Rousseau, in the name of the King of Prussia, writ to laugh at his affectations. It has made excessive noise here, and I believe quite ruined the author with many philosophers. When I tell you I was the author, it is telling you how cheap I hold their anger."t When Rousseau had quarrelled with Hume, six months after, it was one of the unhappy man's suspicions that Hume Avas concerned in the letter from the King of Prussia ; and then Walpole thus writes to Hume : " I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing the King of Prussia's letter ; but I do assure you with the utmost truth that it was several days before you left Paris, and before Rousseau's arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you, but it was the reason why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him, as you often proposed to me, thinking it wrong to go and make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him,"+ We have a suspicion that Walpole's delicacy was sometimes measured by his cowardice, Warburton, writing to Hurd, took a just view of the whole transaction : " As to Rousseau, I entirely agree Avith you that his long letter to his brother philosopher, Hume, shoAvs him to be a frank lunatic. His passion of tears, his suspicion of his friends in the * Horace Walpole to Chute, Jamiary, 1766, f Horace Walpole to Cole, January 18, 1766, t Horace Walpole to Hume, July 26, 1766. 154 LONDON. midst of their services, and his incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro. Walpole's pleasantry upon him had baseness in its very conception. It was written Avhen the poor man had determined to seek an asylum in England, and is, therefore, justly and generously condemned by D'Alembert. This con sidered, Hume failed both in honour and friendship not to show his dislike ; which neglect seems to have kindled the first spark of combustion in this mad man's brain. However, the contestation is very amusing, and I shall be sorry if it stops, now It Is in so good a train. I should be Avell pleased, particularly, to see so seraphic a madman attack so insufferable a coxcomb as Walpole ; and I think they are only fit for one another." There can be no doubt that Walpole's coxcombity must have been " insuffer able " in his own day, except amongst a favoured few. It is perfectiy clear, from his letters, that he had no reverence for anything— but himself His affectation was as excessive as that of Rousseau ; but it Avent in another direction. He fan cied that he could afford to speak contemptuously of all political men ; although, whilst himself a politician, he was the merest tool of party, and never made a single honest attempt to earn one penny of the thousands AvhIch the nation be stowed upon him. As a man of fashion, he was eternally holding up his friends to ridicule; though he went quite as far in their follies as a feeble frame Avould carry him. As a man of letters, he affected to despise nearly all other men of letters : what is there but affectation in thus writing to Hume—" My letter hinted, too, my contempt of learned men and their miserable conduct. Since I Avas to appear in print, I should not have been sorry that that opinion should have appeared at the same time. In truth, there Is nothing I hold so cheap as the generality of learned men."* What is the secret of all this affectation ? He Avanted a heart, and he thought it very clever to let the Avorld knoAV it ; for he Avas deeply imbued Avith the Ioav philosophy of his age, Avhich thought it wisdom to appear to love nothing, to fear nothing, to reverence nothing. The world in Walpole's oavu day took up an opinion which it will not easily part with — that he behaved heartlessly to the unfortunate Chatterton. In March, 1769, Avhen Chatterton was little more than sixteen years old, he ad dressed a letter from Bristol to Horace Walpole, offering to supply him Avith accounts of a succession of painters who had flourished at Bristol, Avhich accounts, he said, had been discovered with some ancient poems in that city, specimens of Avhich he enclosed. It Avas about six months before this that Chatterton had communicated to Felix Farley's ' Bristol Journal' his celebrated ' Description of the Friars first passing over the old bridge, taken from an ancient manuscript ;' and very soon after the publication of that remarkable imitation of an ancient document, he produced, from time to time, various poems, Avhich he attributed to RoAvley, a priest of the fifteenth century, and Avhich became the subject of the most remarkable literary controversy of modern times. Walpole replied to Chatterton's first communication AvIth ready politeness; but Avhen Chatterton solicited his assistance in quitting a profession AvhIch he disliked, his application Avas neglected, and the poor boy threw himself upon the Avorld of London Avith out a friend. He then demanded his manuscripts, in a letter Avhich Avas too * Horace Walpole lo Hume, November 6, 1766. STRAWBERRY HILL. 155 manly and independent to receive from Walpole any other name than " imper tinent." The manuscripts Avere returned in a blank cover. This Avas the extent of Walpole's offence ; and, looking at the man's character, it is impossible to tljink he could have acted otherwise. He probably doubted the ability of the friendless boy to furnish the information he required ; he suspected that the papers sent to him were fabricated. When Chatterton Avrote to him as one man of letters has a right to address another, he could not brook the assumed equality; and he re venged himself by the pettiness of aristocratic insolence. Had he sought out the boy who had given this evidence'of his spirit as Avell as of his talent, he would not have been Horace Walpole. The unhappy boy " perished in his pride" in August, 1770. Walpole Avas assailed for many years for his conduct towards Chatterton, and he seems at times to have felt the charge very keenly. He thus addresses himself to the editor ef Chatterton's Miscellanies : " Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed at the time of his correspondence Avith me ; he Avas maintained by his mother, and lived Avith a laAvyer. His only pleas to my assistance were, disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and communica tion of some suspicious MSS. His distress Avas the consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of his other extravagances. He had de pended on the impulse of the talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to Avealth, honours, and fame. I have already said that I should have been blameable to his mother and society if I had seduced an apprentice from his mas ter to marry him to the nine Muses ; and I should have encouraged a pi-openslty to forgery, Avhich is not the talent most wanting culture in the present age." In 1777, when the 'Monthly RevioAV ' had been attacking him on the subject of Chatterton, he thus wrote to Cole : " I believe M'Pherson's success Avith ' Ossian ' was more the ruin of Chatterton than I. Tavo years passed betAveen my doubting the authenticity of RoAvley's poems and his death. 1 never knoAV he had been in London till some time after he had undone and poisoned himself there. The poems he sent me were transcripts in his oavu hand, and even in that circumstance he told a lie : he said he had them from the very person at Bristol to Avhom he had given them." In this letter he adds, " I think poor Chatterton Avas an astonishing genius." Walpole does not appear to have seen that he Avas in this dilemma ; either the poems which he had received from Chatterton were authentic, and, if so, the greatest curiosities in our language ; or they Avere fabri cated by an '' astonishing genius." Walpole, we believe, did not sec the extra ordinary merit of the poems. His taste was not of the highest quality. When the Avorld agreed that a great spirit had been amongst them, and had perished untimely, Walpole, in self-defence, dwelt upon his "forgery" and his "imposi- sitions." He probably forgot that a Avork had been published in 1765, under the following title, " The Castle of Otranto, a Story translated by William Marshal, Gent., from the original Italian of Ouphrlo Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto:" and that the preface to this translation from the Italian thus commences — " The folloAving AVork Avas found In the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It Avas printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529." Who can say that, if Chatterton had lived, he Avould not have avowed the Rowley poems to be his OAvn, as Walpole afterwards 1 56 LON DON. acknowledged the ' Castle of Otranto ?' And where, then, would have been the forgery any more than in the fabrication of the " Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas ?" Ten years after Chatterton's death Walpole quieted his conscience by continu ing to call the marvellous charity-boy "young villain" and "young rascal;" but an occasion rose in which genius might be patronised without incurring the risk of an impertinent letter. Miss Hannah More had found a milk-woman at Bristol who wrote verses; and they were just such verses as Hannah More. and Horace Walpole would think very Avonderful ; so a subscription is to be raised for the milk-Avoman, Mistress Ann Yearsley. " Her ear," according to a letter of 'VVal- pole to Miss More in 1784, "is perfect," her "taste" is unexceptionable, Wal pole prescribes her studies : " Give her Dryden's 'Cock and Fox,' the standard of good sense, poetry, nature, and ease. . . . Prior's ' Solomon,' (for I doubt his ' Alma,' though far superior, is too learned for her limited reading,) would be very proper. . . , Read and explain to her a charming poetic familiarity called the ' Blue-stocking Club.' " Imagine that poor Chatterton had been more unfortunate than he really was—had been patronised by Horace Walpole, per mitted a garret to sleep in, advanced to the honours of the butler's table, and taught by the profound critic, that Spenser was wretched stuff, and Shakspere's [Horace Walpole.] •Midsummer Night's Dream' " forty times more nonsensical than 'the worst translation of any Italian opera-books."* The milk-woman became restive ? Horace Wilpole to Bentley, Februarv 23, 1755, STRAWBERRY HILL, 157 under the control of Hannah More, and she quarrelled with her patroness, upon Avhich afflicting occurrence Walpole thus condoles with his friend : " You are not only benevolence itself, but, with fifty times the genius of a Yearsley, you are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should expel gratitude! Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you, as well as her affluence? I can testify your labours for both. Dame Yearsley reminds me of the Troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to admire till I knew their history ; and who used to pour out trumpery verses, and flatter or abuse accordingly as they Avere housed and clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this person in the stocks, after procuring an annuity for her !" * It is impossible to have a clearer notion of what Walpole and such as Walpole meant by patronage. The Baron of Otranto would have thought it the perfection of benevolence to have housed and clothed a troubadour ; but the stocks and the whipping-post would have been ready for any treasonable assertion of independence. The days of chivalry are gone, and, heaven be praised, those of patronage are gone after them ! Walpole, like many other very clever men, could not perfectly appreciate the highest excellence, and yet could see the ridiculous side of the pretenders to wit and poetry. He laughs, as Gifford laughed, at 'Delia Crusca;' and he has told the follies of Batheaston with his characteristic liveliness: — " You must know that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, Avhich has been new-christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam Riggs, an old rough humorist who passed for a wit ; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good folks were friends of Miss Rich, who carried me to dine with them at Batheaston, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan Avere forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas ! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The Captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtu., and, that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rimes as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath con tend for the prizes. A Roman vase, dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are croAvned by it with myrtle — with^-I don't know what. You may think this is fiction or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers ! The collection is printed, pub lished. Yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rimes on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland ; receipts to make them, by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt ; others, very pretty, by Lord Palmerston ; some by Lord Carlisle ; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre ; and immortality promised to her without end or measure. In short * Horace Walpole to Hannah More, October 14, 1787. 158 LONDON. nince folly, which never ripens to madness but in this hot climate, ran distracted. there never was anything so entertaining or so dull— for you cannot read so long as I have been telling.''* When poetry was essentially an affair of " hearts" and " darts," it was no wonder that a mob of silly fashionable people set up for poets. The whole age Avas wanting In taste : it was not poetical because it was superficial. But it was a very diffet-ent age from our oAvn, Avhen the national intellect Is divided between utilitarians and those called by utilitarians non-utilitarians. May it long be so divided ! May those Avho believe only in Avhat is gross and palpable to sense go apart from those who cherish Avhat belongs to the spiritual. Ask them not to believe. Let them make the most of their microscopes, their telescopes, their' chemical affinities, their scalpels. Yet, a new generation will be fed and grow upon Avhat they despise. It is feeding, and it is growing. Its aliment is as abundant as the rain, the dcAV, and the sunshine. It has nothing exclusive, to gratify a small distinction; and it will not feed upon husks. The Walpoles belong to neither class of this day. The intercourse betAveen Hannah More and Horace Walpole began in 1781. It Avas an odd intimacy ; but compliments freely received and bestowed made it agreeable, no doubt, to both parties. Here is a pretty note from Horace Walpole, Avritten AvIth a croAvquill pen upon the sweetest-scented paper : " Mr. Walpole thanks Miss More a thousand times, not only for so obligingly com plying AvIth his request, but for letting him have the satisfaction of possessing and reading again and again her charming and very genteel poem, the ' Bas Bleu.' He ought not, in modesty, to commend so much a piece in Avhich he himself is flattered ; but truth is more durable than blushing, and he must be just, though he may be vain." f Walpole could bear flattery better than Dr. Johnson : " Mrs. Thrale then told a story of Hannah More, which, I think, exceeds in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When she Avas introduced to him, not long ago, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner, and talking of the pleasure and the instruction she had received from his Avritings, with the highest encomiums. For some time he heard her with that quietness Avhich a long use of praise has given him : she then redoubled her strokes, and, as Mr. SoAvard calls it, peppered still more highly, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry counte nance, and said, ' Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider Avhether or not your flattery is Avorth his having.' " J As Miss More groAV older, she, no doubt, groAv Aviser ; and Walpole himself, Avith a very prevailing inclination to ridicule Avhat he called her saintllncss, came to respect her for her virtues, instead of continuing to burn incense to her genius. The last indication of their friendship appears in his giving her a Bible, which she wished he Avould read himself. We have uoav run through the London of Horace Walpole, Avith reference only to his connection Avith the fashion and the literature of his times. His cor- * Horace Walpole to Conway, Jan. 15, 1775. t Horace Walpole to Hannah More, May 0, 1784 X Madame d'Arblay's Diary, vol. i. p. 103. STRAWBERRY HILL. 159 respondence, as Ave have before observed, indicates little association Avith tne more eminent literary men of his long day, and no very great sympathy for the best things which they produced. There is scarcely any other general aspect of London of which his Avorks hold up a mirror. The chief value of his letters con sists in his lively descriptions of those public events whose nicer details Avould, Avithout such a chronicler, be altogether hid under the varnish of what Ave call history. It is evident that with such details our Avork has no concern. We shall conclude, therefore, with a brief notice or tAVo, by Walpole, of the physical increase of London. In 1791 he thus Avrites to the Miss Berrys: — "Though London increases every day, and Mr. Herschel has just discovered a noAv square or circus somewhere by the Noav Road, in the Via Lactea, where the cows used to be fed, I believe you Avill think the town cannot hold all its Inhabitants, so prodigiously the population is augmented. I have tAvice been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly (and the same has happened to Lady Ailesbury), thinking there Avas a mob, and it was only nymphs and swains sauntering or trudging. T'other morn ing, i.e. at two o'clock, I Avent to see Mrs. Garrick and Miss Hannah More at the Adelphi, and Avas stopped five times before I reached Northumberland House ; for the tides of coaches, chariots, curricles, phaetons, &c., are endless. Indeed the town is so extended, that the breed of chairs is almost lost; for Hercules and Atlas could not carry anybody from one end of the enormous capital to the other. How magnified Avould be the error of the young Avoman at St. Helena, who, some years ago, said to a captain of an Indiaman, ' I suppose London is very empty Avhen the India ships come out.' " And again, in the same year, " The Duke of St. Albans has cut down all the brave old trees at Han- worth, and consequently reduced his park to what it issued from— Hounslow Heath ; nay, he has hired a meadow next to mine, for the benefit of embark ation; and there lie all the good old corpses of oaks, ashes, and chestnuts, directly before your AvIndows, and blocking up one of my vieAvs of the river ! But, so impetuous is the rage for building, that his Grace's timber will, I trust, not annoy us long. There Avill soon be one street from London to Brentford — aye, and from London to every village ten miles round I Lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish ToAvn for building fourteen hundred houses — nor do I Avonder ; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saAv it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire Avhat Avas the matter, think ing there Avas a mob : — not at all; it Avas only passengers. Nor is there any com plaint of depopulation from the country : Bath shoots out into new crescents, circuses, and squares every year ; Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, and Liverpool Avould serve any king in Europe for n capital, and Avould make the Empress of Russia's mouth water." The last letter of Horace Walpole is a striking contrast to the vivacity, the curiosity, the acute observation, which made him for sixty years the most lively of correspondents : — " I scarce go out of my oavu house, and then only to two or three very private places, Avhere I see nobody that really knoAVs anything; and Avhat I learn comes from newspapers, that collect intelligence from coffee-houses, consequently Avhat I neither believe nor report. At home I see only a foAv charitable elders, except about fourscore nephews and nieces of various ages, Avho 160 .T.ONI>')«. are each brought to me once a year to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family ; and they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest no more than if they talked of their dollS, or bats or balls."* Like the clock at Strawberry Hill, which Henry VIII. gave to Anne Boleyn, Walpole was fa^ ceasing to be a timekeeper : he was a worn-out relic of the past. * Horace Walpole to the Countess of Ossory, January 13, 17fl7. [Vauxhall Bridge.] LXI.-VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. The "Silent Highway," the "Tunnel," and the bridges of London, West minster, and Blackfriars, having been already treated of, there remain only the more recent structures above-named for the present paper. In thus concluding the entire subject of the Thames and the modes of communication between its opposite banks, we shall adopt a method that will enable us, whilst noticing m detail the particular bridges in question, to look at the whole of these great works in a more connected manner than we have hitherto had a favourable opportunity of doing. At the same time we may notice some of those interesting buildings or memorials that enrich the intervening parts of the river. A stranger, yisitmg for the first time these edifices of which he had heard so much, should pass directly from one to another, whilst the impressions made on his mind are yet fresh, each illustrating each, and thus survey the whole. The exceedmg lightness of the iron arches of Vauxhall, for instance, will thus impress more strongly on his mind the gigantic, almost castie-looking solidity of Westminster, and speak as plainly of the different dates of their erection as if he beheld the figures written up on their fronts. Thus, also, he will see with what happy propriety the bridges and their positions in the metropolis, are united: Vauxhall, at one extremity, will re mind him that he is approaching the termination of this vast aggregate of peopled M VOL. in. 162 LONDON. habitations, Avhere, if " trade " still " stirs and hurries," it is with greatly de creased velocity and amount, Avhilst London, at the other, is equally characteristic of the Avonderful traffic it Avas built to accommodate ; and Waterloo, almost mid- Avay betAveen the tAvo, and in the very heart of the metropolis, is, in its graceful beauty and its perfect strength, the building above all others best fitted to be the central object, towards Avhich the other bridges on both sides seem, as it Avere, to lead. The best mode of vicAving the bridges Avhen, as is most commonly the case, time is of consequence, and a rapid survey alone desired. Is to take the steam-boat from Chelsea to London Bridge. As Ave stand upon the noAvly-erected pier, Avith its two handsome stone archAvays, waiting the departure of the boat, Ave may include in our survey Battersea Bridge, a still better starting-point for the eye than Vauxhall, with its rude timber superstructure, and its eighteen or tAventy piers. This was built in 1771 by a company of proprietors, fifteen In number, Avho advanced each 1500/. We cannot see Putney Bridge, — that is too far up the river, but it Is of little consequence ; for in style, we may say Avith an alteration of the Avell-known phrase, it out-Batterseas Battersea. But though Putney Bridge is of little consequence in itself, its history has one passage too rich to be omitted, and which illustrates very amusingly the nature of the opposition that so long retarded the erection of a second bridge in or near London. From the Hon. Mr. Grey's collection of the Debates of the House of Commons during the latter portion of the seventeenth century, Ave extract the folloAving recorded opinions : — " Tuesday, April 4 (1671), — A bill for building another bridge over the river Thames from Putney was read. " Mr. Jones, member for London. — ^Thls bill Avill question the very being of London : next to the pulling doAvn of the borough of Southwark, nothing can ruin it more, " Mr. Waller [the poet]. — As for the imposition laid by this bill, men may go by Avater if they please, and not over the bridge, and so pay nothing. If ill for Southwark, it is good for this end of the town, Avhere court and parliament are. At Paris there are many bridges ; at Venice hundreds. We are still obstructing public things. " Sir Thomas Lee. — This bill will make the noAv buildings at this end of the toAvn let the better, and fears the bill is only for that purpose. " Colonel Birch.— Finds it equal to men whether it docs them hurt or they think it does them hurt. " Sir William Thompson. — When a convenience has been so long possessed as this has been, it is hard to remove it. This will make the skirts (though not London) too big for the Avhole body ; the rents of London Bridge, for the main tenance of it, will be destroyed. This bridge will cause sands and shelves, and have an effect upon the low-bridge navigation, and cause the ships to lie as low as Woolwich ; it Arill affect your navigation, your seamen, and your western barges, Avho cannot pass at low Avater. Would reject the bill. " Colonel Stroude.— In no city where bridges arc were they all built at a time. ¦ No city in the worid is so long as ours, and here is but one passage for five miles. ° " Mr. BoscaAven.— If a bridge at Putney, Avhy not at Lambeth, and more? VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES, 163 " Sir John Bennet, — Says the Lord Mayor and Aldermen did agree to it, if it were for no other reason than to be secured from a bridge at Lambeth. " Mr. Love, — The Lord Mayor of this year is of a different opinion from him of the last year. If carts go over, the city must be destroyed by it," &c. &c. The Bill was rejected by 67 to 54. The steam-boat now receives us, and Ave are soon gliding rapidly on towards Vauxhall, passing in our Avay many a place or building of literary or histo rical interest. There on our left, just beyond the pier, you see, in that hand some row of lofty aristocratical-looking houses facing the river, the building once occupied by the famous Don Saltero, and Avhere you may still take a cup of coffee or q, glass of Avine, and muse over all the old memories of the famous Museum of Curiosities. On the same side, within the walls of that ancient church with its brick toAver, lie buried the mutilated remains of the great Chancellor More (a fine monument marks the spot) ; and it was there that, Avhilst Lord Chancellor, he was accustomed to put on a surplice, and sing in the choir Avith the other choristers. We look in vain for any traces of More's house ; that house which Henry at one time so loved to visit, and Avhere More introduced Holbein to his notice ; that house at Avhich Erasmus too Avas a frequent visitor Avhilst in England, and of Avhich he speaks in such delightful terms. " With him" (More), he says, "you might imagine yourself in the academy of Plato. But I should do injustice to his house by comparing it to the academy of Plato, Avhere numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were the subjects of discussion : it Avould be more just to call it a school and an exercise of the Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, although piety Avas their first care. No wrangling, no angry Avord, was heard in it ; no one Avas idle ; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness." The great court of Chelsea Hospital here too extends its front to the Avater, Avith its porticoes and piazzas, reminding us of the poor orange girl, Nell GAvynn, Avho, according to the tradition, lived to influence a king's mind to the accomplish ment of such a Avork ; and Avhere those trees, with their intensely black foliage expanded horizontally on the air, attract the eye, is the botanical garden of the Apothecaries' Company ; and the trees are cedars of Lebanon, grown, Ave believe, from slips of the original Syrian trees of Scripture, presented to Sir Hans Sloanc, the founder of the garden. On the other side of the river the white stones of the " marge," and the bright green of the sward of the embankment above, shoAv that London has not yet extended so far; indeed, in the proper season one may see the ripe corn waving to and fro in the broad loAv-lying meadoAvs of Battersea beyond. The steam-boat here stops for an instant nearly opposite a place famous in the annals of Cockney diversions, the Red House, From Avhence there is little to attract attention till Ave reach Vauxhall, This structure Avas at first called Regent Bridge, we presume from the •circum stance that the first stone was laid by Lord Dundas, as proxy for the Prince Regent (George IV.) ; but one chief advantage of the proposed structure haA'ing in all probability been the facility it Avould afford to the visitors of the famous gardens, the name of Vauxhall Avas eventually given to it. We have noAv, probably, lost the gardens for ever ; it is pleasant therefore to have some memorial of the M 2 164 LONDON, spot made so familiar to us by the writings of our great men. Vauxhall Bridge is of iron, and, it is said, the lightest structure of the kind in Europe. It has been supposed that we are the inventors of iron bridges, but the nation that lays claim to so many other wonders undoubtedly has the best right to this, as may be seen from a reference to Du H aide's work on China. Vauxhall, like Putney and Westminster, Avas opposed by the City— the event shows with what success. The work Avas carried on by a body of shareholders, who Avere to be repaid by tolls. The original proposer was a gentleman Ave have before had occasion to mention as the projector of tunnels, Mr. Ralph Dodd, who certainly does seem to have had the misfortune of constantly witnessing other men reaping the honours he had sown. The managers of Vauxhall seem to have been particularly difficult to please. Not only Mr. Dodd, but Sir J. Bentham and Mr. Rennie were for a short time employed by them, whilst, after all, the design of the existing bridge belongs to Mr. James Walker. The work was commenced on the 9th of May, 1811, the weather that day belug so bad that, although the coins, &c., were deposited by the Regent's proxy, the stone Avas left for the time uncovered. In September, 1813, Prince Charles, eldest son of the Duke of Brunswick (so soon after killed at Waterloo), laid the first stone of the abutments on the Surrey side. The entire work was finished In 1816, at an expense of about 300,000/., and opened in the month of July. The iron superstructure with its nine arches is supported on rusticated stone piers. The arches are equal; each 78 feet in span ; the roadway measures 36 feet across ; and the entire length of the bridge is 809 feet. We are again on our Avay, and some of the passengers are wondering what that strange-looking building can be, with so many angular wings and small extin guisher-capped towers or buttresses on the left : that is the Penitentiary, where Bentham had hoped to have seen his views on prison discipline cariied out, but was thwarted by the personal influence of King George III., in opposition to his own ministry ; and although the building was erected according to his designs, the plan pursued with regard to discipline was not Bentham's. As we pass the Horseferry, where, prior to the erection of the bridge we are fast ap proaching (Westminster), passengers were accustomed to cross, we are reminded of one proposal that has never yet been carried into effect — a proposal for another metropolitan bridge, to extend from the Horseferry to Lambeth stairs, beside the gateway of Lambeth Palace. It was to be called the Royal Clarence Bridge, and an Act was brought into Parliament. But there the matter seems to have stopped, and is likely to remain ; so Ave must content ourselves, if we desire to cross the Thames here, with the same mode of conveyance which pre vailed so far back as the seventh century ; when, according to the old legend, St. Peter descended to perform himself the act of dedication to himself of the new church which Sebert, King of the East Saxons, had just built on the site of the ruins of a temple of Apollo, flung down by an earthquake. St. Peter, it appears, descended on the Surrey side, with a host of heavenly choristers, but the night being stormy had great difficulty in finding any one to carry him over. Edric, a fisherman, at length crossed with him in his wherry, beheld the illumination Avhich streamed forth from the church windows, and then took the saint back to the Surrey shore ; being rewarded on his way by a miraculous draught of salmon, VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 165 and the promise that if he gave a tenth to the church, he should never want plenty of that fish. Such is the relation of the circumstances attending the earliest erectidn of a church on the site of the abbey whose beautiful towers yet appear above the line of the unfinished houses of Parliament, but which promise when completed to shut them entirely out from our present point of view. In our account of Westminster Bridge we have referred to the sinking of the western pier of the fifteen foot arch, and the consequent removal of the arch. We are now passing through it, and the circumstance reminds us of a feature of this accident which previously escaped our attention. A great deal of ingenuity was shown in rebuilding the arch, which was made double ; we have since found that Stukely was the author of the plan which Labelye followed on that occasion, and from his communication to the ' Gentleman's Magazine' in 1760, in which he lays claim to the " interlaced arch," the enthusiastic antiquary appears to have been very proud of it. From Westminster to Waterloo there is little on either side of individual in terest to attract the attention, unless the scientific mysteries of the shot-towers on one side, or the grave respectability of many of the old houses yet remaining on the other, with their projecting bow windows— those not unworthy-looking descendants of the old palatial mansions of the place — be considered exceptions. There is the fine water-gate, too, of Inigo Jones, the last remnant of the man sion of the haughty Duke of Buckingham. Waterloo Bridge is now immediately [Waterloo Bridge.] before us; and, as we gaze long and earnestly on that exquisite combination of all that is most valuable in bridge architecture with all that is most beautiful, — the broad and level roadway, and the light and elegant balustrade,- the almost indestructible foundations, and the airy SAveep of the arches they support, — we feel the justice of Canova's opinion, that this is the finest bridge in Europe ; and can appreciate the great artist's enthusiasm when he added that it was alone worth coming from Rome to London to see. And in Canova's words the opinion of professional men, English and foreign, as well as of the most enlightened 166 LONDON. connoisseurs, has found voice. Can our readers imagine a paltry wooden bridge standing in its room ? We had a narrow escape of such an anti-climax between the bridge and its central position. The first movers in the affair had determined on the erection of a timber structure, Avith the idea of raising tolls sufficient in time to have built one of stone : we fear it would have been a very long time. The opposition of the City in this case had a salutary effect. For three successive sessions the matter Avas hotly contested, and the company put to enormous expense; but at last they manfully resolved to have a structure worthy of the spot, and an Act for a stone bridge was obtained in 1809. The proprietors were incorporated under the titie of the " Strand Bridge Company," Avith power to raise 500,000/., but Avhich was subsequentiy increased from time to time, and ultimately above a million was expended on the Avork. The man whose name is so indissolubly connected with some of the mightiest outAvard manifestations of the greatness of London, her bridges and docks (we refer to the late Mr. John Rennie), Avas applied to for designs. This gentieman was the son of a farmer of Phantassie, in Haddingtonshire (Scotland), and had risen to the eminence he enjoyed through the successive stages of a country schoolmaster, Avho, whilst teaching Avhat he himself kncAV, was a most assiduous attendant upon the lectures of others, and thus stored up that deep and extensive acquaintance Avith mechanical philosophy Avhich was afterAvards to be so valuable ; — a Avorking mechanist, earning his livelihood Avith his own hands and by the sweat of his own brow ; and lastly, a confidential assistant of Messrs. Watt and Boulton, Avho employed him in the construction of the immense flour-works which stood for a short time near Blackfriars Bridge, but which Avere burnt doAvn in 1791, only tAvo years after their erection. From this period his talents became Avidely known and Avere in continual requisition. The stone bridges of Kelso, Musselburgh, &c., the Grand Western, the Aberdeen, and the Kennet and Avon Canals, the drainage of the fens at Witham in Lincolnshire, the London Docks, the East and the West India at BlaclcAvall, the noAv docks at Hull, the Prince's at Liver pool, those of Dublin, Greenock, and Leith, and lastly, the famous BreakAvater of Plymouth, are but a portion of the Avorks Avhich he has been the chief means of giving to our country. In London one half the bridges, and those the finest, may be . said to belong to him ; for whilst Waterloo and SouthAvark Avere built under his direct superintendence, he also furnished the designs for London, which, after his death in 1821, were acted upon by his son, the present Sir John Rennie. Tavo designs Avere furnished for the proposed Strand Bridge, one Avith seven, the other with nine arches : the last Avas adopted. The site chosen Avas the space extending from a little to the Avest of Somerset Place, on the Middle sex shore, to a part close by Cuper's Bridge on that of Surrey. The name of Cuper is connected Avith a once famous garden, a sort of small and Ioav Vauxhall, Avhich Pennant remembered as the resort of the profligate of both sexes. Cuper, it appears, had been gardener to the collector of the Avell-knoAvn statues, the Earl of Arundel, and begged from his noble master several of his mutilated statues to ornament the " Garden." The place Avas also noted for its fircAvorks. Of the alterations In the respective neighbourhoods on both sides the river since the erection of the bridge, the traces are too legible, on the most cursory VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 167 inspection, to need much explanation. The great street or road from the bridge to the Obelisk in St. George's Fields is entirely ucav, as is also the continuation of Stamford Street into the Westminster Road. The splendid approaches on the other side also date from the erection of the bridge. During the progress of the latter, the site of Waterloo Place Avas partly occupied by remains of the Savoy Palace, its fine Gothic windows and buttressed Avails exciting the grief of many an antiquary who came to look on them for the last time. With these Avas also sAvept aAvay the chapel of the German Reformed Protestants. The first stone of the bridge was laid on the 11th of October, 1811, when a block of Cornish granite was lowered over an excavation containing gold and silver coins of the reign, and a plate with a suitable inscription. The foundations, unlike those of Blackfriars and Westminster Bridges, were laid in coffer-dams. This was the most expensive, but the most certain and durable mode. The ground was found to consist mainly of a stratum of gravel over a stratum of clay, into which piles of beech and elm, twenty feet long and twelve thick, Avere driven in three concentric rows. The whole was then strengthened by masonry. The surface of the piers, as well as of the abutments and entire superstructure, were built of blocks of Craigleith and Derbyshire granite. In building the arches, the stones Avere rammed together with great force, so that Avhen the centres Avere removed not one of them sunk more, than an inch and a half. It has been well said that the accuracy of the AVork is as extraordinary as Its beauty. Not the least noticeable part of the bridge are the series of arches on each side, which raise the road to the level of the bridge. There are no less than thirty-nine of these semicircular brick arches on the Surrey side, each of sixteen feet span, in addition to one of larger dimensions, that crosses the road noAV lying buried, as it Avere, in the hollow beneath ; and sixteen on the Strand side. Over these arches is carried a magnificent roadAvay of 70 feet in width. If to the length of the bridge, 1326 feet, we add the abutments, 54, and the range of brick arches, 1076, we have a total length of 2456 feet! A Avriter in the ' Edinburgh Review ' some years ago, speaking of the pride of the Parisians in their three noAV bridges (for they, like us, added that number to their capital in the early part of the present century), says that even in surface and mass alone Waterloo Avould sur pass the three bridges united. Certainly the dimensions we have given divest the remark of any appearance of exaggeration. As the work advanced towards completion, the name (Strand Bridge) was altered, for reasons thus expressed in the Act of Parliament of 1816, relating to the structure : — " Whereas the said bridge, Avhen completed, Avill be a Avork of great stability and magnificence, and such works are adapted to transmit to posterity the remembrance of great and glorious achievements, and Avhereas the company of proprietors are desirous that a designation shall be given to the said bridge Avhich shall be a lasting record of the brilliant and decisive victory [Water loo], achieved by his Majesty's forces, in conjunction AvIth those of his allies, on the 18th day of June, 1815," The bridge thus received the appellation it uoav bears. Similar considerations fixed the date of the public opening. " June 18 (1817). This day, the anniversaiy of the glorious victory of Waterloo, the magnificent noAv bridge Avhich crosses the Thames from the Strand was opened with appro- 168 LONDGIn, priate ceremonies. In the forenoon a detachment of the Horse Guards posted themselves on the bridge, and about three o'clock a discharge of two hundred and two guns, in commemoration of the number of cannon taken from the enemy, announced the arrival of the Prince Regent, and other illustrious personages, who came in barges from the Earl of Liverpool's at Whitehall. The royal party passed through the centre arch, and landed on the Surrey side, where the pro cession formed. It was headed by the Prince Regent ; with the Duke of York on his right, and the Duke of Wellington on his left, in the uniform of field-marshals ; followed by a train of noblemen, gentlemen, ministers, and members of both Houses of Parliament, On reaching the Middlesex side of the bridge> the com pany re-embarked, and returned to Whitehall, Every spot commanding a view of the bridge was crowded with spectators."* About this very time, whilst the public admiration was universally lavished upon the work, a curious claim appeared in the publication from Avhich we transcribe the foregoing account of the opening of the structure. It was knoAvn that Mr. Ralph Dodd had been the original projector of a bridge at this part of the Thames, as well as at Vauxhall; but it appears he was by no means satisfied with that amount of acknowledgment, but expressly claimed the design of the existing edifice ; and, by way of proof, offered to exhibit his original plans to whoever thought proper to see them, f This is curious, but still more so is the fact that we do not .find any immediate answer given to the statement in the publication where it appeared — if indeed, which seems doubtful, one was given to it at all. Another claim to some of the chief features of Waterloo Bridge has been put forward by the French for their bridge at Neullly ; and certainly the architect of that bridge set the example of the equal arches and level roadway, which were adopted in the bridges of Vauxhall and Waterloo. The arches of the latter are of a semi-elHptleal form, having a span of one hundred and twenty feet, and a height of thirty above the high water even of spring-tides. The piers, thirty feet wide, are decorated by double (three-quarter) columns of the Grecian Doric style, sup porting an entablature, which forms within a square raised recess. Standing on the seat of this recess, one has perhaps the finest view of London that can be ob tained, and which is enhanced by the quiet and comparative solitude of the place— a strange advantage, by the way, for such a bridge, and one that, how ever much Ave may individually appreciate, Ave should be glad to see lost by the removal of its cause— the toll. A Society has been for some time in active operation, which will no doubt ultimately succeed in doing away with this very injurious restriction on the utility of the structure. The tolls on Vauxhall and Southwark Bridges, which also fall within the scope of the Society's labours, will no doubt share the same fate. The great Increase of passengers over Waterloo since the reduction of the toll from a penny to a halfpenny, shows how many must have previously submitted to inconvenience for the sake of the veriest trifle appa- rentiy, but which perhaps was felt not to be a trifle, and may serve as a still more valuable illustration of the multitudes who would avail themselves of this bridge if there was no toll whatever imposed, * Gent's Mag,, 1S17. f Ibid. May, 1817. VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 169 The expense of Waterloo Bridge has excited much comment, and it was, as we have stated,^ above a million — a most enormous sum to be expended in a single work ; but the homely principle, that it is better to do a thing well at first, than trust to after-patchings and improvements, was never more strikingly illustrated than in the bridges of London, Waterloo is built of granite, in the most perfect manner, and the foundations and piers have been laid so as to last for ages uninjured; but certainly it was dear, or at least expensive. On the other hand, Blackfriars and Westminster are — partly from the soft nature of the stone,"partly from the inadequacy of the foundations — constantly under repair (something like a hundred thousand pounds, we believe, is now being expended on the latter) ; but they were cheap ! The beauty of Waterloo Bridge every one can see ; its strength must be tested by time : but it seems certain, that if ever a work was built with promise of permanence it is this. How much intel ligent foreigners have been Impressed with its solid grandeur, we may see in the enthusiasm of M, Dupin, the author of the well-known work on the ' Commercial Power of England,' who says, " If, from the incalculable effect of the revolutions which empires undergo, the nations of a future age should de mand one day what was formerly the neW Sidon, and what has become of the Tyre of the West, which covered with her vessels every sea, — the most of the edifices, devoured by a destructive climate, will no longer exist to answer the curiosity of man by the voice of monuments ; but the Waterloo Bridge, built iu the centre of the commercial Avorld, will exist to tell the most remote generations, ' This was a rich, industrious, and powerful city.' The traveller, on beholding this superb monument, will suppose that some great prince wished, by many years of labour, to consecrate for ever the glory of his life by this imposing structure ; but if tradition instruct the traveller that six years sufficed for the undertaking and finishing this Avork — if he learns that an association of a number of private individuals Avas rich enough to defray the expense of this colossal monument, worthy of Sesostrls and the Caesars — he will admire still more the nation in which similar undertakings could be the fruit of the efforts of a feAv obscure individuals, lost in the crowd of industrious citizens." In taking a farewell glance at this bridge, we remember with pain how many unfortunates have stood shivering in those very recesses, taking their last fare well of the world in which they had experienced so much misery. We have no idea, nor do we wish to have, of the entire extent of this dreadful evil, which has of late years given a new and most unhappy kind of celebrity to Waterloo Bridge^ but the cases of accomplished and attempted suicide here must have been fear fully numerous. A suicide, as it almost deserves to be called, of another but scarcely less harrowing kind, will be in every one's memory, and of which we have already spoken, that of the American diver, Scott.* Between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges, the magnificent faqade of Somerset House, and the fresh-looking gardens of the Temple, are the chief objects of attraction — each calling up a long train of historical memories. The name of the first recalls the memory of the reckless statesman who built the earlier mansion * Vol. i. p. 4 18. 170 LONDON. here with the materials derived from the old Church of St. Mary -le- Strand, the cloisters of old St. Paul's, the tOAver and part of the body of the Church of St. John of Jerusalem, and the inns of the Bishops of Worcester, Lichfield and Coventry, Llandaff, and an inn of Chancery called the Strand Inn, in Avhich Occleve, a poet of the reign of Henry V., is supposed to have studied. As to the Temple Gardens, Avho does not remember the famous scene of the Roses in Shakspere's ' Henry VI.' ? It was Into these very gardens, as being " more convenient," that the contentious lords, Plantagenet and Somerset, adjourned from the hall, Avhere they Avere " too loud," and Plantagenet, impatient at find ing the other nobles unAvilling to give an opinion as to who is right in the quarrel, exclaimed — " Since you are tongue-tied, and so loth to speak. In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts: Let hira that is a true-born gentleman. And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth. From off this brier pluck a white rose with me." On which Somerset adds, " Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer. But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me." And thus began the " quarrel " Avhich did indeed, in the Avords of Plantagenet, "drink blood another day;" and in Avhich, Avith just retribution, the nobles Avhbse ambition, or pride, or jealousy, brought on their country so dire a calamity, brought at the same time on their oavu kindred, and their OAvn order generally, a most sAveeping destruction. A picturesque scene of a still earlier time is also connected Avith the Temple Gardens. Immediately after the news reached EdAvard I. that Bruce had been crowned at Scone as monarch of Scotland, great preparations Avere set on foot for a fresh expedition into that country, and among the rest, solemn proclamation Avas made that the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward II.) Avould be knighted on the feast of Pentecost, and all the young no bility of England Avere summoned to receive a similar honour at the same time. On the eve of the day appointed. May 22, tAvo hundred and seventy noble youths, AvIth their pages and retinues, assembled in these gardens, Avhere purple robes, fine linen garments, and mantles Avoven with gold, Averc distributed to them. We may imagine the splendour and bustle of the scene. The trees were cut doAvn to enable them to pitch their tents. The greater part of the immense assemblage Avatched their arms In the Temple Church, the others in the Abbey of Westminster. The steam-boat is noAv passing by Blackfriars Bridge, Avhich is so altered from what it was, that if the shade of the architect could revisit the earth, in order once more to look on his great Avork, we doubt Avhether he Avould recognise it : he certainly would not acknoAvledgc It as his Blackfriars. As the idea of one change is suggestive of another, we cannot but remark, as we look around us here, Avhat great alterations this part of London in particular has known. Bridewell, a prison, a house of industry, a regal palace, a Saxon stronghold; VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 171 the White and Black Friars, homes for holy and peaceful men — then the one a den of thieves (Alsatia) into Avhich Justice dares not enter, the other a fashion able May Fair, and uoav both lost in the undlstinguishablo mass of London ; Baynard's Castle also utterly SAvept away ; the Fleet, again, a concealed sewer, an open ditch, a navigable canal spanned by bridge after bridge, a wide and possibly rapid river :, for such it must have been if the records speak truly that make SAveyn, in his invasion in 1012, pass up the Fleet with all his vessels as far as King's Cross, and there anchor ; and there is one noticeable corroborating fact — an anchor has been found at that very part. These are but individual illustrations of the extensive changes Avrought in the lapse of time in the neigh bourhood before us. We have referred to Baynard's Castle. It stood here on the left just beyond Blackfriars Bridge, at the end of the City Wall, which, after passing along the side of fhe Fleet so as to shelter the Blackfriars, turned round and extended for a short distance on the bank of the river. As to its antiquity, it may be sufficient to say that it Avas founded by one of the Conqueror's fol lowers, Baynard, Avho died in the reign of Rufus, and that it was one of the tAvo castles described by Beckett's secretary, Fitzstephen, In the reign of Henry II. ; and as to its size, that at a meeting of the great estates of the kingdom in 1 547 Richard Duke of York lodged in it with his four hundred retainers. In 1303 it belonged to Robert Fitzwalter, as we learn from a very curious document, con sisting of a declaration of his rights as castellain and banner-bearer of the City, formally made, and at great length, to John Blondon, mayor. In this he recites in Avhat manner he ought to come to St. Paul's in time of Avar to declare himself ready to do his service, and in Avhat manner he ought to be met, how they are then to ride forth in company, the sort of horse and amount of money they are <. Castle BayD.ird, as it appeared Ur the Scventeeuth Century. J i72 LONDON. to give him, the mode of summoning the cpmmoners to join them under the " banner of St. Paul's," and the march to Aldgate, and if need be the there issuing forth to do battle, with the amount he is to receive for every siege he undertakes (100 shillings), &c. "These be the rights that the said Roberl hath in time of war." As to his rights in time of peace, they consist of his soke or ward in which he enjoys particular privileges (locally, we presume, the Castle Baynard Ward of the present day) ; such as a certain degree of control over the punishment of criminals : traitors, it appears, were to be " tied to a post in the Thames at a good Avharf, where boats are fastened, tAvo ebblngs and flowings oi the water." The said Robert, also, was to be called to every great council of the City, and when he came to the hustings at Guildhall " the mayor or his lieutenant ought to rise against him and set him down near unto him ; and so long as he is in the Guildhall, all the judgments ought to be given by his mouth," &c. &c. The castle was burnt doAvn in 1428, and rebuilt by Duke Humphrey. Among the historical events which signalise the history of Castle Baynard is the assumption of the croAvn here by Edward IV. in 1460, in oppo sition to the reigning monarch, Henry VI. ; and the commencement of a new and more eventful phase of the " braAvl " begun in the Temple Gardens. But the most interesting of these events is the performance of a similar act by Richard III. here — a scene Avhich Shakspere has also made familiar to every one — the scene where Gloster appears in the gallery between two bishops, and accepts, with such an exquisite shoAv of reluctance, the crown offered by the poor mystified Lord Mayor. Here, too. Lady Jane Grey's faithfid council, which had removed from her side at the Tower in order to do her better service, the moment they arrived declared for Queen Mary, and set the seal to the illustrious victim's fate. Castle Baynard was destroyed in the Great Fire. Not the least Interesting part of the river Is that now lying on our right be tAveen the bridges of Blackfriars and SouthAvark, and known generally from a very remote period as the Bankside. The stairs toAvards which yonder wherry with its spmeAvhat heavy load Is gliding are called Paris Garden Stairs, the last relic of the once popular place of amusement when bear-baiting was not only a fashionable but a queenly sport. Paris Garden was also a regular playhouse at one period, for one of Ben Jonson's critics, Dekker, reproaches him with his ill success on the stage generally, and in particular with his performance of ' Zuliman ' at the Paris Garden. In 1582 the scaffolding supporting the spectators fell during a performance, and great numbers were killed or severely injured.. This Avas looked on as a judgment by many. Beyond Paris Garden were the tAvo chief Bear Gardens, properly so called, as they seem to have been used for such purposes only, and not for dramatic entertainments : the name Is yet preserved in that of a street opening from Bankside, Stow de scribes them as places wherein were kept " bears, bulls, and other beasts to be bayed; as also mastiffs in several kennels nourished to bait them. These bears and other beasts are there baited in plots of ground, scaffolded about, for the beholders to stand safe." Farther on still were the stOAvs or brothels, licensed as they are to this day in Paris. Their very antiquity imparts a certain degree of interest and respectability to a revolting subject. It appears that " In VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 173 a Parliament holden at Westminster, the eighth of Henry IL, it Avas ordained by the Commons, and confirmed by the King and Lords, that divers constitu tions (or rules) for ever should be kept within that lordship or franchise according to the old customs that had been there used time out of mind." " Old customs" in force " time out of mind" before the reign of Henry IL, must be indeed old. There is a curious historical passage connected vrith these houses. Till the time of Wat Tyler's insurrection they belonged to no less a person than William Wahvorth, mayor of London ; and although we do not exactly wish to insinuate that the worthy mayor was roused by the spoil of this part of his property which ensued at the instance of the rebels, yet it may have done something towards sharpening his zeal, and made him bestir himself so effectually as he did at the critical moment. The original number of houses was eighteen, which were reduced to twelve in the reign of Henry VII. They must have presented a strange-looking aspect from the river, with their signs "not hanged out, but painted on the walls, as a Boar's Head, the Cross Keys, the Gun, the Castle, the Crane, the Cardi nal's Hat, the Bell, the Swan, &c." Stow, the writer of the foregoing quotation, goes on to say, " I have heard ancient men of good credit report that these single AVomen were forbidden the rites of the church so long as they continued that sin ful life, and Avere excluded from Christian burial if they were not reconciled be fore their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground, called ' Single Women's Churchyard,' appointed for them, not far from the parish church."* The nuisance was at last abolished by " sound of trumpet" towards the close of the reign of Henry VIII- And here, too, on the Bankside was the Globe Theatre, Shakspere's theatre, situated very nearly in a line with the approach to the present Southwark Bridge, which now bestrides with its colossal arches about the same part of the river as that through which the courtiers of Eliza beth and James's reigns, in all their bravery of costume, were wont to pass to and fro, to welcome some fresh novelty from the world's master mind, and learn, if they were capable of it, some new lessons in that wondrous school of humanity. Southwark Bridge was erected at an expense of about 800,000/., by a com pany of proprietors, who obtained the necessary Act of Parliament In 1811. On the third reading of the Bill in the House of Commons, Sir T. Turton, in answer to the opposition offered by Sirs W. Curtis and C. Price, of civic fame, remarked that Mr. Rennie had given it as his opinion that London Bridge after one hard frost might not last one year : an excellent reason certainly for expediting the erection of a new bridge in the vicinity. The spot selected was from Bankside on the Surrey shore to a place close by the Three Cranes Wharf, and between that and Queenhithe, on the opposite or Middlesex bank ; a part of some note even from the very remotest periods of metropolitan history. It forms a portion of the Vintry Ward, so called from the vintners or wine merchants of Bordeaux, who from a very early period were accustomed to bring their lighters and other vessels laden with wine to this part, and there land it by means of cranes (whence the name of Three Cranes Wharf), for sale during the next forty days, * Survey, p, 449. 174 LONDON. But in the reign of EdAvard I. the vintners complained that they could neither " sell their wines, although paying poundage, neither hire houses nor cellars tc lay them in," In consequence, that monarch ordered redress to be given, and houses were built for the merchants' accommodation, with vaults, &c., for the stowage of their wines. To make room for them a characteristic foature of Very old London was swept away. " There is in London," says Fitzstephen, " upon the river's bank, a public place of cookery, between the ships laden with wine, and the wines laid up in cellars to be sold. There ye may call for any dish of meat, roast, fried, or sodden, fish both small and great, ordinary flesh for the poorer sort, and more dainty for the rich, as venison and foAvl. If friends come on a sudden, wearied with travel, to a citizen's house, and they be loth to wait for curious preparations and dressings of fr'esh meat, the servants give them water to wash, and bread to stay their stomach, and in the mean time go to the water-side, Avhere all things are at hand answerable for their desire. Whatso ever multitude, either of soldiers or other strangers, enter into the city at any hour, day or night, or else are about to depart, they may turn in, bait there, and refresh themselves to their content, and so avoid long fasting, and not go away Avithout their dinner. If any desire to fit their dainty tooth, they need not to long for the accipenser, or any other bird; no, not the rare Godwit of Ionia. This public victualling place is very convenient, and belongs to the city."' The vintners, hoAvever, proved too powerful for the cooks, and so the latter had to leave the field to their antagonists. The original name of Queenhithe Avas Edred's hithe (;'. e. Edred's harbour). Formerly ships Avere brought up thus far to discharge their cargoes, London Bridge having a drawbridge AvhIch opened to alloAV them to pass. The name Queen's hithe is supposed to be derived from Henry III. having given its profits to his spouse, and at the same time the ships of the cinque ports Avere compelled to bring their corn thenceforward only to this place. The bridge Avas begun on the 23rd of September, 1814, and the first stone of the south pier laid by Lord Keith on the 23rd of May, 1815, Avho, Avith the other gentlemen of the committee of management, partook of a cold collation on a tem porary bridge erected on the Avorks. The Avhole Avas finished in less than five years, and was opened, without any particular ceremony, at midnight (the bridge being brilliantly lighted with gas) in April, 1819. As an iron bridge this is confessedly Avithout a rival. The arches are, for instance, the largest in existence, the centre one having a span of 240 feet, and each of the tAvo side ones measuring 210 feet. The arch of the famous bridge at Sunderland ha.s a s])an very nearly equal to this centre arch, but still it Is less. As we noAV pass beneath this gigantic semicircle, and gaze upAvard upon the great iron-ribbed framcAvork AvhIch supports it, one feels half unconsciously Inclined to fancy Cyclopean hands must have been here at Avork, But the engineer, In the sublimity of his vIoavs, smiles at our Avonder, and reminds us that Telford had previously proposed to erect a bridge at this spot Avith one arch only : " the force of wonder can no farther go ;" we do not knoAV, in these days, Avhat avc may venture to disbelieve. With the exception of * I'raiislatiou — Slow's Survey, p. 711. VAUXHALL, WATERLOO, AND SOUTHWARK BRIDGES. 175 the piers and the a,butments, the Avhole of Southwark Bridge is of cast iron. The preparing the foundations Avas a work of unusual magnitude and expense, on account of the extraordinary dimensions of the arches ; of still greater difficulty and importance was the business of casting the superstructure, Avhich took place at the iron-works of Messrs. Walker and Co., Rotherham, Yorkshire. Many of the solid pieces of casting weighed ten tons. There are eight great ribs, from six to eight feet deep, riveted to diagonal braces, in each arch : and the height of the centre arch above low water is 55 feet. The entire Avelght of iron is about 5,780 tons. In building the bridge a mistake was committed that might have been attended Avith serious consequences, if timely discovery had not been made. To prevent the natural expansion of the metal with heatj some of the most import ant joinings of different parts of the Avork Avere tightly Avedged Avith iron Avedges. But as, in fact, nothing could prevent expansion under the operation of heat, it was found that a very unequal strain was produced, tending to the fracture of the entire bridge. The masons were accordingly employed night and day till the Avedges were removed. Having mentioned this oversight, it is but proper to state that the accuracy of the Avork generally was most surprising. The centre arch sunk at the vortex, on removing the timber framcAvork, just one inch seven- eighths, and that Avas all. The erection of the bridge was followed, as in all the previous instances, by rapid and extensive changes in the neighbourhood, though, in the case of South wark, these were confined chiefly to the Surrey side. The character of this part may be gathered, in some degree, from the notices Ave have given of the chief features of the place, the bear-gardens, brothels, &c. ; and it need not, therefore, excite any surprise to flnd the extensive district, reaching from Bankside to the King's Bench, described, before the bridge was built, as covered with " miserable streets and alleys." Many of these, indeed, yet remain, but the carrying that fine road- from the foot of the bridge direct to the Elephant and Castle has greatly improved the aspect and prosperity of the district. In reviewing generally the collateral effects of the erection of the bridges of London, Ave are more particularly struck Avith Avhat they have done for that part of the metropolis which lies on the opposite shore. If Ave remember the great branches they have sent out, Westminster Bridge Road, Waterloo Road, Great Surrey Street, and Southwark Bridge Road, and each again putting forth a new system of offshoots ; if avc remember that St. George's Fields v^ere fields in the middle of the last century, and Lambeth Marsh a marsh even at the commence ment of the present; or, in a Avord, if we remember that the extensive districts comprised Avithin the boundaries of Southwark and Lambeth Avere, before the erection of these edifices, little better than a scattered assemblage of lanes and isolated houses and gardens, Avhilst now they form, Avith the parts adjacent, one dense, continuous, and prosperous toAvn, Avhich may be said to have Battersea on one side, and GreenAvich for the other, for its proper limits, avc shall have then some idea of the extrinsic, as Avell as of the intrinsic, greatness of the me tropolitan bridges. We conclude Avith the following document, for Avhich wc arc mainly in- 176 LONDON. debted to Messrs. Britton and Pugin's work on the Public Buildings of London : — TABULAR VIEW OF THE BRIDGES OF LONDON, Showing their extreme Length from bank to bank, their extreme Width, their Height from low water to the top of tha parapet, their number of Arches and Span of Central Arch, their Materials, times of Commencement and Completion, the Names of their Architects, the surface of Waterway between the piers, and the extent of Space occupied by the piers in the width of the river. 1 4TS *1 1 II Materials. Commenced. Finished. Architects. AA'aterway. IB a 1. London, Old . . ^ ^ i < GO Ft. 930 Ft. 20 Ft. 40 Ft. 19 Ft. 70 Stone and rubble 1176 1209 r Peter of ) iColechurch S Above Ft. < starlings S40 I Below S73 1 Ft.396687 „ „ altered by Mr. Dance and Sir R. Taylor . . 2. London, New . . 3. Southvialk . . . 4. Blackfriars . . . 920 700 995 4856 42 42 5555 62 20 5 39 150 240 100 Granite, &c. . Iron . . . Portland stone Mar. 16,1824 Sept. 23, 1814 June, 1760 . 1831 18191769 J. Rennie r'. Mylne 690 660 793 9248 207 5. Waterloo . . . 1326 42 54 9 120 Cornish ijranite October, 1811 f Opened lJunel8,1817 1 J. Kennie 1080 160 6. Westminster . . 7. Vanxhall . . . 1220 809 4036 58 15 9 76 78 Portland stone Iron January, 1739 May. 1811 . 1750 July, 1816 Labelye James Walker 820 246 [Southwark Bridge.] [Gourt'Room, Bazbex-Surgeons*Hal^O LXII.— BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. Among the types of an earlier time, now daily disappearing from our gaze, there is one feature of our old English streets which deserves at least a word of re spectful recollection at parting. Who has not in childhood gazed on that long, gaily-striped, mystic-looking wand— let us not here debase it by associations that have so often injured its dignity, let us not call it pole — fixed over certain Avell- known places in his neighbourhood, and Avondered what could be its use or meaning ? We have yet visioiis before us of an old Elizabethan mansion in an antique corner of one of the most antique-looking towns in England, with pro jecting stories supported by strange monsters in fine old black carving, one of which — a huge piece of workmanship— seemed ever to brandish one of these aAvful instruments over the heads of all who approached the mysterious-looking pre cincts. We cannot to this daj dispel the fancy that in that uncouth, grinning shape we beheld a kind of deposed household divinity of the once-flourishing Company of Barber- Surgeons — a Iar fallen from its high estate, and driven 'snto that remote solitude. Yes, these characteristic, features of our old streets are VOL. III. N ]78 LONDON. passing aAvay, and in one sense the circumstance is to be regretted. They are the last popular symbols of the low state, even iu very recent times, of a science which peculiarly affects the people's welfare; and might yet be a warning against a belief, by no means extinct, that surgery and physic, like reading and writing, " come by nature." Foav readers but Avill remember that the existing pole is an imitation of the one formerly held in the hands of patients during bleeding, and the stripes represent the tape or bandages used for fastening the arm, whilst both pole and tape, as soon as done Avith, Avere again hung up outside the shop, to tempt passers-by to an operation they Avere by no means reluctant to, as being a generally favourite specific for all disorders. We hope the ghosts of those days Avere not of a revengeful nature, or the ancient Barber-Surgeons of this class must have had a weary time of it, considering the number of persons they must have prematurely dismissed Avith their terrible poles, and tapes, and basins. With the poles, too, the "name" of the Barber-Surgeons is in process of ex tinction, but not so their " local habitation :" that yet remains, and a curious and interesting place it Is. Among those narrow streets and alleys which surround the Post-Of&ce, to the north and the east, is one, in the former direction, called MonkAvell Street. Remembering to have met AvIth the same street under the less euphonious appellation of Mugwell Street, in the books of the Company, under the date of sixteen hundred odd, we had suspicions that the alteration, suggestive of monasteries, and shaved heads, and cool and quiet cloisters, Avas not altogether a fair one ; but it appears from Stow that the present is but a re storation of the original appellation, Avhich was derived from a hermitage or chapel of " St. James in the Wall," inhabited by a hermit and tAvo chaplains belonging to the Cistercian Abbey of Garadon. " Of these monks, and a Avell pertaining to them, the street took that name." And in MonkAvell Street is the Hall of the Barbers' (formerly the Barber-Surgeons') Company. The conjunc tion AvhIch now seems so strange to us, may be dated, it appears, from the custom Avhich prevailed among the monks and Jews — almost the only practitioners of the healing art during the tenth, eleventh, and tAvelfth centuries — of employing barbers to assist in the baths, in applying ointments, and in various other surgical operations ; and, as to surgery in particular, after the prohibition of the clergy, in 1163, from undertaking any operation involving bloodshed, the art fell into the hands of the barbers and smiths, but chiefly into those of the former. The first step towards combining this now important body into a united and chartered Com pany was taken by Thomas Morestede, surgeon to the three Henries, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. A record in the ' Foedera ' gives us an interesting glimpse into the state of surgery during Morestede's time. It appears that in Henry V.'s army (the army of Agincourt) there was but one surgeon present at a certain period — Morestede himself: — his fifteen assistants, Avhom he had pressed under a royal warrant, not having yet landed. The scientific attainments of these assist ants Avere not, we may be sure, very extraordinaiy, Avhen Ave find that three of them Avere to act as archers as well as surgeons, that the Avhole fifteen received only archers' pay, and Morestede only the pay of an ordinary man-of-arms. But in surgery, as In physic, alchemy Avas the grand storehouse of all the secrets men BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL 179 could desire to know ; and whilst learned men Avere busy devising hoAV Ave were to live for ever, Avho could expect they should care for the manner in Avhich we lived during such a petty amount of time as the ordinary period of life? or inquire into the best mode of curing a wound, or safely taking off a limb, whilst unfailing youth, and strength, and beauty, for the whole human race, might be lying hidden in every crucible. The promises of the alchemists were, indeed, so great in the noontide of their glory, that one is half ashamed to transcribe one of their latest, made In the days of their comparative decline, to Henry VI. In the protections granted to three "famous men " by Henry VI., whilst prosecuting their studies, the object of the former is said to be the discovery of " a certain most precious medicine, called by some the mother and queen of medicine ; by some the inestimable glory ; by others the quintessence ; by others the philosopher's stone ; by others the elixir of life ; which cures all curable diseases AvIth ease, prolongs human life in perfect health and vigour of faculty to its utmost term, heals all healable Avounds, is a most sovereign antidote against all poisons, and is capable of preserving to us and our kingdom other great advantages, such as the transmutation of other metals into real and fine gold and silver." " Cures all curable diseases," indeed, "heals all healable Avounds !" We wonder the monarch, with the faith that he possessed, Avhich, however often "tried in the fire,'' Avas never found Avanting, who, we verily believe, must have anticipated that the time would come when the Eastern saluta tion would cease to be a compliment, and that the King (oh ! glorious days for monarchs !) would "live for ever" — we wonder, we repeat, Henry condescended to accept such an anti-climax to all his visions of Avealth and immortality. But Ave would not have our readers suppose that he got Avhat Avas promised. Neither would Ave be understood as absolutely contemning the medicine itself. For that matter, we should have been glad if the " famous men " had left us the recipe. To return, Morestede, with Jacques Fries, physician — and John Hobbes, phy sician and surgeon — to EdAvard IV., petitioned for a grant of charter, Avhich Avas given by EdAvard and his brother Gloucester, In the first year of the reign; and the Companj' of Barbers practising Surgery Avere incorporated In the name of St., Cosmo and Damianus, brethren, physicians, and martyrs. Then, probably, it Avas that the first building in Monkwell Street Avas erected. The authority of the Company extended over all persons practising their arts in and about London; they were empoAvered to examine all instruments and remedies ; to bring actions against ignorant persons, and against those who practised AvIthout having been admitted into their body. This association was clearly a practical evidence of the progress of rational principles in the art, and in itself a new advance. In lapse of time the surgical portion of Avhat we may call the Company's constituents ap pear to have groAvn dissatisfied Avith the connection with the remainder ; or it may be that the Company had grown exclusive or arbitrary ; so they formed a sepa rate and unmingled body, calling themselves The Surgeons of London. To meet this new state of affairs, physicians and surgeons, by the Act of the third of Henry VIII. were alike obliged to obtain a licence to practise from the Bishop of London, or the Dean of St. Paul's. The favours shown by Henry VIII. to the curative professions Avould seem to imply that he had some glimmering of an idea n2 180 LONDON. that knoAvledge Avas better than ignorance, the regularly educated surgeon a more trustAvorthy guide than the illiterate quack ; but his sympathies seem to have been decidedly Avith the Aveaker vessels, the old women, &c. See how, in a few years, he repents of his attack upon them in the Act just referred to : " Whereas, in the parliament holden at Westminster, in the third year of the King's most gracious reign, amongst other things for the avoiding of sorceries, Avitchcraft, and other inconveniences, it Avas enacted that no person within the City of London, nor Avithin seven miles of the same, should take upon him to exercise and occupy as a physician or surgeon, except he be first examined, approved, and admitted by the Bishop of London and other, under and upon certain pains and penalties in the same Act mentioned; sithence the making of Avhich said Act, the Company and FelloAVship of Surgeons of London, minding only their OAvn lucres, and nothing the profit or ease of the diseased or patient, have sued, troubled, and vexed divers honest persons, as well men as Avomen, Avhom God hath endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind, and operation of certain herbs, roots, and Avaters, and the using and ministering of them, to such as be pained Avith custom able diseases, as Avomen's breasts being sore, a pin and the Aveb in the eye, un- comes of hands, scaldings, burnings, sore mouths, the stone, stranguary, sauce- lim, and morfew ; and such other like disease ; and yet the said persons have not taken anything for their pains or cunning, but have ministered the same to the poor people only for neighbourhood, and God's sake, and charity. And It is now Avell knoAvn that the surgeons admitted avIU do no cure to any person but Avhere they shall knoAv to be rewarded Avith a greater sum or roAvard than the cure extendeth unto : for in case they would minister their cunning to sore people unrewarded, there should not so many rot and perish to death for lack of surgery as daily do ; but the greater part of surgeons admitted be much more to be blamed than these persons they trouble In consideration whereof, and for the ease, comfort, succour, help, relief, and health of the king's poor subjects, inhabitants of this his realm, uoav pained, or that hereafter shall be pained or diseased, be it ordained, established, and enacted of this present Parliament,, that at all time from henceforth it shall be lawful to every person being the King's subject, having knowledge or experience of the nature of herbs, roots, and waters .... to minister in and to anv out ward sore, uncome, wound, imposthumations, outward swellings, or disease, any herb or herbs, ointments, baths, poultices, and plasters, according to their cunning, experience, and knowledge," Sec, &c.* Gale, an eminent surgeon of the same reign, speaks in somoAvhat different language of these people, though at the same time showing that the King was by no means alone in his opinions of the unprofessional practitioners. He says, " If I should tell you of the un gracious Avitchcrafts, and of the foolish and mischievous abuses and misuses that have been in times past, and yet in our days continually used, ye Avould not a little marvel thereat. But forasmuch as it hath not only turned to the dis honour of God, but also the state of the CommouAvealth, I have thought it good to declare unto you part of their wicked doings, that it may be unto you, Avhich professeth this art, an example to avoid the like most Avretched deeds. These * 14th and 15th Henrici Octavi, cap. viii. BARBER SURGEONS' HALL. 181 things I do not speak to you of hearsay, but of mine own knoAvledge. In the year 1562 I did see in the tAvo hospitals of London, called St. Thomas's Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, to the number of CCC and odd poor people that Avere diseased of sore legs, sore arms, feet, and hands, with other parts of the body so sore infected, that a hundred and twenty of them could never be recovered Avithout loss of a leg or an arm, a foot or a hand, fingers or toes, or else their limbs crooked, so that they were either maimed or else undone for ever. All these Avere brought to this mischief by witches, by Avomen, by counterfeit javills,* that take upon them to use the art, not only robbing them of their money, but of their limbs and perpetual health. This fault and crime of the undoing of these people were laid unto the chirurgeons — / will not say by part of those that were at that time masters of the same hospitals — but it Avas said that carpenters, Avomen, weavers, cutlers, and tinkers did cure more people than the chirurgeons. But Avhat manner of cures they did I have told you before ; such cures as all the world may wonder at — yea, I say such cures as maketh the devil in hell to dance for joy to see the poor members of Jesus Christ so miserably tormented Of this sort (of pretenders) I think London to be as Avell stored as the country ; I think there be not as foAv in London as three score women that occupieth the arts of physics and chirurgery. These Avomen, some of them, be called wise women, or holy and good Avomen ; some of them be called Avitches, and useth (are accustomed) to call upon certain spirits " And in another part he says, " I will not speak of a multitude of strangers, as pouch makers and pedlars, with glass makers and coblers, which run out of their oavu countries, and here become noble physicians and chirurgeons, such as now is most in estimation, and ruleth all the roast in our country." Such, prac tically, Avas surgery in the sixteenth century. The disunion of the barber-surgeons' and the surgeons' companies appears to have been found inconvenient or mischievous after all ; so during the same reign they were re-united by the Act 32 Henry VIII., under the name of masters or governors of the mystery and commonalty of barbers and surgeons of London, and Avere to enjoy all the privileges previously belonging to the single company. This was in 1541 ; then commenced the culminating period of the prosperity of the Barber-Surgeons' Hall. In passing along MonkAvell Street, the visitor is at once directed to the place by the quaint circular piece of carved-AVork, projecting so boldly out like a porch head from the wall over the entrance, AvIth the very large and finely cut arms of the Company in the centre. The three razors form a conspicuous object on the shield. Beneath the arms is a great head, with coarse features and open mouth, and looking very much as we should fancy a gentleman of his aspect Avould under the hands of the ancient barber-surgeons during some of their operations. Animals, fruit, and a variety of other ornaments, help to fill up the details of this somcAvhat interesting piece of workmanship. Passing through the door and a Ioav square passage, Ave enter a paved court, and the front of the building Is before us. This is in no respect remarkable : it is of brick, with large round- * Wandering or dii-ty fellowj, according to Jolmson. 182 LONDON. headed and square windows intermingled, and was erected by subscription some years after the great fire of London, which, without absolutely burning the edifice down, considerably injured its exterior. The doors here open into a small vesti bule, and then into the large apartment called the Hall, which has one or two noticeable features. The upper portion, forming a raised dais, is paved with marble in checquer-AVork, the gift (in 1646) of Mr. Lawrence Loe, chirurgeon, a member of the Company, who, "through his good affection thereunto, did for the Avorship thereof freely offer to give for the beautifying of the hall so many stones of black and white marble." The portion thus paved is of a curious semicircular shape, which at once attracts attention ; and, on inquiry, the delighted antiquary is informed he is there standing within one of the very bastions, or bulwarks as they are called in the old Avritings of the Company, of the genuine Roman Avail, here entirely perfect. The ceiling of the hall is simple, but handsome, being formed chiefly into bold oval compartments. A gallery over the entrance vesti bule, two or three anatomical and other pictures, and rows of long tables, used by the Avorshipful Company for their annual dinner, complete the furniture of the hall, Avhich has on the whole a deserted, cheerless aspect. From the hall let us pass to the Court-room, one of the choicest little rooms of the kind perhaps in London, for comfort, for elegance, and for just so much of antiquity as to har monise with the associations of the place. And no Avonder that it is so, Avhen Ave consider Avho has here been at Avork. Its agreeable proportions, and its exqui sitely decorated ceiling, are from no less a hand than Inigo Jones (the lofty elegant octagonal lantern is of later d^tc') ; and kindred spirits have enriched its walls. Over the screen AvhIch conceals the door of entrance is a portrait of Inigo Jones : that is by Vandyke. The rich full-length of the well-known Countess of Richmond over the fire-place can only be by Sir Peter Lely. But what glorious picture is that facing the fire-place, Avith its numerous figures, each so indivi dually characteristic, yet the Avhole so homogeneously expressive — a picture glowing as a Titian, and minutely faithful as a Gerard Douav ? That is the great treasure of the Company, the Holbein, the greatest of the great painter's un doubted English Avorks, and we should say the least known, except to the possessors of the fine print by Baron. It was painted to commemorate the re-union of the companies in 1541. In the centre is Harry himself, a mag nificent full-length portrait, in Avhich you might almost read every thing but the dates of the monarch's career. He is in gorgeous apparel, still more gorgeously painted. Gold brocade and ermine, ruffles and rings, will all bear the closest examination : so also the Turkey carpet beneath his feet. All the other figures, seventeen in number, are portraits (of members of the Company) ; a curious proof of which is to be found in the interesting cartoon or study for this picture in the College of Surgeons. The portraits are there separate pieces of paper pasted on in their proper places, and are evidently the original studies made by Holbein from the life. We are not aware that the existence of this cartoon is generally known. It is not mentioned by Walpole, though it seems to us scarcely less interesting than the picture painted from it. It has another interesting feature. In the painting there is a long inscription occupying a cer tain space of the upper part ; in the cartoon, Mr. Clift, the curator of the museum BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. [Hrury A'lll. granting tlie Charter to tlic barber-burgcuiis.J of the College, found, on cleaning a portion of it, some years ago, in the cor responding space, a Avindow, through Avhich Avas seen the old church of St. Bride ; showing that the event recorded took place in the palace of Bridewell. May Ave offer a suggestion as to the cause of the discrepancy ? The painting Avas at one period "touched," as the phrase is; probably the AvindoAV there, as in the cartoon, had become through time or neglect almost illegible, and so, in despair of recovering the original, this inscription was made to cover the place ? Among these gentlemen, kneeling before the monarch in their gowns, far- trimmed, we have, first, three on the left (or Henry's right), Avho represent Alsop, Butts, and I, Chambre, all past masters of the Company. Chambre was Henry's own physician, and, according to a custom happily obsolete noAV, held ecclesiastical preferments. He was dean of the royal chapel and college adjoining Westminster Hall, to which he built " a very curious cloister at a large expense." Butts has obtained- a wider celebrity, through the means of him who immortalizes hy a word: he is the Dr, Butts of Shakspere's ' Henry VIII.,' and is there introduced in an incident strictly true to history, and which Strype relates. In 1544 the Duke of Norfolk and other members of the privy council who belonged to the Catholic party made a strong endeavour to overthrow Cranmer, by formally accusing him of spreading heresies through the land. The King, the same night, sent Sir Anthony Denny to inform the archbishop of the circumstance. " The next morning," says Strype, in his Life of the prelate, " according to the king's monition and his own experience, the council sent for him by eight o'clock in the morning. And when he came to the council-chamber door he Avas not permitted 184 LONDON. to enter, but stood without among serving-men and lacqueys above three-quar ters of an hour; many councillors and others going in and out. The matter seemed strange unto his secretary, who then attended upon him, which made him slip away to Dr. Butts, to whom he related the manner of the thing ; who by and by came and kept my lord company. And yet ere he was called into the council Dr. Butts went to the King, and told him he had seen a strange sight, ' What is that?' said the King. ' Marry,' said he, ' my Lord of Canterbury Is become a lacquey or a serving-man ; for to my knowledge he hath stood among them this hour almost at the council-chamber door.' ' Have they served my lord so ? It is well enough,' said the King ; ' I shall talk with them by and bye.' " When the council did condescend to admit the prelate, it Avas to inform him that sentence of imprisonment Avas passed upon him. Cranmer's answer was the production of a ring which the King had sent him the night before, an original gift of the archbishop's to Henry : Ave may conceive the looks of blank dismay all around ; their proceedings stopped at once. This incident is highly honourable to Dr. Butts, but is only in accordance with other records of his character. He was the patron of the learned and accomplished Sir John Cheke, Avhom he first assisted to educate, and then to introduce into the world : it was he Avho invited Latimer to court, and it appears he Avas a Avarm friend of the Reformation. On the other side of the King, the first figure Is that of T. Vyeary, the then master, Avho is receiving the charter from the royal hands. Vyeary Avas serjeant-surgeon to the courts of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, and the author of the first anatomical Avork in the language — ' A Treasure for Englishmen, con taining the Anatomy of Man's Body,' which was published in 1548. Its mate rials are almost entirely derived from Galen and the Arabian writers, so little advance had yet been made In that very important part of the healing arts, the foundation, indeed, on Avhich they are built. The other members whose names are knoAvn are, I. Aylef, N. Sympson, E. Harman, J. Montfort, J. Pen, M. Alcoke, R. Fereis, X. Samon, and W. Tylly, of Avhom we need only mention the first, Aylef, a sheriff of London, and a merchant of Blackwell Hall, as well as a surgeon. His story Avas thus told on his tomb in the chancel of St. Michael's, in Baslnghall Street : — " In surgery brought up in youth, A knight here lieth dead ; A knight, and eke a surgeon, such As England seld hath bred. For which so sovereign gift of God, Wherein he did excel. King Henry VIII. called him to court. Who loved him dearly Avell. King Edward, for his service sake, Bade him rise up a knight ; A name of praise, and ever since He Sir John Ailife hight," &c. The picture is painted on oak, and is therefore likely to last for centuries. We conclude our notice of it Arith an interesting proof of the estimation in which it was held by James I., whose oavu autograph letter is in possession of the Com- tany, and from A^faich we uoav transcribe to the following effect : " James R BARBER-SURGEONS' HALC. 185 Trusty and well beloved, we greet you Avell. Whereas Ave are informed of a table of painting in your hall, whereon is the picture of our predecessor of famous memory. King Henry VIII., together with divers of your Company, which being very like him, and well done, we are desirous to have copied : where fore our pleasure is that you presently deliver it unto this bearer, our well- beloved servant Sir Lionel Cranfield, knight, one of our masters of requests, Avhom we have commanded to receive it of you, and to see it with all expedition copied, and re-delivered safely ; and so we bid you farewell. Given at our court at NeAvmarket, the 13th day of January, 1617." Among the other pictures of the Court-room are a portrait of Charles IL, purchased by the Company in 1720, for 71. 5s. ; two full-length Spanish figures, a lady and a gentleman ; a portrait of C. Barnard, seijeant-surgeon to Queen Anne ; and a picture containing portraits of Sir C. Scarborough, physician to Charles II. and the two succeeding kings, and E. Arris, alderman, and master of the Company. Scarborough is habited in a red gOAvn, hood, and cap, and is read ing one of the anatomical lectures appointed by the College of Physicians. Arris^ as the demonstrating surgeon, Avearing the livery gown of the city, is holding up the arm of a dead body placed on a table. These lectures were received with great approbation. Scarborough, indeed, bears the character of the ablest physician of his time : it is he to whom the poet CoAvley writes certain verses concluding with the lines Avhich appear to refer to a too close application to study : " Some hours, at least, for thy own pleasures spare ; Since the whole stock may soon exhausted be. Bestow 't not all in charity. Let Nature and let Art do what they please. When all is done. Life's an incurable disease." Some interesting articles of plate grace the sideboard of the court on all im portant occasions, the gifts of different members : as, a silver-gilt cup Avith little bells, presented by Henry VIII. ; another Avith pendant acorns, presented by Charles II. ; a large bowl given by Queen Anne ; four croAvns or " garlands of silver, enamelled, garnished, and set forth after the neatest manner ;'' and various " beakers," goblets, flaggons, dishes, Ssc. Some of these relics of the old splen dour of the Company have more than once appeared to be lost. In the seven teenth century the plate Avas occasionally pledged, and finally sold ; Avhen that "loving brother," Arris, bought the cup of Henry VIII., and returned it to the Company. On another occasion, earlier In the same century, the Hall Avas broken open, and the plate Avith some money carried off; but one of the thieves, T. Lyne, confessing immediately after, a clue Avas obtained to the deposit of the treasure, Avhich Avas all or nearly all recovered. The incident is chiefly noticeable for the matter-of-course inhumanity of the period, as illustrated in the fate of all the thieves, Avhich is thus, recorded in the books: — " About the 16th of November then folloAving, Thonias Jones Avas taken, Avho being brought to NeAvgate in December foUoAvIng, Jones and Lyne were both executed for this fact. In January following Sames was taken and executed. In April, 1616, Foster Avas taken and executed. Now let's pray God to bless this house from any more of these damages. Amen." 186 LONDON. In the records just referred to, under the date of 27th September, 1626, we read, " It is ordered by this Court, Avith a general consent, that the present master or governors shall take advice of workmen concerning the new building of their parlour and Lecture House, and to proceed as in their discretion shall seem meet." The parlour (or court-room) only appears to have been erected in pursuance of this mandate ; for In 1635 it is -stated that, in consequence of the Avant of a public theatre for anatomy and skeletons, and a lesser room for private dissections, a theatre is to be ovally built ; and in the succeeding year the order is repeated, with the addition, "according to the plotts drawn by his majesty's surveyor," Inigo Jones. This building, Avhich Walpole calls " one of his (the architect's) best Avorks," is noAv lost, having been pulled down in the latter part of the last century, and sold for the value of the materials. It contained four ellip tical rows of seats of cedar-Avood, rising regularly upAvards, Avas lighted by a cupola, and amongst a variety of decorations Avere figures representative of the liberal sciences and the signs of the Zodiac. Some curious skeletons Avere distri buted about. We arc here reminded of another curious passage in the Company's papers, referring to a strange perplexity in which the worshipful Barber- Sur geons once found themselves. In the minute-book of the Court of Assistants, under the date of July 13, 1587, Ave read, " It is agreed that if anybody AvhIch shall at any time hereafter happen to be brought to our hall for the intent to be Avrought upon by the anatomists of the Company, shall revive or come to life again, as of late hath been seen, the charges about the same body so reviving shall be borne, levied, and sustained by such person or persons who shall so happen to bring home the body. And who further shall abide such order or fine as this house shall award." There are tAvo eminent surgeons Ave have not before mentioned among the Masters or Wardens of the Company ; Clowes, in 1638, and Cheselden, in 1 744, of Avhom Pope, in a letter to a friend, in Avhich he refers to his " late illness at Mr. Cheselden's house," says, " I wondered a little at your question who Che selden was He is the most noted, and most deserving man in the Avhole profession of chirurgery." As to CloAves, we remember an amusing anecdote related by him in one of his prefaces, Avherein he is complaining of the number of pretenders almost as bitterly as Gale a century before. His story is to the effect that a Avoman, who Avas accus tomed to undertake the cure of all ills by a charm, for the roAvard of a penny and a loaf of bread, was committed, not for this fraudulent pretence, but for sorcery and Avitchcraft, by some of the shrewd justices of the peace for the county. At the assizes, the judges, smiling at the absurdity of the charge, told her she should be discharged if she would faithfully reveal at once in public what her charm Avas. She immediately confessed that all she did Avas to repeat to herself the folloAving verses, after receiving her bread and her piece of coin : — " My loaf in my lap. My penny in my purse ; Thou art never the better) Nor I never the worse." In the preface just referred to, CloAves particularly complains of the empirics BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. 187 who were allowed to practise in the navy ; and in that circumstance again reminds us of Gale, who, when he was with Henry VIII. at Montreuil, found himself among a pretty "rabblement" of tinkers, cobblers, &c,, Avho, with their ointment composed ofxust of old pans and shoemakers' Avax, seem to have killed more than the enemy. The mode of supplying the services had no doubt a great deal to answer for in this matter. . We have seen that Morestede's assistants, in Henry V.'s army, were " pressed under a royal warrant ;" but our professional readers will perhaps hardly expect to find hoAv late this custom continued, still less in Avhat a complimentary manner it was done. Here is one of Charles I.'s right royal mandates to the Masters and Governors of the Company : — " After our very hearty commendations : Whereas there is present use for a convenient number of chirurgeons for the 4000 land soldiers that are to be sent with his Majesty's fleet noAV preparing for the relief of Rochelle, these shall be to will and require you, the Master and Wardens of the Company of Barber-Chirurgeons, forthwith to impress and take up for the service aforesaid sixteen able and sufficient chirurgeons, and that you take special care that they be such in particular as are best expe rienced in the cure of the Avounds made by gun-shot; as likcAvise that their chests be sufficiently furnished Avith all necessary provisions requisite for the said employ ment. And that you charge them upon their allegiance, as they avIU ansAver the contrary at their perils, to repair to Portsmouth by the 10th of July next, to go along Avith such commanders in Avhose company they shall be appointed to serve. And you are further, by virtue hereof, to require and charge all mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, bailiffs, constables, headboroughs, and all other his Majesty's officers and loving subjects, to be aiding and assisting with you in the full and due execution of this our letter. Whereof neither you nor they may fail of your perils. And this shall be your warrant. Dated at Whitehall, the last day of June, 1628, Your loving friend," The letter is signed by several of the Lords of the Council.* In another order, of the date of 1672, twenty chirurgeons, thirty chirur geons' mates, and tAventy barbers, are all grouped together ; Avhilst in a third, refer ring to the reign of William and Mary, Peter Smith and Josias Wills, the Company's ofl[icers, are ordered to deliver to " every person by them impressed one shilling impress money." If these duties were of an unpleasant nature, what must have been that of turning constable, and running about to seek surgeons, Avho, not liking their mode of introduction into the navy, or the navy itself Avhen they got there, took the liberty of otherwise disposing of themselves. Yet this, too, Avas imposed upon them, as Ave find from a mandate under the hand of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, in 1665, directing the apprehension and safe custody of " John Shoaler, chirurgeon to His Majesty's ship the Return," for neglecting his duty. These extracts are all transcribed by us from the original documents at the Hall, and afford, Ave think, some interesting glimpses of the poAvers and occupations of the distinguished surgeons of a century or two ago. But as we uoav return through the hall of the building, we are reminded of a more * A memorandutn haa been added to the bottom of the wareant, that—" The master and wardens' power and authority to impress surgeons is by their charter and ordinances confirmed by the Judges, but have not usually ex- trcised lawful authority, but upon such like order as above written, either from the lords of the council or principal officer of the navy," 188 LONDON. vivid and life-like view of the doings here, Avhen a distinguished novelist was the chief actor as well as subsequent narrator. Smollett, it is Avell knoAvn, has described the principal adventures of his oAvn early career in his ' Roderick Random,' and, among the rest, his appearance here to pass his examination prior to his obtaining an appointment as surgeon's mate, which he did in 1741. As he Avaited in the outward hall (the vestibule probably) among a crowd of young fellows, one " came out from the place of examination Avith a pale countenance, his lip quivering, and his looks as wild as if he had seen a ghost. He no sooner appeared than we all flocked about him with the utmost eagerness to know what reception he had met Avith, AvhIch (after some pains) he described, recounting all the questions they had asked, with the ansAvers he made. In this manner Ave obliged no less than twelve to recapitulate, which, now the danger was past, they did with pleasure, before it fell to my lot. At length the beadle called my name Avith a voice that made me tremble as much as If it had been the last trumpet : hoAvever, there Avas no remedy. I was conducted into a large hall, Avhere I saAV about a dozen of grim faces sitting at a long table ; one of Avhom bid me come forAvard in such an imperious tone, that 1 Avas actually for a minute or tAvo bereft of my senses. The first question he put to me Avas, ' Where Avas you born V To Avhich I ansAvered, ' In Scotland.' ' In Scotland,' said he, ' I knoAV that very Avell ; we have scarce any other countrymen to examine here ; you Scotchmen 'have overspread us of late as the locusts did Egypt. I ask you in what part of Scotland Avas you born ? ' I named the place of my natlA^ty, AvhIch he had never before heard of. He then proceeded to interrogate me about my age, the town where I served my time, Avith the terms of iny apprenticeship ; and Avhen I had informed him that T served three years only, he fell into a violent passion, sAvore it Avas a shame and a scandal to send such raw boys into the Avorld as surgeons ; that it Avas a great presumption in me, and an affiont upon the English, to pretend to sufficient skill In my business, having served so short a time, Avhen every apprentice In England Avas bound seven years at least," &c. One of the more considerate of the examiners noAV interferes, Avho puts a foAV questions, Avhich are Avell ansAvered. Another, " a Avag," noAV tries his hand, but his jokes fail to go off, and Smollett is turned over to a fourth party, who, in the exami nation, expresses opinions AvhIch appear someAvhat heterodox to other members, and a general hubbub commences, Avhich obliges the chairman to command silence, and to order the examinant to AvithdraAV. Soon after he gets his qualifi cation, for Avhich he tenders half a guinea, and receives (on asking for it) five shillings and sixpence change, with a sneer at the correctness of his Scotch reckonings. The cost of admission, Ave may add, is noAv tAventy guineas, exclu sive of the stamps. Very few years after this the barbers and surgeons Avere again and perma nently disunited, the brilliant discovery having at last been formally recognised, in 1745, that there was no real connexion between shaving a beard and ampu tating a limb. In that year, the eighteenth of George IL, the union was dis solved ; and the surgeons became, for the first time, a regularly incorporated body, enjoying separately all the privileges of their former collective state ; and in the following reign, by the Act 40 George III., the surgeons were still further BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. 189 advanced by being incorporated into a Royal College, as they remain to this day. On leaving Monkwell Street they built, by subscription, the building here shown, Avhich stood partly on the site of the most southern of the buildings now constituting ^Surgeon»' Thoatre, Sea.. Old Bailej.] the Central Criminal Court, and partly on the site of the adjoining dwelling-houses. Some noticeable recollections attach to this place. Through that door in the basement, in the centre of tho building, the bodies of murderers, executed at NoAvgate adjoining, were carried for dissection, according to the Act of 1 752, and Avhich was only repealed in the late reign. It Avas here, we believe, that the ex traordinary incident occurred which John Hunter is said to haA'e related in his lectures, of the revival of a criminal just as they Avere about to dissect him. We have looked in vain for some authentic statement of the circumstances ; but if Ave remember rightly, the operators sent immediately to the sheriffs, Avho caused the man to be brought back to NeAvgate, from Avhence he was, by permission of the King, allowed to depart for a foreign country. It was here that a still more awful exhibition took place, in the beginning ef the present century, in connexion Avith the same subject. In the 'Annual Register' for 180.3, it is stated that "the body of Foster, who Avas executed for the murder of his Avife, Avas lately subjected to the Galvanic process by Mr. Aldini (a ne-phcAv of Galvani), in the presence of Mr. Keate, Mr. Carpue, and several other professional gentlemen. On the first application of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye actually opened. In the subsequent course of the experiment, the right hand Avas raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs Avere set in motion ; and it appeared to all the bystanders that the wretched man Avason the point of being restored to life. The 190 LONDON. object of these experiments was to show the excitability of the human frame, when animal electricity is duly applied ; and the possibility of its being efficaci ously applied in cases of droAvning, suffocation, or apoplexy, by reviving the action of the lungs, and thereby rekindling the expiring spark of vitality." * Such is the notice in the contemporary publication of the day ; but the most im portant part of the proceedings is not here told. We have been informed by those Avho were present on the occasion, that Avhen the "right hand was raised," as men tioned above, it struck one of the officers of the institution, who died that very afternoon of the shock. In the early part of the present century the College removed to its present' site, Lincoln's Inn Fields. To trace the progress of surgery, step by step, from the state of things illus trated in the foregoing pages, down to its present comparative phase of excel lence, or to do fitting honour to the individuals Avho have been the chief agents of such progress, are matters alike beyond our limits and object; but we may remark, that to two men in particular must Ave ascribe the high position of sur gery and surgeons at the present day — John Hunter and John Abernethy. Each has introduced to the Avorld principles of the deepest import to the welfare of the physical man — each has been a consummate master in reducing these high principles to practice. What John Hunter Avas we may partly judge from the simple circumstance that he, a surgeon, held, with regard to operation, that the operator " should never approach his victim but with humiliation " that his science Avas not able to cure but by the barbarous process of extirpation. And Abernethy not only participated in his sentiments, but took every oppor tunity of enforcing them. It Is OAvIng to the exertions of such men that we find one operation only take place now, where twenty Avould, a century ago, have been inflicted. Of Hunter Ave shall have to speak further in Avhat we may call the local home of his fame — his Museum at the College of Surgeons. Abernethy, as the latest of our very great surgeons, demands a few Avords more in connexion AvIth our present subject. Little is known of Abernethy's early life ; even the place of his birth is dis puted, the toAvn of Abernethy in Scotland, and that of Derry in Ireland, each claiming the honour. The date Avas 1763. He received his education at a school in Lothbury, having removed to London Avith his parents whilst very young. At the proper age he Avas apprenticed to Sir Charles Blick, surgeon to St. Bartholo- lomeAv's Hospital, and there commenced a career equally extraordinary for its rapidity and the height to Avhich it conducted him. Abernethy owed much to Hunter, whose pupil he Avas ; his ardent love of physiology, for instance, the basis of his OAvn greatness. It Avas through his deep insight into this science, and into that of anatomy, Avhich he studied also intensely, that he was enabled to perceive hoAV much empiricism existed in the profession, and his contempt accordingly was lavished Avith a free tongue. But he pulled doAvn in order to build up, and, with characteristic energy, accomplished both parts of his task. Before Abernethy's time the surgeon treated the locally apparent diseases, which it was his business to cure, as having also a local origin ; it Avas Abernethy who first exposed the =* ' Annual Register,' 1803, p. 368. BARBER-SURGEONS' HALL. 191 absurdity of this most dangerous, because most untrue, notion, and showed that it Avas the constitution itself which Avas disordered, and that there must commence the healing process. He first suggested and proved the practicability of per forming two operations of a bolder character than any ever before attempted, the tying the carotid and the external iliac arteries : operations that have since his time been performed Avith the most brilliant success, and Avhich have in themselves done much to extend the reputation of the English school through Europe, We are not about to retail the numerous, and, in many instances, absurd stories told of this distinguished man, and which have had too frequently the effect of loAvering him in public estimation ; but one feature of his character belongs to our subject. He Avas fond of lecturing, and the students were equally pleased to attend his lectures, or his " Abernethy at Home," as they called them, in reference to the wit and humour he Avas accustomed to regale them Avith whilst instilling the dry, abstract truths of the study. An eye-witness describes his very mode of entering the lecture-room as " irresistibly droll ; his hands buried deep in his breeches pocket, his body bent slouchingly forward, bloAving or Avhis- tling, his eyes tAvinkling beneath their arches, and his lower jaAv thrown consider ably beneath the upper."* Striking off instantly into his subject — gun-shot Avounds for instance — he would relate a case which at once riveted the attention, and from which he would proceed to extract the "heart of its mystery," and shoAv wherein failure or success had taken place. He would, then, perhaps, revert to surgery — as it Avas in the good old days of the barber-surgeons, and contrast it Avith its present state, enriching every step of his way by the raciest anecdotes — by an endless variety of the most amusing episodical matter. One of the richest scenes of the kind must have been his first lecture after his appointment as professor of anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons : a " professional friend," states the author of ' Physic and Physicians,'! " observed to him that they should now have something UOAV. ' What do you mean ?' asked Abernethy. 'Why,' said the other, ' of course you Avill brush up the lectures Avhich you have been so long delivering at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and let us have them in an improved form ?' ' Do you take me for a fool, or a knave ?' rejoined Abernethy. ' I have ahvays given the students at the hospital that to Avhich they Avere entitled — the best produce of my mind. If I could have made my lectures to them better, I Avould certainly have made them so. I will give the College of Surgeons pre cisely the same lectures down to the smallest details : nay, I will tell the old felloAvs how to make a poultice.' Soon after, when he was lecturing to the stu dents at St. Bartholomew's, and adverting to the College of Surgeons, he chuck- lingly exclaimed, " I told the bigwigs Iioav to make a poultice !' It is said by those who have witnessed it, that Mr. Abernethy's explanation of the art of making a poultice was irresistibly entertaining." And no doubt if he had lived but a couple of centuries before, and had had to lecture on the barber-surgery of that day, he Avould have introduced, with equal glee, an explanation of the pro cess Avhich it appears then belonged to some of the most respectable practitioners. The foUoAving extract from the list of ofiSeers to Heriot's Hospital in the statutes * Mr. Pettigrew'a account of Abemethy, in the 'Medical Portrait Gallery.' t Vol. i., p. 109. 192 LONDON. compiled in 1627, will explain our meaning : — " One chirurgeon barber, who shall cut and poll the hair of all the scholars of the hospital ; as also look to the cure of all those within the hospital, who any way shall stand in need of his art." CPjittait of AlAlUiithv.l [Exterior View of the College of Surg^ds.] LXIIL— THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. The Square of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with its gardens (now revelling in all the sweet luxuriance of May — the white hawthorn and the gold-dropping laburnum), its fine old mansions, its exhibitions, and its historical recollections, is a place pleasant to walk through, and suggestive of interesting and elevated thoughts. Here, for instance, perished Babington, and his youthful and accomplished com panions, who, in their sympathy for the captive Queen of Scotland, put aside their own allegiance to Elizabeth, and endeavoured to dethrone, if not slay, her, in favour of Mary : whose own fate they thus precipitated. Here too was Lord William Russell led to the scaffold ; the last of those distinguished men, who, during the eventful period comprised between the commencements of the reigns of Charles I. and William III., sealed their political faith in the need and possibi lity of good government with their blood; and whose trial was one of those cases, which, occurring in a particular country, yet has stirred the heart of universal man, and given poet and painter a theme they delight to dwell on. It was on this trial that, when the Chief Justice told the prisoner any of his servants might assist him in writing anything for him, the memorable answer was returned, — " My Lord, my wife is here to do it." And here, to refer to memories of another kind, was D' Avenant's theatre, on the stage of which Betterton performed ; a man whose portrait Pope painted (the poet, it will be remembered, occasionally dab bled with the palette and brush); whom Addison and Steele rivalled each other VOL. ill. 9 194 LONDON. in praising ; and of whom Cibber says, " He was an actor, as Shakspere was an author, both without competitors," &c. These are interesting recollections, and no doubt often turn the eyes of the student in history or dramatic literature to wards Lincoln's Inn Fields. But a much more widely spread as well as deeper interest centres there. Scarcely a town or large village in the remotest parts of England but has its young asijirants for the honours and emoluments of a pro fession, the entrance to which lies through Lincoln's Inn Fields. And only those who have passed, or endeavoured to pass through it, can fully appreciate the anxieties and difficulties of the undertaking, or understand the peculiar interest with which the minds of a very large class of persons throughout England view the Royal College of Surgeons. We are uoav standing before the building in question, admiring Mr. Barry's chaste and impressive design. Till the almost entire rebuilding of the structure under this gentleman's superintendence in 1835-6, the aspect of the College Avas, Avith the exception of the portico, as mean as it is uoav dignified, as discordant as it is noAv harmonious. And that portico OAves much of its present noble propor tions and graceful beauty to the gentleman we have named : a new column, for instance, Avas added, and the whole fluted ; Avhilst the bold entablature along the entire top of the edifice, with its enriched cornice, and the sunken letters of the inscription in the frieze, the elegant appearance of the stacks of chimneys at each end, and the general lightness of the structure from the great number of windoAvs, are all ucav, and betoken the masterly hand that has here been at AVork, and Avhich has given to London not one of the least considerable of recent archi tectural productions. It is afternoon, and many persons are passing beneath the portico into the Hall. Let us foUoAv them. Some pass through the glazed open doors in front into the inner vestibule, Avith its Ioav roof and open pillars, toAvards the Theatre ; others into the Secretary's room on the left : these last are, almost without exception, young, and generally gentlemanly-looking men ; and their business is to take the first step in a much-dreaded business, the registering their names for examination. It is astonishing how hard the most indolent or lazy student can Avork noW' — that is, a week or two before his examina tion ; — and, tired as he has been of the eternal lectures, he is even chivalrous enough to hear one more, the one just about to be given in the Theatre — to the Students' gallery of Avhich accordingly he ascends. Leaving the Secretary's room, Ave enter the inner hall or vestibule before mentioned, Avhich is ornamented, and its roof supported by roAvs or screens of Doric columns ; and in the far corner, on the left, Ave find the staircase ascending to the Council Room and Library, and the doorAvay to the Theatre. Entering the latter, Ave find ourselves in the Members' gallery, which runs round three sides of the lofty but somewhat con tracted-looking place, Avith crimson seats, Avainscoted walls, and a square-panelled roof, in the centre of which is a lantern or skylight. Above us is the Students' gallery, in front the Avail of one entire side of the I'heatre, and below a sunken floor, Avith a table for the lecturer, and seats rising upAvard from it towards us and on each side. The table Is covered Avith preparations, some in glass vessels, intended no doubt to be used for the illustration of the subject of the lecture ; and across the Avail above, on a level Avith our own eyes, that long board has been evidently raised for a similar purpose, for it is almost hidden with THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 19 i draAvings, chiefly coloured. One single bust ornaments the place, the bust of John Hunter, placed on a pediment over the board. The seats immediately in front and by the sides of the lecture-table below us are, Ave are told, for the Council of the College. In looking round, tAVO or three circumstances arrest our attention. The Stu dents' gallery is almost empty, while the members' gallery and tho body of the Theatre, on the contrary, are almost full : another illustration of the truth that meets us in a thousand shapes — those only who knoAV the most have the truest idea hoAV much there is to learn. Again, among the faces present we can detect more than one man whom the Avorld looks on, and justly, as among the foremost in their profession : yet these, Avith their time worth we knoAV not hoAv many guineas an hour, come to hear a lecture which has no adventitious interest what ever attached to it : it is but one of twenty-four given annually : there are no lords, dukes, nor princes present, nor is there any sumptuous dinner about to folloAv, as in the case of the annual oration delivered in the Theatre. The character of the faces around must be noticed by the most ordinary observer. Lavater and Spurzheim might each have written a separate chapter in their great works on the exhibition afforded by such an assemblage. ' The expression of thought and intellect — always acute, sometimes high — is written upon every face and stamped on every brow. But our reflections are interrupted : through a little door in the Avail beside the table enters the beadle of the College with the gilt mace, which he lays on the table, members of the Council follow, and lastly enters the lecturer, in a black silk robe with crimson edging ; and, as if impatient of the parade, hoAvever necessary, at once commences his lecture. The subject is one of greater interest than a stranger and an unscientific man might have antici pated, and of almost (to such an one) startling novelty : the brain of fishes. In a rapid survey, the lecturer describes in brief but expressive language the pro cess of declension of the b: ain from man through the inferior animals, and the birds, doAvn to the fishes; showing how closely each individual and species is linked with that above and below it in the great scale of creation, and hoAV, above all, this variety of structure tends to explain the being of man himself. Thus, it has been m'aintained by distinguished physiologists, that the cerebellum in the human brain has organic functions connected with the locomotive power. If this be true, should avo not find the cerebellum in the lower animals greatly developed, or almost entirely lost, precisely as Ave find the individuals endowed with extraordinary locomotive poAvers, or very deficient of them ? The lecturer ansAvers by pointing to the amazing development of the cerebellum of the shark, the most vigorous perhaps of fishes, and to that of another, which is scarcely visible, and the OAvner of which lies all but torpid for half the year. From this glimpse of the Theatre during one of the lectures of the Professor of Comparative Anatomy, let us pass to an occasion of more general interest — the Hunterian oration, which takes place annually. The Theatre is uoav brilliantly lighted Avith chandeliers ; for it is late in the day, and the occupants are of a more diversified character. The board is gone, and everything" speaks that it is a shoAv rather than a work day of tlie College. Warriors and statesmen, poets and artists, may uoav be found among the audience. The President is the orator. Referring to the fitness of the day for the subject — the 14th of February, and o2 j-96 LONDON, the birth-day of John Hunter— he proceeds, in a notice of the life of that remarkable man, to show what the College, and, through it, the profession, and the world generally, owe to him. John Hunter was born in 1728, at Long Calderwood, near Glasgow. His father was a small farmer, and having nine other children, but littie attention was paid to the child's education. His father's early death made matters still worse, and up to the age of seventeen John Hunter was distinguished for nothing more important than his enjoyment of country sports. Finding this mode of life attended by pecuniary as well as other inconveniences, he addressed himself to a better, and went and laboured zealously in the workshop of his brother-in- law at Glasgow, a cabinet-maker. The manual dexterity which subsequently formed a noticeable feature of Hunter's personal character, and which he found so valuable in his scientific studies, is ascribed to the three years thus spent. The fame of William Hunter, the brother of John, as an anatomical and scientific lecturer, now roused more ambitious thoughts, or at least prepared the way for their accomplishment. He wrote to offer his services ; they were accepted ; and behold John Hunter at London. His first essays gave so much satisfaction that his brother at once prophesied h^ would become a good anatomist. This was in 1748. The' year following he became the pupil of the celebrated surgeon Cheselden, and attended with him the Hospital of Chelsea for two years, and at the expiration of that time engaged himself to Pott in connexion with the prac tice of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Passing over various other stages of his career, we find him in 1754 a partner with William in the school, and sharing in the delivery of the annual course of lectures. The severity of his studies now became too great for him, serious illness ensued, and, but for the judicious course he adopted, the world might have now known nothing of John Hunter. He sought and obtained the appointment of staff-surgeon to a regiment ordered to a milder climate, and for two years followed its migrations, when he returned to England completely restored. Hunter would uoav have risen rapidly in his profession but for two deficiencies, amenity of manner, so valuable, we might say indispensable, to a medical man, and education ; as it was, he suffered muck in convenience and anxiety, not on account of his own personal wants, but for his beloved museum, the foundation of which he began to lay from an early period. He lectured, but could get only few pupils, and was frequently obliged to borrow the money for some new purchase that had tempted him, and which he could not resist. A pleasant anecdote of one of these occasions is told. " Pray, George," said he one day to Mr. G. Nicol, the king's bookseller, an intimate acquaintance, " have you got any money in your pocket ?" The answer was in the affirmative. " Have you got five guineas ? because if you have, and will lend it to me, you shall go halves." " Halves in what ?" said Mr. Nicol. " Why, halves in a magnificent tiger, which is now dying in Castle Street." The money was lent, and the great anatomist made happy. All this while his reputation was steadily on the advance, and the fact came home to him in two very satisfactory incidents In the years 1767-8: in the first of which he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society ; and in the second, surgeon to St. George's Hos pital. This was everything to John Hunter : patients and pupils alike flowed in, and the Museum went on at a glorious rate. More laboriously now than THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 197 ever did he devote himself to the investigation of the great subjects that Museum was formed to illustrate : it was no hobby nor plaything, but the grand storehouse of facts in which he proposed to study, more deeply than perhaps man had ever studied before him, the great branches of knowledge into which the general subject of man — " the ills that flesh is heir to" and their cure — divides itself, as natural history, comparative anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Mr. Thomas, who was some time his dresser at the hospital, and subsequently, through Mr. Hunter's influence, surgeon to Loid Macartney's Chinese embassy, gives us the following account of his introduction to him ; and the anecdote forms a valuable illustra tion of the mode in which so much was accomplished in a single lifetime. He says, " Upon my first arrival in London, on presenting a letter of introduction from a mutual friend, he desired to see me at five the next morning. Having already the highest respect for his great professional talents, it may be easily imagined to what a height my curiosity was raised by so extraordinary an ap pointment : no one will doubt my punctuality of attendance. I found him in his Museum, busily engaged in the dissection of insects. The interest which he seemed to take In his employment — the sagacity of his observations on it — the acuteness of his general remarks upon whatever subject was started — the almost blunt manner iu which he questioned me respecting my medical education, united to the kindness of his admonitions relative to my future plans, made a very forcible impression on my mind : it was a mingled feeling of profound respect, surprise, and admiration."* Hunter had a great love for animals, and not merely, as the satirist might say or think, for their use for dissection, but whilst alive; and he ran some strange risks in consequence. At his house at Brompton he had a numerous collection, among which. were two leopards, of which Sir E. Home relates the following anecdote: — "They were kept chained in an outhouse, but one day broke from their confinement and got into the yard among some dogs, which they immediately attacked. The howling this produced alarmed the whole neigh bourhood. Mr. Hunter ran into the yard to see what was the matter, and found one of them getting up the wall to make his escape, the other surrounded by the dogs. He immediately laid hold of them both, and carried them back to their den ; but as soon as they were secured, and he had time to reflect upon the risk of his own situation, he was so much agitated that he was in danger of fainting." Again : " The fiercer animals were those to which he was most par tial, and he had several of the bull kind from different parts of the world. Among these was a beautiful small bull he had received from the Queen, with which he used to wrestle in play, and entertain himself Avith its exertions in its own defence. In one of these contests the bull overpowered him, and got him down ; and had not one of the servants, accidentally come by and frightened the animal away, this frolic would probably have cost him his life." In 1 773 he was affected by a disease of the heart, which subsequently carried him off. The immediate cause of his death involves painful remembrances. In 1 792 a dispute occurred between him and his colleagues at St. George's Hospital, in consequence of the election of Mr. Keate to a vacancy Avhich then happened, in * Medical Portrait Gallery, vol. ii. ; 198 LONDON, opposition to the man of Mr. Hunter's choice. Sir Everard Home, his brother- in-laAv. This led to recriminatory acts (or Avhat were looked on in that light) on both sides, among which was an order on the part of the hospital governors that no person should be admitted as a student without bringing certificates that he had been educated for the profession. Hunter, who was in the habit of re ceiving pupils from Scotland of the class prohibited, took this as aimed against himself; but two young men having come up Avho Avere prohibited by the rule from entering the hospital. Hunter undertook to press for their admission before the Board. On the proper day, the 16th of October, Hunter went to fulfil his promise, having previously remarked to a friend that if any unpleasant disputes occurred it Avould prove fatal. It is melancholy to have to relate how true Avere his forebodings. In making his statement, one of his colleagues gave a flat denial to some observation, and the irrevocable blow was struck. Hunter stopped, retired to an adjoining room to conceal or repress his emotions, and there fell lifeless into the arms of Dr. Robertson, Every attempt was made to recover him, but In vain. We may imagine the feelings of all parties, as they gazed upon each other and acknowledged that John Hunter Avas dead, and that such had been the occasion. Leaving the Theatre, we ascend the handsome staircase with its roof of deli cately-tinged green hue, and its entablature, having a richly sculptured frieze, to the landing at the top ; Avhere are busts of Cheselden and Sir W. Banks, Avho Avas an honorary member of and benefactor to the College, and an intimate friend of Hunter. On the right a door opens into the Library, on the left to the Council-Room. The Library fills one with surprise from its great height and dimensions. It has tAvo ranges of windows, one above the other, some of the lower opening into the upper part of the portico, betAveen the capitals of Avhich 'the Avaving and gleaming foliage of the gardens beyond appear Avith a charming effect. The collection of books is worthy of the place, although, of course, they consist chiefly of AVorks useful to the medical student. Near one end of the room the gigantic shell of a glyptodon, a kind of primeval armadillo, stands upon a pedestal ; and near to it, toAvards the opposite wall, the half bony, half fossil-looking skeleton of a mylodon, apparently a species of extinct gigantic sloth, which the AVorkmen are now carefully raising in an appropriate attitude, Avith its fore-feet high up the branch of a large tree.* At a consider able elevation along the Avails pictures meet the eye — portraits of Sir Ca;sar Hawkins by Hogarth, Serjeant-Surgeon Wiseman, an eminent surgeon of Charles II. 's time, &c. But the great treasure of the College is the Cartoon of Holbein's picture of the grant of the charter to the Barber-Surgeons, of Avhich Ave have already spoken in connexion Avith the original in the hall of the Barber- Surgeons' Company. At the west end of the Library is a smaller room, called the Museum Library, the tAvo rooms occupying the entire front of the College. Crossing the landing of the staircase to the other extremity, we find ourselves at the door of the Council-Room, the place Avhere sits the aAvful conclave of Examiners. It is a rich-looking and comfortable apartment, Avith imitation bronze doors and porphyry architraves, Avhilst the Avails present the appearance "¦ These recent and very interesting and valuable acquisitions to the College have been removed to the Museum since the above was written. THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 199 of compartments inlaid Avith scagliola. Among the more noticeable ornaments of the room are the pictures and busts : the former comprising Reynolds's ad mirable and well-known portrait of John Hunter ; and the latter, busts of the same eminent man, and of Cline, Sir W. Blizard, Sir E. Home, Abernethy, and George III. and George IV., by Chantrey. There is also a bust of Pott by Hollins. There is one feature of the room Avhich at a glance reveals its uses — a chair surrounded on three sides ; and although, very properly, no persons are admitted during examination but the parties concerned, it needs no great ex ertion of the fancy to see the nervous, excited, quivering, and shivering young examinee, sitting in his solitary but most undesired stall, and the line of grave faces extending along his front and on each side of him, so that he sees nothing, hears nothing, but " Censors, censors, everywhere." There is an ante-chamber attached to the Council-Room, whither candidates pass after examination, and receive refreshment, which in their exhaustion is generally most grateful. And a curious scene in connexion Avith this room may be occa- sionally witnessed. Whilst the young man is being examined in the Council- Room, a croAvd of friends are Avalking to and fro on the pavement in front of the College,, and looking from time to time upon the AvindoAvs of that ante-chamber ; some of them, perhaps, relatives or friends, no less anxious than the principal himself, knowing Avhat sacrifices have been made to bear up against pecuniary difficulties till the Examination-day ; and, to make the trial still more momentous, an appointment perhaps is Avaiting to be taken at once or be lost for ever. But there he is- — the pale countenance flushed up Avith success. In homely but ¦ succinct and expressive words ascends the loAv-toned query, "All right?" "All right " is the joyous answer, — and the load haply is taken off some poor AvidoAv's heart. The regulations of the Board of Examiners so directly interests a large body of the public, and indirectly the public itself, that it may be useful to describe them a little in detail ; and the more, that alterations have from time to time been made in them. The regulations published In October last require candi dates to be not less than tAventy-one years of age ; to have studied professionally not less than four years (six months of this must have been devoted to practical pharmacy, tAvelve to attendance on practical physic, and three years to the prac tice of surgery in a recognised hospital or hospitals of Great Britain) ; to have studied anatomy and physiology by attending lectures and demonstrations, and by dissections during three anatomical seasons ; to have attended not less than two courses of at least seventy lectures each on surgery, and one course of similar length on each of the following subjects — practice of physic, materia medica, chemistry, and midAvifery, Avith practical instruction. When diplomas, licences, or degrees are produced, as from certain local colleges of surgeons or from uni versities, which give sufficient evidence of reasonable preliminary attainments, these rules do not apply. The examinations are conducted viva voce, unless the candidate desire them to take place in Avriting, The questions relate almost entirely to anatomy and surgery; and each candidate is usually examined by four of the Examiners in succession. The affair lasts generally from an hour to an hour and a half. Not more than twelve candidates are noAV set doAvn for one 200 LONDON. day's examination, though there have been times, as during the war, when a hundred have been examined on a single occasion, and the young men, Avorn out by their anxiety and their want of food during the number of hours they have been in waiting, have fainted away in their examination when the time did come. To an old and highly-respected officer of the institution we believe candidates are indebted for the introduction of the kindly and hospitable custom of offering refreshments : this, with the limitation as to the number to be examined at one time, have done away with such scenes. The examination at the College, though indispensable to every medical man (except he be a physician) who desires to be esteemed a practitioner of respectability, can scarcely now be said to be legally necessary; for although the College of Surgeons has the power by charter, &c., of preventing any one but a member of the body from practising in London or within seven miles thereof, or in any other part of the kingdom except a licence has been obtained from the ordinary or vicar-general of the particular diocese, yet the College has never prosecuted any one for practising without licence or diploma. The present number of members is about twelve thousand, and it is calculated that about six hundred new members are added annually. It must be observed that there are also various incidental advantages attached to the membership : thus such persons alone are admitted into the army, the navy, and the East India service ; they have access to the Library, Museum, and lec tures at the College ; and in a great number of cases they alone are eligible to appointments connected with charitable and other public institutions. Lastly, their sons who may be educated for the same profession have the chance open of obtaining for them one of the annual appointments of a student in anatomy, with a salary of 100/. a year ; whose office is to assist the ConserA'ator of the Museum in preparing and dissecting specimens, &c., and who, at the end of three years^ obtains an appointment as assistant-surgeon either in the army, navy, or East India Company's service. Descending to the entrance -hall, we now turn in an opposite direction (or to the right as you enter the College) in order to reach the Museum. This is a magnificent place in form, proportions, size, and general appearance. It mea sures about 91 feet in length, 39 in breadth, and 35 in height. It is lighted, not by windows in the side walls, or by lanterns from above, but by a series of win dows set in a deep cove extending all round the building between the top of the wall and the ceiling, and the effect is as delightful to the eye as it is useful for the exhibition of the contents of the Museum. The walls exhibit three stories : first of glass cases, each set between half- pillars of the Doric style ; second, of a gallery above, with a balcony before it, and occupied by open shelves with preparations in glass vessels ; and third, of another gallery, which does not project so far forward as the second, and which is used for similar purposes. Two ranges of broad, solid, glazed cases, breast high, extend also doAvn the floor of the room from one end to the other. Such, in brief, is the shell of the Museum ; but how shall we describe its multifarious and almost invaluable contents ? The shortest way were, perhaps, to remark, and we should be scarcely guilty of exaggeration in so doing, that it possesses almost everything the imagination of man can conceive of that can be useful or necessary for the study of physical life — that the whole world has been ransacked to enrich its THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 201 .^^i: ^ — X- -../ FMuseum of Surgeons' Hall.] stores. But however comprehensive the idea thus given, we fear it would not be very clear or suggestive ; so we must describe it somewhat more in detail. First, then, to look at the Museum as a whole, and in the state Hunter left it at his death, when his Museum consisted of above 10,000 preparations, obtained, it is said, at a cost of about 70,000Z., and which was purchased from his widow by the government for 15,000/., who presented it to the College. " The main -object which he had in view in forming it," says the author of an admirable account of Hunter and his Museum,* and whose assistance we are glad to avail ourselves of in this somewhat technically scientific department of our subject, " was to illustrate, as far as possible, the whole subject of life by preparations of the bodies in which its phenomena are presented. The principal and most valuable part of the collection, forming the physiological series, consisted of dissections of the organs of plants and animals, classed according to their dif ferent vital functions, and in each class arranged so as to present every variety of form, beginning from the most simple and passing upwards to the most com plex. They were disposed in two main divisions : the first, illustrative of the functions which minister to the necessities of the individual ; the second, of those which provide for the continuance of the species. The first division commenced with a few examples of the component parts of organic bodies, as sap, blood, &c. ; and then exhibited the Organs of support and motion, presenting a most interest- * * Penny Cyclopsedia,' article Hunter, vol. xii. 202 LONDON. ing view of the various materials and apparatus for affording the locomotive power necessary to the various classes of beings. It was succeeded by series illustrating the functions of digestion (AvhIch Hunter placed first, because he regarded the stomach as the organ most peculiarly characteristic of animals), and those of nutrition, circulation, respiration, &c. These were followed by the organs which place each being in relation with the surrounding world, as the nervous system, the organs of sense, the external coverings, &c. The other chief division of the physiological part of the collection contained the sexual organs of plants and animals in their barren and impregnated states, the prepa rations illustrative of the gradual development of the young, and of the organs temporarily subservient to their existence before and after birth. Parts of the same general collection, though arranged separately for the sake of convenience, Avere the very beautiful collections of nearly 1000 skeletons; of objects illus trative of natural history, consisting of animals and plants preserved in spirit and stuffed, of which he left nearly 3000; of upAvards of 1200 fossils; and of monsters. The pathological part of the Museum contained about 2500 speci mens, arranged hi three principal departments : the first illustrating the pro cesses of common diseases and the actions of restoration ; the second, the effects of specific diseases ; and the third, the effects of various diseases, arranged ac cording to their locality in the body. Appended to these was a collection of about 700 calculi and other inorganic concretions. These foAV words may give some idea of Hunter'^' prodigious labours and industry as a collector : but his Museum contains sufficient proof that he was no mere collector : it was formed Avith a design the most admirable, and arranged in a manner the most philo sophic; and Avhen it is remembered that it was all the Avork of one man labouring under every disadvantage of deficient education, and of limited and often embarrassed pecuniary resources, it affords, perhaps, better evidence of the strength and originality of Hunter's mind than any of his written works, Avhere he speaks of facts, that in his Museum are made to speak for themselves." We need hardly add that this arrangement is strictly and reverentially pre served, and that every article Avhich belonged to Hunter is carefully distinguished as his by marks, &c., from the additions Avhich the College have ever since been continually making to complete his gigantic project, and in pursuance of Avhich they expended last year no less a sum than nearly 3000/.* Our readers may * As the financial statement from which this item is borrowed shows in a striking manner the present and in creasing prosperity of the College, we append it here : — Receipts. Disbubsements. Court of examiners' fees for diplomas. College department, including' council, at 20 guineas each, exclusive of the £ s. d. court of examiners, auditors, diploma- cost of stamps , . , . 12,761 14 0 stamps, collegiate prize, salaries, &c. . Rent . . . . . , 37 1 0 0 Museum department, including cata- Fees on admission to council and court logues, specimens, spirit, salaries, &c. of examiners (20 guineas each) . 1 05 0 0 Library department, including the pur- Fee on certificate of diploma . . 5 5 0 chase and binding of books, salaries, Incidental, sale of lists, catalogues, &c. 39 13 0 &c. ,.,,,. Dividends on investments in govern- Miscellaneous expenses, taxes, rent, &c. ment securities, &c. . . . 1,299 4 4 Studentships in anatomy . Repairs and alterations . . . £14,158 6 4 Hunterian oration, lectures, Jacksonian prize, &c. .... £10,924 9 3 — thus leaving above £3000 to be added to the permanent capital in a single year. • £ ,. 6,357 12 d. 7 , 3,823 5 11 778. 0 . 434 6 193 7 338 19 0 37 11 99 17 0 THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 203 now judge of the value of this famous Museum. A few words on the regula tions for admission may be here usefully given. These are highly liberal, if we consider the Museum is not intended to form an exhibition but a place of study, Members of both houses of parliament, great officers of state, the dignitaries of the church and the law, general and flag officers of the navy, members of learned and scientific bodies, and of public boards, physicians, surgeons, &c. &c. have all not only the privilege of personally visiting the Museum, but of introducing visitors. A painful recollection is connected with the Museum, Avhich we are reminded of by the volumes of the handsome and comprehensive Catalogue published by the College, which we see lying about in different parts of the place. That catalogue is very valuable, formed as it is Avith great care from the preparations them selves, and from the published works and a feAV scattered manuscripts of the founder — Hunter. Biit what it is, is but a slender compensation for Avhat it ought to have been, had those who were bound by the nearest ties to look upon every memorial of Hunter as sacred, fulfilled the duty imposed on them. For several years before his death the great anatomist commenced the preparation of his own catalogue, Avhich was to embody the entire results of all his professional and scientific experience; and although he died before positively completing more than a very small portion of his scheme, he did live to bequeath to the world nineteen folio volumes of MS. materials, Avritten either by himself or at his dictation, and, there is little doubt, of a more valuable kind than the world had ever before possessed. These volumes have, it appears, been destroyed! " The formation of the catalogue," states the writer before quoted,* " was in trusted to Sir Everard Home, the brother-in-laAV and only surviving executor of Hunter ; but from year to year he deferred his task, and, after supplying only two small portions of his undertaking, he at length announced that. In accordance Avith a wish Avhich he had heard Mr Hunter express, he had burned the manuscripts, Avhich he had taken without leave from the College of Surgeons, and among which Avere the ten volumes of dissections (forming a part of the nineteen) and numerous other original papers. Thus nearly the whole labour of Hunter's life seemed lost : a few only of the least important of his writings remained, unless, indeed, Ave reckon as his the numerous essays which Sir E. Home published as his OAVU in the ' Philosophical Transactions,' and subsequently collected in six . volumes, 4to., of ' Lectures on Comparative Anatomy.' Many of these give strong evidence of his having used Hunter's Avritings in their composition ; and the fear lest his plagiarism should be detected is the only probable reason that can be assigned for so disgraceful an act." The injury done to Hunter's fame by this mysterious proceeding is incalculable. " Every year, as his Museum is more closely studied, proves that Hunter had been Avell aAvare of facts for the discovery of which other observers have since his death received the honour;" and from this we may judge how great must be the loss the public have expe rienced in losing the fruits of so many years' labour of so valuable a life. In Avalking through the Museum, noAV in its principal department, physiology. the richest collection of the kind in existence, one is apt to be bewildered by the multiplicity of the objects Avhich present themselves to our attention. Every • 'Penny Cyclopaedia,' article Hunteb. 204 LONDON. one of all those numerous cases, divided by pillars which extend round the four sides of the noble room, might well detain us — as far as its abstract interest is concerned — for as long a period as the general visitor can spare to see the whole. Here, in wonderful profusion, the eye passes along an almost interminable series of skeletons, beautifully prepared and exhibited, first of quadrupeds, as llamas. zebras, rams, antelopes, deer, armadilloes, squirrels, seals, lions, cats, wolves, bears, monkeys, kangaroos . then of birds, from the tiny creeper to the giant ostrich ; -and lastly of fishes and reptiles; whilst one portion is set apart for an extensive collection of skulls of all the different varieties of the family of man. These are the contents of the glass cases of the ground story around the wall. Immediately above, adorning the open railing of the balcony which projects in front of the first gallery, we see its entire sweep round the Museum filled with the frontal honours of all the horned animals we have ever heard or read of. There is one gigantic pair of horns immediately over the entrance into the Museum, of a size that would be truly incredible if the eye had not its own un erring evidence. We tried to span it by extending our arms at full stretch, but it was amusing to see how much too short was even such an instrument of measurement : Ihey are the horns of the extinct Irish elk, or stag. We may here observe, that the Museum contains a beautiful series of preparations show ing the gradual growth of the horn in deer, from the first putting forth of the as yet tender sprout, with its blood-vessels, and its soft velvet-like covering, to the magnificent weapon with which the animal goes forth, the knight-errant of the Avoods, in the cause of love. The chief features of the Museum are the isolated skeletons, &c., on pedestals placed at the ends and in the centre of the room, and, as might be expected, the interest attached to them is in proportion to the prominency of their position. Standing at the door of the Museum, just as Ave enter, on our right, is a cast of one of those stupendous remains of the extinct animals of an early Avorld, the bones of the hinder portion of the skeleton of the megatherium, the originals of which are preserved in the College, Until the latter part of the last century this enormous quadruped was unknown in Europe. In 1789 the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres sent the Museum of Madrid a consider able portion of a skeleton, and subsequently portions of two other skeletons reached the same country. It was not, however, till the arrival of the remains collected by Sir Woodbine Parish, and presented to the College of Surgeons, that the general characteristics of the animal could be determined. These remains were found in the river Salado, which runs through the Pampas, or flat alluvial plains to the south of the city of Buenos Ayres. The immediate cause of this dis covery was the unusual succession of three dry seasons, which caused the water to sink very low, and exposed the bone of the pelvis to vieAv as it stood upright in the river. The cast in the Museum here is, as we have before stated, only of the hinder parts of the animal, which, in their startling magnitude, provoke a very natural desire for a glimpse of the entire creature to which they belonged. Let the reader, then, look at the following engraving (in which the simple outline shows the extent of the Madrid skeleton, the pale tint the corresponding parts in the College, and the dark tint the additional parts which are wanting in the skeleton at Madrid), and at the same time reflect that its general dimensions are about fourteen feet in length and about eight in height, that the upper part of THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 205 [Skeleton of Megatherium.] its tail must have measured at least two feet across, that its thigh-bone is twice the size of that of the largest known elephant, that its heel-bone actually weighs more than the entire foot of the great elephant whose skeleton is in the Museum (and which we shall presently have to mention), and that its fore-foot must have ex ceeded a yard in length. " Thus heavily constructed," says Dr. Buckland, in an eloquent passage in his ' Bridgewater Treatise,' " it could neither run, nor leap, nor climb, nor burrow under the ground, and in all its movements must have been necessarily slow ; but what need of rapid locomotion to an animal whose occupation of digging roots for food was almost stationary ? . . . His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal mechanism, adapted exactly to the work it had to do ; strong and ponderous in proportion as the work was heavy, and calculated to be the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a gigantic race of quadrupeds, which, though they have ceased to be accounted among the living inhabitants of our pla net, have in their fossil bones left behind them imperishable monuments of the con summate skill with which they were constructed." In cleaning the bones, on their arrival at the College, some small portions of adipocire (or animal matter, changed into the peculiar fatty and waxy substance first discovered during the last century) was found. Long exposure to water, in particular, appears to cause this extraordinary conversion ; and the remains of the Megatherium must have been so exposed for at least many centuries. At the same time the existence of the adipocire would seem to imply that we can scarcely venture to date the period of the Megatherium's life beyond that of man's first appearance on the world, unless we are to suppose that soft substance as imperishable as the fossil bones themselves. Immediately opposite the Megatherium, on our left, is the complete, and solid, heavy-looking skeleton of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse, the supposed 906 LONDON, Behemoth of Uie Book of Job, Passing down the centre of the room, between the tAvo ranges of glass cases Avhicli extend along the floor, and Avhich are filled, with a thousand small interesting objects— teeth of various animals, in various stages of growth (the series belonging to the elephant, showing the process of his shed ding his teeth, which he does at least twelve times, is very interesting), dried preparations of the different vascular organs of the body, sponges, fossils, shells, &c., Ave find in the middle of the room, on our left, a fine cast of the figure of a male negro, and on the right the amazingly tall skeleton of a man, Avhich Ave can hardly persuade ourselves can have really belonged to a human being ; but there is no room for doubt. It is the skeleton of Charles Byrne, better knoAvn, however, as O'Brien, the Irish giant ; Avho, according to the ' Annual Register,' died in June, 1783, in Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, from excessive drinking, to Avhich he Avas accustomed, and to AvhIch he had previously given himself up, Avith greater recklessness than ever, on account of a loss of 700/., AvhIch he had by him in the shape of a single bank-note. It appears he measured eight feet four inches as he lay dead, being then only tAventy-tAvo years old : his skeleton is just eight feet. It is said that he Avished his remains to be sunk out at sea. Was this from the mere horror of dissection, or that he looked upon himself as a kind of half-monster, and felt a sense of relief in the idea that Avhen he Avas dead all traces of him should disappear ? Whatever be the truth of the story, the body came into Mr. Hunter's possession before any attempt at interment Avas made. In strange contrast Avith this noble and graceful-looking edifice of man, for such it seems to us in a very eminent degree, stands, Ave cannot say by its side, but by its leg, the skeleton of Madlle. Crachani, a Sicilian girl of ten years of age. This is just tAventy inches high, and does not reach, by an inch or tAvo, the giant's knee. She Avas born in or near Palermo, in 1814, and Avas the daughter of an -Italian Avoman, who, Avhilst travelling some months before her confinement in the baggage-train of the Duke of Wellington's army on the Continent, Avas frightened into fits by an accident with a monkey. The child Avas reared Avith difficulty, and, being taken to Ireland," became there consumptive. It was then brought to London, and publicly exhibited In Bond Street in 1824. Sir Everard Home, among numerous other scientific men, visited her; and he says, " The child, Avhen I saAv it, could Avalk alone, but Avith no confidence. Its sight was very quick, much attracted by bright objects, delighted Avith everything that glittered, mightily pleased with fine clothes, had a shrill voice, and spoke in a Ioav tone ; had some taste for music, but could speak fcAv words of English ; Avas very sensible of kindness, and quickly recognised any person Avho had treated it kindly." She died in the same year. On the same pedestal is a very minute and beautifully-constructed ivory skeleton of the human form. As Ave approach the end of the room, the colossal structure of the largest living quadruped, the Indian elephant, makes us gaze in astonishment at the AVonders that still live and breathe among us. The skeleton measures from the pedestal to its highest part twelve feet four inches. Inquiring a^ to the personal history of this enormous creature, hoAV Avere Ave surprised to hear that it Avas Chuny, whose destruction at Exeter Change excited so much sympathy; and, poor Chuny, thou deservedst it. Thine Avas a sagacious and noble nature. We should not like to have been that one of thy keepers who, after helping to THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 207 fire into thy hapless body some eighty shots, bade thee kneel^ littie expecting, we may be sure, thou wouldst obey ; but thou didst ; and he beheld thee, in the midst of all thy agony, kneel doAvn. Gradually thou droppest on thy knees, and in calm dignity let the pitiless storm beat on. When they grew tired, they found thee still in that posture, erect, but dead. The skeleton of poor Chuny is flanked on either side by remarkable com panions — a giraffe and a Bactrlan camel. From this end of the room a door on the left opens into another Museum, of the same height, but comparatively small in its other dimensions. In front of the lofty gallery pictures hang at intervals, portraits and illustrations of surgical marvels : the room itself is chiefly devoted to preparations of extraordinary surgical cases of disease. Sec, monstro sities (here is a cast of the band of the Siamese tAvins, for instance), and a variety of miscellaneous objects, among Avhich the most striking are the row of mummies standing upright in open Avooden boxes along the end facing you as you enter. One of them is the embalmed wife of the once notorious Martin van Butchell, Avith a parrot or some similar bird in the case with her : this Avas prepared at his request by Mr. William Hunter and Mr. Cruickshank, in 1775. But the most interesting mummy is that of an Egyptian in its inner case, unopened, brought to England in 1820, and Ave know not hoAv many thousand years old. It is in a perfect state of preservation, and affords an excellent example of the mode of embalming practised in ancient Egypt, The external case, generally of syca more, has been removed : the internal case, which more immediately envelopes the body, and partakes of its form, is composed of many layers of cloth cemented together, and faced or externally covered Avith a white composition, affording a smooth and uniform surface, upon Avhich an endless variety of hieroglyphical figures and devices are drawn in vivid, and, to this day, comparatively Avell- preserved colours. In strange contrast Avith this artificially preserved human being is that painful-looking figure raised upon a high pedestal, seated on its haunches, the knees against the chin, and the hands pressing against the sunken cheeks. There is every reason to consider the history of this figure as extraordinary as its appearance. The governor of the district of Caxamarca, in Peru, became much interested in a tradition preserved among the natives of the place, that a certain guaca, or sepulchre, Avas the site of the voluntary sacrifice of the life of a Curaca, one of the order of nobles next in rank to the members of the royal family. He determined accordingly to have it opened, Avhich Avas done in 1821 ; and at the depth of about ten or twelve feet three bodies Avere found — a female, which crumbled to dust on exposure to the air; a child, Avhich is now in the museum of Buenos Ayres ; and a man, the figure we are now gazing on. In all probability the three stood in the relation of husband, Avife, and child. This dreadful in stance of the lengths to Avhich man's Avild imagination will carry him is supposed to have taken place some little time before the arrival of Pizarro, or betAveen the years of 1530 and 1540. The preservation of the bodies is owing to the peculiar character of the soil. With them Avere found various articles of inte rest — an axe or bludgeon of green jade-stone, and a ball of very fine thread or Avorsted, two or three inches in diameter, Avhich Avas placed under the arm of the child, a symbol, probably, in some Avay, of its own undeveloped career. SOS LONDON, As we wander to and fro, lingering among the many objects that call upon our attention, but which our space will not admit us to mention, we perceive in front of the pedestal on which stands the giant elephant, a bust, the only one, as in the case of the Theatre, which decorates the place. Need we add it is the idol of the shrine, the creator of all we see around — John Hunter. CJoIm Eusmcj [Old Academy in St. Martin' s-lane.] LXIV.— THE ROYAL ACADEMY. No. I. During the reign of the first George and part of that of the second, it seemed as though the nation at large was inclined to participate in the well-known con tempt of one of those monarchs for " Bainting," whatever it might do as regards his similar opinion of " Boetry ;" at all events, since anything deserving the name of art had existed in this country, never before had the prospect seemed so hopeless. The admirable works of Holbein and Vandyke, and, in a lesser degree, of Lely and Kneller (all foreigners), which had been scattered so pro fusely abroad through the palaces and mansions of England, appeared to have fallen on a soil barren, as far as they were concerned, but most prolific of the ranker and more gaudy kinds of vegetation. Whilst the national mind appeared to make no response to the exertions of the great painters we have mentioned^ the sight of the acres of garish canvas — ' Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and La Guerre,' set us all decorating our staircases and ceilings in a similar manner ; mythology was made easy to the humblest capacities ; Juplters and Junes, Venuses and Mercuries, flocked about us in the most condescending fashion — high ?irt was to be our own at once : there is no saying how soon the spirit as well as the forms of the art-religion of ancient Greece might not have been revived among us. but for the unlucky sarcasms of those wicked poets ! At the period of the accession of George IL, our most eminent native artists were Sit James Thornhill, the VOL. III. V 210 LONDON. painter of the dome of St. Paul's and the great hall of GreenAvich Hospital, Avorks Avhich, Avhatever admiration they excited in his oavu day, Avhen he success fully disputed the palm of reputation Avith La Guerre, are uoav at least as remarkable for the mode in Avhich they were paid (forty shillings a square yard), as for their excellence ; Hudson, the chief portrait-painter ; and Hayman, the decorator of Vauxhall, and the author of many illustrative designs of ' Don Quixote ' and other publications. When such Avere our great men, no Avonder that French critics amused themselves Avith speculations on the cause of what they declared to be our evident unfitness ever to be distinguished in art, and kindly condoled Avith us on our ungeuial climate and our defective physical organization. Jf they could have seen what Avas then going silently on in diffe-. rent parts of England, these sagacious critics Avould have saved themselves much trouble, some confusion, and have derived a lesson as to putting their oAvn house into order, AvhIch Avould have been useful. Holbein and his immortal followers, it turned out after all, had not come to an ungenial soil ; on the contrary, it ap peared they had been slowly doing that Avhich it is the prerogative of genius only to do — making equals, and not imitators. It Avas not long after the com mencement of the reign of George IL, that Sir James Thornhill, on rising one morning, found on his breakfast-table some etchings of so remarkable a character, that Avhen he learnt they were by his poor son-in-laAv, who had offended him by marrying his child Avithout his consent, he at once forgave them both. The etchings Avere some of the as yet unpublished engravings of the ' Harlot's Pro gress ;' the poor son-in-laAV was Hogarth. In the same street Avhere this scene took place — St. Martin's Lane — a few years after, a young painter from De vonshire had established himself after having visited Rome, and" older artists talked of the absurd heresies he was practically broaching. Hudson, befiare mentioned, Avho Avas his old master, Avent to see him, and after looking for some time on the picture of a boy in a turban, exclaimed, with an oath, " Reynolds, you don't paint so Avell as Avhen you left England." Another eminent portrait- painter, Avho had studied under Kneller, also came to the studio and expressed his opinions : — " Ah ! Reynolds, this avIU never ansAver ; why, you don't paint in the least like Sir Godfrey !" The young artist, by no means overAvhelmed, answered Avith quiet confidence, and explained his reasons (Avhich of course em bodied all his novel vIcavs in art), Avith great ability, till at last Ellis cried out " Shakspere in poetry, and Kneller in painting, d e !"' and marched out of the room. Not many years had to elapse before that heretical student Avas ac- knoAvledged the master of a genuine and lofty English school of painting, and posterity has confirmed the opinion of contemporaries. Lastly, about the same time, Gainsborough, yet a boy, Avas obtaining holidays from school by inge niously forging notes of leave from his parent, for the purpose of making sketches in the beautiful Avoods Avhich surrounded his native place in Suffolk ; and Wil son, the English Claude, Avas being happily turned from portrait to landscape by an accident. Whilst studying at Rome, he Avaited one morning a long time anticipating the coming of the artist Zucarelli, and, to beguile the time, sketched the scene he beheld through the windoAvs before him. Zucarelli, looking on it Avhen he came, was astonished, and asked Wilson if he had studied landscape. The answer was in the negative. " Then I advise you' t6 tty, for you are sure THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 211 of great success,'' Avas Zucarelli's immediate remark ; and Vernet, an eminent French painter, spoke to the same effect. The picture of Niobe marked his return to England, and caused his immediate recognition as a painter of high genius. It is to these men that Ave chiefly owe the extraordinary advance in English art Avhich has been made in the space of a single century. From the pe riod of their advent we may date the rapid disappearance of the historical pictures of the La Guerre and Thornhill school, "the mobs of the old divinities — nymphs Avho represented cities — croAvned beldames for nations — and figures, ready ticketed and labelled, ansAvering to the names of Virtues;"* and with them Avent the artists who were at first Reynolds's chief rivals, and Avhom he describes as having " a set of postures which they apply to all persons indiscriminately : the conse quence of Avhich is, that all their pictures look like so many sign-post paintings ; and if they have a history or a family piece to paint, the first thing they do is to look over their commonplace book, containing sketches AA'hIch they have stolen from various pictures ; then they search their prints over, and pilfer one figure from one print, and another from a second ; but never take the trouble of think ing for themselves." In place of all these different kinds of inanities, Hogarth now set the town considering the stern realities of life, and instilled Into them his Avholesome morality ; Reynolds shoAved a truer divinity, hedging in the shapes of humanity itself, than Verrio had ever fetched doAvn from Olympus ; and Wilson and Gainsborough revealed the natural beauties of the every-day Avorld to thou sands Avho had at least practically forgotten them. It Avas during the height of the reputation of these men that the Royal Academy started into existence, and chiefly in consequence of their exertions. It appears from Hogarth's memoirs of himself that the first attempt to form a kind of artists' academy was made about the beginning of the eighteenth cen tury " by some gentlemen-painters of the first rank, who in their general forms imitated the plan of that in France, but conducted their business with far less fuss and solemnity ; yet the little that there Avas, in a very short time became an object of ridicule." The single object then desired Avas a school for draAving from the living model ; and it Is curious, and an unansAverable evidence of the Ioav state of the arts,' that in so important a matter nothing should have been done previously, or more effectively Avhen undertaken. But the public had an idea that some of these meetings Avere for immoral purposes, and the artists had not a little difficulty to overcome on that score. The Duke of Richmond had the credit, later in the century, of establishing the first school in this country for the study of the antique, having fitted up a gallery Avith a number of casts, busts, and bas-reliefs, " moulded from the most select antique and modern figures at that time in Rome and Florence. Cipriani Avas one of the teachers here for a feAV months. Other associations, of the kind before referred to, sprang into existence from time to time, Vertue in 1711 was drawing in one, of which Kneller Avas at the head. Sir James Thornhill also founded one at the back of his house in St. Martin's Lane, Avhich, Hogarth says, sunk into insignificance; and after his death, Hogarth, becoming possessed of the apparatus, himself caused the establishment of another, ultimately known as the Society of Incor- * Allan Cuuningbam's ' British Painters,' vol, i., p 51 . p2 212 LONDON. porated Artists, from which the Royal Academy, Avhich Hogarth so strenuously opposed on the ground of the deleterlou-s influence he conceived such establish ments would have on art, may be said to have arisen. This is by no means the most noticeable feature of the contrast between Hogarth's intended opposition and actual support. A new advantage was soon discovered by the artists in the combination they devised, the advantage of exhibition, and it is one that has since kept the body firmly together by its potent influence. For this, also, the Academy is indebted chiefly to Hogarth. On the erection of the Foundling Hospital, it was desired, in accordance with the taste of the day — and an ad mirable taste, too, if better use had been made of it — to decorate the walls, &c. But the charity was too poor to pay the artists for so doing, some of whom accordingly offered to do it gratuitously. Hogarth Avas the chief of these bene factors. The fame of the different AVorks spreading abroad, people began to desire to see them ; their desires were gratified, the exhibition took amazingly ; and thus did the painters of the day first derive their idea of the advantages that might accrue from exhibitions of their collected works. An opportunity for making the experiment soon offered. In 1754 a Society was formed for the encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce, which, among its other good deeds, expended in tAventy years nearly 8000^., together with ten gold medals, six silver, seventeen gold palettes, and eighty-four large and small of silver, in rewards to youthful competitors in painting, sculpture, and ar chitecture. The great rooms of this Society Avere thrown open for the first public English exhibition of art, April 21, 1760 ; the admission was free, and the price of the catalogue sixpence. The scheme was successful, and therefore repeated the next year in the great room of Spring Gardens, when the price of their catalogue was raised to a shilling, and admission was only to be obtained either by an individual or a party by the purchase of a catalogue. Johnson, writing to Baretti, notices this exhibition, and says, " They (the artists) please themselves much with the multitude of spectators, and imagine that the English school will rise in reputation. . . . This exhibition has filled the heads of the artists and the lovers of art." And then folloAvs a bit of what too many at that time thought philosophy, but of which it is truly surprising to find Johnson the utterer. " Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time — of that time which never can return." Johnson's friend Reynolds taught him better, a few years later, in those immortal discourses, which the doctor among others had the credit with some credulous or envious people of having in a great measure written. He may, perhaps, even have received a more direct reproof if he were in the habit of expressing such opinions in Reynolds's presence. The latter esteemed his art too highly to allow such remarks from such a quarter to pass unnoticed. His admirable comment upon an observation made by the Dean of Gloucester, Dr. Tucker, that a pin-maker was a more useful and valuable member of society than Raphael, is here in point. "That," said Reynolds, " is an observation of a very narrow mind — a mind that is confined to the mere object of commerce — that sees with a microscopic eye but a part of the great machine of the economy of life, and thinks that small part which he sees to be the whole. Commerce is the means, not the end of happiness or pleasure : the end is a rational enjoyment by THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 213 means of arts and sciences," &c. The friendship of these remarkable men com menced in an interesting manner. Reynolds, whilst on a visit in Devonshire, took up Johnson's Life of Savage. He was standing at the time leaning against the chimney-piece. He read, and read on, without moving, till he had finished the book, and then, on trying to move his arm, found it benumbed and useless. From that time he eagerly sought an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the writer, and one soon offered, which resulted in a lasting and cordial friend ship. It was perhaps through this connexion that Johnson was induced to write the advertisement of the third exhibition, when the artists ventured on the bold experiment of charging one shilling for the admittance of each person, but at the same time thought a kind of apology or explanation necessary. The con cluding sentences, which are Johnsonian all over, contain the pith of the whole. " The purpose of this exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art : the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt : whoever hopes to deserve public favour is here Invited to display his merit." This exhibition, too, being successful, the custom was firmly esta blished, and the associated company began to grow rich and influential. In 1765 they obtained a charter of incorporation under the title before mentioned. But their very success bred dissension : there was no deciding what to do Avith the money. The architects wanted a house, the sculptors wanted statues, and the painters wanted a gallery for historical paintings, whilst some wanted nothing but the money itself, and to groAV rich. Another cause of division existed in the very heterogeneous composition of the Society. It consisted at one period of 149 members, many of Avhom Avere artists only In name ; and that was not the worst of the evil, for the bad and indifferent portions of the Society were so numerous as entirely to overpower the good, and to give tone and influence to the whole. This, of course, was not to be endured, and some of the best members seceded, among whom were Reynolds ; and West, then knoAvn as a young American artist of promise, and a Quaker, whom the King, George III., had taken under his especial patronage. The Presidency of the Incorporated Artists being vacant about that time, Kirby, teacher of perspective to the King, was elected, and in his inaugural address assured the members that His Majesty would not support the dissenters. West was then painting his picture of ' Regulus' for the King in the palace, where Kirby was one day announced, and, by the King's orders, admitted, and introduced to West, whom he had never seen before. Kirby looked at the picture, commended both it and the artist, then turning to George III., observed, " Your Majesty never mentioned anything of this work to me. Who made the frame? It is not made by one of your Majesty's workmen, it ought to have been made by the royal carver and gilder." " Kirby," was the quiet reply, " Avhenever you are able to paint me such a picture as this, your friend shall make the frame." " I hope, Mr. West," added Kirby, " that you intend to exhibit this picture ?" " It is painted for the palace," was the reply, " and its exhibition must depend upon His Majesty's pleasure." " Assuredly," remarked the King, " I shall be very happy to let the work be shown to the public." "Then, Mr. West, you will send it to my exhibition?" " No!" interrupted the King, " it must go to my exhibition — that of the Royal Academy." Such was the first announcement to the Incorporated Artists of the success of a memorial 214 LONDON. that had been presented by the seceders from their body, which stated that the. two principal objects they had in vIcav Avere the establishing a well-regulated school or academy of design, and an annual exhibition, open to all artists of distinguished merit ; and they apprehended that the profits arising from the last of these institutions Avould fully answer all the expenses of the first; they even flattered themselves, they said, that there would be more than Avas necessary for that purpose, and that they should be enabled annually to distribute something in useful charities. The constitution was signed by George III. on the 10th of December, 1768, and the "Royal Academy for the purpose of cultivating and improving the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture " was an established thing. Before the King's answer had been received, the choice of the members for the presidency had been fixed, and the manner in Avhich they announced it to him Avhom it most nearly concerned Avas striking, Reynolds and West; when the former had determined to join the noAV body, entered the hall together Avhere the artists Avere assembled. They rose to a man, and saluted Reynolds Avith the single but significant word " President !" Although touched by such a mark of approbation, he Avould not agree to accept the honour till he had consulted his friends Burke and Johnson, Avho advised him to do so ; and, accordingly, he did. The young monarch not only thus favoured the Royal Academy, but promised to supply all pecuniary deficiencies from his private purse, and then gave additional ^clat to the whole by knighting the chosen President, Reynolds. Johnson was so elated at the honour paid to his friend, that he broke through a restraint he had for some years imposed on himself of abstaining from Avine. If the world had been searched for a man combining all the most desirable qualifications for the office, it would have been Impossible to have found a better man for the Presidency of the New Academy than Sir Joshua Reynolds. Deeply imbued with the loftiest theories of the art, which he had studied at the fountain-head, in the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, at Rome, and In those of the illustrious ancients of Greece, and himself a painter of rare excellence, he possessed at the same time literary attain ments of a distinguished order, to enable him to give adequate expression to Avhat ever he most desired to instil into the rising minds of the Academy. As a man his character seems to have approached as near to perfection as our erring nature admits of. Amid all the squabble and clamour, Avhich from time to time shook the academic halls, the noble figure of the President seems ever to stand aloof in calm dignity. The deep repose Avhich forms one of the characteristics of antique art, Avas not to him a thing to be talked about only, or even to be thought of: he knew that the stream can rise no higher than its source, the artist's whole being must be in harmony Avith Avhat he desires to achieve, and Avith him it Avas so. Of his generous sympathy AvIth struggling genius the anecdotes are as numerous as they are individually delightful. On one of his journeys on the Con tinent a young artist, of the name of De Gree, attracted his attention, and, pro bably through his advice, came to England. Reynolds, knoAvIng the difficulties of the young artist, generously gave him fifty guineas : it is one pleasant evi dence of the character of the man thus assisted to find that the money Avas at once sent oflT for the use of poor aged parents. When Gainsborough offered for sale his picture of ' The Girl and Pigs,' at the price of sixty guineas. Sir Joshua THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 215 gave a hundred, Gainsborough appears to have taken a pique against Reynolds, and left a portrait of him unfinished that he had begun. But, on his death-bed, who does he send for but Reynolds; and Avith him by its side, and uttering the words, " We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyke is of the company," died. To these qualities we must add that, in person, Reynolds added the graces of the gentleman to the dignity of the man ; and, in his house, that he Avas hospitable Avithout being profuse. Fond of the best society, Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Avere continual visitors at his table, he made all such enjoyments tend to the enriching and enlarging his mind, and thus Avas constantly carrying fresh acquisitions of thought to his study, instead of AvithdraAving his attention from it, as is too often the case under such circumstances. As President his first act was in accordance Avith all that Ave have described, and stamped a glory on the Aca demy that Avill for ever make its memory dear to the lovers of art. He voluntarily undertook the duty of delivering a series of discourses for the instruction of stu dents, and commenced Avith the opening of the Academy, January 2, 1 769, and con tinued them from time to time till the world Avas in possession of the whole of those Avritings Avhich uoav form the student's best text-book for the principles of his art, and Avhere not the painter only, but the poet and the musician, may find the most valuable instruction. The members of the Academy Avere well calculated to support the reputation Avhich Avas at once obtained by the favourable circumstances of its commencement. In the excellent picture, by Zoffany, of the hall of the Academy during one of the [Zoffany's Picture of tlie Rojal Acaiiemicians, 1T73.1 216 LONDON. days devoted to drawing from the living model, we have the portraits of the original members ; and it is surprising, on looking over their names as given in the Key, to see the amount of talent here congregated together. No wonder the Incorporated Artists soon sunk into oblivion, for they must have been deprived of almost every man of any eminence among them. Goldsmith's couplet on Rey nolds, and the empty pretenders to knowledge who used to buzz about him, " When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuiF, He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuft," points out the President in the centre. Next to him, with his hand raised to his chin, is Dr. WiUiam Hunter, brother to John Hunter, who was appointed Professor of Anatomy. On the other side of Reynolds, the star on the breast marks Sir William Chambers, the author of a most valuable 'Treatise on Architecture, the architect of Somerset House, and the admirer of Chinese gardening: an admiration for which he was somewhat severely handled by Horace Walpole and the poet Mason in the well-known ' Heroic Epistle,' which ridiculed, in rhyme, the prose reasonings and descriptions of the original. Near the extremity of the picture, on the same side, is the standing full-length figure of West; behind him, hat and stick in hand, Cipriani ; and by his side, nearer the front and mid dle of the picture, Hayman, a powerful-looking man sitting at his ease, watching the process of placing the model in the position desired. On the other side of Reynolds and Hunter the first figure is that of Bartolozzi, the eminent engraver, near whom is Wilson, with his hand in his breast, his portly figure raised upon an elevation above any of the neighbouring figures. Wilson, who is said to have painted his ' Ceyx and Alcyone ' for a pot of beer and the remains of a Stilton cheese, was represented in Zoffany's original sketch Avith a pot of beer at his elbow. Wilson, hearing this, immediately obtained a very " proper " looking cudgel, and vowed to give his brother painter a sound threshing. Zoffany prudently took the hint, and caused the offensive feature to vanish. Standing in front of the model, examining the propriety of the position, are Yeo, and Zucarelli, an Italian artist, who had first distinguished himself in England as a scene-painter at the Opera. A curious circumstance is mentioned in Smith's ' Nollekens and his Times :' the distinguished painter CanalettI, it is there stated, frequently painted the build ings in Zucarelli's landscapes. The person giving the handle suspended from the ceiling for the support of the arm, to the man who is being placed in the position required, is Moser, one of the most active movers in the foundation of the Royal Academy. The noble figure standing against the chair, AA-ith one arm reclining on its back, belongs to a someAvhat ignoble personage, Nathaniel Hone, a man who made some noise in his day by an attempted attack on Sir Joshua and the lady whose portrait (that In the square frame) is introduced instead af herself on the wall above Hone, Mrs. Angelica Kauffman, the well-known histo- -cal painter. One of the ideas adopted by the mediocre artists of the time to ..jusole themselves under Reynolds' undeniable pre-eminence, was that he was a plagiarist, and accustomed to steal his groups, attitudes, &c. Hone, to give point and popularity to the idea, painted a picture, in which a Avizard-looking person age stood with a wand in his hand, surrounded by various works of art, and pointed THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 217 to a number of scattered prints, beneath which were slight indications of various of Sir Joshua's works the most nearly resembling, or appearing to resemble them in design. Still more grossly was a representation introduced into the compo sition of the lady, Angelica Kauffman, between whom and Sir Joshua some slight flirtation was said to have taken place. This picture Hone had the impudence to send to his brother Academicians for exhibition, Avho rejected it with indignation. Hone then endeavoured to deny that his picture did refer to the personages in question, but the thing was too evident. In quitting Mr. Nathaniel Hone we must not forget Peter Pindar's-summary of his abilities : — ¦ " And now for Mister Nathan Hone : In portrait thou 'rt as much alone. As in his landscapes stands the unrivall'd Claude :" with this difference, that Hone's isolation was at the wrong end of the pro fessional scale. To return : the full-length figure occupying the extreme right of the picture is Richard Cosway, an excellent miniature-painter, and a gentle man who, if we are to believe his own word, had occasional communings of a re markable nature. " One day at the Royal Academy dinner he assured a brother Academician, that he had that morning been visited by Mr. Pitt, who had then been dead about four years. ' Well,' asked the brother member, ' and pray what did he say to you ?' — Cosway. ' Why, upon entering the room, he expressed himself prodigiously hurt that during his residence on this earth he had not en couraged my talents,' &c."* Over Cosway's right shoulder appears the head of Nollekens, the sculptor, a strange mixture of opposites ; in his works exhibiting a graceful and refined intellect, and in manners appearing an illiterate boor ; a miser, who might almost have contested the palm of notoriety with Elwes, yet one of the best of masters, and occasionally generous in an uncommon degree, where generosity was well bestowed. That he Avas essentially what he appeared in his productions rather than in anything else, we Avant no other proof than his conduct on a certain occasion. An admirable bust of Home Tooke came to the Exhibition : it was by a young and friendless sculptor, and it was placed — where such works are but too apt to be placed in the struggle for the best positions. Nollekens happened to see it : he took it up — ^he looked at it first , in one way, then in another, and, at last, turning to the parties arranging the exhibition, said, " There's a fine — a very fine work ; let the man who made it be known — remove one of my busts, and put this in its place, for well it deserves it :" — the sculptor was Chantrey. But one figure remains particularly demanding notice — the painter himself, Johan Zoffany, who sits in the left-hand corner, palette in hand. He was born in Frankfort, but came to England whilst yet a young man, and, attracting the attention of the Earl of Barrymore, speedily distinguished himself. His admirable pictures of Garrick and other performers are well known. A pleasant passage is recorded of him. He went at one period to Florence, at the Grand-Duke's invitation, and whilst there was accosted one day by the Emperor of Germany, then on a visit to the Duke, who, seeing and ad miring his performances, inquired his name. Zoffany having told him, was asked what countryman he was. " An Englishman," was the reply. " Why, voor * ' Nollekens and his Times,' vol. ii. p. 40£. 218 LONDON. name is German !" " True," said the painter, " I was born in Germany— that was accidental ; I call tiiat my country where I have been protected." The real talent of the Royal Academy, we see, therefore, was very great; and additional lustre Avas shed upon it by its connection Avith such men as Johnson, Avho Avas appointed professor of ancient literature, and Goldsmith, professor of ancient history : both appointments Avere merely honorary. Goldsmith observed concerning his, " I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself. Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man Avho wants a shirt." Thus favourably ushered into the Avorld, the Royal Academy commenced that career of prosperity which has known no check, but steadily increased doAvn to the present day. At first the Academy was lodged in St. Martin's Lane, and held their annual exhibitions in Pall Mall ; but George III, soon caused apartments to be fitted up in Somerset House, Avhere he exhibited his interest in their Avelfare by his steady attention to all their concerns. And when the old Palace was purchased by the nation, he took care that a portion of the new edifice should be reserved for the Academy, In 1780 the Academicians entered upon their new apartments, Avhich Avere fitted up Avith great magnificence and Avere soon made to exhibit a higher splendour from their oAvn hands. Sir Joshua, for instance, painted the ceiling of the library. In the same year the exhibition Avas also removed from Pall Mall to Somerset House, and the painters Avere now thoroughly at home. The sovereign smiled upon them, the people flocked in croAvds to see their pictures, the critics Avere mute, or at least the echo of their voices has not reached us ; and so passed on the time for a year or tAVO, when all at once a succession of shells Avas thrown into the camp in the shape of ' Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians, by Peter Pindar, Esq., a dis tant relation of the poet of Thebes, and Laureate to the Academy ;' and tremen dous seems to have been the flurry, the flutter, and the indignation. The qualifications of the critic Avere of no ordinary kind, as a single circumstance may partly show. Whilst Wolcot (Peter's real name) Avas residing at Truro as a phy sician, he had taken a boy into his service to clean the knives, and fulfil other such menial offices. One of his occupations was to fetch paunches for the dog, and it Avas noticed that he ahvays spent a considerable amount of time on these errands. At last the secret Avas explained : he brought home one day a portrait of the butcher, Avhich Wolcot saAV and Avas astonished. He then made the boy paint his (Wolcot's) portrait, Avhich Avas equally successful. From that time he became the young artist's patron, assisting him not only in all the more Avorldly and business portions of his career, but in the development of his natural talents : a matter In Avhich Wolcot's extensive knowledge and sound judgment were of great moment. Such Avas the early history of Opie. But the duller or more incapable members of the Academy might have forgiven his knoAvledge that they were dull and in capable, but they could not forgivethe Avit and humour Avhich made the whole. of their world know it too. It seems to have been someAvhat a fashion of late to decry Wolcot's abilities, because he so often misused them ; but Ave doubt Avhethcr any critic's opinions, formed under similar circumstances, and making allowance for the exaggeration given to them in passing through the satirical medium in which they reached the public, Avill better stand the test of time. The poet at the outset thus solicits for the inspiration proper to his theme : THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 219 " Paint and the men of canvas fire my lays. Who show their works for profit and for praise ; Whose pockets knoAv most comforlahle fillings. Gaining two thousand pounds a year by shillings." He then at once plunges into his subject. Some of Reynolds's pictures first engage his attention, and, on the Avhole, escape pretty Avell, AvIth ji concluding compliment to the painter : then, with much unction, comes in as the concluding lines of the Ode, " Now, mistress Muse, attend on Mister West ;" and, certainly, never does Peter appear more in his glory than Avhen attacking the eminent but overrated painter, and especial favourite of royalty. The daring character of the subjects chosen by West seems to have stirred the satirist's sharpest bile ; Mr. Cunningham says, " The mere list of his Avorks makes us shudder at human presumption:" this must be Wolcot's excuse for the more pre- suraptous — the irreverend — tone of the passage in Avhich he conveys his opinion of the manner in Avhich such gigantic conceptions had been developed : " O West, what hath thy pencil done ? Why, painted God Almighty's son Like an old-clothes man about London streets ! Place in his hand a rusty bag, To hold each sweet collected rag. We shall then sec the character complete." His description of another of West's historical paintings. King Alexander of Scotland attacked by a Stag, is irresistibly ludicrous ; and, although the effect to us is decreased by our not having the picture before us, as the public had about the time, or a little before they read the ' Odes,' yet it is only necessary to bear in mind the serious and lofty expression intended by the artist to enjoy it still : " His Majesty, upon his breech laid low. Seems preaching to the horned foe ; Observing what a very wicked thing To hurt the sacred person of a king. And seems about his business to entreat him To march, for fear the hounds should eat him. The stag appears to say, in plaintive note, ' I own. King Alexander, my offence : True, I've not showed my loyalty nor sense ; So bid your huntsmen come and cut my throat '.' The cavalry, adorned with fair stone bodies. Seem on the dialogue with wonder staring ; And on their backs a set of noddies Not one brass farthing for their master caring,'" &fc. In an epistle from Brother Peter to Brother Tom at Rome, alluding' to the King's great partiality for West, he explains the royal motives and feelings by likening him and West to a girl Avith a daisy Avhich she has placed in the garden, " Thinking the floAver the finest in the nation," and Avho then visits it every hour, Avatering it, proud of her gardening, " Then staring round, all wild for praises panting, Tells all the world it was Us own sAveet planting ; And boasts away, too happy elf. How that it found the daisy all itself!" We must add that Peter does not deny West's merit, but its misapplication and audacity. Of his picture of ' Nelson,' for instance, he says to him. 220 LONDON. " The hero's form is not disgraced ; Which adds a leaf of laurel to thy head." Gainsborough, now a member of the Academy, as well as an exhibitor, nexi falls under the lash for his portraits, the originals of which, he complains, ought not ' Thus to be gibbeted for weeks on high. Just like yon felons after death. On Bagshot or on Hounslow Heath, That force from travellers the pitying sigh." The " charming forte" of this eminent artist, landscape, is at the same time fully acknowledged. Loutherbourg and Wilson follow next, and the notice does equal credit to Peter's judgment and feelings : " And Loutherbourg, when heaven so wills, Tp make brass skies and golden hills. With marlle bullocks in glass pastures grazing ; Thy reputation too will rise, And people, gaping in surprise. Cry ' Monsieur Loutherbourg is most amazing ! ****** Till then old red-nosed Wilson's art Will hold its empire o'er my heart. By Britain left in poverty to pine." The position of poor Wilson, the " English Claude," was here but too accu rately described. It seems almost incredible, yet it is undoubtedly true, that after the appearance of such pictures as his ' Niobe,' he should be reduced to obtain his subsistence by working for the paAvnbrokers : many of his finest works went fresh from the easel to them ; and we may judge at what prices. One indi vidual who had bought pieces frequently from him, when solicited by the miserable painter to purchase another, took him up into a garret, and showing him a pile of paintings, said, " Why, look ye, Dick, you know I wish to oblige, but see ! there are all the pictures I have paid you for these three years." Perhaps it was in pity to his misfortunes that some of his brother Academicians sent Penny, the historical painter, whom Barry so worshipped, to advise with him as to the cause. And what, our readers will be curious to knoAv, might be their advice ? Why, that, as his works were deficient in the gayier graces of style, he ought to imitate the lighter style of Zucarelli! Can we, ought we to wonder at the " torrent of contemptuous words" the indignant painter poured forth upon the coterie and their messenger ? But, alas ! it was himself who was to suffer most by their utterance. He sank from one rank to another, till at last he found him self in a room somewhere about Tottenham Court Road, destitute of the com monest comforts, making sketches for half a crown each. Here a noticeable scene took place. A lady of rank desired a young student of her acquaintance to mend a first-rate landscape-painter. The latter, acquainted with Wilson's genius and misfortunes, mentioned him. The lady insisted on seeing him imme diately, to the young man's alarm, who was afraid that neither Wilson's room nor the pictures it contained might be exactly in the best state for the occasion. Hoav- ever, with much tact, he so managed matters as to let the lady obtain a just ap preciation of the painter : she ordered two landscapes. As she drove away, Wil son, detaining the young student, looked sadly in his face, and said, " Your kind ness is all in vain— I am wholly destitute — I cannot even purchase proper canvas THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 221 and colour for these paintings.'' But his friend soon set that matter right. On reaching home, he said to himself, " When Wilson, with all his genius, starves — what will become of me?" He at once renounced the profession, as a pro fession, and, entering into holy orders, rose high in the church. This was the Rev, Mr, Peters, the painter of numerous pictures of pretension. Wilson, we must add, spent his last hours in comfort in one of the most delightful parts of Wales ; a small estate having descended to him at the death of a brother. A capital hit at the imitators of Sir Joshua occurs in one of the ' Lyric Odes' for 1782 (the 9th) ; where Peter says,— " Sir Joshua (for I've read my Bible over). Of whose fine art I own myself a lover. Puts me in mind of Matthew, the first chapter ; Abram got Isaac — Isaac, Jacob got — Joseph to get was lucky Jacob's lot. And all his brothers. Who very naturally made others ; Continuing to the end of a long chapter. ^ * * * Sir Joshua's happy pencil hath produced A host of copyists, much of the same feature ; By which the Art hath greatly been abused : 1 own Sir Jos/ma great, but Nature greater." For several years did the licentious but able critic continue his stinging odes, enriching them with a variety of stories that of themselves would have made the opinions they conveyed popular, if there had been less of truth, though exagge rated truth, in them than there was. In the ' Lyric Odes" we find some of the most popular humorous tales in verse which the language possesses. The story of the ' Country Cousins ' and the visit to St. Paul's was written to illustrate the conduct of many of the ladies at the Exhibition, who, instead of admiring the great works they had come to see, stopped to dote upon the lace and the brocade — ". . . . The pretty sprigs the fellow draws ; * * * * Whilst, unobserved, the glory of our nation, Close by them hung' Sir Joshua's matchless pieces ; Works that a Titian's hand could form alone — Works that a Rubens had been proud to own, " Hodge, and the razors made to sell, was in ridicule of mercenary artists, who cared only for the mercantile value of their productions ; and ' The Pilgrims and the Peas ' a practical exemplification of the value of Peter's advice to artists : — " The genius of each man with keenness view, A spark from this or t'other caught, May kindle, qtiick as thought, A glorious bonfire up in yon," Whilst this storm was hurtling about their ears from without, the members of the Academy were not altogether at peace among themselves within. In 1784 Gainsborough sent a portrait to the Exhibition, with directions that it should be hung as low as the floor would admit, A bye-law either prevented his wishes from being fulfilled, or formed a colourable reason for objections : he sent for his picture back, and never exhibited with his brother Academicians again, A more 222 LONDON, important division was that Avhich took place in 1790, Avhen Reynolds Avas the party principally concerned. It appears that, on the first formation of the Aca demy, among the other appointments made was that of a Professor in Perspective, who gave public lectures. At the death of the first lecturer the public lectures Avere discontinued for some years. This arrangement did not agree Avith the President's vieAvs; and in 1789, Avhen an architect of the name of Bonomi placed his name on the list of candidates for the degree of Associate, he determined his election by his oavu casting vote against Gilpin, an artist of high reputation, on the ground that Bonomi might be subsequently " elected an Academician, in order that he might be appointed Professor of Perspective," The minority of the Academicians attributed the vote to Sir Joshua's desire to oblige Bonomi's patrons, but there does not seem to be a shadoAV of proof of the truth of this charge. An Academician's seat soon became vacant, and Sir Joshua, pursuing his avowed intention, supported Bonomi in opposition to Fuseli, Avho was also a candidate. We have no doubt of the purity of Sir Joshua's motives, but it Avas unfortunate, to say the least of it, that such a man as Fuseli was to be opposed in favour of the comparatively unknoAvn Bonomi. Fuseli, in a manly, straight- forAvard manner, Avent direct to the President's house to solicit his vote. He Avas received with the accustomed kindness ; his claims were distinctly acknow ledged; but, said Sir Joshua, "Were you my brother, I could not serve you on this occasion; for I think it not only expedient, but highly neces sary for the good of the Academy, that Mr, Bonomi should be elected." He added, " On another vacancy you shall have my support." Fuseli thanked the President for his promise, but expressed a hope that, if he tried his friends on the present occasion, the latter Avould not be offended, "Cer tainly not," was the reply, and they parted. On the evening, of the election the Academicians found on their table certain drawings neatly executed by Bonomi. This excited much contention, as being a novel proceeding, and as Fuseli had received no notice to prepare an exhibition of a similar kind. It is, hoAvever, to be observed that Fuseli's Avorks must have been Avell known to all present, and Bonomi's, in all probability, were not. Ultimately the draAvings Avere removed. When the vote took place, there Avere tAventy-one votes for Fuseli, and only nine for Bonomi. Sir Joshua, for once in his lifetime, seems to have been deeply AVOunded and indignant at- the conduct of his brethren. Thir teen days after the occurrence he Avrote to the Secretary of the Academy, " I beg you Avould inform the Council, Avhich I understand meet this evening, with my fixed resolution of resigning the Presidency of the Royal Academy, and conse quently my seat as an Academician. As I can no longer be of any use to the Academy as President, it Avould be still less in my power in a subordinate situation. I, therefore, noAV take my leave of the Academy, with my sincere good Avishcs for its prosperity, and Avith all due respect for its members." Sir William Chambers in the meantime had obtained an intervicAv with the King to inform him of the occurrence, when, among other flattering expressions of royal favour, his Majesty stated he Avould be happy in Sir Joshua's continuing in the President's chair. It Avas a wonder George III. did not confine himself to vague words of regret, and set about at once getting his protege. West, installed in the vacant presidency : for he had so little appreciation of the greatness of THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 223 Reynolds, that he never gave him a single commission, or Avas ever painted by him more than once or twice, and then only at the latter's express request, as Avell as at his OAvn expense ; and this, too, Avhilst West Avas scarcely ever absent for a Aveek together from the Palace, Avhere he Avas painting one great work after another, to be paid for at royal prices. Sir William Chambers lost no time in telling Reynolds of the King's words, but he remained firm, and the le.tter Ave have transcribed Avas sent. At first the council Avere inclined to have disgraced themselves by allowing such a man to be lost to them from such a cause without an effort at reconciliation ; but better feelings groAV up, and ultimately a depu tation, consisting of Messrs. West, Copley, Farington, T. Sandby, Bacon, Cosway, Cotton, and the Secretary, Avaited upon Sir Joshua at his house, and requested him to re-consider his determination. Sir Joshua Avas not a man to resist honour able kindness of any kind ; he at once acceded, and the President that evening re-appeared in his place. It was well that matters ended thus pleasantly, for that same year Reynolds died. Only a few months after these scenes had taken place he delivered a discourse, which Avas attended Avith one or two remarkable circumstances. There Avere present a large number of distinguished persons, in addition to members and students ; and the Aveight of the assembly Avas so con siderable, that just as the President Avas about to begin a beam in the floor gave way. Great was the confusion and alarm; Reynolds alone sat silent and com posed. The floor sank a little, but that was all ; it Avas quickly supported and made safe. Reynolds afterwards remarked, and it is a striking evidence of the entire absorption of his mind into the general interests of art, that if the floor had fallen, the whole company must have been killed, and the arts in Britain throAvn back a couple of centuries. In the Discourse that Avas then begun, he said, " So much will painting improve, that the best Ave can noAV achieve avIU appear like the AVork of children ;" another trait of his character and his faith in the grand principle of never-resting improvement, the principle which religion and philosophy alike teach us to be, above all others, the best AVorth living for. And then, as if some dim prophetic consciousness Avas at work Avithin, Avhispering that he Avould never again have an opportunity of recording his devotion to the memory of the man whose soul seemed to partake of the superhuman energy enshrined in the forms of the sibyls, the prophets, and the apostles he so loved to paint, he spoke thus : " I reflect, not Avithout vanity, that these discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man ; and I should desire that the last Avords which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of Michael Angelo." In effect, they were his last words ; he appeared not at the Academy after that evening. An enlargement of the liver took place, Avhich no skill could remedy. He Avas perfectly Avell aAvare of the near approach of death, though friends, unwilling to banish hope from their OAvn breasts, spoke of recovery and years of future happiness to be enjoyed. " I have been fortunate," Avas his ansAver, " in long good health and constant success, and I ought not to complain. I knoAv that all things on earth must have an end, and uoav I am come to mine." He expired on the 23rd of February, 1792, in the same deeply peaceful manner he had lived. The day after, the folloAving appeared in the ncAvspapers of the day :— " Sir Joshua Reynolds Avas on many accounts one of the most memorable men ^^^ LONDON. of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste — in grace — ^in facility — m happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the greatest masters of the renowned age. In portrait he went beyond them ; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity, derived from the higher branches, Avhich even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention and the amenity of landscape. In painting por traits he appeared not to be raised upon that platforrn, but to descend upon it from a higher sphere. " In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation ; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse. His talents of every kind powerful by nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters ; his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He haii too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow. Hail ! and Farewell." Thus wrote one who had enjoyed the fullest opportunities of arriving at an accurate estimation of Six Joshua Reynolds's character — Edmund Burke. lair Jrobm ReynoHs.1 [Benjamia West,] LXV.— THE ROYAL ACADEMY. No. II. TttE death of Reynolds was followed by the election of West to the P.esidential chair ; and, no doubt, the enthusiastic painter beheld in the honour only another evidence of the truth of the supernatural influences which he conceived had shaped out his career. And there was much in that career to excuse such notions. His birth had been prematurely brought on during a field-preaching scene in Spring field, Philadelphia ; he began to draw, and to exhibit indications of talent in his productions, without having seen painters, or paintings, or even prints ; he had received his first lesson in the art of preparing his colours from some wandering Red Indians ; above all, for him and him alone had the society to which he be longed, the Quakers — a society not remarkable for the ease with which they can be induced to give up any of the tenets of their belief — been induced to make a great relaxation, we might almost say renunciation, of one of their cherished principles. There are foAV things more interesting in the history of Art than the memorable- meeting of the Society to consider what should be determined upon respecting the boyish artist whose praises were in every one's mouth. Deeply, Ave may be sure, had the matter been pondered over before the meeting. Whether rightly or Arrongly, they believed the future greatness of the subject of their thoughts was in their hands ; yet that greatness could only be developed in & shape hostile- *o all their previous notions of man's duty. However, they met, and John Williamson (the proceedings of that day have made it an honoured name) first spoke. " To John West and Sarah Pearson," said he, "a man-child hath been born, on whom God hath conferred some remarkable gifts of mind ; and you have all heard that, by something amounting to inspiration, the youth hath been induced to study the art of painting. It is true that our tenets refuse to own the utility of that art to mankind; but it seemeth to me that Ave have considered the matter too nicely. Gcd has bestowed on this youth a genius foi i''^> — shall Ave question his wisdom ? Can we believe that he gives such rare giftt VOL. Hi. Q 226 LONDON. but for a wise and good purpose ? I see the Divine hand in this. We shall do well to sanction the art and encourage this youth." The voice of nature, thus eloquentiy expressed, found a response in every heart. Young Wc?* was called in ; and AvIth his father on one side, his mother on the other, and the whole com munity around, Williamson again spoke — " Painting has been hitherto employed to embellish life, to preserve voluptuous images, and add to the sensual gratifi cations of man. For this we classed it among vain and merely ornamental things, and excluded it from amongst us. But this is not the principle, but the mis- employment, of painting. In Avise and in pure hands it rises in the scale of moral excellence, and displays a loftiness of sentiment and a devout dignity worthy of the contemplation of Christians. I think genius is given by God for some high purpose. What the purpose is let us not inquire — It Avill be manifest in his own good time and Avay. He hath in this remote Avilderness endowed Avith the rich gifts of a superior spirit this youth, who has uoav our consent to cultivate his talents for art. May it be demonstrated in his life and Avorks that the gifts of God have not been bestoAved in vain ; nor the motives of the beneficent inspiration, AvhIch induces us to suspend the operation of our tenets, prove barren of religious or moral effect !" Excellent John Williamson ! surely thou Avert born to be a painter, nay, the president of an academy ! Sir Joshua himself never laid down a nobler principle than is here inculcated as to the true value and uses of the art. At tho close of this address, the Avomen rose and kissed young West, and the men successively laid their hands on his head. It Is true that, on reading the account of this scene, one instinctively seems to regret that the Avhole does not belong to a page of the life of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo ; yet, Avhilst it will hardly be denied that the painter of the ' Death of Wolfe,' and ' Death on the Pale Horse,' Avas a great man, still less is it questionable that West Avas a very good man : his life Avas simplicity and purity itself. At the time of his elevation to the chair of the Academy there Avas but one man Avho might have successfully entered the field as a competitor — Barry, then Professor of Painting, and Avho had but lately completed his extraordinary works in the rooms of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi, But Barry had never found the art of mingling among his brothers of the Academy Avith due temper and discretion — the stuff of whieh the outer man at least of presidents must be made ; from Reynolds doAvnwards he Avas ever en gaged in broils with some of them. These, as we shall hereafter see, Avere to bring his connection Avith the Academy to an unhappy conclusion. In addition to his personal requisites, his high talent, and his general devotion to the interest of the art. West had established a ncAv claim to respect and admiration. In the ' Death of Wolfe' he had committed a daring innovation. In our previous historical pictures. Englishmen, absurdly enough, never appeared as Englishmen, but as Greeks and Romans, for the costume of those countries alone Avas admissible according to the existing canons of criticism. West's oAvn account of this innova tion, as related in Gait's ' Life,' is a pleasant and instructive passage, and ex hibits his predecessor, Reynolds, in a ucav light. " When it Avas understood," says West, " that I intended to paint the characters as they had actually ap peared on the scene, tl-:e ..A ¦•ii'Vshop of York called on Reynolds, and asked his opinion : they I oth came to k.^ house to dissuade me from running so great a risk. Reynolds began a very ingenious and eloquent dissertation on the state ol THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 227 the pubhc taste in this country, and the danger Avhich every innovation incurred of contempt and ridicule, and concluded by urging me earnestly to adopt the costume of antiquity, as more becoming the greatness of my subject than the modern garb of European Avarriors. I ansAvered that the event to be comme morated happened in the year 1758, in a region of the Avorld unknoAvn to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period Avhen no warriors Avho Avore such costume existed. The subject I have to represent is a great battle fought and Avon ; and the same truth Avhich gives laAV to the historian should rule the painter. If, instead of the facts of the action, I introduce fiction, hoAV shall I be understood by posterity ? The classic dress is certainly picturesque, but by using it I shall lose in sentiment what I gain in external grace, I Avant to mark the place, the time, and the people ; and to do this I must abide by truth. They Avent aAvay then, and returned again Avhen I had the painting finished, Reynolds seated himself before the picture, examined it Avith deep and minute attention for half an hour ; then, rising, said to Drummond, " West has conquered — he has treated his subject as it ought to be treated : I retract my objections. I foresee that this picture Avill not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolu tion in art," George III, seems to have never faltered in his approbation of West but in this instance, where it Avas both deserved and desirable : he alloAved the picture to be sold to Lord Grosvenor, to his great vexation Avhen he disco vered its value. We may be sure that West's evil genius, Peter Pindar, did not remain silent under such a state of things as the painter's accession to the presidency ; but in 1 794, or only tAvo years after that event, a noAV satirist entered the field, Avho seems even to have made a greater sensation than Peter himself. This was Williams, better knoAvn by his assumed appellation of Antony Pasquin, Avho, in what he called ' A Liberal Critique on the Exhibition for 1794,' poured out the vials of his Avrath on sundry of the Academicians, Of Opie, Avho, he acknoAV- ledges, " is certainly distinguished from the daubing herd by some genius," he says, " an indifferent spectator Avould be led to imagine that he Avas concerned in a coarse-Avoollen manufactory, as he seizes all possible occasions to array his per sonages in that species of apparel, from an emperor to a mendicant." Amongst other attacks upon West, he says, " The identity of Mr. West's figures is so con tinually ajjparent, that I believe he has a few favourite domestics Avho are the saints and demons of his necessities." Rigaud's ' Exposing of Moses,' it seems, is an exposure of the artist. Sir Francis Bourgeois's discovery, that brickdust is the primary tint in colours, receives due notice ; and Westall's ' Portrait of a Young Gentleman' is "as puerile as the subject," The latter artist's more ambi tious picture of 'Minerva, painted for the Council Chamber of the City of London,' comes in for especial ridicule and reprobation. Thcjiivinity, it appears, " is all legs and thighs, like the late Sir Thomas Robinson." LaAvrence, then very young, but at the same time an Academician (Avho had been forced upon the Academy by the King, in defiance of their laAvs, before the proper age, and made a kind of supplementary associate), and the Court portrait-painter, receives a severe castigation. Lawrence's ' Portrait of a Gentleman,' Avhich filled Antony Avith the idea of an irascible pedagogue explaining Euclid to a dunce, forms tho text for the folloAving remarks : — " Mr. Lawrence began his professional career q2 228 LONDON. upon a false and delusive principle. His portraits were delicate, but not true ; and attractive, but not admirable ; and because he met the approbation of a few fashionable spinsters (which, it must be admitted, is a sort of inducement very intoxicating to a young mind), vainly imagined that his labours were perfect." As Wolcot could appreciate the dawning genius of Wilkie, whom he calls an honour to his nation, and of Turner, so does his rival, Williams, show his admira tion for Stothard, and other young artists, whom the voice of posterity has sig nalized as truly excellent. The West dynasty proved in many respects a troubled one. The Academicians quarrelled among themselves, and occasionally with their President, In 1793 the Rev. Mr. Bromley published the first volume of ' A History of the Fine Arts ;' and, on the motion of the President, the Academy subscribed for a copy. On reading the volume, the Academicians found various works by Reynolds and Fuseli noticed Avith reprobation ; and, on the other hand, unqualified praise was bestowed on West's paintings. This might have passed unnoticed, but for the circumstance that this very Mr. Bromley had, as was well known, assisted West in the preparation of his lectures. A not unnatural suspicion now entered their minds that West was in some degree cognisant of these attacks, which in the case of Fuseli, Avho was living, were deemed worse than ill-judged. Fuseli criticised the book generally in a journal of the day, and so completely convicted the author of unfitness for his task, that the Academicians determined not to receive the second volume, which, however, was never published. Fuseli, indeed, was not the safest man in the world to attack. Many a stinging sarcasm of his yet lives in connexion with the memory of men Avho had offended him. Northcote seems to have been the only man in the Academy who could cope with the Swiss painter and Lavater's early friend ; and numerous are the records of their intellectual fences. When the former exhibited his ' Judgment of Solomon,' Fuseli came to look at it. "How do you like it?" said Northcote. "Much," was the reply. " The action suits the word : Solomon holds out his fingers like a pair of open scissors at the child, and says, ' Cut it.' I like it much " Some time after, Fuseli had occasion to put a similar query to Northcote respecting his picture of ' Hercules drawing his arrow at Pluto.' " How do you like it ?" said Fuseli. " Much," was the ready answer. " It is clever, very clever, but he'll never hit him." Fuseli appears to have felt the truth of the criticism; for he ran off for his brush, muttering, " Hit him ! — by Jupiter, but he shall hit him !" Northcote, as well as Opie, had been aided by Fuseli in obtaining admission into the Aca demy ; and when the latter desired some office, he anticipated their assistance in return. They voted against him, and went the next morning to apologise. He saw them coming, ran to meet them, and hastily cried out, " Come in, come in, for the love of heaven come in, else you will ruin me entirely." "How so?" inquired Opie. " Marry thus : my neighbours over the way will see you, and say, ' Fuseli's done ; for there 's a bum-bailiff (here he looked at Opie) going to seize his person, and a little Jew broker (glancing at Northcote) going to take his furniture.'" Nollekens' avarice formed a favourite subject for Fuseli's wit. They were once dining AvIth Mr. Coutts, the banker, when Mrs. Coutts, dressed like Morgiana (in the Forty Thieves), came dancing in, and presented her dag.ger at each person in succession. As she stood before Nollekens, Fuseli cried out. THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 229 "Strike, strike, there's no fear: Nolly was never known to bleed!" When Fuseli got too much roused, and it was scarcely prudent to give vent to all he had to say, he relieved himself in some language unknown to his brother Acade micians. " It is a pleasant thing, and advantageous," said he, during one of the Academy squabbles, " to be learned. I can speak Greek, Latin, French, English, German, Danish, Dutch, and Spanish ; and so let my folly or my fury get vent through eight different avenues." But all the quarrels that ever disturbed the Academy were light to that in which Barry was the chief actor. This painter, Avhom Mr. Cunningham calls " the greatest enthusiast In art which this country ever produced," was an Irishman, and his first important work was exhibited at Dublin, when he was only a very young man. It was a picture alike noticeable for the novelty of the conception and the excellence Avith AvhIch it had been developed. The subject was a tradition of the Irish Church, running something to the following effect : — St. Patrick, it appears, by one of his dis courses, succeeded in converting the barbarian King of Cashel, who demanded immediate baptism. Hastening with pious zeal to perform the act, St. Patrick struck his iron-shod crozier into the ground, and; in so doing unwittingly struck it through the King's foot. So rapt, however, was the King in his new faith, that believing it to be a part of the ceremony, he bore the torture without the slightest manifestation of uneasiness, and was thus baptized. No sooner was the picture looked on than it was admired. "Who was the painter?" asked every one. Barry, a countryman, young, friendless, and not too well clad, came forward with feelings of the deepest emotion to declare himself, when, to his astonishment, no one would believe him, and he hurried out of the room to conceal the sudden • revulsion of his feelings. But Burke was there — the man who seems never to have beheld genius in any shape struggling without taking it at once to his heart, his purse, his home : — ^Burke, who saved Crabbe from the depths of a despair that we shudder to contemplate, now followed the young artist, com mended his work, advised with him as to his future studies, and ultimately sent him to Rome, paying the entire expenses of the expedition. From that time his rise was rapid, though no doubt partially checked by the infirmity of temper to which through life he was a victim. At Rome he was constantly quarrelling with his brother artists, or with the connoisseurs of the place, or Avith picture- dealers. After five years' absence he returned to Britain, and produced his ' Venus rising from the Sea,' an exquisite picture, but one that failed to arouse any warm admiration in the public mind. It is probable there was a re- action at this period against the classicalities which Verrio and La Guerre had spread along every wall, and hung upon every roof. Other pictures of a similar kind followed, and, as far as the million were concerned, Avith a like result. But Barry had devoted his life to what he esteemed the loftiest school of painting, and, single-handed, hoped gradually to paint the nation into his own views-; and, not content with that influence, endeavoured also to sway it by his writings. His ' Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstruction to the Progress of Art in England,' is at once a monument of his extensive knowledge and lofty enthu siasm, and of his contempt for many of his contemporaries and academic asso ciates. Such direct attacks added new enemies to those whom his personal manners had alienated. His life, indeed, may be said to have been in a great 230 LONDON. measure passed between tAvo antagonist principles — the one ever carrying his thoughts upAvard into the serenest atmosphere of art, making him endure every kind of personal privation for the glorious privilege, as he esteemed it, of being independent ; — the other, chaining him doAvn to the pettiest broils and jealousies that ever degraded or made miserable a fine nature. Even Burke became in a measure estranged, partially perhaps on account of Barry's inexcusable attacks on Reynolds. Yet there Avas too much nobility in Barry's soul for Burke to break off their long and intimate connexion. And, occasionally forgetting every thing but the true friend and generous patron before him, and the art they both loved, Barry's conduct Avould give fresh cause of regret at the injury done to his genius by his unhappy disposition. A delightful story is told of one of these meetings. Burke had heard of Barry's eccentric domestic habits : he kept no servant; and Avhen some one had once advised him to take a better house, dress more neatly, hire a domestic, and altogether improve the appearance and conduct of his establishment, he answered, " The pride of honesty protests against such a rash speculation." The statesman one day, desiring to see Barry's domestic arrangements, asked himself to dinner. A man less proud would have avoided the exposure, or at least have hesitated. Barry said, cheerfully, " Sir, you knoAV I live alone — but if you avIU come and help me to eat a steak, I shall have It tender and hot, and from the most classic market in London — that of Oxford." At No. 36, Castle Street, on the day and hour named, Burke accordingly ap peared, and Avas received by his host, Avho conducted him into the carpenter's shop AvhIch he had transformed into his painting-room. Along the Avails hung the sketches of his great paintings at the Adelphi. Old straining-frames, sketches, a printing-press, with Avhich he printed AvIth his oavu hand the plates engraved from the pictures just mentioned, formed the other chief contents of the place. The AvIndows were mostly broken or cracked, and the tiled roof shoAved the sky through many a crevice. There Avere tAVO old chairs and a single deal table. The fire, hoAv'ever, Avas bright, and Barry cordial. Presently a pair of tongs are put into Burke's hands, AvIth the remark, "Be useful, my dear friend, and look to the steaks till I fetch the porter." The statesman got on admirably Avith his task, and by the time Barry returned the steak Avas done to a turn. " What a misfortune," exclaimed Barry, as he entered ; " the Avind carried away the fine foaming top as I crossed Titchfield Street." The friends then sat down to the feast — anecdote and criticism floAved freely ; the stars Avere propitious, no cloud ruffled the painter s mind, and, altogether, Burke used to say he had never spent a happier evening. It Avas In this house that Barry Avas robbed of 400/., to the astonishment of everybody, Avho did not think the painter had been so rich. But the most extra ordinary part of this affair Avas Barry's notion of the thieves. In a formal pla card, he attributed his loss direct, and Avithout any circumlocution, to his own brother Academicians ! The memory of this insult Avas no doubt cherished by the Academy, to be signally punished at a more favourable opportunity. This Avas soon afforded. Plunging once more into literary controversy, Barry issued his memorable ' Letter to the Dilettanti Society,' in Avhich he attacked the Aca demy in no measured terms. He spoke of its private combinations and jea lousies—of the misuse of its funds — and advised that in all cases of appeal t THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 231 the body, the honesty of every individual member's vote should be tested by oath. This letter was read at the Academy by one of the members— Farington ; two others — Dance and Daniell — then enlightened the meeting on the subject of Barry's personal condud; and the result was, a determination to draAV up a series of charges for the judgment of the Council. Barry Avas accordingly ac cused ..of abusive digressions in his lectures ; of teaching the students habits of insubordination, and countenancing them in licentious and disorderly conduct; of accusing the Academy of having voted 16,000/. in pensions among themselves, Avhich should have been expended for the benefit of the students; lastly, of having spoken improperly of the President (West). Many may think these matters deserving serious notice on the part of the Academy ; but no one, Ave think, can defend the Avay in Avhicli they did notice them. They sent no copy of the charges to Barry ; they called for no explanation or defence, but, determining the accusations to be just, at once expelled him. Barry received a pittance of some 30/. a-year from the Academy as professor ; and to the man Avho for the Avhole of the great Avorks of a lifetime received probably less than a modern fashionable portrait-painter will make in a single year, even this trifle Avas of importance : of course he lost it with his seat. A subscription Avas noAV commenced by various friends, and 1000/. raised to purchase an annuity. But he died before it could be of any service ; and in a manner that seems to tell but too plainly of mental suffering. During an attack of fever he locked himself in for forty hours Avith out medical assistance ; and after that nothing could save him. He died on tho 22nd of February, 1806. The President, West, some years before this period, had lost his royal patron, not by death, but by the illness that darkened so many of the later years of the monarch's life. The Government Avould not alloAV him. to finish the Avoiks ho had in hand, and having, Avhilst thus out of favour, gone over to France, ho fancied on his return that the admiration he had expressed for Napoleon had made the countenances of the great men about court chillier than ever. But, Avorse than all, the Academy Avas unmanageable. Where the blame rests It is impossible to say, as the particulars of these matters are never fully made public ; but all at once West imitated Reynolds, and resigned. He then made another journey to Paris, Avhere, as before, he Avas received Avith great distinc tion, and certainljf the amiable painter's head Avas a little turned at the honour paid him. To no other cause can Ave attribute that most exquisite piece of simple conceit he has recorded of himself in connexion with that visit. He says, " Wherever I Avent men looked at me, and jninisters and people of influence in the state were constantly in my company. I Avas one day at the Louvre — all eyes were upon me ; and I could not help observing to Charles Fox, who hap pened to be walking with me, hoAv strong Avas the love of art, and admiration of its professors, -in France." The Academy, in the mean time, had put Wyatt, the court architect, in the chair ; but West soon heard that he Avas to be once more a prophet in his oavu country^ — that the Academicians had grown tired of the ncAV rule — albeit their oAvn choice— and consequently they had displaced him, and restored West by a vote that Avas unanimous, Avith a single exception. The ex ception Avas certainly a bitter drop in the cup of sAveetness. One member — it is supposed Fuseli, and it Avas like him — put in the name of Mrs. Mary Moser 232 LONDON. for the Presidency (she was a member) ; thereby intimating apparently that an old lady was not an unfit competitor with the late President. From this time littie occurred to disturb the even tenor of his way. He died in 1820. The history of the connexion of the new President, Lawrence, with the Aca demy, which we have before incidentally noticed, is curious, and deserves a fetv words of remark, were it only from the circumstance that Wolcot appears among the historians. When Lawrence first appeared in the Academy it was as a stu dent. He was then about eighteen years old. Mr. Howard, the Secretary of the Academy, states * that his " proficiency in drawing, even at that time, was such as to leave all his competitors in the antique school far behind him. His personal attractions were as remarkable as his talent : altogether he excited a great sensation, and seemed to the admiring students as nothing less than a young Raphael suddenly dropped down among them. He was very handsome ; and his chestnut locks flowing on his shoulders gave him a romantic appearance." Although he thus entered the Academy under the most favourable auspices, the Academicians were hardly prepared to allow him to take his seat among them selves within three years afterwards ; so, when, in accordance with the desire ol the King, he was proposed as a supplementary Associate (Associate he could not be by the rules till he was twenty-four), they rejected him by a vote of sixteen to three, though Reynolds and West were among the minority. Peter Pindar, in a note, says he " has some reason to imagine that a part of the academic rebellion was meant to attack the President" — Reynolds. This was glorious fun for Peter, who, in a fervour of loyal indignation, bursts out thus : — " Am I awake, or dreaming, O ye gods ? Alas, in waking's favour lie the odds. The devil it is ! Ah, me, 'tis really so ! How, Sirs ? on Majesty's proud corns to tread. Messieurs Academicians, when you're dead. Where can your Impudences hope to go ?" And then follows a series of Odes full of all the peculiar characteristics of the writer. Lawrence's friends were not, however, deterred, but at the next vacancy again proposed him, and succeeded in having him as it were stuck to the Aca- 1/ rSir Thomas Lawrence.] * Williamii'a * Life of Lawrence,' voL i. p. THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 233 demy for a time, in a position that no one before or since has occupied: in 1791 the Academicians elected him supplemental Associate. The year after he was appointed to the office of painter in ordinary to the King, on the death of Rey nolds, being then but in his twenty-second year. It was well for Lawrence that his abilities were equal to the demand thus prematurely made upon them ; for there is a very natural jealousy against those Avho receive such marked favours, almost at the commencement of their career, as are more usually bestowed at a period nearer their termination, LaAvrence had also formidable competitors in men like Opie, Beechey, and Hoppner ; with the last in particular he may be said to have kept up a continual struggle of generous emulation, Avhich Avas only ended by Hoppner's death. As during Reynolds's lifetime there had been a Rej'uolds faction and a Romney faction, and men like LordErsklne made a boast of belonging to the latter, who was never connected Avith the Academy, so with him who was destined to occupy Sir Joshua Reynolds's chair, and Hoppner : each had his respective faction, and, as In the great political divisions of the day, the King was at the head of the one, and the Prince of Wales (George IV.) the other. On the death of Hoppner, the Regent gradually transferred his favours to Lawrence ; and it was on his return from the continent, where he had been to execute a magnificent commission received from the Regent, to paint the portraits of the great personages assembled at the congress of sovereigns at Aix-la Chapelle, subsequently to the fall of Napoleon, that he received simulta neously news of the death of West, and his own election as President. In the period of his rule there is nothing, Ave believe, requiring particular notice : he died in 1830, and was succeeded by Sir Martin Archer Shee, the present head of the Academy. Sir Godfrey Kneller, one day explaining the cause of his preference for " face- painting," as Barry contemptuously called it, observed, " Painters of history make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live." The painters of the present day seem very much of Kneller's opinion, if we may judge from the Exhibition uoav before us, as, passing through the great portico of the National Gallery, Ave ascend the staircase into the chief rooms of the Academy. Of the fourteen hundred and odd works contained in the Exhibition of the present year, a single glance will show the immense proportion portraits and busts bear to all other subjects. And In walking through the crowded place, one is forcibly struck with the eloquent com plaint of Opie, in connexion with the same point : — " So habituated," says he, " are the people of this country to the sight of portraiture only, that they can scarcely as yet consider painting in any other light : they will hardly admire a landscape that is not a view of a particular place, nor a history unless composed of likenesses of the persons represented, and are apt to be staggered, confounded, and wholly unprepared to follow such vigorous flights of imagination as Avould — as will — be felt and applauded AvIth enthusiasm in a more advanced and liberal stage of criticism. In our exhibitions, Avhich often display extraordinary powers Avasted on worthless subjects, one's ear is pained, one's very soul is rent, with hearing crowd after crowd sweeping round, and, instead of discussing the merits 234 LONDON. of the different works on vioAV, as to conception, composition, and execution, all reiterating the same dull and tasteless questions — Who is that ? And is it like ?"* The evil, it is to be hoped, Avill ultimately Avork its oavu cure. When thoroughly Aveary of the eternal roAvs effaces of others, Ave may begin to thlnli a little less of the exhibition of our oavu. The use of the original apartments of the Academy in Somerset House Avas granted, as Ave have seen, by George III. : it may be useful to add a foAV Avords here on its present position in Trafalgar Square. On the death of George III., his son and successor continued the royal patronage of the institution, as did also William IV. In 1834 a proposal Avas made to the latter monarch to transfer the Academy from Somerset House to Trafalgar Square, where it Avas intended to erect a building large enough for a National Gallery and the Academy under the same roof. The change Avas agreed to ; and consequently the Academy enjoys its present accommodations by the same right, Avhatever that might be, which they had in their first locality, Somerset House. Their expectations of increased faci lities for the business of the institution are said to have been hardly fulfilled : certain it is that serious disadvantages arise from the want of larger space. The sculpture -room will occur to every one ; but that is not the kind of evil Ave are nere referring to, but the shutting up of the principal schools during the whole period of the exhibition. The school for draAving from the antique is held In that sculpture-room, and the school for painting in the West room, the chief of the rooms appropriated for exhibition ; so that the school for drawing from the living model is the only one of the Academic schools not interrupted yearly for a consi derable time. As the chief feature and the great value of the Royal Academy is the schools, Ave must notice them someAvhat at length. The admission arrangements are on the broadest principle : any person may become a student, whether he intend to pursue the study as his profession, or merely for his occasional enjoyment. On applying for admission he receives a printed form to be filled up, Avhich explains the only qualifications required— that -he be of good character, and that he can send a draAving of some talent, AvIth vouchers of It being entirely his own production. If he be a draughtsman, the specimen he sends must be a chalk draAving of an entire naked figure from the antique ; if a sculptor, a model of a similar description ; and if an architect, he must send a plan, elevation, and section of an original design for some building, and an individual ornament for details. The council, which consists of nine mem bers, including the president, and is the executive of the Society, examine this specimen, and, if they approve of it, the applicant is admitted for three months as a probationer. During that time he must produce fresh AVorks before the eyes of the officers ; and if these exhibit a decided improvement, he Is then enrolled among the list of students, and for ten years enjoys all the privileo-es the Aca demy can give him— tuition in the different schools, the use of the library, attendance on the lectures, &c. Numerous prizes are also given : as several of silver annually, and one of gold for each school biennially. It is somewhat curious that of all the living members of the .Academy there are not perhaps above four or five who have obtained the gold medal : nor is the number very numerous, we oelieve, of those who can claim the honours of the silver one. A still more solid * From Opie's first lecture to tlie Academy. THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 235 rcAvard may foUoAV the attainment of the gold medal. Every three years the council sends a student of this rank to Rome, paying all the expenses of the journey both Avays, and alloAving an annuity of 100/. The expense hitherto seems to have been more than proportionate to the good produced. The students are young, and Avhen they reach Rome they are left to shape out their oAvn plans ; the consequence too often is that false styles of art come to be admired and imitated, and the young man returns, to all valuable purposes. Averse, because more sophis ticated, than he Avent. It is true that he must send at the end of the second year a specimen of his progress ; but that can only shoAv the evil when existing, not act as a preventive. Tavo names only of any eminence recur to us in connection Avith these Italian visits from the Academy, Rossi and Banks, The latter received the gold medal in. 1 770; and in the foUoAving year exhibited his group of Mer cury, Argus, audio, Avhen the council unanimously voted that he should be sent to Rome, He was the first student of the Academy Avhom Reynolds took any pride in, or, in other Avords, Avho came up to the painter's lofty standard. He said Banks's " mind Avas ever dAvelling on subjects Avorthy of an ancient Greek." The school for drawing from the life model is held in the interior of the dome of the edifice, a curious, unornamented, dingy-looking place, lighted by a single Avindow in the side wall, Avhich throws a tolerably strong light upon a raised plat form with a high back, covered with crimson, on which the person Avho acts as the model is placed. A double roAV of plain seats form an oval round the platform, on Avhich about forty students find accommodation. A foAv casts scattered about the Avails complete the furniture of the room. The general management of the schools is vested in the Keeper, who, hoAvever, personally attends only to the antique school ; the others being directed by visitors, Avho are certain of the Academicians annually chosen. Among the past Keepers of the Academy, Fuseli's is a memorable name. Numerous are the jokes and sarcasms of the eminent Swiss yet current among the students : the story of the formidable nail he used to cherish expressly for the work of pointing out hoAV bad Avas that outline, or hoAv easily this might be remedied, and Avhich seldom failed to impress the lesson on the memory in the shape of a draAving cut through in the most remorseless fashion, yet lives to delight the noAV-comer, even Avhilst he is shuddering at the thought of the bare possibility of his becoming himself a similar victim. One day, during Fuseli's absence, the students Avere more than usually riotous, and the noise reached him in a distant part of the building. He asked one of the porters Avhat was the matter. "It is only those felloAvs, the stu dents, sir," Avas the ansAver. " FelloAvs 1" exclaimed Fuseli ; " I Avould have you to knoAV, sir, that those fellows may one day become Academicians !" The noise increasing, he suddenly burst in upon them and told them Avith an oath they Avere a set of Avild beasts. A student of the name of Munro boAved, and remarked, " And Fuseli is our Keeper." There Avas no resisting this. Fuseli retired smiling, and muttering to himself, " The fellows are growing AvItty." A student on some occasion as he Avas passing held up his draAving to Fuseli for admiration, remarking, " Here, sir, I have finished it Avithout using a crumb of bread." " All the Avorsc for your draAving," Avas the ansAver : " buy a tAVopenny loaf and rub it out." Some painter, not approving of the progress of the pupils under Fuseli, and Avho had himself studied under Keeper Wilton, said to him, " The 236 LONDON. students, sir, don't draw so well now as they did under Joe Wilton." " Vef true," was the reply and explanation ; " anybody may draw here, let them draw ever so bad— yow may draw here if you please." A sculptor, and we presume a student, one day working away at the old emblem of eternity, a serpent with it» tail in its mouth, Fuseli told him it would not do : " You must have something new," said he. "How shall I find something new"' demanded the sculptor, " Oh, nothing so easy ; I'll help you to it. When I went away to Rome I left two fat men cutting fat bacon in St. Martin's Lane : in ten years time I returned, and found the two fat men cutting fat bacon still : twenty years more have passed, and there the two fat fellows cut the fat flitches the same as ever. Carve them ! If they look not like an image of eternity, I wot not what does." Descending from the dome, we pass into the Hall of Casts, now unusually full, from the circumstance of those which are usually in the Antique school (sculp ture-room) being placed here during the Exhibition. Many of these beautiful Avorks are a portion of the gift of George IV., who, having procured from Rome, through the intervention of Canova, a highly valuable collection of Casts from the finest known antiques, gave the whole to the Academy. All those beautiful or sublime forms of antiquity, Avhich have ever haunted the dreams of the young painter or sculptor, or made him, awaking, sigh to think of their unapproachable excellence, are here, and in the great entrance hall of the build ing, congregated together — the exact prototypes of their respective originals. The different figures composing the wonderful group of the Niobe and her daughters ; the graceful Mercury of the Vatican ; Fauns with their cymbals ; Apollos and Venuses, in which the genius of different artists and periods have embodied their ideal of the human form ; the Egyptian Jupiter, and the Olym pian; Apollo, and all the Muses"; the Laocoon ; the Fighting and Dying Warrior, or gladiator, as commonly but incorrectly called, &c. &c., are all here, the concen trated genius of the most Avonderful people the Avorld has ever seen. Here, too, is that maimed and mutilated remnant of a statue, Theseus, which caused so much discussion before a committee of the House of Commons in 1816 (on the value of the Elgin Marbles), which Lawrence and other distinguished artists did not hesitate to place in rank even before the Apollo Belvidere ; and, considering the character of some of the committees of the House that had sat upon such questions, it required a little determination to speak thus of a fragment which some of the members probably, of their own unassisted j udgment, would have thought a mere misshapen piece of stone. The committee of 1S05, for instance, made an especial point of noticing that the Townley Marbles Avere in excellent condition, Avith the surface perfect ; and, where injured, they were generally well restored, and per fectly adapted for the decoration, and almost for the ornamental furniture, of a private house. On reading this we may observe, with Mr. Williams,* from whom we have borroAved the passage, " Let no man after this discredit the Royal saying, ' I always buy Mr. 's paintings, they are so beautifully shiny, and look as smooth as glass.' " Leaving the Hall, we cross the eastern passage or thoroughfare to the Library and Council-Room. In the former the centre of the ceiling is divided into com partments, occupied by paintings from the hand of the lady Academician, ' Life of Lawrence. THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 237 Angelica Kauffman. Figures typical of the arts form the subjects, which were no doubt painted at the time of the removal of the Academy from St. Martin's Lane to Somerset House, when Sir Joshua and the chief Academicians aided in. the adornment of their new abode. The books are in wainscot cases, closely covered in with crimson silk, which gives the apartment a warm, rich aspect. The Library uoav comprises all the best works on art, a considerable num ber of prints, and a collection, of considerable value, of engravings of the Italian school from the earliest period, purchased from George Cumberland, who formed it. Busts ornament the top of the shelves, and over the fireplace is a cast of a Holy Family by Michael Angelo. We must not omit to add, before we leave the Library, that Wilson was saved perhaps from actual destitution, during some of the later years of his life, by the office of Librarian, which was given to him by the Academy. Let us now step from the Library into the Council-Room. This is an apart ment small in size for %uch a body as the Academy, but rich in its works of art, which are chiefly the diploma pictures and statuary : that is, the works given by the Academicians on their admission, each person being expected to present one work from his own hand. The ceiling is very elegantly arranged in compart ments, filled with paintings by West, the centre representing the Graces un veiling Nature, and the surrounding pictures figures typical of the elements. First in size, in splendour, and in value, along the walls, we behold Sir Joshua's full-length portrait of George IIL, seated on the throne, and Avearing his kingly robes. The author of the ' Nightmare,' Fuseli, has left here one of his most favourite works — ' Thor battering the serpent of Midgard in the boat of Hymer the giant' — a subject borroAved from the Scandinavian mythology, which had so many attractions for Fuseli's imaginative, romantic, and most daring genius. His love for. the terrific was pleasantly satirised by his brother Academicians, who called him " Painter in ordinary to the Devil !" But the Academy has had foAv greater men — few men more generally great — than Fuseli. His lectures are ad mirable, enforcing in pregnant language the most pregnant truths. As Avith Reynolds, Michael Angelo is the great god of his idolatry ; and he used often to tell his friends how he had been accustomed to lie on his back on the pavement of the Sistine Chapel for hours together, day after day, and week after week, in tently wrapped in the grandeur, of that matchless ceiling ; and it is not difficult to trace in Fuseli's productions something more than a spark of the sublime genius of the Florentine. His paintings for the Shakspere Gallery, formed under the patronage of the enlightened and generous Boydell, and the series for the Milton Gallery, which was entirely his own production, testify a mind of the very highest order, though not perhaps always under the best regulation. Mr. Cunningham says of him, very happily, " Out of the seventy exhibited paintings on which he reposed his hope of fame, not one can be called commonplace : they are all poetical in their nature, and as poetically treated. Some twenty of these alarm, startle, and displease; twenty more may come within the limits of common com prehension ; the third twenty are such as foAV men could produce ; while the^ re maining ten are equal in conceptioii to anything that genius has hitherto produced, and second only in their execution to the true and recognised masterpieces of 238 LONDON. art.""^ England may be proud of having fostered, and made, in every essential respect, her own, such a man as Fuseli. Passing over a variety of AVorks, all of greater or less interest and importance, such as ' A Rustic Girl' by LaAvrence, 'The Tribute Money' by Copley, ' A Shepherd Boy ' byWestall, 'Charity' by Stothard, ' Jael and Slsera' by Northcote, 'The Falling Giant' by Banks (a AVork of Avonderful poAver of expression), Ave pause a moment before the produc tions of the greatest of British sculptors, the ' Apollo and Marpessa,' and a cast of the shield of Achilles, by Flaxman. " If ever Purity visited the earth, she resided Avith John Flaxman," said one Avho knoAV him intimately ; and it is im possible to gaze on his Avorks without feeling some such truth, breathed, as it Avere, from out the marble. Sir Joshua's judgment was for once found tripping in Flaxman's case. As a student, he contended for the gold medal, which, how ever, Avas given to Englehart — a man now only remembered from that circum stance. Flaxman married early; and one day, shortly after, met Sir Joshua. " So, Flaxman, I am told you are married: if so, sir, you are ruined for an artist." Again Avas the President deceived: never Avas marriage more happy in all its consequences. We Avish avo could pause over some of the delightful domestic scenes recorded of this simple-hearted and lofty-minded paii\ Again we must hurry quickly by Baily's bust of Flaxman, that of West by the recently-deceased sculptor Chantrey, the ' Cupid and Psyche ' by Nollekens, ' Christ blessing Children ' by West, &c. Many other paintings are at present in the Exhibition Room, hidden behind the modern Avorks. Among these are a portrait of Hoppner by himself, Wilkie's picture of ' The Rat-Catchers ' (now invested with a more melancholy interest from the recent death of the great painter), Opie's ' Infancy and Age,' Raeburn's ' Boy and Rabbits,' &c. Ssc. There, too, is a portrait of that most delightful and most English of landscape-painters — that somewhat way ward, and occasionally gross, but ever humorous, Avitty, and delightful member of society — that enthusiastic artist and half-mad musician — Gainsborough. He appears to have painted portraits for the same reason that everybody else does — money ; landscapes because he loved them ; but he Avas a musician because he could not help it. Musicians and their instruments, of every kind and in every degree, he Avorshipped them all. His friend Jackson says, " He happened on a time to see a theorbo in a picture of Vandyke's; and concluded, because perhaps it Avas finely painted, that the theorbo must be a fine instrument. He recollected to have heard of a German professor ; and, ascending to his garret, found him dining on roasted apples, and smoking his pipe, Avith his theorbo beside him. ' I am come to buy your lute : name your price, and here's your money.' ' I can not sell my lute.' ' No, not for a guinea or tAvo ; but you must sell it, 1 tell you.' ' My lute is Avorth much money: it is Avorth ten guineas.' ' Ay ! that it is — see, here 's the money.' So saying, he took up the instrument, laid down the price, Avent half-Avay doAvn the stairs, and returned. ' I have done but half my errand. What is your lute Avorth if I have not your book?' 'What book, Master Gainsborough ? ' ' Why, the book of ai rs you have composed for the lute.' ' Ah, Sir, I can never part AvIth my book !' ' I'^h ! you can make another at any time ;— this is the book I mean : there 's ten guineas for it — so, once more, good day. * ' Biitisli Painters,' vol. ii. p. 346. THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 239 He went down a few steps, and returned again. ' What use is your book to me if I don't understand it ? And your lute: you may take it again if you Avon't teach me to play on it. Come home with me, and give me the first lesson.' ' I Avill come to-morroAV,' 'You must come noAv.' ' I must dress myself,' 'For AvhatJ You are the best figure I have seen to-day,' ' I must shave, sir,' ' I honour your beard!' ' I must, hoAvever, put on my Avig.' 'D — n your wig! Your cap and beard become you. Do you think. If Vandyke Avas to paint you, he'd let you be shaved?'" And so the poor German professor Avas hurried off. Smith, the Avriter of the ' Life of Nollekens,' one day found Gainsborough listen ing in speechless admiration, and Avith tears on his cheeks, to the playing of a first-rate violin- player — Colonel Hamilton, Suddenly the painter called out, " Go on, and I Avill give you the picture of the ' Boy and the Stile,' Avhich you have so often wished to purchase of me." He Avas as good as his word: the Colonel took away the picture Avith him in a coach. With a brief account of the constitution of the Academy Ave conclude. It con sists of forty Academicians — painters, sculptors, and architects — and tAventy Asso ciates, from Avhom the Academicians are elected by the Academicians. There are also six Associate EngraA'ers, Avho, hoAA-ever, must remain Associates— a feature in Avhich, it is said, Ave knoAV not Avith^vhat truth, this Academy stands alone in Europe, With the body of Academicians rests all the business of the Society, the Associates having no voice in any of its proceedings. The Associates arc chosen by the Academicians froin the great body of artists who exhibit. The chief officers of the Academy are tho President, the Keeper (who has the general care of the Institution), the Treasurer, Librarian, and Secretary. There are four Professors, who lecture respectively on painting, sculpture, architecture, and per spective, Avho t^re Academicians, and a Professor of Anatomy, Avho is not ahvays a member. The honorary members are a Professor of Ancient Literature, Professor of Ancient History, a Chaplain, of high rank in the Church (the Lord Bishop of London at present), and a Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, These ofEces have been held by Gibbon, Dr. Burney, Walter Scott, and other eminent men, in addition to those before mentioned — Johnson and Goldsmith, All elections require the Sovereign's signature to make them valid. The most onerous, in every sense, of the duties of the Academy is the choice of the works for the Annual Exhibition. Large as the number of pictures admitted always is, a great many are annually rejected; and sometimes not from Avant of merit on the part of the artist, but for Avant of space on the part of the Academy. The process of selection, as it has been described to us, forms a noticeable scene. Here sit the nine members of the Council behind a large table ; Avhilst there porters, Ssc, are hurrying to and fro, passing every single Avork in review before them. Is it sufficiently good ? — it is so marked, and placed in a certain part of the building. Is it only mid dling? — ^it goes, Avith a suitable mark, to another place, to take the chance of being included in the Exhibition, if the good ones should leave any room. Is it decidedly bad? — it is at once ordered to be returned to the artist. Where some seven or eight hundred artists are chosen, as in the present Exhibition, we may judge of the character of a great part of the rejected. Fuseli used to express, in his own satirical Avay, t'he anti-genial effect upon him of the greater part of 240 LONDON. the works that came pouring in. Standing one day at the receipt of pictures, he called out, "What pictures are come?" " Many— very many. Sir," was the reply. " I know that, but whose are they ?" " There are six landscapes. Sir, by Mr. " " Oh ! don't name him : I know whom you mean. Bring me my coat and umbrella, and I'll go and see them." Our space will not admit of our doing more than merely referring to the splendid dinner given annually by the Academicians, to which the most distin guished personages of our country — nobles, warriors, statesmen, poets, literary and professional men, &e., &e.— are alone invited. A brilliant assemblage ! and not unworthy of them the Institution — whatever its defects — ^they have met to do honour to. [Portico of the National Gallery. itstBtia Moute, 1657. From an anonymous print published at that data.] LXVL— LONDON ASTROLOGERS. Whether there be prophecies, avo are told they shall fail: but that has not yet •altogether come to pass in London ; for the Worshipful Company of Stationers, we believe, still continue to prophesy, even as they have been in the habit of doing for some- hundreds of years past. And if, according to the proverb, the honour they thereby acquire among their countrymen be but small, Ave do not- doubt that the profit is considerable. The prognostications Avhich they publish to the Avorld, in truth, Avere never so distinctly and all but avowedly their own as they have come to be in our day. They are uoav, if Ave mistake not, all put forth in the single name of Francis Moore — a most venerable name, we admit, but still for a long time past palpably nothing but a name ; for the largest bump, or bumpkin, of credulity among-the buyers and believers of their predictions cannot fancy that Francis, Avho has been star-gazing and almanac-making almost ever since almanacs or stars were heard of, can be still alive. It must be taken to be UOAV as good as confessed that the magni nominis umbra of Francis Moore is nothing more than the fan, as it Avere, behind Avhich the Worshipful Company half hide, half reveal themselves, in their astrological coquettings with the public — that they are their own dreamers of dreams and seers of visions — that all the signs and Avonders and mystic lore of their almanacs are to be considered as, if not the actual produce of their Avorshipful brains, at least manufactured under their direction and offered to purchasers on their sole responsibility — in short, as vol,. III. R \ 242 LONDON. theirs in the same sense in Avhich a butt of porter is said to be of Meux's or Per kins's broAving, or in Avhich any other commodity is held to be the handlAvork of the parties Avho give their names to it and profess themselves its makers. Now, this Avas not the case in former times. A hundred and fifty years ago the Stationers' Company probably dealt as largely in astrology as it does now ; but we question if it then published any astrological almanac in its own name, or even on its OAvn account. The prognostications of this date came forth to the Avorld, not as proceeding from the Company of Stationers, but from the writers of the several almanacs, Avho were all, with at most one or tAvo exceptions, men knoAvn to be actually in existence, putting their true names, like other authors, upon their title-pages, and, doubtless, like other authors too, vain enough of their performances, and not at all disposed to divide their glory Avith any other party. Even the almanacs Avhich the Company ultimately adopted and continued,^ as we may say, in their OAvn name, appear to have been all originally the speculations of their authors themselves. We have now before us a collection of the almanacs published by the Stationers' Company for the year 1 723 ; it probably Includes nearly the entire number: all of them are of the same small octavo size, and all profess to be printed for the Company, but yet for the most part by different printers, as if each author had got up hi« OAvn work even to the completion of the impression, and had then merely made an arrangement with the Company in regard to the formality of bringing It out. Here is the list : — ' Remarkable News from the Stars,' by William Andrews, Student in Astrology (printed bv A. Wilde) ; ' Merlinus Anglicus Junior, or the Starry Messenger,' by Henry Coley, Student in the Mathematics and the Celestial Sciences (printed by J. Read) ; ' A Diary, Astronomical, Astrological, Meteorological,' lij Job Gadbury, Student in Physic and Astrology (printed by T. W., that is, probably, Thomas Wood) ; ' Vox Stellarum,' by Francis Moore, Licensed Physician, and Student in Astro logy (printed by Tho. Wood) ; ' Merlinus Liberatus,' by John Partridge (printed by J. Roberts) ; ' Parker's Ephemeris ' (printed by J. Read) ; ' The Celestial Diary,' by Salem Pearse, Student in Physic and Celestial Science (printed by J. Dawkes) ; ' Apollo Anglicanus, the English Apollo,' by Richard Saunder, Student in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences (printed by A. Wilde) ; ' Great Britain's Diary, or the Union Almanac,' also by Saunder (printed by J. Roberts) ; ' Olympia Domata,' by John Wing, Philomath (printed by J. Dawkes) ; ' Wing,' by the same (printed by W. Pearson) ; and lastly, ' An Almanac after the Old and New Fashion,' by Poor Robin, Knight of the British Island, a Well-wisher to the Mathematics (printed by W. Bowyer), being the only one of the number to which a fictitious name is prefixed. The collection also contains ' The Woman's Almanac,' and 'An Ephemeris,' by George Kingsley, Gent. ; but there is no astrology in either of these. Such, then, were the London astrologers of the beginning of the last or the latter part of the preceding century. William Andrews, « Student in the mathe matics and astrology," published a littie volume entitied 'The Astrological Physician, showing how to find out the cause and nature of a disease according to the secret rules of the art of Astrology,' so long ago as in the time of the Pro tectorate—in the year 1656. It was ushered into the worid by a recommendation. LONDON ASTROLOGERS. 24o from the renowned William Lilly, of whom more presently, although the author, Lilly declares, Avas wholly unknown to him. AndrcAvs's astrology, indeed, seems to have been of a different temper from Lilly's — to have wanted the spirit of accommodation and compliance by AvhIch that ingenious practitioner commonly managed to see a sunny side of things for himself In all the contradictory aspects of that changing time. Andrews, in this little book, Avhich appears to have been his first publication, inveighs against the evil days for science and philosophy on AvhIch he had fallen, in a very bitter and contemptuous style. The manner, too, in Avhich he asserts the claims Of his art looks like sincerity. " It Avere needless here to shoAv," he observes in his preface, " what great necessity there is for every physician to be an astrologer, or to practise physic astrologically, in regard of the great influence and dominion, the planets and stars have on our bodies, seeing no rational man can deny or disprove the same, although many have en deavoured Avhat they can to contradict the truth." Alas for the shiftings of opinion, or of Avhat Ave mortals call truth andAvisdom! We have still our mystical physicians of sundry varieties — homoeopathic, hydropathic, mesmeric — but London, Ave fear, does not uoav contain one physician Avho professes to be an astrologer, and to practise physic astrologically. AndroAvs began his annual communication of ' Noavs from the Stars' at least as early as 1696; Avhether he Avas still alive Avhen the publication for the year 1723 appeared Ave do not know; he Avas undoubtedly dead and rotten long before the fact Avas admitted by the Worshipful Company of Stationers, Avho continued to publish a yearly pamphlet of celestial intelligence In his name till toAvards the close of the last century at least. The number before us contains nothing very remarkable or distinctive : its astrology Is very pious and very Protestant — professing the greatest veneration throughout for the glorious Trinity, the Church of England, and King George. Of neariy the same general character is Coley's ' Starry Messenger,' the earliest tidings brought by Avhich, that have come under our notice, are for the year 1681, and AvhIch the Company also continued to publish annually till the latter part of the last century. Coley, hoAvever, is rather more A'arled and sprightly than Andrews : he combines both the qualifications of the ancient Fates, Is poet as well as prophet, and ever and anon breaks out into song from the midst of his predictions and calculations. The ' Diary ' of Job Gadbury is also a most loyal aud religious publication. This-,. Ave suppose, was a son of the famous John Gadbury — " that monster of in gratitude, my former tailor, John Gadbury," as Lilly calls him. He is said to have been, in fact, originally a tailor; but, having come up to London from Oxford, his native place, he Avas taken into Lilly's service as a sort of assistant in carrying on his trade of interpreter of the heavens, of Avhich he Soon learned enough to hold himself entitled to set up for himself. This Avas the main part of the monstrous ingratitude AvhIch so excited Lilly's virtuous indignation. Naturally enough, too, Gadbury's astrology took a political complexion the opposite of Lilly's : as the stars AvIth Lilly Avere all Roundheads and Puritans, AvIth Gadbury they Avere all friends of the Cavalier cause, and in their theological predi lections either High Church or Roman Catholic. Gadbury's publications, all of an astrological character, Avere very numerous. The earliest Ave have found is dated in the year 1654. His Almanac, first entitled a 'Diary,' aflei-Avards an k2 244 LONDON. [John Gadbury, 1658.] • Ephemeris,' appears to have begun in 1664, and to have been continued till 1712, -for Avhich year it first appears under the name of Job Gadbury. Old John is said to have been lost at sea on a voyage to Jamaica. Among his publications 'Is a collected edition of ' The Works of the late most excellent Philosopher and Astronomer, Sir George Wharton, Baronet,' which he brought out in a thick octavo volume in 16S3. Wharton, Avho Avas aAvit and a versifier, as Avell as an astrologer, published his Almanacs in the reign of Charles I. under the anagram of ' Naworth,' and Avas the great authority in regard to the Intentions of the Fates Avith the Court party, as Lilly Avas Avith the adherents of the Parliament. The rivalry and opposition betAveen Wharton and Lilly commenced imme diately after the appearance of Lilly's first ptiblication, his ' Merlinus Anglicus Junior,' which came out in April, 1644, In his almanac for the next year Wharton noticed the new astrologer as " an impudent, senseless felloAV, and by name William Lilly," as Lilly himself has taken the trouble to inform posterity. Noav " before that time," adds Lilly, " I Avas more Cavalier than Roundhead, and so taken notice of:" he admits, indeed, that he afterAvards "engaged body and soul in the cause of Parliament ;" but even Avhile so acting he claims the credit of " much affection to his majesty's person and unto monarchy, Avhich," says he, "I ever loved and approved beyond any government Avhatsoever." He con fesses that his object in Avrlting his next "Anglicus," for 1645, Avas to vindicate his reputation and to cry quittance with NaAvorth, " against Avhom," he says, "I Avas highly incensed;" and it seems clearly by his own account to haA'e been this spite against the royalist astrologer that provoked him to venture upon Avhat he calls in his Life (Avritten after the Restoration) his "unlucky judgment" for the month of June, 1645 — "If uoav avo fight, a victory stealeth upon us" — which Avas so signally verified by the king's defeat at Naseby, " the most fatal overthroAV he ever had." Whatever he may have thought of it, or chosen to call it, afterwards, Ave may be sure that at the time Lilly looked upon this pre diction as one of the luckiest hits astrologer had ever made; and possibly It even turned his rage against Wharton into something like gratitude or a sense LONDON ASTROLOGERS. 245 [Lilly.] of obligation ; for although Wharton still continued his attacks, it is related that Avhen at length, on the complete subjugation of his party, the captain fell into trouble, and even got sent to NoAvgatc, Lilly interceded for him Avith his friends In poAver, and obtained his release. Wharton, hoAvevcr, Avho before his imprison ment had been reduced to Avrite for bread, long outlived his misfortunes; and after the Restoration the old astrologer Avas made treasurer to the Ordnance. When shall Ave have another treasurer of the Ordnance Avho shall have recom mended himself to his place in the government by his skill in casting nativities, and Avho shall leave his literary reputation to be taken charge of after his death by a brother astrologer and almanac-maker ? Yet this Avas only about a century and a half ago. As for the Job Gadbury of 1723, if he Avas, as Ave have sup posed, the son of John, he had not inherited his father's religious opinions, but seems to have been rather a Protestant, and something more. But one of his memoranda of the past is more curious than any of the predictions^ we find in his almanac: in a 'Compendious Chronology,' extending from the creation of the Avorld to the current year, to Avhich he devotes a couple of pages, in the midst of a series of notices of the dates of Noah's flood, the destruction of Troy, the building of Rome, the GunpoAvder Treason, the martyrdom of King Charles, and other such familiar events, occurs the following entry : — " 1620, Bern, Calvert, of Andover, went from St, George's Church in SouthAvark to Calais in France,and back again. In 17 hours, on July 17." It is to be understood, Ave suppose, that he Avcnt through the air on a broomstick, the only substitute at this date for our modern balloons and railways. This veracious Diary of Job Gadbury's con tinued to be published down to the first years of the reign of George III, The renoAvned Francis Moore, Avho Avas at one time, Ave take It for granted, a living man, seems to have made his first appearance about the end of the seven- 246 LONDON, teenth century. He published a ' Kalendarium Ecclesiasticum' in 1699, and his earliest 'Vox Stellarum' or almanac, as far as Ave can discover, came out in 1701. When he became a mere name, and ceased to be really more, we do not knoAV. His almanac for 1723 is what one may call a Avorkman-like perform ance ; and it seems already to have become one of the chief popular favourites, if Ave may judge by the much larger number of advertisements of noAV books and quack medicines it Is graced Avith than almost any of its contemporaries. It begins, dashingly, Avith a Avhole page of poetry, and more verse is plentifully scattered throughout : its prose too is more ambitious and eloquent than that of Its neighbours ; and its Protestantism Is quite ferocious. Altogether, in short, Francis has the air of taking the lead among his brethren, most or all of Avhom Avere older than himself, and Avere probably past their prime, AvhIle he Avas as it Avere only commencing his career, to continue it, as Ave have seen, till he should have witnessed all the rest go out one by one, and find himself the last of the astrologers. If there Avas any one of the older almanacs that rivalled at this time the popu larity of Francis Moore, it Avas that of John Partridge — the immortal Partridge of SAvIft's satire. Partridge — Dr. Partridge, as he called himself — Is said to have been originally a shoemaker, and to have borne the name of HeAVson, which one Avould think Avas as good a name as the one he exchanged it for : if he in tended any allusion to his ncAV trade of " commercing Avith the skies," it seenis- strange that he did not rather dub himself Dr. Eagle or Dr. Falcon — for Dr. Partridge, the sooth to say, hardly carries more dignity Avith it than Dr. Spar row Avould have done. Partridge acted for some time as assistant to Gadbury, in the same manner as the latter had. done to Lilly : he commenced astrologer on his own account in 1679; his almanac, styled 'Merlinus Liberatus,' first appeared, Ave believe, in 1696; Swift, In his 'Predictions for the year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,' put him to death on the 29th of March of that year ; and although " an uninformed carcase," Avhich Avas " pleased to call itself Partridge," continued to Avalk about for some time longer, he Avas at last fairly interred in the churchyard of Mortlake, in 1715, under a monument Avith a sonorous Latin epitaph, according to which he Avas born at the neighbouring hamlet of East Sheen, on the 18th of January, 1644, and died at London, on the 24th of June, in the year In AvhIch he Avas thus buried. In this inscription, Avhich is said to have been set up at the cost of his widow, who Avhen he married her Avas the relict of the Duke of Monmouth's tailor, he Is styled Astrologer and Doctor of Medicine — Astrologns et Medicinal Doctor — and we are told that he practised medicine under tAvo kings and one queen, namely, Charles II., William IIL, and Queen Mary, so that we may presume he had betaken himself exclusively to almanac-making and fortune-telling before Anne came to the throne. James's short reign he is known to have spent In Holland — having run aAvay from the danger to which he apprehended he had exposed himself by some unlucky anti- popish prediction ; and it was on his return to England after the Revolution that he married the tailor's widoAV. This temporary expatriation, besides enabling him for the rest of his life to claim the credit of having been a sufferer In the cause of liberty and religion, was turned to account by him in the sup port of his medical pretensions : for he profess-ed to have brought home a doctor's ^ONDON ASTROLOGERS. 247 degree from the University of Leyden ; and this may have been the case : Ave remember a naive account given by the late respectable Dr. John Alkin of his graduation by that ancient university, Avhich Avould make even Partridge's doctorship by no means incredible. Partridge, In fact, had to -the last a wonder fully high continental reputation : Grainger notices that the obituary of the ' Acta Lipsiensia' for 1715 records, among the deaths of other pihilosophers, that of " John Partridge, the most famous English astronomer and astrologer" — Astro- nomus et Astrologus in AngUa famigeratissimus. Nevertheless, It Is certain that the man could barely spell. His Ignorance and stupidity made him the happiest possible subject for Swift's joke. Bickerstaff's prediction when it first came out appears seriously to have alarmed him, and it is evident that he lived in terror till the day announced for his death Avas fairly past. He said not a Avord till then ; but the strain in Avhich he began to croAV as soon as he found himself safe affords ludicrous proof of how much he had been frightened. " Old friend," he Avrote to an Irish acquaintance, three days after, " I don't doubt but you are im posed upon in Ireland also, by a pack of rogues, about my being dead;" and then he goes on to abuse the suspected author of the prediction : — " There is no such man as Bickerstaff; it is a sham name, but his true name is Pettie; he Is ahvays in a garret, a cellar, or a gaol ; and therefore you may, by that, judge what kind of reputation this felloAV hath to be credited in the world." Still the impression clings to him that he has made a lucky escape ; he is surprised that, if not actually dead, he should not at least have been in some danger : — "I thank God," he exclaims, " I am very Avell in health, and at the time he had doomed me to death I was not in the least out of order. The truth is, it was a high flight at a venture, hit or miss. He knows nothing of astrology." Poor Partridge ! so might one of thy feathered namesakes congratulate itself after the fire of some young shot Avhich has not touched one of the covey. " The truth is, it Avas a ' high flight at a venture, hit or miss. He knoAvs nothing of partridge-shooting !" " Pray, Sir, excuse this trouble," concludes the exulting almanac-maker, " for no man can better tell you I am Avell than myself; and this is to undeceive your credulous friends that may yet believe the death of your real humble servant, John Partridge." As if the very demon of jocular mischief had inspired this proceeding, the person to Avhom Partridge addressed himself, Isaac Manley, the Irish postmaster, was Swift's particular friend ! Forthwith came out ' The Ac complishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions, being an Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge, the Almanac-maker, upon the 29th instant, in a Letter, to a Person of Honour,' professing to have been Avritten on the 30th of March. Partridge noAV saw the necessity of taking the most decided measures, as people say in such circumstances, to vindicate his vitality ; and so, not satisfied Avith earnestly assuring his countrymen in his almanac for the ensuing year that Squire Bickerstaff Avas a sham name, assumed by a lying, impudent felloAv, and that, " blessed be God, John Partridge was still living and in health, and all were knaves Avho reported otherwise," he applied to his neighbour, the Rev Dr. Yalden, preacher at Bridewell, to draAV up for him a full statement of his injuries and sufferings, to be laid, as a conclusive appeal, before the public. Yalden, a Avit and poet, Avhose life is among Dr. Johnson's biographies, readily undertook the task ; and if Partridge, as is said, actually published the pamphlet 248 LONDON. Avhich the Doctor drcAV up in his name, entitled ' Squire Bickerstaff Detected 5 or, the Astrological Impostor Convicted,' he may be Avritten doAvn an ass such as there has seldom been knoAvn the like of. He must have brayed like a whole legion of asses In his fury and despair Avhen he found that, after all, his unrelent ing tormentors still persisted in their original assertion, and even undertook to make it good out of his OAvn expressions in contradicting It. ' A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against Avhat is objected to him by Mr. Partridge, in his Almanac for the present Year, 1709; by the said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,' noAV came forth, in which, besides various other grave reasons proving that Mr. Par tridge Avas not alive, the Avriter alleged the following :— " Fourthly, I will plainly prove him to be dead, out of his OAvn almanac for this year, and from the very passage AvhIch he produces to make us think him alive. He there says, he is not only now alive, but Avas also alive upon that very 29th of March AvhIch I foretold he should die on: by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now Avho Avas not alive a tAvelvemonth ago. And, indeed, there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert that he Avas alive ever since the 29th of March, but that he is now alive, and Avas so on that day : I grant the latter ; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death, in a letter to a lord; and Avhether he be since revived I leave the Avorld to judge. This, Indeed, is perfect cavilling, and I am ashamed to dAvell any longer upon it." It Avould have been Avise after this in Partridge to have let the matter drop — to have rested satisfied, like other people, AvIth being alive, Avithout any further attempts to prove the fact. Driven Avild, hoAvever, by some more persecution in the 'Tatler,' he Avas foolish enough, in announcing his almanac for 1710, to reiterate his passionate contradiction of the story of his death : " Whereas," he said, " it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanac, that John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that he is still living In health, and they are knaves that reported it otherAvise. — J. P." This the ' Tatler ' noticed imme diately as " an advertisement, Avith several scurrilous terms in it, that do by no means become a dead man to give ;" and the next Aveek appeared the humorous letter from the Master and Company of Upholders, exclaiming against the " in tolerable toleration ' by which so many dead people Avere alloAved to " go putre fying up and doAA'n the streets," pointing out the danger of infection to Her Majesty's subjects " from the horrible stench of so many corses," so long as it Avas " left to every dead man's discretion not to be burled until he sees his time " — and concluding Avith the folloAvIng postscript : — " Whereas a commission of interment has been awarded against Dr. John Partridge, Philomath, Professor of Physic and Astrology ; and whereas the said Partridge hath not surrendered himself, nor shoAvn cause to the contrary ; these are to certify that the Company of Upholders avIII proceed to bury him from CordAvainers' Hall, on Tuesday the 29th instant, Avhere any of his surviving friends, Avho still believe him to be alive, arc desired to come prepared to hold up the pall. — Note. We shall light aAvay at six in the evening, there being to be a sermon." To be dead Avas bad enough, but to be buried Avas still Avorse, and Partridge probably objected Avith increased vehemence ; but Ave have not inquired further into his proceedings. A letter of his dated from the banks of Styx is given in a subsequent number of LONDON ASTROLOGERS. 249 the ' Tatler,' folloAved by an intimation from Bickerstaff that, having lately seen some of his predictions, Avhich were " Avritten in a true Protestant spirit of pro phecy, and a particular zeal against the French king," he had some thoughts of sending for him from the other Avorld, " and reinstating him in his own house, at the sign of the Globe, in Salisbury Street." By the bye, in a former paper he had been designated as " late of Cecil Street in the Strand." The last mention of him that occurs is in an advertisement in August, 1710, Avhich has the ap pearance of having been provoked by some uoav proclamation he had been making of his continued existence in the body : — " Whereas an ignorant upstart in astrology has publicly endeavoured to persuade the world that he is the late John Partridge, Avho died the 29th of March, 1708; these are to certify all Avhom it may concern that the true John Partridge Avas not only dead at that time, but continues so to this present day. — BeAvarc of counterfeits, for such are abroad." For the remainder of his life (if life it could be called) John appears to have been left in quiet by the nest of hornets his braying had kept so long about him, and Avhose persistency Ave fear must have made the poor astrologer look upon Avhat the Avorld called Avit as something Equally atrocious AvIth down right murder. But even his real departure from the earth did not interrupt the publication of his almanac ; the ' Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,' con tinued to appear as regularly every winter as ever — Avith only a sly (not to call it profane) intimation, or Avord to the Avise, in the addition, after the pretended author's name, of the scriptural expression as it stands in the Vulgate, " Etiam mortuus loquitur," that is, " He, being dead, yet speaketh." The book seems to have for a time been got up by Mrs. Partridge, the tailor's remnant: the publication for 1723 concludes Avith an advertisement informing the Avorld that " Dr. Partridge's night drops, night pills, &c., and other medicines of his OAvn preparing, continue to be sold as before by his AvIdoAv, at the Blue Ball in Salis bury Street, near the Strand." The other contents of the almanac are merely the usual farrago. ' Parker's Ephemeris for the year of our Lord 1723,' Is described as " the thirty-fourth impression," Avhich Avould carry back the commencement of the publication to the year 1689. It continued, as Avell as Partridge, to be pub lished doAvn to our oavd day. Of the author, George Parker, Ave knoAV nothing, except that he carried on for some time, AvhIle he Avas actually in the flesh, an abusive controversy Avith his brother nativity-monger Partridge, to Avhich the Avorld is indebted for the knowledge of some recondite particulars in the history of the latter. 'Parker's Ephemeris for 1723' carries an effigies in its front, a head copiously boAvigged and otherAvise somewhat clerically adorned, Avhich is probably intended for that of the astrologer. Yet an advertisement at the end announces " Printing of all sorts of books, bills, bonds, indentures, cases of par liament, funeral tickets, and tradesmen's bills. Sec, performed by this author." On the whole, ' Parker's Ephemeris ' contains more useful information, and less nonsense, than any of the other astrological almanacs of the day that Ave have examined. The author's astrological faith Avas evidently of the Aveakest. Of a very different spirit is Salem Pearse, Avhose 'Celestial Diary' for 1723, in tAVO parts, overflows both Avith fervent verse and Avith ample details in prose of all the human and planetary influences. It seems indeed to be 250 LONDON. draAvn up mainly for the meridian of the kitchen ; as ' Poor Robin,' also in tAVO parts, Avhich follows it in our collection, may be said to be wholly. The latter, which Avas of ancient standing in Swift's time, continued to be published, Ave believe, till Avithin the last foAv years, Avith all its old rich and singular melange of the horrible and the jocular, the puritanical and the prurient. Pearse we cannot trace back farther than to the year 1719, but he also survived to the end of the last or the beginning of the present century. A Richard Saunder, or Saunders, published a AVork upon physiognomy, chiromancy. Sec, ui 1653, and an 'Apollo Anglicanus' at least as eariy as 1667; but the author of the almanac published Avith that title in 1723 Avas probably the son of this ori ginal Richard. It is stated to be " the eight-arid-thirtieth impression of the same author," Avhich Avould carry back its commencement to the year 1685. Nevertheless Mr. Richard Saunder still Avalked the earth, and in a long adver tisement at the end of his ' Union Almanac ' he informs his readers that he was noAV removed to Brook near Oakham in the county of Rutland, Avhere he pro fessed the following mathematical arts : Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Trigo nometry, Navigation, Dialling, Surveying ; '.' or," it is added, " if any gentleman, or other person, would have his land surveyed, or any building or edifice mea sured, either for bricklayers, carpenters, masons, plasterers, Sec, he Avill perform the same either for master or Avorkmen. Weather-glasses are also prepared, and carefully adjusted, by him, for any that have a desire to have them." Wing is a famous name in the history of English astrology, naving been first raised to distinction by Vincent Wing,, Avho is said to have been born in 1619 and to have died in 1668, and Avho Avas a mathematician and astrologer of considerable eminence, as Avell as a proficient in more mystical lore. John Gadbury, Avho edited the works of Sir George Wharton, Avrote ' A Relation of the Life and Death of Vincent Wing,' which Avas published in quarto in 1669. There is a letter from him to Lilly printed among the ' Letters Avritten by Eminent Per sons ' published by Dr. Bliss along Avitii Aubrey's ' Lives,' partly about a little astronomical work in the press, entitled ' Harmonlcon Coeleste ;' but the literary matter is preceded by an equally grave and earnest passage on another sort of sub ject, Avhich curiously illustrates the character not only of the tAvo correspondents, but of the time. " Honoured Mr. Lilly," the epistle commences, " a Avorthy gentle- Avoman of this toAvn hath requested me to Avrite a line unto you, concerning a great number of fine linnings [linens] that Avas stolen in the night time, the last Aveek, out of a private garden close under her house. And, because she much fancies astrology, I Avould desire yoii to give her your advice therein, and to write a line or tAVO back, Avhether you think they be recoverable or not. I set one figure for the first question, but I forbore to give judgment, and the rather because she hath, not undeservedly, so good a confidence of you and your Avritings, for Avhich, I must say, Ave are all obliged to you. Good sir, at her request be pleased to honour her Avith a line, and she protesteth to make you pi. [enty ?] of satisfaction, if ever it be in her poAver. Her husband is a member of this parliament, aud one, I suppose, Avell knoAvn to you, and is a man that highly esteems of your singu lar parts.'' The recovery of stolen goods Avas one of the most lucrative pro fessions of these old astrologers ; Isaac Bickerstaff alludes to it as a Avell- knoAvn branch of Partridge's practice:— "Thirdly, Mr. Partridge pretends to tell LONDON ASTROLOGERS. 251 fortunes, and recover stplen goods ; Avhich all the parish says he must do by con versing with the devil and other evil spirits ; and no Avise man Avill ever allow he could converse personally Avith either till after he Avas dead."* Partridge and his brethren, in fact, were in this Avay a sort of predecessors of Jonathan Wild. As for Vincent Wing, he Avas succeeded by John Wing (perhaps his son), whose almanac, entitled sometimes ' Olympia Dogmata,' sometimes ' Olympia Domata,' and printed sometimes at London, sometimes at Cambridge, Ave trace back to 1689; and John Avas succeeded by Tycho, Avhose name first appears on the ' Olympia Dogmata,' or Domata, for 1738, although we find him publishing another almanac, which he called ' Merlinius Anglicus,' so early as 1730. Both the 'Olympia Domata," and the prognostication entitled 'Wing,' for the year 1723, by John Wing, who dates from PickAvorth in the county of Rutland, are sufficiently stored with planetary and lunar learning of all kinds even to satisfy the manes of the worthy Vincent, whose astronomical studies ranged from the harmony of the spheres down to the setting of a figure for the recovery of a stolen washing of linen. There was evidently a considerable amount of astrological faith remaining in the popular mind so long as all these almanacs continued to be printed and bought ; but the religion of the stars had ceased, we apprehend, to have a gene rally believing priesthood in this country even before the middle of the seventeenth century, and by the beginning of the next, probabl}', Ave had not a single profess ing astrologer who Avas the dupe of his OAvn pretensions. Lilly, Avho Avas born in 1602, and Avho commenced practice, as Ave have seen, in 1644, certainly was not so, and It may be questioned if among his immediate predecessors and contempo raries, of whom he has given us accounts in his characteristic and amusing auto biography, there were more than tAvo or three avho Avere not much more rogues and impostors than self-deceived enthusiasts. Dr. Simon Forman, for instances though, Ave are told, "he travelled into Holland for a month, in 1580, purposely to be instructed in astrology, and other more occult sciences, as also in physic, taking his degree of doctor beyond seas," and afterwards " lived in Lambeth, Avith a very good report of the neighbourhood, especially of the poor, unto Avhom he Avasvery charitable," Ave must take leave to hold to have been a thorough scoundrel. Lilly says, " he Avas a person that in horary questions (especially thefts) Avas very judicious and fortunate ; as also in sicknesses, which indeed Avas his masterpiece." If this irieans that he Avas a master In the art of secretly destroy ing health and life, a subtle practitioner in poisons, the infamous story of Lord and Lady Essex, and the tragedy of Sir Thomas O verb ury, will sufficiently bear out the statement. " In resolving questions about marriage," Lilly adds, " he had good success ; in other questions very moderate." As for a remarkable memorandum Avhich it seems the doctor left behind him — " This I made the Devil Avrite with his OAvn hand in Lambeth Fields, 1596, in June or July, as I noAV remember " — Ave must .be excused for Avithholding our belief from Avhat Is therein affirmed, till some unexceptionable Avitness is brought forward who will sAvear to his infernal majesty's handAvriting. There was a contemporary of Forman's, however, also mentioned by Lilly — the '* Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., &c. 252 LONDON, famous John Dee, commonly called Doctor Dee, who Avas a man of unquestionable learning and talent, much of Avhich he expended in the study of astrology and the Rosicrucian philosophy, and Avhose undoubting mind appears really to have, in great part at least, believed the magic Avondcrs Avhicli he passed his life in dreaming of Dee Avas born 13th July, 1527, in London, Avhere his father, RoAvland Dee, Avas, according to Anthony Wood, a vintner In good circumstances, though Aubrey, who Avas his relation, tells us he Avas a Radnorshire gentleman of ancient and illustrious pedigree, being descended from Rhees, Prince of South Wales. John Dee Avas sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1542, and there studied so hard, as he states, for the space of three years, that he never alloAved himself more than four hours of the four-and-tAventy for sleep, and tAvo for meals and recreation. He spent several years, chiefly on the Continent at different univer sities, but returning to England In 1551, he received from King Edward, first a pension, and then a grant of the rectory of Upton-ujJon-Severn, one of a number of church preferments Avhich he held in the course of his life, though he ncA-er Avas in orders. He appears to have first become knoAvn to Eli zabeth Avhile she resided at Woodstock, in the reign of Queen Mary, and he then suffered a short imprisonment at Hampton Court, in consequence of some suspicions excited by a correspondence AvhIch he was detected in carrying on with some of the persons in attendance upon the j)rincess. He himself says that he Avas suspected of " endeavouring, by enchantments, to destroy Queen Mary." In fact, he had already acquired the reputation in the popular mind of being wiser than he ought to be — of being not only astrologer, but magician. The accession of Elizabeth brought him at once into request in the former capa city. In 1577 the court Avas greatly alarmed by a comet; upon Avhich Dec Avas sent for to Windsor, and spent three days there in tranquilliziiig her Majesty and her ministers by a mere favourable Interpretation of the phe- nornenon. On another occasion, " My careful and faithful endeavour," con tinues Dee, " Avas Avith great speed required (as by divers messages sent to ?«e one after another in one morning) to prevent, the mischief which divers of her Ma jesty's privy council suspected to be Intended against her Majesty's person, by means of a certain image of wax, with a great pin stuck into it above the breast of it found in Lincoln's Inn Fields ! " This, if Ave may judge from the vehement im portunity of the council's application, Avas a still Averse case than that of the comet : hoAvever, Dee's art Avas a match even for the Avax figure and the great pin. 'f I did satisfy her Majesty's desire," he says, " and the lords of the privy council, AvIthIn fcAv hours. In godly and artificial manner." After this his next " dutiful service" has something of the bathos in it — "the diligent conference AvhIch," says he, " by her Majesty's commandment I had AvIth Mr. Doctor Bayly, her Ma jesty's physician, about her Majesty's grievous pangs and pains, by reason of toothache and the rheum." In return, Elizabeth took much notice of her learned adviser in matters of comets, Avitchcraft, toothache, and rheumatism. On the afternoon of the IGth of March, 1575, " The Queen's Majesty," he tells us, " Avith her most honourable Privy Council, and other her lords and nobility, came purposely to have visited my library; but finding that my Avife Avas within four hours before buried out of the house, her Majesty refused to come in. but Avished me to fetch my glass so famous, and to shoAv unto her some LONDON ASTROLOGERS, 253 of the properties of it, Avhich I did. Her Majesty being taken down from her horse by the Earl of Leicester, master of the horse, at the church Avail of Mortlake, did see some of the properties of that glass, to her Majesty's great con tentment and delight, and so in most singular manner did thank me," We do not know if it Avill assist in identifying the spot beside the Avail of the old village church, where, on a March afternoon, tAvo hundred and sixty-seven years ago, the royal Elizabeth thus alighted to converse Avith the astrologer, her full-bloAvn favourite (it Avas the year of KenilAVorth) assisting her to the ground, to mention that Dee's house, according to Aubrey, stood " next to the house Avhere the tapestry hangings are made, viz., Avest of that house."* Aubrey had his informa tion from an old Avoman, a native of Mortlake, Avho remembered Dee ; and stated that " the children dreaded him, because he Avas accounted a conjuror." Another time, on the 17th of September, 1580, "the Queen's Majesty,'' Dee himself re lates, " came from Richmond in her coach the higher Avay of Mortlake Field, and when she came right against the church, she turned down toward my house ; and when she Avas against my garden in the field, her Majesty staid for a good while, and then came into the field at the great gate of the field, where her Majesty espied me at my door, making reverent and dutiful obeisance unto her; andAvith her hand her Majesty beckoned for me to come to her, and I came to her coach- side. Her Majesty then very speedily pulled off her glove, and gave me her hand to kiss ; and, to be short, her Majesty Avilled me to resort oftener to her Court, and by some of her Privy Chamber to give her to weet when I am there." Finally, on the lOth of October in the same year, at five in the afternoon, her Majesty came again ; but Dee Avas noAV going to the church to bury his mother, as five years before, Avhen he Avas thus honoured, he had just returned from the funeral of his Avife — a circumstance Avhich Elizabeth did not fail to remember. It appears to have been shortly after this last visit that Dee became connected Avith EdAvard Kelley, Avhoin he is said to have engaged to assist him in a course of experiments, perhaps having for their object at first nothing more than the pursuit of the grand hermetic secret of projection, or the transmutation of metals, at a salary of fifty pounds. But Kelley, a sharp-witted rogue, Avould soon perceive the Influence he might acquire over the ^visionary by humouring his enthusiastic and credulous disposition : at any rate the two are alleged to have, after a short time, abandoned the regular alchemical method of seeking the philosopher's stone, and to have boldly taken to the forbidden practices of incantation and magic. We cannot go into this part of Dee's history ; the true nature of his proceedings has been the subject of much controversy ; what is certain is that he and Kelley left England suddenly and clandestinely in the end of 1583 for Poland, whence Dee did not return till November, 1589, Avhen he came back by special invitation from Queen Elizabeth, Kelley remained abroad, and is said to have been made a baron by the Emperor, though he ended his life in a jail. But there is still in existence a most elaborate and minute * In a note, by Mr. Hallivirell, to Dee's very curious ' Diary," printed by tlie Camden Society since this paper was written, the following statement is given on the authority of a manuscript in the Ashmolean Library : — " Dr. Dee dwelt in a house near the water-side, a little westward from the church. The buildings, which Sir F Crane erected for working of tapestry hangings, and are still (1673) employed to that use, were built upon the ground whereon Dr. Dee's laboratory and other rooms for that use stood. Upon the west is a square court, and the next is the house wherein Dr. Dee dwelt, now inhabited by one Mr. Selbury, and further west bis garden.. 254 LONDON. [KL'lley.] detail, apparently draAvn up by Dee, of their proceedings during several years in the raising of spirits, a portion of Avhich has been published, making a closely printed folio volume of some five hundred pages. It is altogether about the most amazing performance that ever proceeded from the press or the pen. Meric Casaubon, the learned divine, by AA'hom it Avas given to the public in 1659, is clear as to the absolute and literal truth of every line of it, and considers the nar rative (as Avell he may upon this supposition) to be the most complete account of the spiritual Avorid of Avhich Ave are in possession. Modern readers will in general content themselves Avith the question of Avhether the narrator is to be held as deceiver or deceived, as quite sufficient exercise for their faculties or their faith. For our OAvn part, it is one Avhich Ave shall not attempt to ansAver. All this portion of Dee's life, indeed, is a mystery. He made his journey homoAvard in extraordinary state and parade, ti'aveUing Avith not only three ' coaches, besides baggage Avaggons, but also with the attendance of a hired guard of horse ; yet when he reached his native country he found himself in utter destitution. If he had ever possessed the philosopher's stone, he had apparently lost it by the Avay. The detail of his various shifts and difficulties during the three years that had elapsed since his return, which he gives In the ' Compendious Rehearsal,' presents one of the most singular pictures of housekeeping anyAvhere delineated. It ap pears that his house at Mortlake, having been left unprotected Avhile he Avas abroad, had been broken into, and that a valuable library and a collection of philosophical instruments which it contained Avere nearly all carried off, not, however, as it should seem, by regular thieves or burglars, but rather by persons Avho thought it merito rious to scatter about the magician's books of diablerie and to break to pieces the tools of his black and sinful art. One AVonders that everything Avas not irretriev- ablj gone : hoAvever, he succeeded in recovering a considerable portion of his dis- LONDON ASTROLOGERS. 2-35 persed property, of about four thousand printed books and manuscripts finding n. the end only about a fourth part lost. But many of those he got back he had after wards to dispose of for AvheroAvithal to keep himself and his family from starving ; " enforced," says Lilly, " many times to sell some book or other to buy his dinner with, as Dr. Napier, of Linford, in Buckinghamshire, oft related, Avho kncAv him Avell." For the rest, he borrowed and begged from all and sundry who came in his Avay. His establishment all the Avhile Avas on a scale of extraordinary extent for a person in such circumstances ; for besides himself, his Avife, and seven children, he seems to have kept no foAver than eight servants^he talks of " seventeen of us in all." No Avonder that the thought of catering much longer for so numerous a brood in this predatory style filled him with apprehension : he dreads that he Avill be obliged to sell his house for half Avhat it cost him, and he describes himself as now "brought to the very next instant of stepping out of doors : — "I," says he, " and mine, Avith bottles and Avallets furnished to become wanderers as homish vaga bonds, or, as banished men, to forsake the kingdom." Nevertheless it appears by a marginal note of subsequent date that he contrived to keep up the war in the same Avay by borroAving and getting in debt for about a year and a half longer. At length in May, 1595, the old astrologer and reputed magician Avas ap pointed to the Avardenship of Manchester College, vacant by the promotion of Dr. Hugh Bellot to the bishopric of Chester. Dee indeed hints in his ' Com pendious Rehearsal ' that he was at one time actually offered a bishopric if he ATould have taken orders ; but he shrunk from having anything to do Avith the cure of souls. After all, he came back from Manchester after a fcAV years, and taking up his abode once more at Mortlake, resumed his old crazy dealings Avith spirits, having got into the hands of a uoav assistant or associate, one Bartholo- moAv Hickman, who Avas probably as great a rascal as Kelley. He had not resigned his preferment, but nevertheless poverty Avas again as great as ever : he seems to have preferred a precarious, scrambling existence, and to have rather had an aversion to a settled income. It is even asserted that he Avas meditating a uoav journey into Germany, Avhen death at last arrested him some time in the year 1608, at the age of eighty-one. He was buried in Mortlake Church, Aubrey's informant, the old AVoman, told him, in the midst of the chancel, a little toAvards the south side, between Mr. Holt and Mr. Miles, both servants to Queen Elizabeth. A stone that covered him Avas removed in Oliver's days : before this, the children, the old woman said, when they played in the church, Avould run to Dr. Dee's gravestone. Of a numerous family Avhich he left, there are only tAvo of Avhom anything seems to be knoAvn — a daughter, Sarah, Avho is said to have married a flax-dresser In SouthAvark ; and a son, Arthur, Avho studied medicine, became physician in ordinary to Charles I., and died at Norwich about 1650. According to Aubrey, Ben Jonson had Dee in his eye in writing ' The Alchemist ;' he is indeed mentioned by name in that play— " one whose name is Dee, . In a rug gown." Aubrey says, "He Avas tall and slender; he wore a gown like an artist's goAvn, AvIth hanging sleeves and a slit." 256 LONDON. These "follies of the Avise" of former days are noAV become the jests ot chil dren ; but Avhen Ave think of Dee and his divinations avo ought to remember that in the same age the grave and Avise Burghley cast the nativity of Queen Elizabeth, and that a century later Dryden still attempted in the same Avay to unveil the future fortunes of his newly-born son. Nor ought Ave to forget that Avith all this Aveakness something strong and high has also perished : these super stitions, Avhatever e\'ils of another kind they brought along AvIth them, gave In some respects a consecration and solemnity to this life of ours that is now Avanting. And even of astrology and its kindred visionary sciences themselves, it is true, as Bacon has remarked in his high style, that, although they had better intelligence and confederacy Avith the imagination of man than with his reason, nevertheless the ends or pretences Avere noble. ;»»*.) [Seven Dial?.] LXVIL— ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. The sententious Maitland says, of the Church of St. Giles in the Fields, that it " is denominated from St. Giles, a Grecian;" Avhich may be the reason why so •nany " foolish Greeks " (vide Shakspere's ' What you will ') have both in ancient and modern times congregated around it. It Is scarcely to be wondered at that, among so numerous a company as the Saints of the Roman Church (half-a-dozen for every day in the year, besides a numerous corps de reserve to supply any vacancies that might occur, packed away in the day of All Saints), some of them should occasionally fall into indifferent company. But there are one or two of them who, with every inclination to make alloAvance for human frailty even in Saints, have stretched their licence rather too far. St. Julian's connection Avith thieves is matter of notoriety ; St. Nicholas's conduct has led to his name being conferred upon one whom, according to. old saAVS, it is not very safe to mention ; and as for St. Giles, if in any town possessed of more than three or four churches there be one set apart for him, it is odds but you find the most questionable characters in the town dwelling in its neighbourhood. Without going out of our oavu island to seek for examples, we may remark that in Edinburgh the " Heart of Mid Lothian " stood, and the Parliament House still stands, close to the shrine ol VOL. HI. * 258 LONDON. St. Giles; and here, in London, he is the central point of a population— " of whom more anon," as Baillle NIchol Jarvie said of the sons of Rob Roy. St. Giles appears to have come in with the Conqueror, or soon after, which may account for his sympathy with marauders : " By the village of St. Giles's not appearing in 'Domesday Book,' I imagine it is not coeval with the Conquest," says Maldand ; and here, for the information of those who, not being deeply read in this historian, may not be acquainted with his peculiar use of the English lan guage, " not coeval Avith " means, in his mouth, " what did not exist before." ' The Beauties of Maltiand' would be an interesting book, and one of them fol lows close in the wake of the piece of intelligence just cited : " That the parish is of great antiquity is manifest by the decretal sentence of Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, &c.j anno 1222, in the great controversy between Eustace, Bishop of London, &c., and William, Abbot of Westminster, Sec, in which sentence this parish Is expressly mentioned; but I imagine it Avas not converted into a parish- church till the 20th of April, awio 1547." By Avhat process a parish can be con verted into a parish-church it is not very easy to conceive ; but as, in the same breath, the soaring imagination (" I imagine ") of the author leads him to decide that the parish prophetically mentioned in a judicial sentence of 1222 did not exist till 1 547, this is a trifle. The church and village of St. Giles are supposed to have sprung from an hos pital for lepers founded there by Matilda, Avife of Henry I., about the year 1117. As in the sentential aAvard made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, already alluded to, the garden of the hospital appears to have been situated between St. Giles's High Street, the Pound, and Hog Lane (now dignified by the appel lation of CroAvn Street, thereby plainly shoAving that in London, at least, men knoAv hoAV to make a silk purse out of a soav's ear), Maitland concludes that the hospital itself stood near the Avest end of the present church. In 1354 EdAvard III. granted this hospital to the master and brethren of the order of Burton, St. Lazar of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire. When the galloAvs was removed from the Elms In Smithfield, about the year 1413, It Avas erected at the north end of the garden- Avall of St. Giles, near the junction of St. Giles's High Street and CrOAvn Street. When it Avas again removed, still in a Avestern direction, Avhich may have helped, along with other observations, to lead Bishop Berkeley to the conclusion, " west- Avard the course of empire holds its Avay," St. Giles's became a sort of half-way house for the heroes Avho travelled that dark road. "The condemned criminals, in their Avay to the place of execution, usually stopped at this hospital, Avhere they, as their last refreshment, Avere presented Avith a large boAvl of ale." It is probably OAving to this combination of circumstances — to its being selected as a pi ace" of retreat for noisome and squalid outcasts, and associated in various ways Avith the careers of those Avho lived in hostility Avith the laAv — that the cha racter Avhich St. Giles's has retained from first to last during the Avhole period that anything is knoAvn of it has been so ineradicably burned into it. St. James's, Avhich Avas also originally a lazar-house, has become a kingly residence, and Ty burn too has In its day been the shambles or sacrificial altar (Avhich you will) of the laAV : all traces, hoAvever, of the disagreeable associations Avhich clung to the one locality, and are still conjured up by the name of the other, have vanished. But St. Giles's combined Avithin itself Avhat Avas repulsive .about bothj and ac cordingly St. Giles remains true to itself, " unchanged, unchangeable." ST. GILES S. PAST AND PRESENT, , 259 It cannot be said that no attempt has been made to reclaim it. In the days of Charles II. the place subsequently denominated Seven Dials Avas erected, in the expectation that it would become the abode of the gay and the Avealthy, Nor did the hope seem altogether groundless. Close at hand Avere Soho Square and Covent Garden, then aristocratical resorts, and on the other side were the man sions of the Bedford and other noble families, upon the ruins of Avhich the seemly district of -St, George's, Bloomsbury, has since arisen. There was good society enough to keep the Seven Dials from turning haggard. But the atmosphere of St. Giles's was too powerful for such counter-agents, and the Seven Dials soon became neariy, though not altogether, as bad as its neighbours in the Rookery. During the ascendency of the Puritans a stout effort Avas made to reform the morals of the denizens of St. Giles's, as Avell as other places ; but it appears from the parish books that a stout resistance Avas made by these turbulent Avorthies. Mr. Brayley furnishes us Avith a foAV illustrative extracts : — £. s. a', "1641. Received of the Vintner at the Catt in Queen Street, for permitting of tippling on the Lord's-day . . . 1 10 0 1644. Received of three poor men for drinking on the Sabbath-day at Tottenham Court 0 4 0 1645 Received of John Seagood, constable, which he had of a Frenchman for swearing three oaths . . . 0 3 0 „ Received of Mrs. Thunder, by the hands of Francis Potter, for her being drunk, and sAvearing seven oaths 1646. Received of Mr. Hooker, for brewing on a Fast-day „ Paid and given to Lyn and two Avatchmen, in consideration of their pains, and the breaking of two halberts, in taking the two drunkards and swearers that paid . . „ Received of four men travelling on the Fast- day „ Received of Mr. Wetherill, headboro', which he had of one for an oath 034 1648. Received from the City Marshall, sent by the Lord Mayor, for one that was drunk at the Forts in our parish . . 0 5 0 „ Received from Isabel Johnson, at the Coal-yard, for drinking on the Sabbath-day . , ..... 0 4 0 1652. Received of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Norris, who Avere riding out of town on a Fast-day 0 110 1654. Received of William Glover, in Queen Street, and of Isaac Thomas, a barber, for trimming of beard on the Lord's- day. (The sum is not stated.) 1655. Received of a maid taken in Mrs. Jackson's ale-house on the Sabbath-day 0 5 0 „ Received of a Scotchman drinking at Robert Owen's on the Sabbath 020 1658. Received of Joseph Piers, for refusing to open his doors to have his house searched on the Lord's-day . . . . 0 10 0 1659 (An entry occurs of ' one Brooke's goods sold for breach of the Sabbath ;' but the produce is not set down.)" " Think of that. Master Brook," as a congenial spirit Avould doubtless have exclaimed, had he not long ere this been " all cold as any stone." So, too, would his co-mates; but Bardolph and Nyin were hanged " for pyx of little price:" Mrs. Pistol (tlie quondam Quickly) Avas dead ; and Pistol himself had doubtiess fired hi§ l£>st ghot, for at our farcAvgll interview Avith him he was complaining — S3 0 12 0 0 2 6 1 4 0 0 1 0 2b0 LONDON. " Old do I wax, and from my weary limbs Honour is cudgelled," It was clear, from the subdued and despondent tone of his voice, that " his heart was fracted and corroborate," and that he was soon to die the death of his old master. They had left, however, kindred souls behind them, who bade defiance alike to the Ironsides of Cromwell and the whole Assembly of Divines at West minster. The vintner at the "Cat" kept his doors open on the sly, notwith standing the fine of thirty good shillings imposed upon him ; Mrs. Thunder (appropriate name) continued to tipple and sAvear, at the rate of five shillings for each jollification, and a shilling for every oath ; the Frenchman kept spitting out "sacres" as fast as the sparks from a Catherine-wheel; and the worthies Avho broke the two halberts of Lyn's watchmen (and, though the parish records gloss over the defeat of their officers, swinged the Avatchmen), survived to lead a gallant troop down Drury Lane, and along the Strand, to, assist in burning the rumps at Temple Bar. The only recusant was the Scotchman, Avho was reclaimed, by the outlay of two shillings English, from all such backslidlngs ; though the maid taken in Mrs. Jackson's alehouse, despite her five shillings, and Isabel Johnston, despite her four, continued rebellious " mallgnants" to the last. Nor is this so much to be wondered . at, Avhen we consider that, as early as 1641, " the correcting Parliament" had excited the jealousy of the sellers and drinkers of ale by appearing to mete to the sellers of lordly wine, and to the sellers of yeomanly beer, Avith a different measure. The vintners were relieved from the pressure of the Avine monopoly at the very time that the alehouse-keepers were subjected to a rigorous police ; and the roisterers of St. Giles's, not unnaturally, jumped at the conclusion that the rigid morality of the Parliament was like the sobriety of the vice-president of a Temperance Society whom we knew well in our younger and more foolish days — the office-bearers of such societies have since become more consistent. Worthy man ! — Ardent spirits he would not allow to enter his house, except in homoeopathic doses in an apothecary's phials, but many a good bottle of Edinburgh ale have Ave shared with him Avhen we chanced to drop in on him at. his house for luncheon ; and at one serious tete-a-tete did Ave finish three bottles of claret — he drinking glass for glass, Avhile he urged upon us, with weightyargilments, the propriety of joining the Society. That this suspicion lent vigour to the resistance offered in St. Giles's to all attempts on the part of the parish dignitaries to amerce them into sobriety, appears from a dialogue, the scene of which is laid in this neighbourhood, published in 1641, under the imposing title of " The Tapster's Downfall and the Drunkard's Joy ; or, a Dialogue between Leatherbeard, the Tapster of the Sheaves, and Rubynose, one of his ancient acquaintance, who hath formerly eaten three stone of roast- beef on a Sunday morning, but now (being debarred that privilege) slights him, and resolves to drink wine altogether.' TJie communing of these worthies begins as follows : — " Leatherbeard. Whither away, Mr. Ruby ? Will you not know your old friends, uoav they groAV poor ? "Rubynose. Now you grow poor, I hold it a gentle garb to be Avilling to for get you. " L. What ! not one cup more of our brisk beer, which hath set that tincture ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. 26J in- your well-dyed scarlet face ? Are you resolved to leave us so ? This is most discourteously done of you. " R. I cannot stay, i' faith. More serious employments draw me aAvay, . " L. What do you say ? — Will you try a piece of beef, for all your haste ? " R. Yes : Avere it Sunday morning, " L. Truly, Mr. Rubynose, you do not well to jeer your poor friends, now they are in misery With a most sorrowful heart 1 will relate to you the saddest news that ever befel unto us squires of the draAving society of the tap. " R. Good Small-beer, proceed. " L. Why, you knoAV the benefit my poor master's widoAV got every Sunday morning by her thin-cut slices of roasted beef; hoAv she made the gents to pay for the vinegar and pepper they ate with the roast-beef at prayer-time ; and how I sold my ale and beer all that time at double prices. " R. I am very sensible of it. " L. I know likewise you are not ignorant of what innumerable numbers of mince-pies we sold every Sunday at dinner, and Avhat benefit we made of the refuse of the slashed roast-beef. " R. I know of all this very Avell. " L. Nay, one of the chiefest matters is behind ; hoAV many great gross of plum-cakes and cheese-cakes, what stewed prunes and custards, we have sold every Sunday at prayer-time in the afternoon, and what doings we have had all the day^ after — oh, in those days I was a man of great calling! I assure you we have taken more money on a Sunday than all the week after. " R. Why, all this I confidently believe ; therefore, I pray, what of it ? " L. Oh, sir, those days are done ; we must now fall to our prayers on a Sunday, and keep our doors shut all the day long, and sing psalms if we please, but we have never a room to the street. " R. Why, how cometh that about, you have not liberty to open your doors on a Sunday as formerly ? " L. The correcting Parliament, that hath a sight on all trades, hath made an order to the contrary, which is put in strict execution : Ave are now in more fear of the churchwarden than of all the back-clappers and clenching tenter-neck bailies of the town. " R. Why, you may fee the churchwardens, and regain your privilege. " L. No, Sir ; they are not so mercenary as the promoting paritor is : six shillings a quarter and free access to a lusty chine of roast-beef will not give them content." And thereupon Rubynose tells the complaining man that, if things remain in that Avay, he must break, and to render him still more malcontent, leaves him, after communicating the information that Parliament has extended the privileges of vintners, and thus rendered wine cheap, and that he, Rubynose, is resolved for the future to abjure both meat and malt potations, and spend every farthing he has or can get upon the juice of the grape. And by such means- was St. Giles's and all its worshippers of John Barleycorn rendered ripe for revolt. They saw the wine-bibber favoured, and themselves, unaccused, untried, treated Avorse than the convicted felon who passed through their village on his way to Tyburn — stinted in their bowls of ale. Like one of the great men Avith Avhom 262 LONDON, wc have already paralleled them, they protested they had " operations in their head, Avhich be humours of revenge ;" and Avith another they SAVore " by Avelkin and her star " to have revenge Avith Avit or steel. If it Avere but to spite the Parliament and churchwardens, they Avere resolute not to " purge and leave sack, and live cleanly as a noble man should do." And most happily Avere they situated for carrying their resolves into effect, St, Giles's, situated neither in Westminster nor the liberties of the City, abuts upon both. In those days it communicated Avith the former through St. Martin's Lane, Avith the ganglion of courts, minor lanes, and houses of questionable cha racter at its loAver extremity ; Avith the latter through Drury Lane and Wych Street, and sundry almost impervious defiles round or across St, Clement's Churchyard into Butcher Roav, The situation is commanding ; it overlooked Whitehall on the one side and the City on the other AvIth a saucy complacency. In front it Avas only accessible through dangerous defiles, and all to the north of Holborn and the Oxford Road Avas in a manner open country. In those days it seemed marked out by the hand of nature as a city of refuge for the oppressed and persecuted tipplers and raggamuffins of London and Westminster, Avhen they Avanted to ma,ke merry in defiance of the churchwardens, Avhose empire Avas then more terrible than that of the thief-catchers. St. Giles's Avas at that time for the natives or naturalised of Alsatia and the Sanctuary Avhat the hills in the south of Scotland were for the Presbyterian disciplinarians, Avhen their turn came to be undermost, a central point Avhere they could meet, and from the elevation of Avhich they could timeously descry the approach of danger ; and in whose chan nelled sides Avere rare dens for sculking, doubling, and throAving out their pur suers. It is a mistake to imagine that the stifling pressure of a densely peopled metropolis is most sensibly felt in its innermost recesses. The filth and squalor ot its necessitous population are to be found squatting in out-of-the-Avay corners Avhere toAvn and country meet. The islands of social misery found in the interior of London or Paris have been surrounded and built in as these capitals extended themselves. Thus favoured by natural position, by the sturdy character of its inhabitants, the blackguardism of St. Giles's Avas only increased by harsh treat ment : it Avas pounded into tougher consistency. It might even have protracted its resistance although the reign of Puritanism had been lengthened ; but relief came to its inmates — as Avell as to the better-dressed and more cleanly black guards— Avith the restoration of Charles II. — the anniversary of Avhich ought no where to be celebrated Avith more fervent gratitude than in the quondam village of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Not to insist upon other pieces of evidence to the unvarying character main tained by St. Giles's from the days of the CommouAvcalth to those aa'o live in, it may suffice to mention, between the years 1740 and 1750, It Avas a resort of the celebrated Thurot — the commander of a French squadron Avhich committed some depredations on the coasts of Ireland and the Hebrides in 1760 a native hero of France, much of the same class and calibre Avith the one of Scotch growth Avho commanded the ' Bon Homme Richard ' some tAventy years later. Thurot, though a Frenchman, had some Irish blood in his veins, and he began the Avorld under the auspices of a relative of the name of O'Farrel, an eminent smuggler from Connaught. The education, commenced on board a smuggling lugger, ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT.'. 26.'^ was advanced by the experience of two years' service as valet in a nobleman's family in Dublin. He and the lady's maid Avere dismissed rather abruptly and unceremoniously about the same time ; and the girl being soon after received into the family of another nobleman Avho lived In the north of Ireland, Thurot followed her. " In this place he made himself acceptable," says his biographer, " to many gentlemen and to the Earl of A , by his skill in sporting; but his situation being near the sea, and the opposite coast of Scotland favouring the trade of smuggling, in which he Avas a much greater master than in cocking and hunting, he soon got into a gang of these people." The chance of trade brought him to London; and from 1748 to 1752 he was constantly trading between France and this city. " Part of this time he lodged in a court in Carey Street. Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Avas then instructed in the mathematics by one Mr. Donnelly, an Irish gentleman famous for his knowledge and abilities in the mathematical studies." After 1752 his chief place of residence was Boulogne, " where he became king of the smugglers, and during his reign did not export and import less than 20,000/. Avorth a-year." In due time he Avas throAvn into prison, from which the French government, being at that time sadly at a loss for a naval hero, took him, and gave him the command of a buccaneering expedition along the coasts of Britain, in the course of Avhich he displayed skill, courage, and humanity. In short, though Ave are not aAvare that his parallel. Captain Paul Jones, ever Avent through the initiatory processes of smuggling and Avaiting at table, " barring these accidents," Thurot Avas infinitely the more genuine hero of the two : he was more of the gentleman, and never landed as commander of an alien and hostile force within sight of the house he was born in. But Avhat has Thurot to do AA'ith St. Giles's ? He is a specimen of the company Avhich, while he was studying mathematics and serving his time as journeyman to the trade of smuggler — before he had set up for himself on a large scale — ¦ used to frequent the more genteel streets of that district. " He used frequently to go to a club which Avas held every Monday night somewhere about the Seven Dials, and consisted Avholly of foreigners, chiefly of Frenchmen. Some of these gentlemen took it in their heads one evening most grossly to abuse the English and Irish, calling them every contemptuous name Avhich liquor and ill-manners could suggest. Thurot listened to them for some time Avith a groat deal of patience ; till at length, finding they intended to set no bounds to their insolence, he very calmly got up, and, seizing the tAvo Avho sat next him, each by the nose, Avithout saying a syllable, he led them to the door, and put them out and bolted it after them; then, returning to his seat — ' Come, gentlemen,' he said, ' let us drink about and call another subject.' "* Ihe class of foreigners to Avhich Thurot belonged has become too numerous or too ambitious to find proper ac commodation at Seven Dials : uoav that they obtrude themselves upon a wider public, it is to be Avished that they sometimes had a Thurot among them. It is time, hoAvever, to come to the modern St. Giles's. This interesting dis trict is bounded on the north by the great broAvhouse in Balnbridge Street, and on the south by the great brcAvhouse in Castle Street ; and extends from Hog Lane (noAv Crown Street) on the west, to Drury Lane on the east. The erection of Bloomsbury, Avhich originally formed part of St. Giles's, into a separate Aiu»«»l Register,' 1760, p. 28 (of the CUionicle division of the volume). 264 LONDON. parish, has given a greater homogeneity to the district. Leaving out of view therefore, the scantling of Great Russell Street included in it, the parish of St. Giles's may be considered as the most thoroughly uniform and consistent in point of character and appearance of any in London. Slight shades of difference may be detected between its " west end '' (Avhich, by the way, is situated on its south side) about Seven Dials, and its " east end " which rejoices in the designa tion, redolent of woodland or cathedral associations, of " the Rookery." The Seven Dials, we have had occasion to remark above, are an evidence of an attempt to civilise the neighbourhood by introducing respectable houses Into it. The attempt Avas not altogether in vain : this part of the parish has ever since " worn its dirt with a difference." There Is an air of shabby gentility about it, not unlike that Avhich may be remarked about the native of such a dis trict, Avho, after having been tried for a year or two as servant in a genteel family, has been returned in despair to his (ot her) original rags and dirt. The air of the footman or waiting-maid can be recognised through the tatters, which are Avorn with more assumption than those of their unsophisticated neighbours — " You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will ; The scent of the roses Avill hang round it still." The houses in this region, with their inmates and surrounding objects, always remind us irresistibly of Sophia Western's sacque worn by Molly Seagrim in her father's house. It is here that the literature of St. Giles's has fixed its abode ; and a literature the parish has of Its own, and that, as times go, of a very respectable standing in point of antiquity. In a letter from Letitia Pilkington to the demure author of ' Sir Charles Grandison,' and published by the no less exemplary and irreproach able Mrs. Barbauldj the lady informs her correspondent that she has taken apartments In Great White Lion Street, and stuck up a bill intimating that all who had not found "reading and writing come by nature," and Avho had had no teacher to make up the defect by art, might have "letters written here." With the progress of education, printing-presses have found their way into St. Giles's, and it Is now no exaggeration to say that, compared Avith the rest of the metro polis, the streets radiating from Seven Dials, and intersecting the diamond- shaped space included by Monmouth Street, West Street, Castle Street, and King Street, display more than the average allowance of booksellers' and sta tioners' shops, circulating libraries, and the like. It was here — in Monmouth Court, a thoroughfare connecting Monmouth Street Avith Little Earl Street — that the late eminent Mr. Catnach developed the resources of his genius and trade. It was he who first availed himself of greater mechanical skill and a larger capital than had previously been employed In that department of The Trade, to sub stitute for the execrable tea-paper, blotched with lamp-black and oil, which cha racterised the old broadside and ballad printing, tolerable white paper and real printer's ink. But more than that, it Avas he who first conceived and carried into effect the idea of publishing collections of songs by the yard, and giving to pur chasers, for the small price of one penny (in former days the cost of a single ballad), strings of poetry, resembling in shape and length the list of Don Juan's mistresses, Avhich Leporello unrolls on the stage before Donna Anna. He Avas no ordinary man, Catnach: he patronised original talents in many a bard of St,~ ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT 265 Giles's, and is understood to have accumulated the largest store of broadsides, last-dying speeches, ballads, and other stock-in-trade of the flying stationers, upon record. We had flattered ourselves with the illusive hope of benefiting by his liberal assistance in compiling these annals of St. Giles's ; but upon entering Monmouth Court, the first time for many years, we were abime by finding over one of his doors (for the great man filled two), " Paul and Riley, successors to late Catnach." _ We entertain not a doubt that his mantle has descended upon successors worthy of him, but to us they never can be what Catnach has been. His literary treasures will, in all probability, remain locked up until some St. Giles's George Robins does for them what the genuine Robins is doing for the collection of Strawberry Hill. Unless, indeed, the British Museum or the Bod leian contrive to secure them before they are offered to public competition. The taste of St. Giles's is more literary than scientific, and modern seems prer ferred to ancient literature. At present there is, so far as we can ascertain, only one old book-shop in the district — the extensive and recherche collection, near the upper end of Broad Street, on the south side — second-hand books are some times indeed to be met with in the shops of other dealers, but they are in general the latest fashionable novels. Romantic serials appear to be greatly in demand : such as the ' The Grave of the Forsaken,' ' The Wreck of the Heart,' ' The Lion King,' ' Susan Hopley,' ' The Horrors of the Castle of Zeinzendorff,' ' The Mil ler's Maid,' &c. All these are of the Bulwer or Ainsworth schools, and illustrated by engravings in wood every way worthy of them. For works of humour, such as the ' Penny Satirist,' ' Cleave's Police Gazette,' there seems to be a considerable demand. The fact of all the works Ave have enumerated belonging to the illus trated class will have prepared the reader to expect other symptoms of a taste for art ; and accordingly, in Monmouth Street, we find one of the great ateliers from which the milk-shops, ginger-beer stalls, green-groceries, and pot-houses of the suburbs are supplied with sign-boards. Theatrical amateurs appear to abound; at least the ample store of tin daggers, blunt cutlasses, banners, halberds, battle- axes, &c., constantly exposed for sale at a cellar in Monmouth Street, indicate a steady demand. Nor is this all : in no part of the town do Ave find singing-birds in greater numbers and variety, and as most of the houses, being of an old fashion, have broad ledges of lead over the shop windoAvs, these are frequently converted into hanging gardens, not so extensive as those of Babylon, but possibly yielding as much pleasure to their occupants. In short, what with literature and a taste for flowers and birds, there is much of the " SAveet south" about St. Giles's, harmonising with the out-of-door habits of its occupants ; and one could almost fancy that, amid the groups so easily and picturesquely disposed round each of the seven angles Avhieh abut upon the central circle. Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer had there found many of those exquisite pictures which he has so felicitously introduced into his 'LastDays of Pompeii.' Flower (or vegetable) girls (sometimes blind of- one eye) meet you at every corner, and the baths are to be found in Little Earl Street with the inscription, "A shave and a wash for Id." Pedants may fancy this a degradation from the merits of the great work referred to, but Avho ever com plained because phrases of true English groAvth are to be found in the mouths of Shakspere's " citizens ?" The bulk of the permanent population seems composed of HebrcAvs and the 266 LONDON. natives of the Emerald Isle. The former preponderate in Monmouth Street (and this being the case, it is a favourable account of their practical tolerance that there is a fiourishing pork and sausage shop near one end of the street, and an equally flourishing Roman Catholic bookseller's at the other) ; the Irish abound most in the lanes and courts. The association is not without its predisposing causes in the economical relations of the tAVO parties. Whoever has passed along Monmouth Street must have been struck with the redundant drapery of the old- clothes' shop, intermingled Avith stores of second-hand boots and shoes, enough, it Avould seem, to fit out Avhole Spanish legions, were they again required. Doubtless good part of them finds a retail sale on the spot : it is not easy to escape the importunities of their eloquent vendors. But in addition to these, a large export trade is driven Avith Ireland. It is understood that Mr. O'Connell's patriotic attempt to promote the domestic manufactures of Ireland has failed mainly from the circumstance that nine-tenths of the population have contracted a habit of wearing in preference second and third-hand clothes, and that the re maining tenth cannot Avith their best Avill Avear out their new clothes quick enough to provide the rest Avitli a constant supply of their favourite wear. 'The classical reader may possibly retain from his schoolboy days a recol lection of a race of people called Troglodytes — dwellers in caves, an intermediate species between the man and the rabbit. Their descendants still flourish in great force in Monmouth Street. Cellars serving Avhole fanlilies for " kitchen and parlour and bed-room and all" are to be found in other streets of London, but not so numerous and near to each other. Here they cluster like cells in a convent of the order of La Trappe, or like onions on a rope. It is curious and interesting to Avatch the habits of these human moles Avhen they emerge, or half emerge, from their cavities. Their infants seem exempt from the dangers Avhich haunt those of other people : at an age when most babies are not trusted alone on a IcA^el floor, these urchins stand secure on the upmost round of a trap-ladder, studying the different conformations of the shoes of the passers-by. The mode of ingress of t'.ie adults is curious : they turn their backs to the entry, and, in serting flrst one foot and then another, disappear by degrees. The process is not unlike (were such a thing conceivable) a sword sheathing itself They appear a short-Avinded generation, often coming, like the otter, to the surface to breathe. In the twilight which reigns at the bottom of their dens you can sometimes discern the male busily cobbling shoes on one side of the entrance, and the female repairing all sorts of rent garments on the other. They seem to be free feeders : at certain periods of the day tea-cups and saucers may be seen arranged on their boards ; at others, plates and poAvter pots. They have the appearance of being on the Avhole a contented race. At present, Avhen the cold north-easter of the income-tax is about to SAveep cuttingly across the face of the earth, we often feel tempted to envy those Avho, in their subterranean retreats, avIU hear it whistle innocuously far above their heads, with the feelings of the travellers in ' Mary the Maid of the Inn :' " ' Tis pleasant, says one, seated by the fireside, To hear the wind whistle Avithout." There are some features common to both divisions of this region, Avhich Avill be best understood and appreciated after avc have introduced our readers to " the ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. 267 Rookery." Here is the genuine unsophisticated St. Giles's, Its limits are not A'ery precisely defined, its squalor fades into the cleanness of the more civilised districts in its vicinity, by insensible degrees, like the hues of the rainboAV, but Ave shall not be far from the mark if Ave describe it as the triangular space bounded by Bainbrldge Street, George Street, and High Street, St, Giles's, It is one dense mass of houses, " so olde they only seemen not to falle," through Avhich narroAV tortuous lanes curve and wind, from Avhich again diverge close courts innumerable, all communicating with those nearest them. It is one great maze of narrow crooked paths crossing and intersecting in labyrinthine convolu tions, as if the houses had been originally one great block of stone eaten by slugs into innumerable small chambers and connecting passages. There is no privacy here for any of the over-croAvded population ; every apartment in the place is accessible from every other by a dozen different approaches. Only at night, Avhen they are asleep — 'and not always at night — can their redundant numbers find . room ; for so long as they are lively enough to turn and be aAvare that anything presses them, there is squeezing and jostling, and grumbling and cursing. Hence whoever ventures here finds the streets (by courtesy so called) thronged with loiterers, and sees through the half-glazed windoAvs the rooms croAvded to suffoca tion. The stagnant gutters in the middle of the lanes, the accumulated piles of garbage, the pools accumulated in the holloAvs of the disjointed pavement, the filth choking up the dark passages Avhich open like rat-holes upon the highAvay — all these, Avith their indescribable sights and smells, leave scarcely so dispirit- . ing an impression on the passenger as the condition of the houses. Walls of the colour of bleached soot — doors falling from their hinges — door-posts worm-eaten and greasily polished from being long the supports of the shoulders of ragged loungers — Avindows Avhere shivered panes of dirty glass alternate Avith Avisps of straw, old hats, and lumps of bed-ticken or broAvn paper— bespeak the last and frailest shelter that can be interposed betAveen man and the elements. It is a land of utter idleness. Groups of Avoinen, Avith dirty rags hung round them, not put on, cOAver round the doors — 'the old Avith AA'rinkled parchment skins, the young with flushed SAVollen faces anfd heavy eyes. The men lean against the Avail or lounge listlessly about, sometimes AvIth pipes in their mouths. In this, region there are no birds or floAvers at AvindoAV or on Avail ; the inmates can scarcely muster liveliness sufficient to exchange Avords, or perpetrate the practical joke of pushing each other into the kennel. Shops are almost unknoAvn — in the interior of the district quite unknoAvn. Half-way up Bainbrldge Street is one In Avhich a few Avithered vegetables are offered for sale ; in George Street another, Avhere any kind of rags, Avith all their dirt, are purchased ; along Broad Street, St. Giles's, are some provision shops, one or tAvo of those suspicious deposits of old rusty keys called marine stores, and opposite the church a gin-shop. Here a feAV miserable women may be seen attempting to help each other to arrange their faded shaAvls, Avhcn by any means they have procured liquor enough to stupify themselves — exhilaration is out of the question. Such is the aspect of this place by day. At night men speak of AvIld frantic revels, but these are not bj- the per manent inhabitants. In this desolate region many of the AvindoAVS announce "Lodgings at 3c?. a night," and the transient population is almost as numerous as the regular in-dAvellers, What the attraction can be it is difficult to conceive : 268 LONDON. perhaps in winter animal heat in over-crowded rooms may be a cheap substitute for fuel. It is the wild wanderers from town to town, whose blood circulator owing to their unsettled life, who keep up the revels spoken of; their hosts look on apathetically, or, if allowed to participate, moodily drink stupefaction. The dull prosaic accounts given by policemen and constables of the ihtellectua. and moral character of the inhabitants of this district some years back (and exter nally there is yet little show of amendment) Avas more appalling than anything a mere imaginative writer could conceive. Imagination falls short of reality on one hand (" Bill Sparkes could patter flash ten times faster and funnier than that cove," said an eleve of the flash-house, tossing aside contemptuously one of those novels which attempts to be striking by imitating the language of thieves) ; and, on the other, there is a liveliness excited by the effort of describing incompatible with the representation of the utter apathy and moral deadness sometimes to be found in men. One gin-shop " was reported, from the multiplicity of business they carried on from six in the morning till church commenced on Sundays; and there have frequently a great many people come out quite intoxicated, not able to stand on their legs." "My opinion Is," pursued the witness, " that, if there is a house that sells good spirits, if they go in and have a glass, they make a point of repeating that so often, that in my oAvn mind they become stupefied and in toxicated sooner than they would by sitting down and drinking spirits in a public- house. You seldom find any of these people ask for beer in these houses ; when they go into a public-house, they may take a glass and then sit down and have some beef. I have seen a woman myself go a dozen times into one shop, and I am sure that has been Avithin two hours and a half." * These practices were not confined to adults : — " There is a number of his lodger's children who go round Russell Square and those places, sweeping the causcAvays, and I have seen a deal of abandoned conduct of these children. I have come round and heard their conversation one to another ; after one of them has got fourpence, the others have been successful and got fourpence more : ' Well,' using a most dreadful expression, ' I Avill give you a fly for a quartern of gin.' They are children from eight to twelve ; I do not think they exceed twelve." Is the reader curious to know who the he was whose lodger's children were such precocious adepts in drinking and gambling? He Avas "street-keeper of Russell Square." Nor was he the only public functionary who made a livelihood out of the vices of the inhabitants : one was mentioned Avho was the proprietor of no less than three disreputable houses, and clerk in Bedford Chapel. The truth is, that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled ; and this ac counts foi the peculiar morality of thief- catchers. " Do you think it necessary," was asked of a gentleman of this profession, by a member of the committee which made the report from which we have been quoting, "for respectable police-officers to associate with thieves and bad characters at flash-houses, in order to detect ihem ?" " In the first place," was the sententious reply, " I do not think very » Some comfortable philosoplier says, « There never was a had, but it had a worse ;" and this seems to hold true of St. Giles's. Bad though it be, it is nothing to what it was. A magisbate of the county of Middlesex said in 1817:— "In the early pait of my life (1 remember almost the time which Hogarth has pictured) et'w^ home tn St. Giless, whatever else they sold, sold gin ; every chandler's shop sold gin : the situation of (he people was dreadful. I lived with a relation of mine then, who employed a vast number of people, and observe.l the ower orders then in a terrible state." ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. 269 respectable officers can long bear to be in the company of Me /ower class of thieves, on account of their conversation and their manners." This was an officer of de licate taste. As the bear-leader In ' She Stoops to Conquer ' never allowed his bear to dance except to the " very genteelest of tunes," our hero could only asso ciate with the very genteelest of thieves. Captain Macheath might have been his friend, but Nimming Ned must have in vain aspired to the honour of his ac quaintance. This worthy (it was before the days of the new police) admitted that he " did a little in the coal-trade," and that he supplied public-houses. Then." came question like an A B C book:" — " Is that not a temptation for officers to pass over the conduct of certain houses, when they supply those houses with articles of consumption?" — " It is very natural to consider that it must on all pure minds be acknowledged that, generally speaking, it must be a temptation occasionally to show lenity; at the same time I must speak for myself, that it has given me an opportunity of looking into the houses back wards and forwards, where I have discovered several things that have been useful," One other trait, and we dismiss the subject. Mr. " senior police- officer," as he styled himself, having declared magisterially that " Sunday news papers have a great tendency to corrupt the minds of the lower classes of society,',' and having previously stated that he served newspapers, the committee not unnaturally inquired whether he served Sunday newspapers ? " Yes, I do ; I am very sorry for it'' We would not be misunderstood; every officer of justice does not bear his truncheon in vain, or become, as Falstaff would say, "little better than one of the Avicked." We reud, in the same annals of dlsreputablllty from which we have been quoting, of a beadle who was so well knoAvn, and had so much influence even over the Irish, that he had been seen " leading up the Irishmen, one in one hand and one in another, with a mob of two or three hundred persons arotind him, and no person attempting to rescue any one from him, though they might to do it if they would." The terrible man thus described unconsciously paints himself in one of his answers to the committee : — " There is generally somebody looking out for my cocked hat at the chamber-window, and the moment they see my gold-laced hat, they shut it up." Gold, like the magnet, operates differently according to the end of the instrument that is turned to the object : gold In the breeches-pocket attracts ; gold " all round my hat," as the bard of St. Giles's sweetly sings, repels. But seriously, in St. Giles's, even more than in many other places, the pomp, pride, and circumstance of authority does a great deal. " I have never attempted," said Mr. John Smart in 1817, " to collect the rate but for the parish of St. Giles-in-the-FIelds and St. George's, Bloomsbury, where they will not pay any person but the high constable." There Is pride for you! The sturdy burghers of St. Giles's will not condescend to be taxed by deputy ; the high constable must come in person and take it himself. It is as if the nobility should refuse to pay their income-tax to a common tax-ga,therer, and insist upon the Premier's coming to receive it in person. Nor is this a solitary instance of the airs the denizens of St. Giles's (both in and out of office) give themselves, as Avitness : — " Samuel Furzeman called in and examined. — What are you ? I am constable and round-house keeper of St. Giles-in-the-FIelds and St. George's, Bloomsbury, the two united parishes." To say nothing of the 270 LONDON solemn specific nature of the description, the retention of the title " round-house keeper," long after a round-house had ceased to exist, reminds one of the Kings of England persisting in calling themselves Kings of France, although for cen turies they had not owned a foot of land on the other side of the Channel. Such are the regions close on either hand of the street Avhich connects High Holborn Avith Oxford Street — an airy thoroughfare, along which no small portion of the ease and affluence of London Is daily rolled in cab, 'bus, or in their own private vehicles, unobservant it may be, or merely remarking hoAV shabby fly- bloAvn provision-shops, old furniture repositories, and marine stores look, but little thinking of the squalid scenes that lurk behind them — in " the back settle ments," as they are poetically named by the natives. The main difference betAveen the north and the south sides of the great thoroughfare alluded to con sists in this : that in the latter there is still thought, and hope, and exertion, Avhile in the former all these seem dead in the human bodies Avhich move mechanically about amid its pestilential effluvia. Isolated courts and lanes, resembling ths Rookery, are found on the south side also, but not in one dense mass : they are broken up and ventilated by the busier streets, Avhere men are still human. The feeblest eddy on the outer' edge of the ever-foaming torrent of London life, it may be, AAiith just enough of motion to enable us to distinguish between it and the dull moisture Avhich keeps out the ooze alongshore as torpid as itself, but still there is life in it ; and unspeakable is the difference between life, hoAvever faint, and utter apathy. In this eddy of ScA-en Dials Is to be found the pilfering instinct of the native of its back-courts not utterly dead, mingling with the rust ing honesty of the indolent and unfortunate sinking doAvuAvard from the industri ous classes. There Is activity after its kind, as any one may be aAvare who has threaded Monmouth Street during the hours nearest on either side to noon; for later in the day its busy chafferers rcAvard themselves for their activity by indul gence, and in the morning they crawl about opening their shops as if only half aAvake. But the incessant crowds of listless hangers-on at the doors of the gin- palaces in Seven Dials show by hoAV thin a partition the anomalously industrious of the place are separated from the hopeless class Avhoso only pleasure is sottlsh- ness. Let us not forget the education of St. Giles's; for however little Is done in that sacred cause, the forms of it are uoav everjAvhere gone through Avith most edifying hypocrisy. In Compton Street Is a sign-board, " Infants' School," but Avhether this inscription relates to Avhat is or to Avhat Avas, it Avere hard to say. At the lower end of Monmouth Street is a cellar into which a croAvd of children are duly packed in the morning to keep them from amongst the horses' feet during the day; and at the upper end of George Street may be seen the lirmly. bolted doors of " St. Giles's Irish Schools," confronting the " Catholic School of St. Francis," Avith its brown and torn hats stuck through the broken panes of glass in its AvindoAvs. There is here just enough of the appearance of education to remind us that there is such a thing elsewhere, if it should for a moment escape our memory. And this desolate region lies between the Inns of Court and the two great theatres, extends on one side to the busy traffic of the Strand, on the other to the jqually busy traffic of Oxford Street and Holborn, and is separated from the ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT 271 Court-end of the town only by the equivocal region of Soho and Leicester Squares. One step conveys us from a land of affluence and comfort to a land of hopelessness and squalid Avant. And Avhat remedy is proposed ? Men are be ginning to suspect that spacious lines of streets, Avith rows of stately fronts of houses on each side, in Avhich the decorations of Grecian temples are superin duced upon shops of all kinds, are of little avail, so long as close and noisome lanes and courts are allowed to remain in their rottenness behind, only hidden by these Avhitened sepulchres ; and therefore it is proposed to apply, to " the Rookery " in particular, a more thorough-going cure. A street is to be driven through In a direct line from Oxford Street to Holborn, where the Rookery now stands, sweeping the offensive mass aAvay bodily. As far as the houses merely are concerned, there can be no objection to this ; but what is to become of their inhabitants? They have sought shelter there not because they prefer dirty and ill-ventilated abodes, but because there are no others to which they can betake them. Pulling down their old houses about their ears will not provide these miserables Avith noAV residences. Is it an amendment of their lot to drive them from their mouldy straw and crumbling roofs to the hard streets without any covering? There is a lamentable ignorance about that self-applauding humanity Avith Avhich Ave deck ourselves in this age as Avith'a glittering robe. It is the true counterpart of that of the French princess, Avho, Avhen told that the people Avere starving for Avant of bread, asked why they did not eat buns? It is either that selfish reluctance to contemplate pain, which Avould assuage the pain of the sufferer so long as he is in vioAV, heedless of the pangs he may endure as soon as he is removed from sight ; or it is a dream that, by removing some of the conse quences of poverty, the cause itself Is removed. To the first class belong those Avho imagine that lavish poor-laAvs — abundant doles of alms — are all that is re quired; to the latter, those Avho persuade themselves that, by merely enforcing a medical police, improving drainage, opening up close and over-built districts, removing dilapidated buildings — in short, by rendering all parts of our toAvns and cities fit habitations for those Avho can afford to pay for comfort, and leaving none of those holes in which the very poor are accustomed to hide their heads — ¦ enough is done. Alas ! man is not relieved by heaping food, clothing, and sheltei' upon him, so long as he remains unchanged Avithin — unable to help him self — a pauper in soul ! And it seems little likely that Lazarus avIU cease to be hungry merely because he sees the crumbs he used to pick up sAvept away and destroyed as they fall from the table. Let the rich and the poAverful lay these things to heart. We pause for a mo ment ere Ave quit the scene through Avhich avc have led our readers, to look around from this the highest part of it, on Avhich the church is built. Most frequently the lazar refugees of the poor or the dishonest in great cities are to be found in holloAvs, into Avhich they seem to have run down like the rain-Avater, carrying all impurities along with them. Here is one planted like a city on a hill, which can not be hid. And, from the little care taken to amend It, one could almost fancy London Avas proud of this pimple on her fat smooth citizen visage. " Here lieth," so runs, or ran, a monumental inscription in this cemeter}^ "Richard Pendrill, Preserver and Conductor of his sacred Majesty King Charles II. of Great Britain, after his escape from Worcester Fight, in the y ;ar 1651, who died *272 LONDON. Februarys, 1671." Surely it Avas not altogether by accident that the body of this loyal yeoman came to be deposited here. There is a meaning and a moral in the arrangement. A devotional feeling is ennobling, if sincere, however erro neous its attachment. Whatever we may think of Charles, the faith and loyalty of Pendrill was pure. And fitting, therefore, is it that he be hold in remembrance; yet the erecting of his monumental trophy amid a living condemnation of those who held the faith that rulers may blamelessly live for themaelves, neglecting the discharge of their high functions, as a standing rebuke to all who, seeing honour paid to one who in ignorance served faithfully an undeserving master, seek their own honour by serving those who they knoAV do not deserve it. Or, if the reader think, with Horatio, that it is " to consider too curiously to consider so,' he may satisfy himself with the quodlibet, that honest Pendrill lies here, amid the living lumber of St. Giles's, like a fine picture by an old master depo sited by accident among the rubbish of some of the neighbouring old-furaituro shops. 1. The flrst St. Giles's Church. 2. Remains of the Walls anciently enclosing the Hospital precincts. 3. Site of the Gallows, and afterwards of the Pound. 4. Way to Uxbridge, now Oxford Street. 5. Elde Strate, since called Hog Lane. 6. Le Lane, now Monmouth Street. 7. Site of the Seven Dials, formerly called Cock and Pye Fields. 8. Elm close, since called Long Acre, 9, Drury Lane, [West Front of the General Post Office.] LXVIIL— THE POST OFFICE. Of all the public departments under the direction and management of the State, the Post Office is at once the most popular and the most interesting in its opera tion and influence. In consequence of recent changes, it can scarcely be any longer regarded as an engine of taxation, but its vast machinery is put into action almost solely for the advantage of the public. In its social influence, such an Institution is only second in value and importance to the art of writing. If the millions of letters Avhich it is noAV employed in transmitting from one part of the earth to another — from kingdom to kingdom, from the metropolis to the most obscure hamlet, and from the latter to the antipodes — Avere suddenly de prived of the means of reaching their destination, and all the resources for accom plishing this end Avere to be broken up, the whole world would be throAvn back ward in civilization, and all the springs by which it is urged onward would lose some portion of their elasticity. Such a prospect need not, however, be contem- plate'd. The Post Office is not a very ancient institution in England. For many cen turies a great proportion of the population lived and died near the spot Avhich gave them birth ; and long after a change in that state of society, Avriting was not a very common accomplishment. The business of Government could not, VOL. III. T 274 LONDON. nowever, be carried on without some correspondence; and when the King sum moned Parliaments, or addressed the sheriffs, or the governors of his castles, officers were employed called "Nuncii." They carried their despatches on horse back, and the payment of sums of money to them for the carriage of letters is mentioned In various rolls, from the days of King John through subsequent reigns. The principal nobles, whose large estates were often at a great distance from each other, also maintained " Nuncii." In the ' Paston Letters,' and In the ' Household Books ' of various families, doAvn to the end of the sixteenth cen tury, the practice of transmitting letters from their country-seats to London, or elsewhere, by their own servants, is frequently mentioned. After a day's journey they halted for the night at the ancient hostelry. Before this period, however, there Avere post-stations on the great roads. Gale states that during the Scottish war, Edward IV. (1461-83) established such stations, at distances of twenty miles from each other. On arriving at one of theSe, the messenger delivered his despatches to another horseman, who conveyed them to the next station ; and so they passed from one station to another, each messenger travelling only a stage of about tAventy miles. By this means letters Avere expedited about two hundred miles in two days. Cyrus, the first King of Persia, established an exactly similar mode of communication through his dominions. The superscription of " Haste, post haste," often met Avith in letters of the fifteenth and beginning of the six teenth centuries, shows that letters Avere not unfrequently transmitted through horsemen attached to a line of post-houses. In the ' Household Book ' of the Le Stranges of Hunstanton, Norfolk, there Is an entry, in 1520, by Lady Le Strange, of 9s. 3d. " for cost of riding up to London with a letter to my son Nycholas." In this case a servant of the family might ride up to London himself, procuring re lays of horses at the different post-houses, or he might place his letter in the hands of an authorised messenger travelling to London Avith other lettersr In these arrangements the rudiments of a regular Post Office begin to appear, Tavo persons having each a letter to send to London Avould be enabled to do so at one-half the expense by employing one public messenger ; four persons would do so at one-quarter of the expense ; and so on. The carriers of goods were also carriers of letters. The rate of hire for post-horses was fixed at a penny a-mile by a statute of 1548 (2 and 3 Edw. VI. c. 3). The duties of the office of chief Postmaster of England at first related rather to the superintendence of the system for facilitating travelling, by the establish ment and regulation of post-houses, and had littie or no immediate connexion with the collection and distribution of letters. It does not appear certain when he undertook the latter task. In 1514 the aliens resident in London appbinted their own Postmaster. Letters were committed to his charge, and it devolved upon him to provide the means of forwarding them to their destination. Some times the Flemings, at other times the Italians, appointed one of their oavu countrymen to this office ; but his nomination was confirmed by the Postmaster of England. At length the aliens of London presumed upon exercising their choice as a matter of right, and in 1568 a Spaniard was appointed their Post master through the Influence of the Spanish ambassador; but the Flemings had at the same time chosen one of their own countrymen, who was confirmed in his THE POST OFFICE. 275 office by the Postmaster for England ; and to decide the matter an appeal was made to the Privy Council, the substance of which is given in a paper entitled ' Articles touching the Office of the Post of London.' In this document it was alleged that " The strangers that had been Postmasters of London had always been occasion of many Injuries and much damage unto the merchants of England, as well by means of staying and keeping their letters a day, twain, or more, and In the mean time delivering the letters of strangers ; and also by staying the ordi nary post a day, three, or four, tliat In the mean time one extraordinary might be despatched by the strangers to prevent the market." Other abuses were alleged, and the petition concluded by a desire that an Englishman might be placed in the office. The English merchants suggested that, " for quietness' sake," an agreement should be made between the Postmasters of London and Antwerp, that one-half of the " runners " employed should be foreigners, though it was stated that under the former arrangement not one Englishman was engaged. How the dispute was settled Ave do not know ; but in letters patent of Charles I., in 1632, it is stated that King James had constituted an office called the Post master of England for Foreign Parts. He had " the sole taking up, sending, and conveying of all packets and letters, concerning his service or business, to be despatched to foreign parts, with poAver to grant moderate salaries ;" and no per son besides Avas to take upon himself these duties. In 1635 a proclamation was issued "for settling of the letter office of England and Scotland," Avhich is the first attempt to place the Post Office system on its modern footing. It stated that hitherto " there hath been no certain or constant intercourse between the kingdoms of England and Scotland," and commands " Thomas Witherings, his Majesty's Postmaster of England for foreign parts, to settle a running post or two, to run night and day between Edinburgh and Scotland and the City of London, to go thither and come back in six days ;" and all postmasters are " to have ready in their stables one or two horses," Bye-posts Avere to be established with places lying at a distance from the great roads; with Hull, Lincoln, &c., on the road to the north. Similar arrangements were to be carried out on the road to Dublin through Holyhead, and toPlymouth through Exeter ; and Oxford, Bristol, Colchester, and Norwich, Avere to enjoy correspond ing advantages with as little delay as possible. The pre-established system set on foot by private parties for the transmission of letters was not summarily put doAvn, the Government contenting itself for the present by enunciating Its exclu sive title to the business of conveying letters. In 1640, Witherings, the Post master, Avas superseded by the Long Parliament for having interfered with the private adventurers who undertook the transmission of letters, his interference being declared contrary to the liberty and freedom of the subject; and the duties of his successors Avere to be exercised under the superintendence of the Secretary of State. But when, in 1649, the Common Council of the City of London pro ceeded to set up an office of their oavu for the despatch of letters, the Commons passed a resolution asserting their exclusive right to the control of such establish ments. A struggle now took place between the Government posts and those carried on by companies of private Individuals. The latter not only established more frequent posts than the Government, but carried letters at a cheaper rate t2 276 LONDON. Prideaux, a member of the Commons, who had been appointed Postmaster, threatened to seize the letters Avhich passed through their hands, but the " Noav Undertakers," so far from being deterred, stated that they were resolved, "by the help of God, to continue their management," and announced that many ucav places Avould be included In their arrangements. Besides Tuesday and Satur day, they established an additional post j day on the Thursday, so that they had three posts a-Aveek, Avhile the Government had only one; and they charged only threepence where the charge of the Government Avas sixpence. Prideaux Avas empoAvered to reduce the Government rates, and the private carriers were subsequently put down by an order for the seizure of their letters. The revenue derived from the postage on letters soon became of some importance, and during the Protectorate various improvements Avere introduced calculated to render it more productive. The authority of the Government posts Avas fully established by an Act passed in 1656 "to settle the postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland." The pream ble showed that " the erecting of one General Post Office for the speedy convey ing and re-carrying of letters by post to and from all places AvIthin England, Scotland, and Ireland, and into several parts beyond the seas, hath been and is the best means not only to maintain a certain and constant intercourse of trade and commerce between all the said places, to the great benefit of the people of these nations, but also to convey the public despatches, and to discover and pre vent many dangerous and Avicked designs Avhich have been and are daily con trived against the peace and Avelfare of this commonAvealth, the intelligence AA'hereof cannot Avell be communicated but by letter of escript." The Act pro vides " that there shall be one General Post Office, and one officer styled the Postmaster- General of England and Comptroller of the Post Office." The horsing of all " through " posts, and persons " riding in post," Avas to be placed under his control. Rates were fixed for English, Scotch, Irish, and foreign letters, and for post-horses. The Post Office had noAV assumed the character and exer cised the functions Avhich it does at present. When Prideaux Avas made Postmaster the revenue of the Post Office is sup posed scarcely to have exceeded 5000Z. a-year. It was farmed at 10,000/. in 1653, and at 14,000/. in 1659; at 21,500/. in 1663, at Avhich period it Avas settled on the Duke of York ; in 1674 at 43,O0OZ. ; and in 1685 at 65,000/. The Duke was now James II,, and an Act Avas passed granting to him and to his heirs the revenue of the Post Office independent of the control of Parliament. This pro fligate grant was resumed at the Revolution, though it Avas settled on the King, but it could not be alienated beyond his life. In the following reigns a certain proportion of this revenue Avas applied to the purposes of the state ; but It Avas not .until the settlement of the Civil List, at the accession of George III., that the claims of the sovereign were finally relinquished. In 1724 the net revenue of the Post Office amounted to 96,399/. ; in 1764 to 116,182Z. ; in 1784 to 196,513/. ; in 1794 to 463,000/.; in 1804 to 952,893/.; in 1814 to 1,532,1.53/., after which time it remained nearly stationary. The gross revenue from 1815 to 1820 averaged 2,190,517/., and from 1832 to 1837, 2,251,424/. The modern history of the Post Office may be divided into three distinct THE POST OFFICE. 277 jieriods: 1st, before 1784; 2nd, from that year to 1839; and 3rd, from 1839 to the present time. In the first period the mails Avere conveyed on horseback or in light carts, and the robbery of the mail Avas one of the most common of the higher class of offences. The service Avas very inefficiently performed, and the rate of travelling did not often exceed four miles an hour. A time-bill for the year 1717 has been preserved, addressed "to the several postmasters betwixt London and East Grinstead." It is headed " Haste, haste, post haste !" from AvhIch it might be inferred that extraordinary expedition was not only enforced but Avould be accomplished. The mails, conveyed either on horseback or in a cart, departed "from the letter-office in London, July 7th, 1717, at half-an-hour past tAVO in the morning," and reached East Grinstead, distant forty-six miles, at half-an-hour after three in the afternoon. There Avere stoppages of half-an-hour each at Epsom, Dorking, and Reigate, and of a quarter-of-an-hour at Leatherhead, so that the rate of travelling, exclusive of stoppages, Avas a fraction above four miles an hour. But even nearly fifty years afterwards, and on the great roads, five miles an hour Avas considered as quite " going a-head." " Letters are conveyed in so short a time, by night as well as by day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes one hundred and twenty miles, and in five or six days an ansAver to a letter may be had from a place three hundred miles from London." Letters Avere despatched from London to all parts of England and Scotland three times a-Aveek, and to Wales tAvice a-week ; but " the post goes every day to those places Avhcre the court resides, as also to the several stations and rendezvous of his Majesty's fleet, as the Downs and Splthead ; and to Tunbridge during the season for drinking the Avaters." The mails Avere not all despatched at the same hour, but Avere sent off at various intervals between one and three in the morning, and letters Avere delivered in London at different times of the day as each post arrived. This careless and lazy state of things existed until Mr. Palmer's plan for extending the efficiency of the Post Office began to be adopted in 1784. Mr. Palmer's attention was draAvn to the singular discrepancy AvhIch existed between the speed of the post and of the coaches. Letters AvhIch left Bath on Monday night were not delivered in London until tAvo or three o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, and were sometimes even later ; but the coach AA'hIch left Bath on Monday afternoon arrived in London sufficiently early for the deli very of parcels by ten o'clock the next morning ; and though the postage from Bath to London Avas at that time only threepence, yet despatch was in many cases of such importance that the tradesmen of Bath willingly paid tAvo shillings to send their letters to London in the form of a coach parcel, besides request ing their correspondents to give a gratuity to the porter for the early delivery of the packet, this promise of ad.ditIonal payment forming part of the direction. The sloAV rate of travelling of the Bath post was not an exception. The post Avhich left London on Monday night, or rather on Tuesday, from one to three iu the morning, did not reach NorAvich, Worcester, or Birmingham, until Wednes day morning ; and the Exeter post not until Thursday morning, Avhile letters were five days in passing from London to GlasgoAv. Mr. Palmer submitted his plan-s to Mr. Pitt. He proposed that the mails 278 LONDON. should no longer be transported on horseback or in light carts, but that coaches should be employed, and, as the robbery of the mail Avas so frequent an occur rence, a man Avith fire-arms Avas to travel with each coach. The coaches with the mails Avere all to start from London at the same hour, and their departure from the country was to be so regulated as to ensure, as far as possible, their simulta neous arrival in town at an early hour in the morning. The first mail-coach upon Mr. Palmer's plan left London for Bristol on the evening of the 24th of August, 1784. The improvements suggested by Mr. Palmer met with a good deal ofoppo- sltion from some of the Post Office authorities. One of them, Mr. Hodgson, " did not see Avhy the post should be the swiftest conveyance in England ;" and he conceived that to bring the Bristol mail to London In sixteen or eighteen hours was a scheme altogether visionary. Another gentleman, Mr. Draper, declared " that the post cannot travel Avith the same expedition as chaises and diligences do, on account of the business necessary to be done in each town ;" and the quarter-of-an-hour Avhich Mr. Palmer proposed to allow at the different post- towns Avas insufficient, as half-an-hour Avould, in Mr. Draper's opinion, be required in many places. The idea of a guard to each coach, so far from afford ing safety, Avould only occasion the crime of murder to be added to that of robbery ; for, " when desperate fellows had once determined upon a mail robbery, the consequence would be murder in case of resistance." Timing the arrival and departure of the coaches bearing the mails Avould "fling the whole commercial correspondence of the country into the utmost confusion." Even the Postmasters General addressed the Lords of the Treasury after Mr. Palmer's plans had been partially in operation for eighteen months, stating that they felt " perfectly satisfied that the revenue had been very considerably decreased by the plan of mail-coaches." Happily the minister saw more clearly the advantages of in creased safety, and of more frequent, rapid, and certain facilities of communica tion ; and he resolved that the scheme should be carried out in all its most essential features. The results were that by 1797 the greater part of the mails were conveyed in one-half the previous time ; in many cases in one-third ; and in some of the cross posts in one-fourth of the previous time. Daily posts were established to above five hundred places, which before had only received them thrice a-week. The great commercial towns were thought to be as much entitled to this advantage as the Avater-drinkers at Tunbridge Wells thirty years before. The revenue of the Post Office increased beyond anticipation ; but Mr. Palmer, who had stipulated for a per-centage on the surplus net revenue beyond 240,000/, received instead an annuity of 3000/. The era of mail-coaches embraces about half a century. Their origin, ma turity, and perfection, and gradual displacement by the railways, all took place within that short period. In 1836 there were 54 four-horse mails in England, 30 in Ireland, and 10 in Scotiand. The number of pair-horse mails in England was 49. Their average speed in England was nine miles, all but a furiong, per hour, including stoppages. Starting from London at eight o'clock In the evening, the mail reached Exeter, 170 miles, in 16 hours 34 minutes; Holyhead, 261 milesi in 27 hours; Glasgow, 396 miles, in 42 hours; Edinburgh, 399 m/les, in 42^ hours. The number of miles travelled by the mails in England and Scotland, in THE POST OFFICE. 279 1838, was above seven millions, equal to a circuit round the globe, every day in the year. The English mail-coach was strongly characteristic of the national energy and spirit, and also of the national taste. The daily departure of the mail-coaches from the Post Office was ahvays a favourite sight. In 1837 the number which left London every night was 27, travelling in the aggregate above 5500 miles before they reached their respective destinations. A short time before the hour of starting, they arrived in the yard round the Post Office from their respective inns, with the passengers already in their places. Through the iron railing, by the light of Innumerable gas-lamps, the public could see the process of packing the mail-bags. It was really a fine sight to see twenty of these vehicles drawn up, each occupying the same station night after night, the horses fine and spirited animals, the harness unexceptionably neat, and the coachmen and guards wearing the King's livery. The travellers for such various and distant parts of the kingdom seemed as if they felt the difference between travelling by the mail and by the stage-coach. As the clock struck eight the Post Office porters dragged out huge bags, of Avhich the guards of the different mails took charge. In a few minutes, each coach, one by one, passed out of the yard, and the sound of the guard's horn became lost in the noise of the streets. About six of the mail- coaches on the south-western, western, and north-western roads, did not take up their bags at the Post Office, but started from the Avestern end of Piccadilly — the bags for those mails being conveyed in light carts in the care of mail-guards. The starting of these mails was a sight for the West-End. About twenty minutes past eight the mail-carts drove up at great speed, the guards' horns Avarning pas sengers of the necessity of getting out of the Avay. The bags were transferred to the mail-coaches, and each successively took its departure. The annual procession of the mail-coaches on the King's birthday was also an exhilarating and pleasing sight, which will never again be witnessed. " The gala turn-out of our mail-coaches on the King's birthday," says a popular Avrlter,* " I always think must strike foreigners more than anything else in our country Avith the sterling, solid integrity of the English character." And here Ave have some of the impressions of a foreigner after witnessing this sight : — " Such a splendid display of carriages-and-four as these mail-coaches could not be found or got together in all Berlin. It Avas a real pleasure to see them in all the pride and strength which, in an hour or two later, was to send them in every direction, Avith Incredible rapidity, to every corner of England." f The procession pro ceeded from the City to the West-End, and through Hyde Park ; and usually passed before the residence of the Postmaster-General for the time being. We noAV come to a uoav era, which has had a most Important influence on the arrangements of the Post Office. In 1836 the stamp-duty on noAvspapers was re duced from fourpence to one penny. The circulation of the London and provin cial papers together has nearly doubled since this change ; and a very large pro portion of the total number is sent through the Post Office. Here is so much additional work to be got through. The Penny Postage came into operation on the 10th January, 1840; and the number of letters passing through the Post Offices of the United Kingdom has risen from 1,500,000 per week to 4,000,000, • Sir F. Head. f Von Haumer, ' England in 1835.' 280 LONDON. being at the rate of above 200,000,000 letters per year, instead of about 78,000,000. In the same period the letters passing through the General Post Office, London, have increased from 400,000 to 1,364,000 per week; and in the London District Post (late Twopenny Post) the increase has been from 255,300 per week to 476,000. The great lines of railway have been gradually rendered available for the transmission of correspondence as they Avere successively opened. In 1838 the sum paid by the Post Office to Railway Companies amounted to 12,380/., and In 1841 to 94,818/. Most of the great towns in England, with Dublin and Edin burgh, have noAv a mail twice a-day from London, or fourteen times a-week, and a mail to London as often, making twenty-eight communications per Aveek to and from the metropolis. Before the morning mails Avere established, a letter from Brighton for a town in Yorkshire Avas stopped fourteen hours in London, as it could not be transmitted until eight o'clock at night; but it noAV reaches its des tination (2C0 miles, perhaps, from London) tAvo or three hours before it Avould formerly have left the Post Office. The Liverpool merchant receives his foreign letters on the same day that they reach London, instead of thirty hours afterwards. The effect of expediting the class of letters formerly detained a whole day iu London is a good illustration of the philosophy of the Post Office system : they have increased from 6,000 to 30,000 a-day, or five-fold. The gross revenue of the Post Office in 1838, the last year of the old system, Avas 2,346,298/. ; of the first year under the Penny Postage, 1,342,604/. ; of the second year (1841), 1,495,.540Z. If the increase should be progressive at the same rate, the gross revenue will be restored to its former amount in about two years from the present time. The cost of management, Avhich in 1838 was 686,768/., in 1841 amounted to 938,168/. for the Avhole country. Of this increased cost — namely, 251,400/. in 1841, as compared with 1838 — the sum to be attributed to the Penny Postage plan does not much exceed 50,000/. The morning mails, additional Post Offices, and other additions to the public accommodation, account for the remainder. From what has been already stated, it Avill be seen that the London Post Office has grown up Avith the development of commercial and intellectual activity. If it were merely an establishment for the collection and distribution of the letters Avhich pass through it, the building required for such a purpose Avould still rank amongst those of the largest class. Nearly as many letters go through the London Office UOAV as circulated a few years ago through all the Post Offices of the United Kingdom, including London in the number. But the General Post Office is a grand central department for the management of the Post Office business of the United Kingdom, for maintaining the means of intercourse with foreign countries and distant colonies, and therefore apartments are required for a large number of officers who are employed in the general administration of the establishment at home and abroad. The Post Office appears to have been successively removed. Immediately after the commencement of the last century, from Cloak Lane, near DoAvgate, to Bishopsgate Street, Avhen the next transfer was made to a mansion in Lombard Street, occupied by Sir Robert Viner, who Avas Lord Mayor in 1675. It was a THE POST OFFICE, 281 large and substantial brick building, Avith an entrance from Lombard Street, through a gateway into a court-yard, around Avhich were the various offices. There Avas a second entrance by an inferior gateway into Sherbourne Lane, In 1 765 four houses in Abchurch Lane Avere taken, and additional offices erected , and from time to time other additions were made, until the whole became a cumbrous and inconvenient mass of buildings, ill adapted to the great increase AvhIch had taken place in the business of the Post Office, It was at length de termined to erect a building expressly for affording the conveniences and facili ties required; and in 1815 an Act Avas passed authorising certain Commissioners to select a site, and to make the necessary arrangements for this purpose. The situation chosen Avas at the junction of St, Martin's-le-Grand Avith Newgate Street, where once stood a monastery Avhich possessed the privileges of sanctuary. Since the dissolution it had been covered with streets, courts, and alleys. Com pensation Avas granted to the parties Avhom it Avas necessary to remove : their houses Avere pulled down ; and the first stone of the ucav building Avas laid in May, 1824. On the 23rd of September, 1829, it Avas completed and opened for the transaction of business. It is about 389 feet long, 130 Avide, and 64 feet high. The front is composed of three portions, of the Ionic order, one of four columns being placed at each end; and one of six columns, forming the centre, is sur mounted by a pediment. The other parts of the building are entirely plain. The public entrances are on the east and west fronts, Avhich open into a hall 80 feet long, by about 60 wide, divided into a centre and two aisles by two ranges of six columns of the Ionic, standing upon pedestals of granite ; and on each side of the hall are corresponding pilasters of the same order. There is a tunnel underneath the hall by Avhich the letters are conveyed, by ingenious mechanical means, betAveen the northern and southern divisions of the building. On entering the hall from the principal front, the offices on the right hand are appropriated to the departments of the Receiver- General, the Accountant- General, the Money-Order Office, and the London District (late TAVopenny Post) Office. On the left are the NeAVspaper, Inland, Ship, and Foreign Letter Offices. A stair case at the eastern end of this aisle leads to the Dead, Mis-sent, and Returned Letter Offices. The Inland Office,- in the northern portion of the building, is 88 feet long, 56 wide, and 28 high ; and there is a vestibule in the eastern front Avhere the letter-bags are received, and Avhence they are despatched from and to the mails. The Letter-Carriers' Office adjoins the Inland Office, and Is 103 feet long, 35 wide, and 33 feet high. The business of assorting the letters and news papers for delivery and for despatch Into the country Is carried on in these tAvo offices. The Avhole building Is Avarmed by means of heated air, and the passages and offices are lighted by about a thousand Argand burners. The business of the General Post Office, independent of the general routine of administration, is directed toAvards two operations, the delivery and the collection and despatch of letters and .noAvspapers. But before giving some explanation of the means by which these objects are effected, Ave must briefly advert to the London District Post — the local post of the metropolis and its vicinity. In 1683, a merchant of the name of DoAvckra set up an office in London, and undertook the delivery of letters, Avithin certain limits, for a penny each. This 282 LONDON. was thought to be an infringement of the right of the Duke of York, already ad verted to ; and In a suit to try the question, a verdict was given against Mr. Dowckra. He afterwards received a pension for the loss of his office, and at a subsequent period was appointed Comptroller of the Penny Post. In 1700 he was dismissed in consequence of various complaints, the nature of Avhich will show the mode in Avhich the office Avas at that time managed : — " He forbids the taking In any band-boxes (except very small), and all parcels above a pound, AvhIch, when they Avere taken, did bring in considerable advantage to the office, they being now at great charge sent by porters In the City, and coaches and Avater men into the country, which formerly Avent by Penny-Post messengers, much cheaper and more satisfactorily. He stops, under specious pretences, most parcels that are taken in, which is great damage to tradesmen, by losing their customers or spoiling their goods, and many times hazard the life of the patient, when physic is sent by a doctor or by an apothecary." He Avas also charged Avith opening and detaining letters, and removing the office from Cornhill to a less central situ ation. The Penny Post Avas therefore at first similar In its operations to the Parcels' Delivery Company of the present day. In 1708, Mr. Povey set up a private post under the name of the " Halfpenny Carriage," and appointed re ceiving-houses and persons to collect and deliver letters in London, Southwark, and Westminster ; but this undertaking Avas put down by the Post Office autho rities. The conveyance of parcels by the Government Penny Post continued down to 1765, when the weight was limited to four ounces, unless the packet had first passed, or was intended to pass, through the General Post, The postage Avas paid in advance down to the year 1794, In 1801 the Penny Post became a Twopenny Post. In the same year the postage Avas advanced to threepence for letters delivered beyond the limits of London, Southwark, and Westminster. In 1831 the limits of the Twopenny Post were extended to all places within three miles of the General Post Office ; and In 1833 the boundaries of the Threepenny Post were enlarged so as to comprise all places not exceeding twelve miles from the same point. These are the present limits of the London District Post, which is in no respect distinguished from other parts of the country, except by the fre quency of collection and delivery of letters, the service connected Avith which is administered by a distinct department of the General Post Office. The gross revenue of the Penny Post before 1702 did not exceed 361/, In 1801 it was 54,893/., and in 1836 it had reached 120,801/., the cost of manage ment in the latter year being 47,466/. The gross revenue under the last com plete year before the adoption of the uniform rate Avas 1 18,000/. ; and for 1840, the first complete year under the new system, it amounted to 104,000/., being equal to the gross amount collected in 1835. The number of letters has since gradually advanced until the gross revenue has now become restored to its former amount. The limits of the London District Post, extending twelve miles in every direc tion fnom the General Post Office, comprise an area of five hundred and seventy square miles, being, Avithin sixty miles, equal in extent to the county of Hertford. ¦Within this boundary there are, besides the principal office, four hundred and thirty-six sub-offices or receiving-houses, including four principal branch-offices THE POST OFFICE. 283 centrlcally situated. A foAV years ago the receiving offices of the General and Twopenny Post were quite distinct, and a letter for the country dropped inad vertently into the latter was subject to a charge of twopence in addition to the General Post rate. The consolidation of these offices was a most satisfactory improvement, and they now receive indiscriminately letters intended for the General Post as well as those ior the London district. Formerly the stranger might wander a long time In search of a receiving-house, and he might be com pelled to pass one Intended only for the reception of letters for the country, but during the present year the situation of the receiving-houses has been indicated by a plate of tin affixed to the nearest lamp-post, on which is shown the street number of such house, a crown being conspicuously placed at the top of the lamp. The keepers of the receiving-houses are shopkeepers, Avho were formerly paid according to the number of letters they received, but they have noAv fixed salaries, usually varying from 5/. to 40/., though a few, where the duties are heavier, receive considerably more. At above two hundred receiving-houses, situated Avithin three miles of the General Post Office, the letters are collected six times a-day — every two hours from eight in the morning to eight at night ; and there are as many deliveries Avithin these limits. At above two hundred other offices, situated beyond this circle, and within one of twelve miles, the collection and deliveries of letters vary from two to five daily, in proportion to the wants and importance of each district. Thus the communications betAveen the four hundred and thirty-six sub-offices and the central office amount, on the aggregate, to fifteen or sixteen hundred per day. For this purpose horse-posts, mail-carts, and letter-carriers are employed. A few years ago there were three classes of letter-carriers, the Foreign, General, and TAVopenny, but the former are no longer a distinct class, and the latter are noAV extensively employed in delivering the letters which arrive by the day-mails, and also foreign and ship letters. The General Post letter-carriers are employed only Avithin the three-mile district to deliver the letters which reach town by the mails in the morning ; but a few of them are engaged within a circle, comprising chiefly the heart of the city, in delivering those which are brought by the day-mails arriving before two o'clock in the afternoon ; but others which arrive somewhat later are sent out by the letter-carriers in the London District department. The practical tendency is to consolidate the tAVo services so far as concerns the delivery of letters. The number of General Post Letter-carriers in 1835 Avas 281, and in June, 1842, only 261; but there has been a very large addition to the other class, whose number at the latter date Avas 662, Avith 117 assistants, making in all 779 ; and If the 261 others be added, Ave have a total of 1040 persons engaged In the delivery of letters. In 1735 the General Post Office employed 65 letter- carriers, and the Penny Post 100; but the number of receiving-houses was very large, amounting, it is said, to about six hundred, each of Avhich exhibited at the door or Avindow a printed placard AvIth the Avords, " Penny Post Letters and Par cels taken in here," In 1821 the number of General Post receiving-houses in the three-mile district Avas only fifty, and of those for the Twopenny Post one hundred; With this digression we shall now be prepared to understand the machinery by 284 LONDON. which the Post Office performs various of its important functions. On a Satur^ day the number of letters despatched into the country is above a hundred thou sand, and there are as many newspapers. Each of the four hundred and thirty-- six receiving-houses contributes its proportion, those from the greatest distance being received by horse-posts and mail-carts, which call at each office along their respective lines of road, and arrive at the central office betAveen five and six o'clock. At five o'clock the receiving-houses in the three-mile district close, and at six o'clock the four principal branch-offices are closed for the evening's despatch. Within this district also the General Post letter-carriers go through their respective walks Avith a bell, and, for a penny each, collect the letters Avhich Avere too late for the receiving-houses, calling also in many cases daily at the counting-houses and shops of merchants and tradesmen, for Avhich extra service they are remunerated by a Christmas gratuity. At six o'clock they hurry Avith their bags to the chief office, or to the nearest branch office. The letter-boxes at the central office close at six, but a very large number of letters are received until seven, on payment of an additional penny. There is a box appropriated to these late letters, where, if an extra penny stamp be affixed to the letter, they may be deposited without the trouble of paying the penny to the AvindoAV-man. A small number of letters are received from seven until half-past for a fee of sixpence. Newspapers are received until six o'clock, and, to expedite the business of sorting, the Post Office porters call at the different newsvenders before that hour, and carry to the office the sack.s of newspapers already prepared for the post. This is, comparatively, a recent innovation, and but for the reduction of the stamp duty Avould never have been necessary. From six until half-past seven noAvspapers are also re ceived on payment of a half-penny fee. A minute or tAvo before the boxes are closed for the receipt of newspapers, the late editions of the evening papers, Avith an account of the proceedings in Parliament, and of other events which have transpired before seven o'clock, are brought on horseback in bags ; and it often happens that intelligence reaches Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and other great toAvns, as far north as Lancaster, distant tAvo hundred and forty miles from the me tropolis, which the merchant or tradesman Avho has retired to his house at Hamp- , stead, Highgate, or NorAVOod, does not hear of until a later period on the folloAving morning. The.great exertions for effecting the despatch of the mails are crowded into the tAVO or three preceding hours. The appearance of the large hall a few minutes before six is very striking. Men and boys Avith sacks of newspapers pour in in a continued stream ; the noAvspaper AvIndow is raised for their reception, and one or tAVO porters inside empty the contents into large baskets, AvhIch are Avheeled^for- Avard for sorting, and pitch the bags outside to their oAvners. Within three or four minutes of the time for closing, the discharge of bags into the office-AvindoAV, and the hurling of those AvhIch are emptied, take place as fast as it is possible for the tAVO or three porters inside to' perform the operation. When the clock has finished the sixth stroke the AvindoAV descends as if it Avere impelled by a powerful spring. At the same instant all the letter-boxes close as If by some similar means. The scene there is as animated as at the ncAvspaper AvindoAv. Crowds of persons arrive by each of the entrances into the hall, and if their letters are THE POST OFFICE. 285 stamped there Is no further trouble than that of depositing them in the letter box. But there are hundreds Avho carelessly neglect this convenience, and yet detain their clerks and servants to the latest possible moment. To receive the penny and mark the letter is but the work of an instant, but, though several AvindoAvs are open, the arrivals accumulate faster than they can be despatched ; and each person fearing to lose the opportunity of handing In his letters, a struggle ensues, Avhich it is disgraceful to permit, the strong putting on one side the weak, and the young clerk, anxious to serve his employer, thrust from the window just Avhen his turn had come. All this confusion might be avoided by simply using a stamp ; but where the remedy is so easy, the Post Office autho rities can scarcely be expected to interfere further than stationing several of their servants in the hall to keep the approaches to the letter-boxes as clear as possible. Before an attempt is made to assort the letters they are placed with the address uppermost, and stamped at the rate of two hundred a-minute. They are then assorted in about twenty great dlAdsIons, all those letters AvhIch are in tended for a particular series of roads constituting one division. While this pro cess is going on, the letters already placed in their proper division are taken to other tables, where other sorters are employed ; they are then classed according to the separate roads, and next according to the different post-towns for Avhich bags are made up, and Avhich are about seven hundred in number. The noAvs- papers merely require to be faced and sorted. Every letter and newspaper passes more than once through the hands of the sorters, and about three hundred persons are engaged as sorters, including a considerable number of letter-carriers. An account is taken of the unpaid letters to be sent to the postmaster of each town, and the bags are then sealed up. As the clock strikes eight the sacks Avith the letters and noAvspapers are dragged into the Post Office yard, and put into the mails, mail-carts, and omni buses. The old Edinburgh, the Glasgow, Holyhead, and other first-rate mails, are gone, and nine omnibuses for conveying the letter-bags to the railway stations occupy their places. At present there are only nine mails Avhich take their bags from the yard, and these can never rival the celebrity of the old mails, being merely intended to maintain a communication Avith a foAV places which are not yet connected Avith London by raihvays, or are useful to intermediate districts rather than to the metropolis. The present mails are the Hull, the Louth, the Mel ton MoAvbray, the Lynn, the Norwich, the Ipswich, and the Brighton, Dover, and Hastings mails ; and the three latter will probably be superseded at no distant time. In place of six or seven mail-carts dashing Avith rapidity to the White Hor^e Cellar, Piccadilly, there are only tAvo, one for the Worcester and the other for the Exeter mail, the latter of Avhich makes a part of its journey on a ralUVay truck. The total weight of the noAvspapers and letters despatched on a Saturday night. Including the bags, is above eight tons, and six out of the eight are, probably, transmitted by the raihvays . Five of the omnibuses, or accelerators, proceed to the station of the London and Birmingham Railway ; tAvo to that of the Great Western Railway ; and two to the South- Western Railway station. On the tAvo latter railways the letter-bags 286 LONDON, are conveyed in a mail tender under the care of a guard; but on the Birmingham line there Is a different arrangement. On the arrival of the five accelerators at the Euston Square station, the servants of the Company carry the bags to a large vehicle, sixteen feet long, seven and a half wide, and six and a half feet high, fitted up as a sorting room, Avith counters and desks, and neatly labelled pigeon-holes. This Is the Railway Post Office. It travels on the northern chain of railroads to Lancaster. While the train is proceeding at a speed of twenty- five or thirty miles an hour, a couple of clerks are engaged in sorting letters and arranging the bags for the different towns. By an ingenious contrivance of Mr, Ramsey's, of the General Post Office, letter-bags are taken up while the train is at full speed. They are suspended from a cross-post close to the line, and as the train passes the bag is caught by a projecting apparatus, which drops It into a net hung from the exterior of the Railway Post Office. Bags for deli very are simply dropped as the train passes. The bag taken up is examined, and the letters for places northward are put into the proper bags, which are left during the passing of the train. At Rugby the correspondence for Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Leeds, Hull, York, and Darlington, and for Edinburgh and the east of Scotland,, and all the districts adjacent to the above places, is de tached, and conveyed by different lines of raihvay in the care of mail-guards. The Raihvay Post Office continues its course, leaving at one place the mails for Ireland, and reaches Lancaster before half-past eight in the morning, the clerks being occupied the whole of the night in taking up and delivering bags, and In sorting their contents. They make up bags for above fifty different towns. The same process goes on in the day-mail, and the services of eighteen clerks are re quired for the day and night work. The gross number of bags taken up in the twenty-four hours by the day-mail and the niffht-mail together is about five hun dred. In 1717, and for above half a century afterwards, a week would have elapsed before a reply could be received in London to a letter addressed to a person at Lancaster. Now a letter may be written to the latter place on one day, and an answer received to it on the next day. It is not only the internal means of com munication which have been accelerated, but the change has been complete. Letters are conveyed in eleven days from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to London; and from London to Bombay in thirty-one days. There are lines of steam-boats from England to Halifax and Boston ; to the West India Islands ; and to India by the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The post has become the safest and quick est of all modes of conveyance. The business of the General Post Office commences at six o'clock In the nvorning, by which time all the mads have arrived. There are about seven hundred bags to be opened, and as many accounts of unpaid letters to be checked. It is said that expert persons will open a bag and check the account in a minute and a half. The letters are then sorted into districts, and afterwards into " Avalks " corresponding to the districts of actual delivery. A bill is made out against each letter-carrier, and the Avhole number start at the same time. The letter-carriers whose walks are farthest from the office are conveyed by the acce lerators or omnibuses, which were first used when the new Post Office Avas opened. Nine of these vehicles are used at present, which convey a hundred and fifty THE POST OFFICE. 287 letter-carriers as near as possible to the scene of their duties, dropping them one by one in rapid succession. The effect of this excellent arrangement Is to give the most distant parts of the town nearly the same advantages as those In the immediate vicinity of the Post Office, The Avork Is so subdivided that the de liveries are finished In from one hour and a half to two hours. The despatch of letters to the suburbs, and villages and towns not Included within the limits of the General Post delivery, but comprised within the twelve-mile boundary, is effected by the horse-posts and mail-carts, which leave the bags at different offices, where letter-carriers are in waiting to deliver the letters, or to take the bags to the respective receiving-houses to which they are subordinate, and which are In many cases situated at a distance from the line of road traversed by the mail-cart or horse -post. There Is one department of the General Post Office to which Ave have not alluded, which has lately become of great importance. This is the Money-Order Office. A few years ago the business was transacted in apartments at a house In Noble Sl;reet, a little distance east of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and subsequently it Avas transferred to offices in the present building, but it was again removed. Entering by the principal front, this office is now on the right hand of the hall ; and a wooden construction has been put up, which projects into the hall, for those who wish to obtain^ orders, or to receive payment for them. About five years ago, the cost of transmitting a few shillings to a place 160 miles distant Avas 2s. 2d., the order being on a separate paper, which rendered the enclosure liable to double postage. The necessity of double postage was first avoided by the order being given on a sheet of letter-paper. Since the reduction of the com mission to 6d. for sums betAveen 51. and 21., and to 3d. for all sums not exceeding 40*., Avhich took place in the year that the Penny Postage was adopted, the faci lities of the office have become available to an extraordinary extent. At present the number of money-orders issued and paid is at the rate of upwards of 700,000 a-year. Instead of 40,000. Twice as much is paid on orders from the country as is issued for payment at the country offices. In the quarter ending January 5, 1842, the number of each per day averaged 2071 : namely, 1335 paid, and 736 issued. A large proportion of the former are paid to tradesmen for articles to be sent into the country by post, or other means. Innumerable are the objects procured in this way, without any other intervention than that of a Post Office order. The appearance of others who present their orders tells of exhausted re sources recruited by appeals to early friends, or of profligacy recklessly wearing out their patience. On the Avhole, the air of those who apply for orders to be sent Into the country is more cheerful. This class comprises servants who are sending a portion of their earnings to aged parents, workmen who can spare something out of their large wages for the wants of others ; and here also is to be found the Irish labourer, and others of the same class. The total number of Post Office orders issued and paid at the present time, in England and Wales, Is at the rate of 3,000,000 a-year, involving the circulation of about 7,000,000/. This return does not Include Ireland. We cannot conclude without a tribute to the admirable management of the 28S LONDOJ Post Office in this country. It has in a great measure ceased to be an engine of taxation ; and, within the last few years, a series of improvements have been adopted which renders the Institution a most valuable auxiliary in the diffusion, hoth directly and indirectly, of most important moral advantages. [Hall of the Post Office,] [Piill MaU, about 1740,] LXIX.— PALL MALL. "Pall Mall," says ' A Noav VIcav of London,' published in 1708, and professing to give an ample account of that city In two volumes or eight sections — " Pall Mall, a fine spacious street between the Haymarket NE, and St, James's Street S.W. ; length 580 yards; from Charing Cross, near W., 260 yards," The precision and scientific accuracy of these admeasurements, to say nothing of the laconic brevity with which they are recorded, furnish a good model for the imi tation of travellers whom the Geographical Society may hereafter send to ex plore unknown regions. Pall Mall, even at this early period of its history, had already developed the character it has since maintained : for in Evelyn's time we have reason to believe It Avas not paved ; Pepys mentions supping at a tavern in it, calling it " The Old Mall," and thereby indicating that the tradition of Its original destination was then held in fresh remembrance ; and in the days of Queen Elizabeth there were only a few houses standing vriiere is now the corner of Warwick Street. Doavu to the era of Club Houses (of AvhIch anon) there have been few buildings of archi tectural pretensions in Pall Mall. Marlborough House (behind a screen of commonplace dwellings), Schomberg House, the Ordnance, Carlton House, and VOL. III. D 290 LONDON. the Opera House in the Haymarket- these are all. The geographer— the Strabo or Ptolemy of London in 1708, we may call him— quoted above, while expatiating on the glories of St. James's Square, Incidentally throws some light upon the external appearance of the houses In Pall Mall : — " St, James's Square, a very pleasant, large, and beautiful square, between Jermyn Street N.W. and Pall MallS.E., and between Charles Street N,E. and King Street S.W.; all very fine buildings (except tliose that side towards Fall Mall), mostly In habited by ihe prime quality. The area is upAvards of 4J acres, and the centre is from Charing Cross W. 570 yards. Here are houses of 5001. per annum!" Pall Mall was not, with the foAv exceptions indicated above; inhabited by "the prime quality," and the houses " siding toAvards It" Avere not very fine. It Avas, hoAvever, a frequent resort of the gay Avorld — one of the most thronged and bustling Avalks or alleys in the great Vanity Fair of London fashion. It was one of the principal approaches to St, James's Park ; it was, and still continues to be, a standing-place for carriages Avhich have set doAvn their courtly loads at birth day, draAving-room, or levee ; and at the corner of the Haymarket has stood, since early in the eighteenth century, the theatre,* devoted almost from its first erec tion to the aristocratic representations of the opera. With such attractions Pall Mall could not fail to become a favourite lounge, and, being such, to draAV into it such dealers as minister to luxury. So early as the 8th of March, 1 709, Ave find one of their shops exciting the austere suspicion of no less formidable a person than Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., Censor of Great Britain : — " The Censor having observed that there are fine wrought ladies' shoes and slippers put out to vIoav at a great shoemaker's shop towards St. James's end of Pall Mall, Avhich create irregular thoughts and desires in the youth of this realm, the said shopkeeper is required to take in these eye-sores, or shoAV cause the next court-day why he continues to expose the same ; and he is required to be prepared particularly to ansAver to the slippers Avith green lace and blue heels." From an Intimation issued by the same eminent philosopher, on the 7th of October, in the year above-mentioned, Ave derive some information regarding one of the most frequented coffeehouses of the day : — " This is to give notice to all ingenious gentlemen in and about the cities of London and Westminster, Avho have a mind to be instructed in the noble sciences of music, poetry, and poli tics, that they repair to the Smyrna Coffeehouse in Pall Mall, between the hours of eight and ten at night, Avhere they may be instructed gratis, with ela borate Essays by word of mouth, on all or any of the above-mentioned arts. The disciples are to prepare their bodies Avith three dishes of Bohea, and purge their brains Avith tAvo pinches of snuff. If any young student gives indication of parts, by listening attentively, or asking a pertinent question, one of the professors shall distinguish him by taking snuff out of his box in the presence of the whole audience. N.B. The seat of learning Is uoav removed from the corner of the chimney on the left hand toAvards the AvindoAv, to the round table In the middle of the room over against the fire ; a revolution much lamented by the porters * It was flourishing in 1709, as may be inferred from tlie following advertisement : — " On Saturday niglit last a gentlewoman's iinsband strayed from the playhouse iu the Haymarket : if the lady who was seen to take him up will restore him she shall be asked no question?, he being of no use bnt to the owner," ' Tatler,' Nov, 14, 1709 PALL MALL. 291 and chairmen, Avho Avere much edified through a pane of glass that remained' broken all the last summer," " Porters and chairmen !" the words carry us back into another world. The locomotion and messages and parcel carrying of the capital were then effected by means of human legs and arms, London Avas in those days a town Avhich men could Avalk through, and its business could be transacted without the aid of com plicated machinery. As yet, cabs, 'busses, and Metropolitan Parcels Delivery Companies, Avere not, and could not be. The very names of chairmen and porters are fast being forgotten ; and a raAv young Scotsman just come up from Edin burgh, who inquires for either (these terms having In that town been adopted of late years by the venerable fraternity of Celts, which used to rejoice in the euphonious and vernacular designation of " Cadies" — see ' Humphrey Clinker'), is apt to be stared at as if he gabbled an unknown tongue — as, indeed, he In most cases does. But this is a digression : we return to Pall Mall in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when chairmen and porters still haunted the doors of its coffeehouses. In those days a good observer, the author from Avhom we have been quoting, assures us that no one " could speak with even Kidney at St. James's Coffeehouse Avithout clean linen ;" and the history of the young gentleman who " on the 9th of September, 1705, being in his one-and-twentieth year, Avas Avashing his teeth at a tavern- AvindoAV in Pall Mall when a fine equipage passed by, and in It a young lady who looked up at him " (see ' Tatler,' No. 1), affords us some notion of the forenoon amusements in those places of public resort. All Avas not thus " Innocent and silly sooth," for in Suffolk Street, " opposite to the lower end of Pall Mall," was a notorious gambling-house, described metaphoric ally in the sixty-second ' Tatler ' as a dog-kennel. It Avas in one of the houses so slightingly spoken of by the author of ' A Noav VioAv of London ' that, a few years earlier than the period to Avhich we have hitherto been referring, the celebrated Beau Fielding, Immortalized by Sir Richard Steele under the name of Orlando the Fair, had his abode. Some pas sages in the evidence given upon the trial of this Avorthy for bigamy are of a nature to throAV light on the economy of a gay bachelor's lodgings in those days. He Avas visited at his chambers in 'Pall Mall by the Avoman whom he married in the belief that she Avas a lady of fortune t — " Mrs, Villars, the evening of my lord-mayor's day, brought Mrs. Wadsworth In a mourning-coach and AvidoAv's dress to Mr. Fielding's lodgings : he was not within at the time they came thither, but, being sent for, came in soon after, and was extremely com plaisant for some time ; but at length, though he had been cautioned not to let the lady knoAv that they Avere his lodgings, yet he could not forbear shoAving his fine clothes, and Avhat furniture he had, and in a little time after sent for Mrs, Margaretta to sing to her." The evidence of Mrs. Villars is more specific as to the manner in Avhich he entertained his fair guest: — " He asked her whether she loved singing ? He said he Avould send for Margaretta to come up. When she came, Mr. Fielding bid her sing her two songs Avhich he loved, which she did. The one was 'Charming Creature,' and the other Avas 'lanthe the Lovely.' After which Mr. Fielding sent for tAvo pints of wine and some plum-cakes." Mrs. Margaretta herself said, — " I remember Mr. Fielding sent for me to his u2 292 LONDON. lodgings in Pall Mall. 1 sung several Italian songs and one English, and that was 'lanthe the Lovely.' He desired me to sing that song, ' lanthe the, Lovely,' for he said he had the original of it, and had translated it out of the Greek." When Mrs. Wadsworth visited Mr. Fielding on another occasion, he told his valet " to get wax-candles, and sconces, and fires in the rooms ;" and some time after her arrival " he came down stairs in great haste, and said, Boucher [his valet], go and bespeak a dish of pickles. I did so, and brought over a cloth and the rest of the things, and left them in the AvindoAv." The dish of pickles was the wedding-feast, for on this occasion Mr. Fielding locked the supposed Avidow and her friend in his apartments till he went and procured " a priest in a long red gown lined with blue, and a long beard and a fur cap," who performed the marriage ceremony. The lady did not visit him again for fifteen or sixteen days, and then seems to have put up Avith pot-luck. " He was not at home when she came ; but she went to supper by herself She had for her supper some toasted cheese, a pint of wine, and a bottle of oat-ale. When he came home, he asked her why she did not send for something better for supper?" The public amusements of Pall Mall were at this period scarcely more refined than those of the neighbouring May Fair. " Certain models," says Malcolm in his ' Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century,' " representing William the Third's palaces at Loo, Keswick, and Hunslaerdike, were shown in 1701, from ten In the morning till one, and from two till eight at night, at the White Hart near Pall Mall, facing the Hay market, within two doors of the glass-lamps." The proprietors elegantly observe in their advertisement that they were " brought over by outlandish men " and that, " to render those diversions altogether more delightful and acceptable, there will be a collection of several curiosities to be sold and raffled for at the opening, and likewise every Monday and Friday following, those days being appointed the public raffling-days, besides a great variety of rarities ; and to entertain the nobility and gentry (who the Undertakers hope will countenance them with the honour of their company), there shall be on Wednesday, the 14th of January, a concert of music by the best performers ; and if all these diversions please such for whom they are intended, there shall be from time to time great additions made." The " outlandish men " who brought over the models of the palaces were possibly In league with the king, who may have Avished to shame the English into giving him a new palace by showing how much better the Stadt- holder of Holland had been lodged than the King of England was. If so, the plot was too refined for this meridian ; the outlandish men, finding their exhi bition did not pay, were glad to dispose of it to natives, who sought to enhance its attractions by adding the delights of a raffle, concerts, and indefinite promises of something still finer behind. So, notwithstanding sundry and divers models of projected palaces still extant at Hampton Court, Buckingham Palace was the first built in England since the Revolutioft, and a creditable specimen of royal and national taste it is. In 1733 the Pall-Mallians do not seem to have advanced in taste and refine ment much beyond their condition in 1701. We again quote from Malcolm:— " Some absurd persons were at the expense (!), in October, 1733, of procuring a Holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes, which they offered as PALL MALL. 293 prizes to any four women who would run for them at three o'clock in the after noon in Pall Mall. The race attracted an amazing number of persons, who filled the streets, the windoAVS, and the balconies. The sport attendant on this curious method of killing time induced Mr. Rawlings, high constable of Westminster, resident in Pall Mall, to prepare a laced hat as a prize to be run for by five men, which appears to have produced much mirth to the projector ; but the mob, ever on the watch to gratify their propensity for riot and mischief, committed so many excesses, that the sedate inhabitants of the neighbourhood found it necessary to apply to the magistrates for protection, Avho issued precepts to prevent future runs to the very man most active in promoting them." But a noAv era was dawning for Pall Mall at the very time that these swift Camillas Avere scouring along its plain. Schomberg House, it is true, built In the reign of William III. by the Duke of that name, had rather retrograded : it had fallen into the hands of Astley the painter, who divided it into three habita tions, reserving the centre for his own residence. The house bestoAved upon Nell Gwynne by Charles II., from the back wall of which she horrified the decorous Evelyn by holding a light conversation with the King, never seems to have had any architectural pretensions : it is now occupied by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Marlborough House was scarcely visible from Pall Mall. In the paper on St. James's Palace we had occasion to notice the cavalier manner In which Marlborough House, when occupied by " old Sarah," gave the public to know whether it was peace or war between it and the Court. This is perhaps the most appropriate place to advert to a characteristic scene which occurred in 1740. The City in that year observed with great solemnity the anniversary of Admiral Vernon's birth ; and the Duchess of Marlborough presented two does to the Lord Mayor, and one to each of the Sheriffs, that they might feast their friends on the occasion. These dignitaries returned the compliment by visiting her Grace instate on the 1st of January. " She received us," says Mr. Hoare, " in her usual manner, sitting up in her bed ; and expressed much satisfaction for the compliment and great honour, as she said, Ave had done her in returning our thanks ; and after an hour's conversation on indifferent matters we retired." Lord Grantham, too, had a house in Pall Mall; and Sir Robert Walpole for some time lived nearer the Duchess Sarah than seems to have been altogether conducive to the preservation of his equanimity. But these were trifles to the glories preserved for Pall Mall. In 1732 Frede rick Prince of Wales purchased what an erudite historian of London calls " the original Carlton House and Gardens of the Earl of Burlington." The name of the proprietor seems almost to warrant that. In his hands, the English architecture of the day had already done, its worst ; but royalty can prompt the genius even of absurdity to flights beyond what ordinary mortals have the power to inspire Flitcroft is said to have drawn a plan, in 1734, intended as an improvement of Carlton House ; and Kent laid violent hands upon the gardens, said by the historian above alluded to to be " very beautiful, and/w// as retired as if in the country." For this sequestered spot Kent designed " a cascade ;" and a saloon was erected In ] 735, and paved with Italian marble brought to England by Lord Bingley and the immortal Bubb Doddington. " The walls were adorned with rich paintings and statues ; and the chair of state was of crimson velvet, embroidered with gold. 294 LONDON. AvhIch cost five hundred pounds. A bagnio near It cowM's/ec/o/" encrusted marble." It Avas not till 1788 that one Prince of Wales completed what the kindred taste of another had begun : but there is much to be told of Pall Mall before Ave reach that era. It was about the same time that Carlton House was undergoing the process of " translation," as Nick Bottom's cronies would have called it, into a royal resi dence, that the literature of Pall Mall received its first development. Previous attempts appear to have been made. Letitia Pilkington at one time opened a pamphlet-shop here ; but her stock-in-trade consisted only of a couple of dozens of an unsaleable pamphlet, generously presented to her by the author or by the publisher, and a fcAV secondhand prints, and the concern was soon Avound up. In 1732, however, Dodsley, born and bred to be the appropriate link betAveen noAv and old Pall Mall — betAveen the Pall Mall of mere Court gaiety and the Pall Mall of elegant literature — Dodsley, born a poet and bred a footman, published his 'Muse in Livery.' In 1735 he opened, Avith the assistance of his patrons, a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall. ' The Muse in Livery ' is Indeed the Avork of a footman : it is professional all over. The very frontispiece (the " effigies auctoris " representing a young man AvIth one hand attached by a shackle-bolt to concentric rings, inscribed " poverty," " ignorance," &c., and extending the hand which he has wrenched from Its con finement, Avith the handcuff still there, but ornamented by a pair of Avings, to the sun, the god of poetry) is typical of the sentiment and imagination of the parti coloured race. Fielding, in the opening of his ' Joseph Andrews,' has presented us with a full-length portrait of the footman of that age ; and, to parody a fa- A'ourite expression of coal-merchants Avhen their commodity rises in price, " foot men Averc footmen then.'' It Avas only in 1701 that the Right Hon. Charles Earl- of Carlisle, Earl Marshal of England during the minority of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, moved thereto by " many mischiefs and dangerous accidents occasioned by footmen Avearing of swords," had found it advisable to " order that no foot man attending any of the nobility and gentry of his Majesty's realms shall wear any sAvord, hanger, bayonet, or other such-like offensive weapon, during such time as they or any of them shall reside or be AvIthin the cities of London and Westminster." And it Avas not till a good many years later that a Townley arose to break the spirit of this ancient and honourable fraternity, by his ' High Life below Stairs,' as effectually as the Minister of George II. broke the spirits of the Scots Highlanders by the Act of Parliament forbidding them to Avear their national dress. Dodsley flourished as a footman in the y'et palmy days of the profession, when (see ' Joseph Andrews ' for the particulars) the gentlemen of the cloth Avere still, in their oavu especial gallery, lords paramount of theatrical criticism. To have been draAvn by a non-professional hand, Fielding's sketch must be allowed to have merit ; and so has 'Humphrey Clinker,' although that great man, living in the declining days of his order, had betaken himself to Methodism ; but still a portrait of a footman and his tribe by one of themselves must be allowed to be the more authentic. Dodsley has given us a full, true, and particular account of his thinkings and doings from the timeof his rising in the morning till the close of the day's labours, which commences thus : — PALL MALL. 295 " As soon as laziness Aviil let me, I rise from bed, and down I set me To cleaning glasses, knives, and plate. And such-like dirty-work as that. Which, by the bye, is what I hate. This done, with expeditious care To dress myself I straight prepare ; I clean my buckles, black my shoes. Powder my wig,' and brush my clothes. Take off my beard, and wash my face. And then I'm ready for the chace." A feAV rapid and abruptly cadenced lines convey a lively impression of tho multitudinous errands on Avhich his lady despatches him : then follows a savoury description of the odours from the kitchen announcing the approach of the dinner- hour that makes one's mouth Avater. The meditative footman tells how he lays the cloth, decants the wine, ale, and beer, and declares — " -This is the only pleasant hour Which I have in the twenty-four; For Avhilst I unregarded stand. With ready salver in my hand, And seem to understand no more Than just what's called for out to pour, I hear and mark the courtly phrases. And all the elegance that passes-'' We reluctantly pass over his graphic account of the ceremonies of the tea- table to hurry to his public appearance In state Avhen the hour of paying visits arrives : — " The chairman straight prepares his chair, A lighted flambeau I prepare ; And, orders given Avhere to go. We march along, and bustle through The parting crowds, who bustle off To give us room. Oh, how you'd laugh To see me strut before a chair. And with a sturdy voice and air Crying, ' By your leave. Sir ! Have a care !' From place to place with speed ive fly. And '¦ Rat-a-tat ' the knockers cry ; ' Pray is your lady, Sir, within?' If no, go on ; if yes, we enter in." Tastes are free : Ave have no mind to enter into controversy with any one who may prefer Steele's more amplified description of a similar scene in the 109th ' Tatler :' — " There has not, for some years, been such a tumult In our neighbour hood as this evening about six. At the loAver end of the lane the Avord Avas given that there Avas a great funeral coming by. The next moment came forAvard in a very hasty. Instead of a very solemn manner, a long train of lights, Avhen at last a footman, in very high youth and health, with all his force, ran through the Avhole art of beating the door next to me, and ended his rattle Avith the true finishing rap. This did not only bring one to the door at Avhich he knocked, but to that of every one In the lane, in an Instant. Among the rest, my country maid took the alarm^. and, immediately running to me, told me there was a fine, fine 296 LONDON. lady, who liad three men with burial torches making way before her, carried by two men upon poles, with looking-glasses on each side of her, and one glass also before, she herself appearing the prettiest that ever was." In justice, how ever, to Mr. Dodsley, we must remark that Steele, to heighten the effect of his description, employs the artifice of carrying the visit into a region where such sights were unknown. We may add that Dodsley writes like an experienced footman — Steele like one less familiarised with the ceremony. But be this as it may, none but a footman, none but one who could say of the deeds he narrates "quorum pars magna fui," could give, as Dodsley has done, the scene in the servants' hall while their mistresses are chatting above- stairs : — " Then to the hall I guide my steps. Amongst a crowd of brother skips. Drinking small beer and talking smut. And this fool's nonsense putting that fool's out ; Whilst oaths and peals of laughter meet, And he who's loudest is the greatest wit. But here among us the chief trade is To rail against our lords and ladies ; To aggravate their smallest failings. To expose their faults with saucy railings. For my part, as I hate the practice. And see in them how base and black 'tis. To some bye-place I therefore creep. And sit me down to feign to sleep ; And could I with old Morpheus bargain, 'T would save my ears rriuch noise and jargon. But down my lady comes again. And I'm releas'd from all my pain" — that is, he Is hurried off to conclude the evening at the play or opera. This, it will be allowed, is conceived in the true spirit of a footman, even to the peach ing against his fellows, and affecting that he had never taken part In their uncivil comments on their betters; for, be It remembered, Dodsley's poetical vein was encouraged by his masters and mistresses, and this poem, and all the rest, were composed with a view to their being perused by them. It may not be out of place to remark here that, curtailed though the footmen of our degenerate days are of the proportions and appendages of their progeni tors, they are closer copies of them than Is found to be the case with any other class in gay and genteel society. On the great gala occasions, when the nobles of the land present themselves to their sovereign, there is some attempt made by them to revive the finery of former days, but court suits, bags, and swords are only to be worn gracefully by those to whom custom has made them a second nature — almost what his fur and tail are to the monkey. The wearers of these antique adornments for a day walk as awkwardly in them as David did in Saul's armour. Not so their footmen, Avhose daily dresses are the only ones a beau of Queen Anne's time would acknoAvledge to be passable were he to rise from the grave, and who by daily use learn to Avear them with a grace. We never stand at St. James's on a levee or drawing-room day, and observe the gentlemen (civilians at least) so ashamed of their unwonted array as to lose more than half the pleasure of being presented to royalty, and mark the degage, easy, self-pos-. PALL MALL. - 297 sessed deportment of the gentlemen's gentlemen, with their fine coats, gold- headed staffs, and bouquets, but we are led irresistibly to think how the whole pageant would be improved were they and their masters to change places. Pall Mall Is, on such occasions, the spacious hall to which the " brother skips '' guide their steps. We will not take upon us to say that Dodsley's description of the manners of the class in 1 732 is altogether applicable now — indeed our impression decidedly is that their deportment is marked by more gentleness and refinement — but they still retain their predilection for beer, though, perhaps, their drink cannot with strict accuracy be called " small beer." There is something ex tremely piquant in watching the dainty and minikin airs of one of these gentlemen picking his steps from the tap of the Star and Garter to where his friend the coachman remains glued to his seat (for what Talleyrand said, in his eloge on Count Reinhard, of a minister of foreign affairs, may equally be applied to a coachman — "11 ne doit pas cesser un moment dans les vingt-quatre heures d'etre ministre des affaires etrangeres ''), himself arrayed in a peach-blossom coat that might have made Goldsmith envious, inexpressibles of a brilliant orange border ing on pomegranate, irreproachable white silk stockings, and in his breast a bouquet of the rarest and most delicate exotics the greeuTiouse can afford, carrying in his hand the while a pewter pot, bright, it is true, as silver, but betraying, by a hun dred indentations and roughnesses, its age and hard service, with the rich froth, of the colour of chocolate cream or the foam of an embrowned mountain-stream, mantling over it. And if they have no Dodsley among them in these latter days — ^have they not a " Yellowplush ?" We have said that ' The Muse in Livery' was an apt designation — that the Muse, If Muse she were, had contracted the sentiments and habits of the serArants' hall as if she were to the manner born. But " honours change manners," as the old copy-line hath it : Dodsley the bookseller was a very different man. With wonderful good sense he spoke of the employment of his early life quietly as a matter of course ; and he displayed good taste and kind feeling on many occa sions. It was he who purchased Johnson's first original publication (1738) ; and It was he who, when in 1758 he started his 'j^nnual Register,' had the boldness and discrimination to employ as his historian no less " eminent a hand" than Edmund Burke. Dodsley's shop was the resort — and who that has known what an exquisite lounge a bookseller's shop is, ever cared for another ? — of Young and Akenside, of Horace Walpole, the Wartons, and Burke. Dodsley too was the publisher of several of Pope's works. From 1735, when he first opened shop, to 1764, when he died, Dodsley's establishment was deservedly one of the lions of Pall Mall. We learn from the ' Tatler' that the wits of Queen Anne's time were in the habit of repairing at times to Pall Mall and its vicinity. But when they did this they, in a great measure, laid aside their literary character, and appeared as men of gaiety and fashion, or of the great world of politics. " All accounts," writes Isaac Bickerstaff, in his introductory paper, " of gallantry, pleasure, and enter tainment, shall be under the article of White's Chocolate House ; poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from St. James's Coffee House." And although in Dodsley's day, and since, they did not altogether lay aside their literature op 298 LONDON. entering Pall Mali, they continued to wear it, as Ophelia allowed her friends to wear their rue, " with a difference." Accordingly we hear littie of Dr. Johnson's visits to these regions : for the Doctor, although he certainly did purchase a scarlet waistcoat and gold-laced hat to appear In at the first night of his tragedy —thinking that a dramatic poet ought to dress less gravely than he had been wont— cannot Avith strict propriety be called a gay man. Gibbon, on the con trary, luxuriates In the atmosphere of St. James's. Those who know Gibbon only as the author of the 'Decline and Fall' ought not to lose a moment in making his acquaintance through his diary and letters, as published by Lord Sheffield ;— Avbuld that the task of editing them had fallen Into the hands of some one less a slave to the feeling expressed In the cant speech—" What will Mrs. Grundy say ?" The ineffable coxcombry of this editor, affecting to think that a full-grown public Avas not as competent to judge of what Avas Avholesome and Avhat dangerous doctrine as himself, and under this pretext laying before the poor innocents nothing that he did not think they might safely partake of, has " cut us here a monstrous cantie out" of the edifying revela tions of Gibbon. Johnson, on the one hand, as has been justly remarked by Mr. Croker, did not mix in high society; and Burke Avas too earnest a character to enjoy Its frivolities. Horace Walpole made literature his relaxation. Gibbon Is almost the only real litterateur of his day who mingled with the fashionable world on a footing of equality. And his journals and letters, mutilated though they be, afford us some pleasing glimpses of it. We like to catch the sententious his torian recording that he Avrites from the Club of Almack, or of Boodle, in a velvet embroidered coat, with lace ruffles. His participation in the Bachelor's Masquerade at the Pantheon raises him ten per cent. In our estimation ; and but for his pen the controversy among the proprietors of that establishment con cerning immaculate and leopard beauties Avould have perished. He does the honours of the social position of a silent M. P. with Infinite discretion, and Avith great glee and good humour. In his -time that truly English invention the ' Clubhouse seems to have attained its full development ; at least,, the folloAvIng picture might still be matched Avithout much difficulty : — " November 14, 1 762. I dined at the Cocoa Tree Avith Holt, Avho, under a great appearance of oddity, conceals more real honour, good sense, and even knoAvledge, than half those Avho laugh at him. Wc Avent thence to the play (The Spanish Friar), and, Avhen it was over, returned to the Cocoa Tree. That respectable body, of Avhich I have the honour to be a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men of the kingdom in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered Avith a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat or a sandAvich, and drinking a glass of punch. At present Ave arc full of king's councillors and lords of the bedchamber, Avho, having jumped Into the Ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language Avith their modern ones." Gibbon Avas a member of Boodle's, White's, Almack's, and perhaps of some more. He gave the preference to the last-mentioned : — "Almack's, June 24, 1776. * * Town grows empty, and this house, where I have passed many agreeable hours. Is the only place which still invites the floAver of the English youth. The style of living, though somewhat expensive, is PALL MALL. 299 exceedingly pleasant, and, notAvithstanding the rage of play, I have found more entertainment and even rational society here than in any other club to Avhich I belong." The number of club-houses has increased since Gibbon's time, and also their architectural pretensions. Pall Mall is a favourite locality with them, and bids fair to become a street of club-houses. In the centre the " houses of call " of the tAVO rival political parties, the Carlton and the Reform Club, keop watch and ward over each other. Near the Avest end of the street the United University opens wide its doors to the alumni of Oxford and Cambridge, and Is much be- [Osford and Cambridge Club Hotui-.^ loved of such clergymen as, like Vanbrugh's Lady Grace, love to be a leetl,: dissipated " soberly." Passing to the east from the Reform Club, there is the Traveller's, for the reception of such as have " sAvum in a gondola;" the Athe naeum, for the worshippers of the goddess Minerva, who stands over the door with doAvnward-pointing fihger, as if saying, "This man may enter— that man may not ;" and the United Service, which appears, by the simple and somewhat barn-like style of its architecture, intended to keep its inmates in mind of life in the barracks. But Pall Mall is far too narrow to contain these multitudinous establishments : they overflow into all kinds of neighbouring streets. At the corner of Cockspur Street Is the Union, beloved of the late James Smith ; in Regent Street is the Junior United Service, and a club with a very hard name, the Erectheium— an establishment that stands in somewhat the same relation to the Athenaeum that a tap does to its hotel ; in St. James's Street the two Whites', Brookes's, Crockford's, the Guards', and some more, crowd upon each other ; and the Colonial has nestied itself in the house once Sir Philip Francis's in St. 300 LONDON. James's Square. This is a tolerable list, and yet some clubs of note remain unnamed, as, for example, the Wyndham, The features of all are much the same; places they are wherein to murder time ; some are places of amusement under the pretence of promoting serious business, and some are places where serious business is sometimes transacted in the yawning intervals of pleasure. The political clubs are of considerable use to political leaders, especially Avhen their party is in opposition. Ministerial leaders can ingratiate themselves with a partisan Avhom they Avould not like to admit to their own table by sending him and his family cards to a Queen's ball ; but the Opposition have no such lightning-conductor to carry off their vulgarian friends, so they allow them a kind of equality within the walls of the club as a set-off. Politics are not altogether excluded from other clubs, indeed they are a condiment indispensable at every English table. When Vanbrugh erected his theatre in the Haymarket in 1706, " on the first stone that was laid were inscribed the words Little Whig, as a compliment to a celebrated beauty, the toast and pride of that party." Club loungers naturally betake themselves .to politics, as fine ladies have been known to do, for a relief to ennui. The idle man of fashion seeks relief in business sufficiently important to be exciting, in the same manner as the grave man of business is apt to plunge into dissipation for relief. And in both cases it is odds that the fresh new-comer outstrips the old habitu&s in the race. The decline of drinking and gaming may have been favourable to political amusements : men must have some stimulus ; and in this decorous age, though a De Roos will arise from time to time, men do not venture to shake the dice-box so pertinaciously as Charles James Fox. That habit, however, survived in full force to a not very distant period. Club-houses, their character, rise, and progress, deserve a chapter to themselves : we have taken them up at present on the same principle that Falstaff says Worcester took up rebellion^they lay in our way, and we found them. But to our tale. The transformation of Carlton House into a nursery for the younger sprouts of royalty has already been noticed, and a hint given that the decorations com menced under Frederick Prince of Wales were carried to their height by George Prince of Wales and Prince Regent. Pall Mall certainly has gained by the sub stitution of the airy open space between it and the Duke of York's Pillar, the Athenaeum and the United Service Clubs, for Carlton House. That palace, probably because it stood on the declivity towards the Park, looked low and in significant, and the screen of Ionic columns in front did not much mend the matter. " Care colonne, che f'atti qua ? Non sapiamo, in veriti " — was the sarcastic dialogue inscribed upon them by some Italian refugee, who had brought a taste for real art from his own country. Sheridan's allusion to them Avas not much more complimentary. About the time that the Duke of York took possession of Melbourne House, now Lady Dover's, near the Horse Guards, of Avhich the most remarkable feature is the cupola in. front, some dis cussions were raised (no uncommon case) in Parliament about the debts of the royal brothers. A considerable amount of virtuous indignation was of course PALL MALL. 30i expressed by the Opposition of the day; and, some of their remarks having been reported to Shevidan when he entered the House, " I wonder," s«id he, " what amount of punishment of these young men would satisfy some people ! Has not the one got into the Roundhouse, and the other into the Pillory ?" Carlton House- did not carry many historical reminiscences with it when it was pulled down It was the Regent's residence c'uring the whole time of the Penin- [Carlton House, Levee Day.] sular war, but its connexion with the martial exploits of that period was merely accidental : the more distinguished soldiers who had occasion to visit London got an occasional dinner there. It derived a temporary eclat from so many of Moore's squibs being directed against it and its occupant ; but this interest is of the kind upon which time operates with most destructive effect. Twenty or thirty years have a Avithering influence over lampoons. Already it is as difficult to enter into the spirit of those of Tom Moore as of those of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and the Irish poet himself, in a fit of real or affected modesty, has gone far to accelerate the work of time. In vindicating himself from the charge of having repaid the hospitality of the Regent with satire, he has succeeded in proving that he could know very little of that Prince's personal habits and domestic arrange ments ; and has thus loAvered the value of his rhymes — in so far as they might have been taken to convey authentic information regarding the manners of a Court — to that of the lampoons of any newspaper hack. "Non omnis moriar" may, however, still be the motto of the old house. Something of Carlton House will still survive so long as the fame of Beau Brummell lives. Since his star was eclipsed, England has, properly speaking, had no beau, and indeed no character to supply the vacancy. He Avas the last of a race now apparently extinct. Contrary to the anticipations of a great poet the dynasty of dandies has not been succeeded by some other herd of imitated imitators. The sscptre of foppery, handed down from Sir Fopling Flutter — ' He's knight of the shire, and repres indeed, seems to have been, as it deserved, highly popular, for Its piety, bravery, and humility ; and the usual consequences of popularity in those days followed. Great men desired to be buried among them, which could only be accomplished by a connexion with their Society in one of the available modes; lands, manors, houses, fairs, privileges were showered upon them ; money was deposited with them in cases of peculiar danger ; and one monarch at a somewhat critical time deposited himself in their community. This was King John, who, during the period of the arrangements connected with the signing of the Great Charter, resided here. Numerous documents of this king's are dated from the Temple, Among other distinguished visitors was one the Templars must have been glad to get rid of — Martin, the Pope's nuncio, of whom Matthew Paris says, " He made whilst residing at London in the New Temple unheard-of extortions of money and valuables. He imperiously intimated to the abbots and priors that they must send him rich presents, desirable palfreys, sumptuous services for the table, and rich clothing ; which being done, that same Martin sent back word that the things sent were insufficient, and he commanded the givers thereof to forward him better things, on pain of suspension and excommunication.''* The treasure deposited in the Temple must have been frequently immense, from the quality of the depositors or the circumstances of the deposit. Fully trust worthy, enjoying the privilege of sanctuary, and able so well to defend per sonally whatever was in their charge, the Templars became distinguished as the safest of guardians on all extraordinary occasions. The king, his court, and chief ecclesiastics, all made the Temple their bank when they pleased, and here, too, were brought all monies collected for the Christian service in Palestine. The most remarkable record on this subject Is connected with the great Earl of Kent, Hubert de Burgh, on Avhose disgrace and committal to the Tower the King began to look shrewdly after the captive's treasures. Matthew Paris says, " It was suggested to the King, that Hubert had no small amount of treasure deposited in the New Temple, under the custody of the Templars. The King, accordingly, summoning to his presence the Master of the Temple, briefly demanded of him if it was so. He indeed, not daring to deny the truth to the King, confessed that he had money of the said Hubert, which had been confidentially committed to the keeping of himself and his brethren, but of the quantity and amount thereof he was altogether ignorant. Then the King endeavoured with threats to * Transcribed for Mr. Addison's ' History of the Knights Templars,' p. 113. 314 LONDON. obtain from the brethren the surrender to him of the aforesaid money, asserting that it had been fraudulently subtracted from his treasury. But they answered to the King, that money confided to them in trust they would deliver to no man without the permission of him who had intrusted it to be kept In the Temple. And the King, since the above-mentioned money had been placed under their protection, ventured not to take it by force. He sent, therefore, the treasurer of his court, with his justices of the Exchequer, to Hubert, Avho had already been placed in fetters in the Tower of London, that they might exact from him an assignment of the entire sum to the King. But when these messengers had explained to Hubert the object of their coming, he immediately answered that he would submit himself and all belonging to him to the good • pleasure of his sovereign. He therefore petitioned the brethren of the chivalry of the Temple that they would, in his behalf, present all his keys to his lord the King, that he might do what he pleased with the things deposited in the Temple. This being done, the King ordered the money, faithfully counted, to be placed In his trea sury, and the amount of all the things found to be reduced Into writing and exhibited before him. The King's clerks, indeed, and the treasurer acting with them, found deposited in the Temple gold and silver vases of Inestimable price, and money and many precious gems, an enumeration Avhereof Avould, In truth, astonish the hearers."* Of the eminent persons Avho caused their bodies to be here interied some very interesting memorials are preserved. We allude to the tAvo ranges CKffigies of Knight Templars.] of monumental effigies of great men reposing in their habits as they lived ; one of five figures on the north side of the entrance to the oblong part of the church ; the other of four, and a coped stone, the top of a coffin, on the south. The first figure on the left in the range here shoAvn is that of Geoffrey de Mao-navIUe, the bold and bad son of the Norman baron of the same name who distinguished him self at-the battle of Hastings. This baron, after committing all kinds of excesses * History of ' Kuighta Templars,' p. 112. THE TEMPLE CHURCH. 315 during the troubled reign of Stephen, died excommunicated by the church, and abandoned by all but the Templars, Avho, finding him repentant, put their habit on him, and enrolled him among their order. On his death, as they dared not bury him in consecrated ground, they hui.g him up in a leaden coffin on a tree in the garden here, where he remained till absolution was obtained some years afterwards, Avhen they burled him in the portico before the western door. Next to him Is the effigy of the famous Protector, the Earl of Pembroke, to whom Henry III. was Indebted for the safety of his throne during his minority, and the people of England for healing, as far as they could be healed, the dissensions between the barons, and for driving the French from the country. He was burled here on Ascension-day, 1219. The expressive and beautiful effigy which forms the third in the group represents the youthful-looking Lord de Ros, one of the foremost of the memorable men Avho forced the Charter from John. None [Effigies of Knight Templars.] of the other figures in this and the following range can be distinguished Avith any certainty.. It is knoAvn that two of the sons of the Protector Pembroke, William. and Gilbert Marshal, were here buried, and the two efiigics to the right, AvhIch have evidently a kind of correspondence (such for Instance as the turn of the bodies in opposite directions), are supposed to be theirs, William Marshal, another of the patriots of Runnymede, married King John's daughter, and Avas therefore brother-In-laAV to Henry III,, who was so grieved at his death that, on attending the funeral, he could not conceal his emotion. We need hardly add that all the cross-legged figures represent crusaders. Among other persons of eminence whose remains may yet lie beneath the floor along Avhich Ave are pacing, are William Plantagenet, fifth son of the king just mentioned, and the Bishop of Carlisle, who was killed in 1255 by a fall from his horse, and to Avhose memory It is supposed the recumbent figure of a bishop in the recess in the south Avail Avas erected. In the tomb beneath, which was opened in 1810, Avas found, at the feet of the skeleton of the bishop, the skeleton of a very young Infant. It may 316 LONDON. partly explain this strange circumstance to point out that the tomb had evidently- been opened before. Ifere too the celebrated man of learning, Selden, and Plowden, the eminent lawyer, were both interred. In the churchyard of the Temple many stone coffins have been found, once filled, no doubt, by persons of distinction in their day, but whose very names are now lost in oblivion. The extraordinary features which from the first characterised the Knights Templars, both in themselves and in their history, and made them so widely and popularly known, and which still invest their name with a thousand romantic associations, were to be equally visible in their melancholy fall and extinction.. There seems little doubt but that the body grew in many respects more and more lax in their observance of many of the virtues for which they had at one time been so distinguished ; but still it is only simple justice to say that, on the whole, they never lost sight of the object for which they had first banded themselves together: on the contrary, as the fortunes of the Christians in -the Holy Land grew darker and darker, their spirits, throwing off much of the grosser cor ruptions which their immense wealth and Irresponsible power had generated, shone out the more clearly through the gloom. They shoAved by their heroic disregard of danger, sufferings, and death, that they Avere still the " fellow- soldiers of Jesus Christ," if no longer the " poor," Their last great act, the defence of Acre in 1291, was a worthy close to their brilliant career. And, if anything could add to our surprise as well as horror at the ultimate fate of the Order, it is the consideration that the period when the circumstances to which we are about to allude took place was not twenty jears removed from this event. In which the great body of the Knights Templars perished, the last defenders of the last (with one exception) Christian stronghold. The throne of France, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Avas occupied by Philip the Fair, a man already distinguished for his avarice, and the unscru pulous means he was accustomed to use for its gratification. But all the evil deeds he had ever committed in this way, we might almost say that any powerful tyrant had ever committed from such motives, were thrown into the shade by the proceedings which now took place. The Templars were known to be wealthy ; they had houses in every portion of Christian Europe; their manors and lordships were reckoned at not less than nine thousand; the popular opinion estimated their annual revenue at six millions sterling — an exaggeration most probably, but there was quite truth enough in it for Philip the Fair. He was not covetous ; if it should turn out a million or so less, why he would be content. Such, no doubt, was one of the directions his thoughts took. Then what an opportunity Avas afforded by circumstances ! That long and expensive day-dream of the Crusades was evidently over ; what could the Order want with its wealth ? What could the world want Arith the Order ? No doubt the monarch's answers to himself Avere perfectly satisfactory. Then the example of his brethren of England was before him ; both Edward I. and Edward II, had been nibbling at the possessions of the English Templars, influenced most probably by similar considerations. The first monarch, on his victorious return from Wales, being short of money, was seized with a sudden desire to see his mother's jewels, deposited in the Temple. Filial piety found its own reward. Being admitted, he was enabled to carry away ten thousand pounds to Windsor Castle, the Templars said, by breaking THE TEMPLE CHURCH. 317 open their coffers. Philip's policy took a subtler — more sweeping course. The Pope, Benedict XL, fortunately died just at that moment, and quickly did Philip obtain the induction of a tool of his own, ready for any work, into the vacant chair of St. Peter. This was Clement V. Rumours, traceable to no particular source, now began to spread abroad through the world that the Templars were not what they seemed, that the Holy Land would not have been lost but for their want of Christianity, and even blacker insinuations were heard. The way thus prepared, the next thing was to secure some base wretch to give these rumours shape by direct accusation. On the 14th of September, 1307, the necessary In formations having been obtained from a condemned criminal, said by some writers to be an apostate Templar, Philip struck the first and most Import ant blow. Throughout France the proper officers of the different pro vinces received at the same time a communication commencing in the following portentous language : — " A deplorable and most lamentable matter, full of bitterness and grief, a monstrous business," &c., had reached the King's ears ; and then followed direct charges against the Templars of the vulgarest as well as the most abominable kind of blasphemy against the Saviour, and of the committal of the worst crimes among themselves ; and lastly, an order to seize the Templars suddenly, and place them under the power of an inquisition empowered to try them, and employ torture if necessary during the examination. Human nature recoils at the very mention of the sufferings inflicted upon these brave, and we may safely say on the whole, innocent, but most unfortunate men. Of the one hundred and forty who were first put to the torture, no less than thirty-six actually perished in the hands of their tormentors. One of the Templars, who confessed what was de sired, when subsequently brought before the commissary of police to be examined, revoked his confession, saying, " They held me so long before a fierce fire that the flesh was burnt off my heels ; two pieces of bone came away, which I present to you." These revocations occurred so often, in spite of the remembrance of what had been suffered, and what might in consequence be yet expected, that Philip, like a wild beast who has tasted of blood, became half frenzied apparently at any opposition, and determined to take wholesale vengeance. In one AecTee fifty-four Templars, who had thus given the most decisive proofs of their innocence (for, be it observed, a continued acknowledgment of guilt would have saved them J, were sentenced to be burnt ; and this most atrocious act was performed at Paris, In the most barbarous manner. And by a continuance of these processes of the torture and the scaffold in different parts of the country on the one hand, and every kind of deceit, persuasion, and threat on the other, Philip, having ultimately suc ceeded in clearing the body of all the most high-principled and bravest members, managed to make the remainder somewhat more tractable, among which for the present may be included the Grand Master, whom he had inveigled into France, though of him we shall have again to speak. Let us now turn to the progress of affairs in England. Edward II. was then king; and this monarch at first turned a deaf ear to Philip's letters and examples, and even wrote to some of the European princes, urging them to take care that due justice was done to the Templars in their dominions. But a papal bull soon ended the threatened opposition from this quarter; and Edward was convinced, or professed to be so, by the PontifiTs 318 LONDON. proofs, which consisted essentially of the confessions obtained in the manner already shown. On the 8th of January, 1308, the English Templars> who had been probably lulled into a sense of security by the King's earlier conduct in the matter, Avere suddenly arrested In all parts of England, and their property seized. Tavo hundred and twenty-nine of their number in all Avere throAvn into the different prisons of the country, on similar charges; amongst them was William de la More, the Master of the Temple, and most of the other chief officers of the body in this country. Many escaped to Wales, to Ireland, and to Scotland, What a glimpse of the time and the cruel bloodthirsty hunt that Avas set on foot for these so recently honoured and distinguished men is afforded by a little incident, the account of which has been preserved in our national records ! "The King, &c. — Our favourite valet, Peter Auger, the bearer of these presents, having lately made a voav that he would not shave his beard till he had made a jour ney to a certain place in parts beyond sea ; and the said Peter, being afraid that some one, in consequence of his long beard, may suppose him to have been a Templar, and for that cause may hinder or injure him ; we being desirous to bear testimony of the truth, by these presents Inform you that the said Peter is our valet de chambre, and that he never Avas a Templar, but permits his beard to groAv long for the cause above specified,"* With the weakness that characterised Edward's conduct throughout, he could not even abide by his first resolution that no torture should be used : the Pope once more induced in him a change. In 1310-11 the unfortunate Templars were here too given up for some months to the unrestricted management of inquisitors appointed by the Pontiff; and even then their enemies failed. On being brought before certain examiners sitting in the churches of St. Martin's, Ludgate, and in St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, every individual without exception declared the innocence of the Order with respect to the foul and monstrous accu sations brought against it. It is probable the torture Avas not carried to the extreme lengths It had been in France. The inquisitors might not have the same confidence in these horrible outrages of human nature under the hesitating EdAvard, as under the reckless Philip. They accordingly changed their tactics, and Avere obliged to content themselves with Avhat Ave should now think much better evidence, if trustworthy, than any torture could have given — the deposi tions of other parties. Our readers may judge hoAv trustAvorthy Avas the Informa tion thus obtained from the mere statement of its character. One witness had been told the Templars annually worshipped a calf; another that a Templar had in his possession a brazen head which answered all questions ; a third that a Templar had confessed to him that, on his admission into the Order, he had been obliged to deny God and Jesus Christ, and to spit on the cross. This last was the favourite charge of the inquisitors, although not a single case was supported by so much proof as Avould induce a magistrate of the present day to detain a prisoner for a second examination. It moreover failed to satisfy the holy in quisitors themselves ; they yearned, no doubt, for their accustomed method, and so Avere once more indulged with the rack and Its kindred Influences. A splendid triumph at last Avas theirs. A chaplain and two poor servingmen were overcome, * Translated from the original Latin passage, as given in the 'History of the Knights Templars,' with the following references ; — Pat. 4. E. II., p. 2, m. 20. Dugdale, Hist. Warwickshire, vol. i, p. 962, ed. 1730. THE TEMPLE CHURCH. 319 who confessed, publicly, the guilt of the Order as to its contemptuous denial of the Saviour ; and, for so doing, were reconciled to the Church. But the main body Avere as resolute as ever, and a kind of compromise was devised (it were worth knowing by whom) of an ingenious nature. The Templars, it appears, were guilty of believing that the Master had the power of absolution, and had ahvays acted accordingly. It Avas noAv kindly pointed out to them that this was a grievous heresy; that the Master, as a layman, could have no such power : the Templars were too wise to quarrel about words, for as a thing it was evident It would never concern them again, so they observed they Avere ready to abjure that and all other heresies. The admission seems to have been made as much of as if it alone had been the object of all the torture and suffering Inflicted. The Templars, in successive bodies, made a public acknowledgment In accordance with Avhat they had said, and no more ; and they too, like their apostate brethren, were recon ciled to the Christian community and its ecclesiastical head. And In this almost ludicrous manner terminated the previously solemn and terrible proceedings against the Templars in England. We must add, however, that their property, in common Avith the property of the Order generally, Avas transferred, nominally, by the Pope to the rival Order of St. John, Avho, it is said, ultimately obtained about a twentieth part of their possessions, and the rest was swallowed up by Philip, the- Pontiff, Edward II., and the other European Princes, &c. As to the rightful OAvners; the pettiest meanness Avas added to all the other atrocities committed upon them ; many of the members Avere reduced almost to starvation, till some of the chief English ecclesiastics interfered and procured their admission Into different monasteries. The Order was finally abolished by the Pope in 1312, and the site and buildings of the Temple, with the Church, soon after fell into the hands of the students of the law, recently, and for the first time in England, formed Into a society. All this time the Grand Master, James de Molay, AvIth three others of the most illustrious men among the Knights Templars, Avere kept in close confine ment in Paris ; and In March, 1313, as a final close, Ave presume, to the affair, they were brought out on a scaffold in front of the great church of Notre Dame, to rencAv their confessions before the eyes of the world. Tavo of the four did Avhatever was required, but the Grand Master, to the astonishment of every one present, advancing to the edge of the scaffold, raised his chain-bound hands on high, and, addressing the mighty multitude assembled, said in a loud voice : — " It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the irilquity of falsehood, and make the truth to triumph. I declare then. In the face of heaven and earth, and acknoAvledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest of crimes ; but It has been the acknowledging of those Avhich have been so foully charged on the Order. I attest, and truth obliges me to attest, that it Is innocent. I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those Avho made me endure them. I knoAV the punishments Avhich have been inflicted on all the knights Avho had the courage to revoke a similar confession ; but the dreadful spectacle Avhich Is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret." The fourth Templar followed the grand example set him when both 320 LONDON. were hurried back to prison. And so maddened was Philip by this unexpected overthrow of all his precious schemes to leave the evidence of the head of the Order on record against It, that that very same evening he and his companion were burnt to death by small fires of charcoal, which protracted their agonies to the last possible moment. No traces of the former weakness or indecision were visible ; the two died as greatly as they had determined to do ; Molay, according to a Aridely-believed tradition, summoning, with his dying breath, the Pontiff to appear before the last awful tribunal within forty days, and the King within twelve months. If the people had half thought the Templars martyrs before, they must have made sure of It when the times mentioned elapsed, and both parties, by their deaths, appeared to have obeyed the dread summons. ''James de Molay, the lasl Grand Miisteff.l » t* ¦ f.'W/; [Scotsman and Frenchman. From Hogarth's March to Piocbley.] _ LXXL— SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. BY JAMES M'TURKj ESQ. Mr. Croker has. In more than one of his notes to Boswell's ' Life of Johnson, expressed a conviction that at some period of the Doctor's life, of which no record has been preserved, he must have experienced some unutterable affront or injury from Scotsmen. This seems an uncalled-for conjecture, for although the pre judice against them was real, the expression of It was exaggerated — In moments of controversy by the heat of debate — at other times by that half-sense of shame which prompts us all at times to caricature and burlesque the expression of feelings which we can neither defend nor get rid of, Dr, Johnson's dislike of Scotsmen was rather loud than intense : it was a dislike of his abstract idea of Scotsmen, prompting him to bristle up whenever one approached him for the first time, confirmed or dispelled afterwards by the real qualities of the individual. The impossibility of parting with a playful crotchety grudge was once happily expressed by Charles Lamb to a young Scotch admirer who had introduced himself to " Ella." "Are you a Jew?" asked Charles, when his new acquaint ance declined a luncheon of pork-chops, which he hospitably pressed upon him. " No. I am, however, one of your ' Imperfect sympathies' — a Scotsman." " Oh," cried Charles, colouring and stammering most desperately, " that's ail nonsense, you know. I have a great respect for Scotsmen, if — If — If they did not think such a d d deal of themselves." If one were to attempt an analysis of the feelings which keep the Scotch, almost VOL. III. V 322 LONDON. as much as the Jews, a distinct and peculiar people in London, this notion that they " think such a d d deal of themselves" will be found at the bottom of the English side of the shyness, A distinct people they undeniably remain : their waters no more mingle and are lost in the great tide of cockneyism than the black waters of the Nahe at Bingen are lost In the strong current of the Rhine. Bread Street may be thought an extreme case — but it will serve to illustrate our position. Bread Street is chiefly tenanted by a colony from Paisley, and the denizens of Paisley are proverbial for their local peculiarities even in Scotland. A sturdy ingenious tribe of small capitalists they are, in whose eyes Paisley is all the Avorld. No more perfect picture of independence can be Imagined — not even a chimney-sweep Avith his hands in his pockets whistling along the pave ment of Bond Street — than a Paisley " Cork" — that is, one of those whose industry or good fortune has brought him to float as it were on the surface of their society — ¦ standing within his shop-door, or " where Corks most do congregate," the Cause- Avay Side (one of the principal streets in Paisley) on the look-out for a mouthful of gossip. In Bread Street he is the same unsophisticated Cork — loitering about his door in a way unknown to other London tradesmen, his hands cased in his Paisley-gloves (Anglice thrust to the bottom of his breeches-pockets), gabbling at the highest pitch of his voice his own ineffable patois. It is scarcely a paradox to say that you meet with more intense Scotch na tionality in London than in Scotland. Every valley or strath of Scotland has a character of its own ; and in Edinburgh, the capital where representatives of all these districts are brought into contact, the clannish spirit of the people prevents their mixing. This is the most disagreeable feature of Edinburgh society, or rather this is what prevents it having any society properly so called. Circles there are, or have been, as pleasant as heart can wish — that of which Lord Jeffrey used to be the centre of attraction, the re-unions of Professor Jameson, and some others, live pleasantly in the memory, but they were rather in Edinburgh than of it. Apart from them the population of Edinburgh consisted of Dum friesshire people, Fife people, Aberdeenshire people, and so forth. A man must keep company with his own countrymen, or live alone; for access there was none to the intimacy of the different coteries except by right of birth. In London, on the contrary, Scotsmen recognise a common nationality, as they do in any other foreign country, and herd lovingly together. The English part of the com munity know them as merchants, or lawyers, and, above all, as bakers (for, strange though it may appear to those who have tasted bread in Scotland, almost every baker's shop you enter in London is a Scotsman's) ; but they know little of them as persons to live with : they are public mysteries, mid-day spectres, things to be seen, not touched, except by each other. " They herd together :" they have their Caledonian balls once a-year, at which some of the most imaginative appear in the Highland costume ; they have their Presbyterian clergymen and places of worship— Scotch Presbyterianism is quite a different thing from English ; and they have an annual dinner of the Caledonian Asylum, after which Highland chiefs win all their hearts by dancing the Highland fling. This holds true of those who are transplanted to London full-grown and trained, for even Dr. Johnson admitted that a good deal may be made of a Scotsman— if he is caught young. Scotsmen educated at Westminster or Eton — and even some SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 323 who have only commenced their English education at Oxford and Cambridge — are scarcely to be known from Englishmen, except the latter, who are apt to be found out In the same manner as the Ionian who was detected at Athens by the extfeme purity of his Attic dialect, Scotsmen are so early drilled by their Kirk Sessions into punctilious carefulness in word and deed, that they are always on their guard themselves, and always expecting that others should be so too, and this renders them uncomfortable companions. They can relish the greater free dom of England, but rarely emancipate themselves from their first fetters : like Gray's Eton truants, they taste a fearful joy. We remember a characteristic conversation between two Scotsmen — a retired Indian employe, and an eminent political writer, of whom Bentham used to say, Avith more candour than politeness, " That his leading articles were excellent, but that his conversation, reminded him of a magpie chattering from the back of a jackass." They had — " more suo" — been for half an hour trying to trump each other's panegyrics of their dear native land, when a sudden fit of candour seizing one of them, he exclaimed, " After all, do you think that any one who has been accustomed to London life could exist comfortably in Scotland?" "No, by ," was the reply. "It Is thinking so much of themselves," In this more extended sense of the word — understanding thereby not merely a high estimate of their oavu merits and importance, but a pedantic, sleepless anxiety as to what people may say or think of them — that keeps Scotsmen In London from mingling kindly with others than themselves. It is not, however, with the numerous Scotsmen who are in London, without any person being aAvare of their presence, that we have to do, but with those who have by any means emerged into such notoriety as to become for a time fea tures in the public life of London. These introductory remarks are merely thrown out as tending to explain the dubious feeling with which this class of metro politan lions have generally been viewed. The writer of these pages ought to know something of the matter, for, as his name indicates, he is descended by the father's side from a clan still tolerably numerous in the South of Scotland,* while by the mother's side he traces his lineage to the eminent scholar mentioned by Smollett, who came all the way from Scotland to teach Londoners the true niceties of English pronunciation. He is thus, to say the least, as well qualified to write about Scotch character as Mr. Logan Is to write about Highland costume and antiquities — regarding both of which he has told the Gael a great deal of which they had previously not the slightest suspicion. The sub-repulsion which undeniably exists between the Scotch and English temperament is more owing to difference of character than to what are properly called faults on either side. The Englishman Is more a natural character — ^Is more open to be swayed by impulse ; the Scotsman has always before his eyes the ideal held up by the ' Shorter Catechism,' through which he was drilled In youth,— is continually asking himself whether and how far he (and still more others) falls * Nor is it by any means the only heathenish name to be met with there. At the time of the Reformation the new clergy, in their zeal to put down superstitious customs, issued an edict prohibiting the practice of baptizing bells. It so happened that in the district of Middlebie the Bells were the preponderating clan, and the worthy minister of the parish, misapprehending the edict, refused to administer the sacred rite to any of the name. There are people still alive who remember a respectable family talked of in « the country-side " as the " unbaptized Bells of Middlebie." y2 324 LONDON. short of Its requirements, and is more stern and impertinent with this unceabing Inquisition the more he feels conscious of not being -up to the mark. At the period when English intellect asserted its right to be the normal form of English thoughts, feelings, and actions, and stamped upon the people their national, or, as some call It, Protestant character, the English were already a highly-civilised people wealthy, animated by the humanized and refined tastes and emotions of a wealthy people, who have by their own energies conquered their wealth — influ enced by the teaching and example of learned universities and a brilliant court. The Scotch at the same period of their history were still, in the mass, a barbarous people. Noav, it is much more easy for moral and religious reformers to impress belief in a creed, and compliance with a .formal external morality, upon a rude than upon a civilized people : individual character is developed in a less marked manner among the former, and their intellects are less inquiring, less difficult to satisfy — there are fewer obstacles in the way of their spiritual teachers acquiring a complete ascendency over them. Though true Protestantism — the exercise as well as the avowal of the right of private judgment — strikes deepest root among a civilised people, formal Protestantism, like formal Romanism, is most easily stamped upon an uncivilized people. And it is your narrow-minded formalist who is ever most apt to lay down the law. Hence, since the time that Scotsmen began to repair in considerable numbers to our capital, they have come lecturing and to lecture, and that John Bull cannot abide. Non mea verba: the thing is proved by their own best writers; Smollett's Strap and Scott's Ritchie Monyplies are the true exemplars of all their tribe. King James I. of England and VI. of Scotland came not only to reign over but to play the schoolmaster over us, and the latter tyranny was the more insufferable of the two. Then came the Scotch delegates to the Westminster Assembly of divines, resolutely bent upon establishing the reign of terror of Kirk Session and " cutty stool " as rigidly here as in the north, and converting frank jolly English men into the same solemn " prim, pert praters " they had made of great part of the northern race. The ' Edinburgh Review,' when it first started, was little more than an incarnation of the same spirit in a new form. Some young men, on the strength of having read the great English authors, or heard of them through the medium of Dr. Blair, and one or two of them having moreover spent a few months at Oxford, took upon them to lay down the law to the literary world of England. It Avas as if Strap, Lismahago, Ritchie Monyplies, and Andrew Fair- service had clubbed their forces to — teach their grandmother how to suck eggs. Intimately and necessarily combined with this lecturing propensity is another Scotch characteristic, even more apt to make their neighbours regard them with a jealous eye, especially their London neighbours ; for the genuine Cockney is weak precisely where the Scotsman is strong, and vice versa. The same process of drilling in his tender years which makes the latter a Avalking sack of sen tentious maxims qualifies him at the same time for success in business. Narrow- mindedness, and even a spice of pedantry, are no obstacles there. Some foolish people are indignant that the Duke of Wellington, who Is neither poet nor phi losopher, should have been so uniformly successful, and in such colossal struggles. both as a warrior and a statesman. Why, if the Duke had been either, he might have been a Coleridge, thinking fine and high thoughts, inspiring with the conta- SCOTSMEN IN LONDON 325 gious power of thinking men who never could have accomplished It of their own accord, but he never could have done anything. To do, a man must concentrate his thoughts within the narroAV range within which human power can make itself felt ; that very discursiveness which charms In the thinker and the poet unfits them for action. And to descend from these altitudes, the very abandon which makes the Londoner a pleasing companion unfits him to rival the grim, self-concentrated Scotsman in the earnest business of life. All Englishmen have something more instinctive in their actions than Is the case with their northern neighbours ; but the high perfection to which the social mechanism has been brought in London renders those who have had in this city their " place of kindly engendure " the moral antipodes of Scotsmen, London habits of business no more cultivate the mind than the monotonous operations of factory spinners and weavers : the dif ference is that they allow (except in the cases of milliners and a few others) more time for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and that pleasing state of reverie which some men think Is thinking. But even in the most perfect machinery cranks and wheels will at times be getting out of order, and the aid of persons is requisite who are shifty and can devise substitutes when routine is at a stand still. Here It is that the Scotsman comes Into play ; and hence Scotsmen are in demand not merely when accidents happen, but at all times, in order that they may be ready against emergencies. We are referring, it will at once be seen, to the commonplace pf life : but it is especially In mediocrity that the Scotch are great. Scott was led by his national partiality Into an uncharacteristic mistake when he made Quentin Durward aim so high and so successfully : he was nearer the mark when he set his Nigel to pluck small gamesters with uniform success, and return in triumph to his paternal " peel-house" with a rich city bride, for whom a kind of genealogy had been patched up. The Scotch are first- rate second-rate men; as in their own bagpipes the drone is more pleasing than the higher and more varied notes to which it is the monotonous accompani ment. They swarm in counting--houses and engineer-shops — In the subordinate departments of government-offices — in the India-house, and so forth : their tri umphs are over the commonplace and narrow-minded of society — the class most alive to the dislike of successful rivals. To these permanent sources of repulsion AvhIch keep the Scots a peculiar people in the great motley mass of London society, accidental circumstances, as above hinted, have from time to time contributed. They were regarded as a set of hungry adventurers, when all the beggarliness of their land flocked southward in the train of King Jamie, to pick up the crumbs that fell from the royal table. The Presbyterians — the juste milieu of their age — contrived under the Common wealth, like all pragmatical holders of the extreme middle, to make themselves universally disliked or despised, and Scotsman and Presbyterian came to be re garded as synonymous terms. The Highlanders in the '15 and '45 frightened the Whigs and angered the English Tories, who had come to regard their political principles as sacred, but too good for common use, as Mrs. Slipslop thought it Atheism to mention the Bible out of church. And by bringing their parish politics into the great concerns of the empire about the beginning of the reign of George III., the Scots contrived to make themselves for a time the popular bug bear. Nor were minor offences wanting ; as witness^ — 326 LONDON. Henry, second Earl of Clarendon, writing to Mr. Pepys, in May 1701, says — " The story I told you the other day relating to what they call In Scotland the Second Sight is of so old a date, and so many of the circumstances out of my memory, that I must begin, as old Avomen do their tales to children, ' Once upon a time.' The matter was thus: — One day, I know by some remarkable circum stances it was towards the middle of February 1661-2, the old Earl of New- borough came to dine with my father at Worcester House, and another Scotch gentleman with him, whose name I cannot call to mind. After dinner, as we were standing and talking together In the room, says my Lord Newborough to the other Scotch gentleman (who was looking very steadfastly upon my wife), ' What Is the matter that thou hast had thine eyes fixed upon my Lady Corn- bury ever since she came into the room ? Is she not a fine woman ? Why dost thou not speak ?' ' She is a handsome lady indeed' (said the gentleman) ' but I see her in blood.' Whereupon my Lord Newborough laughed at him ; and all the company going out of the room we parted: and I believe none of us thought more of the matter ; I am sure I did not. My wife was at that time perfectly well In health, and looked as well as ever she did in her life. In the beginning of the next month she fell ill of the small-pox : she was always very apprehen sive of that disease, and used to say, if ever she had it she should die of it. Upon the ninth day after the small- pox appeared, in the morning, she bled at the nose, which quickly stopped ; but in the afternoon the blood burst out again with great violence at her nose and mouth, and about eleven of the clock that night she died, almost weltering in her blood." Really if Scotland insisted upon send ing us long-legged, grim-visaged "gentlemen" to stare ladles out of countenance, and then tell raw head-and-bloody-bones stories by way of apology — even though they only fell true once in a hundred times — no wonder that the English became somewhat shy of their company. During the time which elapsed from the accession of James I. till the begin ning of the civil war, the Scots seem to have carried it in London with a high hand. This is scarcely in accordance with the caution which we have attributed to them as a national characteristic ; but allowance must be made for their ela tion at that time : they seem to have been possessed with the idea that It was not so much the King as the whole nation that had come to the crown of England, and they were puffed-up accordingly. The freaks even of the higher classes among them in the neighbourhood of the Court at that time read marvellously like those of the Irish hodmen of our day in the courts and alleys where they most resort. Take for example one of their capers in May 1638. " One Carr, a servant of Marquis Hamilton's, was arrested before Wallingford House, which bred a mighty tumult. The Serjeant carried him into a house near Charing Cross, whither flocked many of the Marquis's servants and others, broke open the house, setting ladders to it to unglaze and untile it, got in, beat the Serjeants, so that one of them died since ; threatened to blow the house up Avith gunpowder, took the prisoner, brought him forth, and with sAvords drawn conducted him to White hall, and there put him in. The King resented this very ill, and hath caused pro clamation since to be published for apprehending the principals who were the murderers and chief causers and fomenters of this unlawful assembly, who In their madness neither regarded the justices' constables, nor any other whatsoever.'' SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 327 Tills anecdote is told by the Rev. Mr. Garrard, caterer-in-ordlnary of town gossip for Lord Strafford, whemLord-Deputy in Ireland. In the same letter Mr. Gar rard had sent his Lordship an account of a duel between Lord Elgin and Sir William Crofts ; and not long before he informed him—" There fell out a quarrel betwixt my Lord Philip Herbert, son to the Chamberlain, and the Lord Carr, son to the Earl of Roxborough (who lately Is made a councillor here), at Pall Mall— young youths both : upon some words my Lord Philip struck him so they fell to cuffs. It passed no further; my Lord had notice of it, who made them friends." Sometimes the Scots came into collision with the natives on tenderer ground : women are fanciful ; variety can lend a charm even to freckles and high cheek-bones ; at least such seems to be the moral of the following story — also recorded by that right Indefatigable tattle, Mr. Garrard : — " A grand child of Vanlove's, rich Peter Vanlove, was to be married to a son of Sir Thomas Read's, he who lay seven years in the Fleet, and spent but 18d. a-week. He now lives at Brockett Hall, near Hatfield. Read hath estated upon this second son of his 1500i. a-year, and a match was intended with Mrs. Vanlove, who had a portion of 4000/., and 400/. a-year after the death of her father, young Peter. Monday the 1 1th of this month they were to be married. The day before, in the afternoon, she sends to speak with Mr. Alexander, a third son of the Earl of Stirling, Secretary of Scotland here. He comes, finds her at cards, Mr. Read sitting by her. She whispered him in the ear, asking him If he had a coach — he was of her acquaintance before. He said yes; she desired Mr. Read to play her game, and went to her chamber, Mr. Alexander going along with her. Being there, she told him that to satisfy her friends she had given way to marry the gentleman he saw, but her affection was more to him ; if his were so to her, she would instantly go away with him in his coach and be married. So he carried her to Greenwich, where they were married by six that evening." It is not to be wondered at that under such circumstances the Scotch should be anything but popular in and around London. A letter from Garrard to Lord Strafford, in May 1634, shows symptoms of this : " Our two elected Knights of the Garter, the Earls Darnley and Morton, rode In great state through London to Windsor. There was a secret vie who should go best attended; but my LordDamle,- carried it sheer, for he clothed fifty men In tissue doublets and scarlet hose, thick laced, twelve footmen, two coaches set out bravely, and all the ancient nobility of England that Avere not of the Garter rode with him, and many other Earls and Barons. With my Lord Morton rode the Earls of Warwick and Devonshire, the Earls Denbigh, Grandison, and Craven, Sir William HoAvard, Sir William Bruncher, young William Crofts, some of the equerries, all the rest Scottish lords and gentlemen. That which added much to his show, all the Scottish Colonels that came with Oxenstlern rode along too, and most of his company were furnished with the King's horses." The loan of the King's horses and the clannish friendship of the Colonels accidentally In London, both together, were unable to bear up against the good-will Avith Avhich the " ancient nobility" turned out, to enable the English Lord to outshine the Scotch one. At an earlier period the feeling seems to have been still more deep and bitter. Mr. Garrard writes to the Lord-Deputy in 1635, that at the New Spring Garden behind the Mews " there Avas an order yielded to by consent that every man of what quality soevei 328 fcONPQN, should sit down or stand by the banks ; and the best obeyed, only old Pinchbeck was refractory. The Lord Chamberlain came civilly enough to him ; he mumbled and did not obey, Avhich made the Chamberlain gently with his hand move him toward the bank, and there he sat down. Two days after he wrote him a strange letter, beginning it, ' Sir, you may remember what counsel I gave you at Croy don, for which I have suffered ever since ; King James could never abide me, and I lost my fortune with Prince Henry to do you service.' His counsel was to strike Ramsay, and then they would break their fast on the Scotch there and sup upon them in London." After the Restoration the Scotch colony in London was considerably less cock- a-hoop : Cromwell had cudgelled the conceit out of them to some tune ; and neither royalists nor commonwealth-men were so satisfied with the part that nation had taken in the civil war as to feel inclined to patronise them. Charles II. had enough of Scotch society, during the short time he kinged It in Scotland before the battle of Worcester, to satisfy him for life. Besides, the whole people had enough of employment at home ; Episcopalians and Presbyterians had gone together by the ears, and were less frequently to be met with abroad. The partisans of the dominant faction only came to London to procure appointments, and returned home again, where their harvest lay, as soon as they could ; the Presbyterians came in search of concealment, and kept quiet. Nor did the Scotch emerge into notoriety for some time after the Revoliition ; for it was well on in the eighteenth century when Steele began to say sometimes a word or two in their favour, and Swift to compare their conversation to the drone of their own bagpipes. The Scotch were still foreigners in London down to the period of the Union, and as such could not aspire to the great prizes of public life. Bishop Burnett was the Scotsman of most note about London at the Revolution era, and he was decidedly a favourable specimen. The Bishop of Sarum has scarcely had justice done hira. He Avrites a bad style, it must be confessed, but not so bad as Locke did: he is a good deal of a gobemouche, but his gullibility was sincere and good-natured, and that palliation can scarcely be urged in favour of the Inaccuracies of Swift's 'Last Years of the Reign of Queen Anne.' But the poltering, blundering good-nature and earnestness of the Bishop render him a delight of a man, whatever he may have been as a writer. He loved praise, and he was too sincere himself, and sympathized too much with the enjoyments of others, to be able to conceive there could be any reason for concealing or dis avowing the pleasure it gave him. He repeats all the flatteries said of or to him, and clearly believed that they were all said in good faith. Never meaning to hurt any person, he seems to have been incapable of understanding how words of his could offend. When first presented to King Charles, he, then a young man, lost no time in delivering the merry monarch a lecture on his misbehaviour. This propensity was'uuconsciously heightened by the Bishop's absence of mind : he was constantly saying what he ought not from sheer forgetfulness of whom he was speaking to. One day, in conversation with the old Duchess of Marlborough, he Avas extolling the merits of her deceased lord, and running an affecting parallel between him and Belisarius. This was the Avay to ingratiate himself with the old lady, but he soon spoiled all. " Oh," exclaimed she, " how could \)en ever abandon him?" "Oh, Madam," rejoined the Bishop, "only think what SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 329 a brimstone of a wife he had !" The Bishop of Sarum was a sort of moral antipodes to Talleyrand : the 'English frondeur said sharp things unintentionally, — the French with what Scotch lawyers call " malice prepense ;" the Englishman never could conceal anything he knoAv or felt, — the Frenchman was a sealed book to the last. One can easily conceive how such an Involuntary and Incessant treader upon sore toes may have been avoided by his cotemporaries ; but our toes are safe from him ; disembodied spirits tread lightly, and we can afford to be just. The union of the two kingdoms, by transferring the seat uf executive govern ment for Scotland and of Its legislature from Edinburgh to London, brought about a state of affairs not much dissimilar in kind from that which had been produced by the elevation of James I. to the English throne. That monarch's bold figure of speech about " the kings in the House of Commons " had become in the eighteenth century almost a literal truth. Members of Parliament were courted by ministers and would-be ministers with as much supple flattery as ever kings had been, and to them was transferred much of that servile homage which had in earlier times found a market only at court. Forty-five members in the House of Commons, and sixteen in the House of Peers — and these, as feeling themselves alone in assemblies whose prejudices and objects of pursuit had little In common with their own, predisposed to act as one organized whole — were a phalanx worthy the courting of any minister or leader of opposition. The Scots found themselves persons of great importance In London. And the power had fallen Into the hands, not of the gay and roystering braggadocios who had con stituted the ruffling followers of a lawless court, but Into the hands of the sedate and cautious burgessry of Scotland. The expenses of civil war, or their own extravagance, had clipped the wings of the old Scotch nobility, and raised to power the younger branches of old families who had betaken themselves to lucra tive pursuits, and the nouveaux riches of the burghs in which Industry and com mercial enterprise were beginning to strike root. The class to which habits of reflecting industry had communicated a cautious disposition and habit of obeying the law, at the same time that its growing wealth had awakened in It aspirings of bolder ambition — the class fitted above all others to produce and be influenced by the earnest, narrow-minded, sturdy clergy of the kirk — was in the ascendant in Scotland ; and at their head were one or two of the oldest families of the kingdom, who had been enabled to maintain their position by what their enemies insinuated was a timid, self-seeking character, duly transmitted from father to son. The de corum and caution of Scotland had the reins in their hands ; the romantic, the imaginative dare-devils were thrown into the arms of the faction of the exiled family. Scotsmen became naturalized In England, London became their metro politan city, at a period when those who flocked to the seat of government to make their fortunes were almost to a man stamped more or less with the cha racteristics of the tamed puritan, and were followed by a hard-featured, fantastic race — half French courtiers, half Highland clansmen — who alternately skulked in the lanes and blind alleys, or emerged for a moment Into broad day, as the tortuous windings of Jacobite plots and intrigues required. It is difficult to say which portion of the nation gave most umbrage to John Bull, — the orderly, place-hunting gentlemen, who followed office with the stealthy, noiseless footfall 330 LONDON. of the cat, the pertinacity of a blood-hound, and the tenacious snap of a bull dog ; or the particoloured gentry from the Highlands, who were implicated in every attempt at insurrectionary movements that disturbed his peace. The position of the Scotch members of the legislature at this period, though capable of being rendered a lucrative, was necessarily a subordinate one. The secret of their strength was their own union and the equality of the great English parties. When the indigenous factions were nearly balanced, the adhesion or se cession of the Scots could at any time turn the scale, but of themselves they could do nothing. This was a situation admirably suited to that mediocrity of genius which has already been noticed as one of the peculiarities of the Scotch character — a spirit of which the Earl of Islay, the great subordinate of Sir Robert Walpole, may be considered the incarnation. But their ambition for second-rate distinction Avas perhaps still more marked in domestic life ; their very gallantry was tinged by it. There are examples of female adventurers, by fair faces, or the whimsical tide of fashion, attaining to an English coronet, but there Is no case on record of such a one being deemed a worthy prize by the two principal noblemen of the country in succession, as one of the Miss Gunnings was, first by the premier Duke of Scotland (Hamilton), and afterwards by the almost feudal prince of the High lands (Argyle). Let it be remembered, too, that at the time the former married her the first bloom of her beauty had been rubbed off by the wear and tear of fashionable life — that the hardness of the habituee was distinctly visible (vide Richardson's correspondence) in her whole appearance and deportment. Scotch pride could, in the Avane of her beauty, put up with one of whom they could brag that she had once been the first toast in England. The Chudleigh was a fresher and more attractive flower, and equally willing to be gathered by a duke ; but neither Hamilton nor Campbell had the courage to try, nor would they have attempted the Gunning four or five years earlier. The London jeers and taunts — the caricatures written and engraved of Scots men in London at this period — are, in consequence, more of a domestic, or at least of a personal, than of a public nature. The gentleman, beneath whose coat a tartan Avalstcoat peeps out, in earnest conversation with the Frenchman, in Hogarth's 'March to Finchley,' shows the prevalent London notion of the Scotch Jacobite. Sir Pertinax MacSycophant, in Macklin's ' Man of the World,' is a highly-exaggerated picture of the Scotch supporter of, or conformist to, the Hanoverian government. Politics — meaning thereby the gabbling, and ranging under different banners, and spitting of spite, which pass muster for politics in general society — have at least this advantage, that, by directing malice against a body, they in some measure draw it off from individuals. Squire Western and his sister contrived to drag on a cat-and-dog life together, because the former could expectorate his spleen, not against the lady, but the " Hanoverian rats'' in general, and because she could vent her venom, to which she in vain attempted to communicate the milder flavour of dignified contempt, against the Avhole body of booby Jacobite squires. The real feeling of rancour was much bitterer be tween the Scottish and English denizens of London at the time now under con sideration than when the reckless invectives of Wilkes, Churchill, and Co., were at the loudest. It is a relief to turn from these harsh topics, which have forced themselves on SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 331 our notice, to loiter before plunging Into the bitternesses of the ensuing pe riod, and dwell for a moment upon the character of Thomson. There was nothing of the harsh angularity about him which is found in so many of his countrymen that it has come to be regarded as a national characteristic. He was not, like the most of them, harsh and hard as the wooden Highlander, the prescriptive Lar, or domestic genius, of the tobacconist's shop. He was too easy and good- natured for the land of thistles, and slipped southwards by a natural instinct teaching him his appropriate place. His friends In early life sought to make a minister of him : he might (had fortune seen fit to allow him to be born south of the Tweed) have made a good rector, with a comfortable benefice and a couple of curates under him, but for the hard and stern work of the ultra-presby- terian Scotland of his time he was utterly unfit. He almost frightened the Divinity Professor into fits, by sending him poetry instead of verses which he had been ordered to compose as a college exercise. In London, quite as much by the guardian care of friends as by his own skill In advancing his fortune, he contrived, after a probationary period of starvation, to pick up a competency, and then set himself down to enjoy a true Castle of Indolence, sleeping till noon, because, as he said, he " had no motive to rise," and biting peaches off the trees to save him self the trouble of pulling them. His poems — that is, his only readable poem, his "^ Seasons ' — are the express image of his own character. The language is, as Johnson observed, extremely diffuse, because it would have given him trouble to condense It ; the Imagery is a simple outpouring of impressions which had lodged in his mind unawares, and been moulded by his imagination AvIthout any trouble — save effort of the will. There Is nothing about the ' Seasons ' of the con ventional forms and cant words which now exclusively pass muster for Scotch. Thomson's shepherds and shepherdesses — sweet. Insipid dears !¦ — are the usual abstractions of Arcadia; he ascends "some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains ;" and though the Obi rolls Its tide In his lines, we cannot remember that even the half-Scotch Tweed Is once mentioned. Yet the colouring of his landscape is essentially Scotch : the fishing scene in spring, the snoAV-storm in winter, all have that local colouring which a Scotchman recognises at once, and is aware of a home-feeling stealing over him. Of his sentiment, " least said is soonest mended " — he seems scarcely to have felt the more delicate beauty of the human figure. His Amanda — and (" partly because they count her In my line ") I may be sup posed to speak with partiality, not prejudice — must have been, if family tradition " may be In aught believed," as regular a red-haired, " rump-fed ronyon" as ever startled the passing traveller into wondering whether she were man or woman. But, whether refined or not, his attachments were sincere, and by their quiet fer vour thawed even the hard soul of Quin, The Marquis of Bute, to whom belongs the honour of raising for a time the Scotch name into an object of popular hatred, is as striking a specimen of the power of English imagination to dress up a bugbear to frighten itself as can well be conceived. Horace Walpole describes him as a gentleman, who, having spent his time studying mathematics in the seclusion of his oavu little Island till his 35th year, and simples in the hedges about Twickenham, discovered about tha. sedate time of life that, like Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, he had a leg for a galliard, and took good care to shoAv it in private theatricals and fancy balls. Nor does 332 LONDON. he appear ever to have been anything more. But discomfited political leaders wished for some one to point out to the populace as giving the young King bad advice ; and as the Marquis of Bute stood, or seemed to stand, near the throne, they denounced him as the terrible intriguer. To heighten the joke, Scots nationality fired in behalf of a Scots nobleman, and imagined him the first of statesmen. And while the clamour of controversy raged around him, the poor object of It, conscious that he was an object of dislike to, and kept at distance by, the King, must have felt, while reading the descriptions of himself by either party much like the heroine of an old Scotch song — " Hech ! quo' the wee wifikie, this is no' me." Among those who mingled in the wordy war of politics at that time was as arrant a Scotchman as ever crossed the Tweed — Tobias Smollett. You rarely [Dr. Smollett] hear mention made either of Fielding or Smollett apart. They are the Castor and Pollux of British literature ; and it would be difficult to decide whether the justice of this classification be more strikingly illustrated by the excellence of their novels or the execrable trashiness of their plays. They are so closely asso ciated, that their very differences are brought out more strikingly by the con junction. Both were writers for bread, and not very scrupulous, at least on the score of dignity, as to the literary tasks they undertook. Fielding, however, had higher notions of novel-Avriting than Smollett. The former regarded it as an art, and sought to give unity and finish to his performances ; the latter was satisfied if he could fill up the number of volumes bargained for with matter that would " go off," and thus satisfy the bookseller. He eked out ' Humphrey Clinker ' by incorporating a tour in Scotland Avith it ; and he eked out ' Pere grine Pickle ' by a still more questionable admixture. He had more of the " penny-a-liner " in his composition than Fielding, as the ' History of England ' is alive at this day to testify. BetAveen the minds of these two writers there was this essential difference— that Fielding took pleasure in delineating character, while Smollett rioted in caricature. Fielding with patient elaboration produces what. If not a transcript of nature. Is so natural we could conceive It existing : SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 333 Smollett, taking the hint from something he sees In nature, overlays it by a com bination of all the grotesque images it suggests to his fancy. Fielding's writings are expressive, Smollett's suggestive. There is a more quiet intense feeling of the ludicrous in the former, a more Bacchanalian revelling in it in the latter. When Fielding attempts the burlesque it Is with an effort, but it is the natural language of Smollett. Smollett's Strap, Lismahago, the old Scotch schoolmaster in London, Ssc, are among the best delineated Scotch characters our literature can supply. They (and still more his ostensible heroes. Pickle and Random) have all a dash of their author in them — of his disregard of money, and his almost morbid pleasure In probing the eccentricities of human nature. Nor was he without that self-complacency which is the badge of all his race : Fielding had a good-natured friend to tell what company he sometimes kept, but Smollett has given a full-length picture of one of his ragged levees at Chelsea. Next In the order of our Scotch worthies (how unlike the grim heroes of the peasant's manual so designated !) is an equally but more unconsciously eccen tric personage — Jamie Boswell. Smollett and Boswell were perhaps equally [Boswell,] remarkable in their day for doing Avhat no other person would have done, but the former played his pranks knowingly and wilfully, while the latter made an ass of himself in perfect innocence of heart. Boswell might have said of Smollett, had any one praised his " admirable fooling" — " Ay, he does well enough If he be disposed, and so do I too : he does It with a better grace, but I do it more natural" Boswell wore a head-gear " pricked with the humour of forty fancies." He wooed and tended gruff Sam, as the Humorous Lieutenant, after quaffing the philtre, sighed for the sweet old King ; he ran about seeking the acquaintance of every notoriety— from Paoli to the Keeper of Newgate ; he was everybody's shadow, and yet when wine warmed him he sometimes tried to expand into an absolute substantial personality of his own — sneaking back like a rated hound Into his echoship as soon as he sobered. Poor Goldie ! when Bozzie joined in the laugh against him, his feelings must have been those which one could fancy laying hold of Malvollo, If he had overheard "the foolish knight" tittering in 334 LONDON. triumph over his soliloquy. Yet was not Boswell an absolute fool, though he looks very like one— ^especially In his more grave and sententious moods, when he is consulting with Johnson about the best way of turning sentences in his law-papers, and receiving as a sincere compliment the sly hit of the old Scotch Judge, who, alluding to the magniloquent diction of his argument in some paltry case, advised him " not to cast his pearls before swine." His ' Life of Johnson' Is not merely unique — ^it is full of characteristic portraiture and shrewd remark. It was almost worth while leading such a lacquey's life to be able to make such a book. We have come as near to modern times and modern associations as can well be ventured, unless we would draw a storm of Highland indignation into the shop of our publisher. The poets, politicians, painters, and political economists whom Scotland has sent us in this our own day and generation are themes that crave wary handling, and had better be passed over, at least for the present. Trying back, many shadowy figures rise upon our recollection, who seem almost as worthy of being recorded as thoSe who have rather forced themselves upon us than been selected. There is Hunter (the elder — the accoucheur), whose private memoirs would be a strange chapter in the history of British nobility, and whose own personality would almost require a Le Sage to do him justice. There is Macpherson, a penny-a-liner, and not only a liar himself, but the cause of lying in others. There is Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, for whom a tall showy figure, invincible good-nature, and a serviceable disposition, did more than genius or even dexterity In political intrigue could have done. And if we are to add to the list the mere birds of passage, what crowds rush upon our view, from old Balmerino stopping the coach to buy " honey-blobs," as he returned from receiv ing sentence of death, and Lovat sitting to Hogarth for his portrait, down to James Hogg, the last genuine Scotch lion sent to London, and, of all lions upon record, the one Avhich played its part most con amore, roaring after a fashion un paralleled since the days of the immortal Bottom. Adam Smith, however, though only a casual visitor, must not be passed over in silence, were It only for the sake of mentioning how Dundas sent the ' Wealth of Nations ' reeling in his saddle home to his lodgings from the Bacchanalian revels of Wimbledon. [Adam Smith.} SCOTSMEN IN LONDON. 335 We have touched upon the overflowings of Scottish spirit in London — the occasional flashes and sparkles which show that there is life and high spirit in that hidden stream of Scotch domestic life which meanders through metropolitan society — flying the light almost as much as the over-arched "River of Wells" Avhich once flashed and sparkled in the sun like other brooks. There is not, after all, such perfect uniformity in Scotch character as those who formed their notions of it from the caricatures of Macklin and Churchill used to believe. How dif ferent are the Scotsmen of Walter Scott from those of Smollett, though Avith enough of general resemblance to mark their relationship. Smollett's are like himself, more intent upon fun than gain ; but the fun that can penetrate their rhinoceros hides and reach the seat of sense would be harsh and repulsive to more susceptible natures. Their jokes are like the sailors' shaving with tar and a rusty barrel-hoop on crossing the line. Andrew Fairservice has the same skinny withered hardness, and honest Cuddy Headrig compensates for superior plump ness by stolidity ; but, unlike Smollett's, all Scott's heroes haye an eye to the main chance. They are what their author Avould have been and could not be ; for he was one of those who possessed the taste without the talent for accumu lating and retaining a fortune. Whoever would seek to penetrate Into the " tiled lodge" of Scotch metropo litan society must take a roundabout road, and set out in the first place for Scot land. There in every town-hall and burgh church he will find portraits, statues, or mural inscriptions to eminent civic dignitaries of London, of Avhoni the metro polis knows comparatively little, perhaps nothing. There matter may be col lected for the history of obscure mayoralties and shrievalties — of merchants pos sessing great Influence at the India House — things, the memory of which has utterly perished in the City. There will be found an explanation of the process by which our colonies and Indian dependencies have become so redundantly stocked with Scotsmen. The astonished Londoner will there discover what a busy world he has been living beside, unaware of its existence — an affiliated society of Scotch settlers in the metropolis forming a connecting link between the populations of North Britain and British India. If he play his cards right he may obtain the certainty, through the voluminous correspondence of parents and grandsires carefully treasured in family archives, that the same interchange of good offices between the London colony and the mother country which is now In active progress has been carrying on for upwards of a century. He may read in them how the prosperous London merchant received annual tribute of kebbocks, kipper, and whiskey, as punctually as ever the feudal laird Received his kains and rents ; and how he repaid these acts of vassalage by procuring appointments for younger sons as cadets in the Company's service, or pursers in the Company's navy, or book-keepers on West Indian estates, or as clerks In the Commissariat or other Government offices. The same authentic annals will ex plain by what means the Duchess of York's spring- garters first penetrated Into Scotland ; and many a stirring tale of flirtation is mingled with the grave business-like thread of the narrative. The young Scotch beauty on a visit to her London relations felt a strange charm in the mixture of something outiandish with the home tones of her native land in the young soldier or sailor whom chance brought from the far East during her stay, and the place of their meeting height- 336 LONDON. ened the charm. She again Avas to him like the glens he had roamed through In boyhood, and dreams of her fair face mingled with and interrupted his earnest resolves to make a fortune. And If any young Englishman seemed Inclined to admire her, the business was done at once. Many are the homely but stirring recollections which cement the union between the Scotchman In London, to the third and fourth generation, and his relatives In the far North. They have a common fund of family traditions ; and a visit to London or a visit to Scotland is the day-dream of childhood in all their families. How the males do chirrup It over their tumblers of toddy within sound of Bow Bells or on the borders of the Moor of Rannoch ! But such eternal blazon must not be for the present, though, gentle reader, " There is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add another tale." [SnuH-sbop Highlander.] [Tue Cliapei.j LXXIL— THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL, Though the local position of this institution is too well known to render it necessary for us to adopt the method of many worthy topographers, and describe It by its boundaries and parochial relations, one may easily imagine the difficulty those who should know it best — the founders of the hospital — would experience in finding it Avere they now alive. In that extensive Avilderness of houses, how should they expect to discover the building they left almost surrounded by fields ? Who would think of coming here to seek for a place enjoying at once the advantages of a country residence, and that of being near to all the metro politan conveniences, as was the case with the Foundling Hospital much, less than a century ago ? And In looking on street after street of lofty and noble houses, which have for ever banished the daisies and buttercups and the sweet- smelling hay of the summer time from the place, still more astonished Avould they be to learn how great a number of them belonged to the Hospital itself; a striking evidence of the prosperity of their beloved charity. The gates are flung wide open, and on foot and in luxuriant vehicles a quiet, but brilliant-looking stream of persons are passing through them into the very spacious area in front of the edifice. The hum of industry in the solitary shop vol,. III. ^ 338 LONDON. of the Hospital to the right, where some of the boys are instructed in the mys teries of the tailor. Is mute ; the play-grounds on either side, Avith their arcades and alcoves and gymnastic implements, are all deserted ; nothing Is to be seen or heard but the continued passage across the centre of the area of the visitors to the famous chapel, Avhich occupies the central of the three sides of a square of large but plain brick buildings constituting the Hospital. In the corner to the right Ave find a small vestibule or hall, leading by a passage from its farther end into the chapel, and directly into the kitchen-garden of the establishment. At its entrance stands a governor, receiving the slight donation which Is expected from visitors. This hall, to many, has a kind of melancholy interest. The Avails are decorated Avith funereal memorials of different persons Avho have been burled in the chapel vaults. Among the rest we read the names of Sir Stephen Gaselee, and beneath a handsome marble bust placed between pillars, and over a sarcophagus, an inscription to the late Lord Tenterden. The privilege of burial here Is now confined to governors of the Hospital and its officers, Avith their families, Avho generally pay a handsome fee. Children Avho die in the Hospital are buried in the churchyard of St. Pancras. Passing on into the chapel, we enter upon a noticeable scene. The building in itself is large, light, and' generally elegant In Its appearance ; the stained glass here and there sheds Its rich glories ; the altar-piece, Avith its most touching and beautiful of subjects, Christ blessing children, and treated in the artist's (West) best manner, is at once appropriate and impressive ; but it is not on these features the eye of the spectator rests, much less on the mingled croAvd of the pious, the wealthy, and the fashionable, AvhIch occupies the gallery over the altar-piece at this end, as Avell as the tAvo side galleries and the body of the chapel : it is that long slope of youthful and interesting faces descending from the ceiling to the front of the gallery at the other extremity of the building, the boys in their dark costume on the right, the girls in snowiest vesture on the left, Avith the noble organ rising be tween them ; it is they who are the " cynosure of neighbouring eyes " — it is In that gallery centre the attractions AvhIch make the Foundling Hospital Chapel one of the most popular of London places of worship. As the service proceeds, and the hymns and choruses are sung by the children and the professional choir — as the anthem, one of Handel's most glorious Avorks, Is raised in solemn chorus or touching melody, we no longer Avonder at the popularity to AvhIch we have alluded ; such singing and such music AA'ould draAV audiences — and not neces sarily undevout ones — anywhere, much more to an institution Avhich has so many other interesting features to attract curiosity. That organ, so magnificent in tone and power, was the gift of Handel, not in its form as Ave now see it, for the original instrument has been greatly enlarged and altered, but there are the actual materials possessing the peculiar quality Avhich Ave attach to the humblest article that has been touched by a man of lofty genius ; and so the present organ is essentially the very Instrument before AvhIch the wonderful musician himself sat, and from AvhIch he drew forth the notes in AvhIch the sublime strains of the Messiah here found voice ; year after year in this chapel did Handel fill the coffers of the Hospital by the gratuitous performance of that, his greatest Avork. All the other benefactors of the Hospital sink into comparative Insignificance in regard to the amount of actual pecuniary benefit THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 339 they were the means of conferring : above ten thousand pounds Avere in all ¦Kided by the 'Messiah' to the fands. A curious misunderstanding occurred betAveen Handel and the governors. He " presented the charity with a fair copy of the original score of the 'Messiah.' This act of bounty was so ill understood by some of the governors, that, imagining this deed gave them an exclusive right to its performance, they formed the singular resolution of ap plying to Parliament to legalise their claim. But, first of all, it Avas deemed necessary to obtain Handel's concurrence ; and accordingly a deputation of these gentlemen waited upon him Avith their strange, though Avell-meant, requisition. But the musician, bursting into a rage which the music he has put in the mouth of Polypheme would but faintly express, exclaimed, ' Te deivel ! For vat sal de Foundling put mein oratorio in de Parlement? Te delvel! Mein music sal not go to de Parlement.'"* The advantages conferred on the Hospital by the musical performances thus commenced by Handel Avere, in a measure, made permanent through an accidental circumstance highly honourable to the thoughtful humanity of the governors. In the minutes of the institution we read that in a general committee, held on the 20th of March, 1758, it was " resolved that Tom Grenville, a boy of this Hospital, born blind, be taught music by the assistant to the organist of the chapel," and " at the price of two guineas per quarter." Two or three other blind children were similarly treated, who, it is pleasant to relate, lived to "contribute very abundantly" to the Hospital funds through that circumstance. Attention was now attracted to the subject of teaching music to the children generally, and the result was the admirable chorus, Avhich, in conjunction with some half-dozen professional voices, has, doAvn to the present day, contributed greatly to the prosperity of the insti tution. About a thousand a-year is now collected at the chapel-doors, and at the annual sermon, over and above the expense of the professional assistance alluded to. As we leave the chapel on the conclusion of the service, we perceive that the musical performances, though the chief, are by no means the only attraction of the visitors to the Foundling. Mingling with the throng which at the outer extremity of the hall passes through a door on the left along a passage, we find ourselves in the girls' dining-room, an apartment of great length, hung round with pictures of no ordinary merit. Here is Hogarth's well-known and capital portrait of Captain Coram, the founder of the institution, of Avhom we shall presently have to speak. This is the picture to Avhich Hogarth refers in the following passage of his autobiographical sketch, Avhere he is alluding to his dispute with Ramsay, the eminent painter, as to the qualifications required for portrait-painting. He says, " The portrait Avhich I painted Avith most pleasure, and In which I particularly Avished to excel, was that of Captain Coram, for the Foundling Hospital ; and if I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somcAvhat strange that this, which Avas one of the first and painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years' competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notAvithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it." This may not sound very inodest, but it is quite true ; although at the same time among the other por- * Bumey's ' History of Music' 340 LONDON. traits In this very room, and which are among the works Hogarth refers to, are ¦ Dr. Mead's by Ramsay, the Earl of Dartmouth's by Sir Joshua Reynolds, besides others by Hudson (Reynolds's master) and Shackleton. Sir Joshua's picture, we may observe by the way. Is a melancholy example of those experi ments In colouring to which the great painter Avas addicted. The face is of a cadaverous hue, and the drapery sadly blistered. But the general attention is now withdraAvn from the walls. The girls enter, and take their stand each In her proper place against the long row of tables that extends from end to end of the room, the crowd forming a lane on either side. A moment's pause, and a sweet voice is heard saying grace ; the utterer is that modest-looking girl in the centre of the table, who from her superior height and appearance seems chosen as one of the oldest among her companions. Scarcely has she finished before another girl, at the end of the table, dispenses, Avith the ease and rapidity of habit, from the large dishes of baked meat and vegetables before her, the din ners of the expectant children, plate folloAving plate with marvellous rapidity till all are satisfied. This room occupies a great portion of the easternmost wing or side of the edifice : the boys' dining-room Is in a similar situation, though more contracted In its dimensions, in the opposite wing. Following in the wake of the busy gazers across the court-yard, towards the apartment in question, through the school-room, we are arrested in the latter by the sight of the per formance of a kind of preliminary to the act of dining, which, though somewhat tantalizing, no doubt adds fresh zest to the sharp appetite when it does get to work. Arranged in a double row, " Fine by degrees and beautifully less," till the little fellows at the end near which we are standing seem so youn'g and short (though fat enough) that we could fancy them but just taken from the nurse's arms, and breeched, waistcoated, and coated for the occasion, are the whole of the male portion of the youthful community, going through their drill exer cises at the word of command of their master. They change at once, and without blunder, or hesitation, or Avant of concert, from a two-deep to a three-deep line, they beat time, they march, turn and turn again, until the welcome word is given for the final march to dinner-table in the adjoining room, where the sound of the regular, even tramp of their footsteps soon ceases. We need not follow them, as there is nothing materially different in the economy of their table from that of the girls previously noticed. The public promenade through the Hospital is not yet exhausted. There are the long wards with their roAvs of clean and comfortable little beds, and baskets at the foot of each, and there is the pleasure- ground into which the windows of some of the chief apartments open. The two most interesting apartments of the Hospital are those devoted re spectively to the use of the secretary and to the meetings of the committee or executive of the institution, and which very properly are not shown on the sabbath. The object of the governors in throwing open the other portions of the edifice described is, we presume, to enable the public constantly to judge of the treatment and condition of the children ; an excellent reason, but which, of course, does not apply to the apartments above mentioned. These are in the western wing. In the secretary's room are ' Ellsha raising the Child,' an immense sea-piece by Brooking, painted within the walls, landscapes and por- THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 341 traits ; but the gem of the place, and indeed of the entire collection, is Hogarth's 'March to Finchley.' The history of this work is curious. Among his other benefactions to the Hospital, Hogarth gave a number of unsold tickets con nected with the disposal of the ' March to Finchley' by lottery ; one of these tickets obtained the prize. In a recent paper on the Royal Academy we had occasion to observe that the first Idea of a public exhibition of works of art was borrowed from the Foundling Hospital. So many and such eminent artists contributed to adorn the home of the newly-foundeid charity, that the place became one of the most fashionable of morning lounges. The committee-room, into Avhich we now enter, was of course a chief point of attraction ; and its walls show very strikingly the generous strife which had prevailed in its decoration. The beautiful stucco ceiling, the marble chimney-piece, the verd antique table, with its magnificently carved support, and the glass above it, are respectively the gifts of different artists. Rysbrack gave the beautiful piece of sculpture over the mantel-piece ; Hogarth, Hayman, Wills, and Highmore, contributed the four great pictures which occupy so large a portion of the walls; whilst Wilson, Gainsborough, and others of humbler name, filled the eight small round compartments scattered between the more pretending works, representing different metropolitan hospitals. Of the four large pictures, Highmore 's represents the ' Angel of the Lord and Ishmael ;' Wills's, 'Christ showing a Child as the emblem of Heaven;' Hayman's, the ' Finding of Moses ;' and Hogarth's, the ' Adoption of Moses by Pharaoh's Daughter.' Mr. Cunningham speaks of the "serene and simple dignity" of this fine work by Hogarth ; and another critic (Ireland) justly observes, " There is not perhaps in Holy Writ another story so exactly suitable to the avowed pur pose of the foundation." The scene, with its distant pyramids. Is splendid, the composition harmonious, and the principal figure (Pharaoh's daughter) exqui sitely beautiful. It seems to us that, on looking at such pictures as this and the portrait of Coram, Hogarth has done much, after all, to defend his claim to be a painter, in the painter's own lofty sense of the term. What he wanted was chiefly that Avhich arduous study could have given him. Fortunately there is little room for regret : his admirable picture-morals are worth a thousand of the works of many of those who, whilst denying his right to call himself an artist, hid, under 'shoAvy conventionalities and high-sounding names, the intrinsic hoUowness of their own productions. _ It will be seen from what we have stated that the Hospital may pride itself upon the possession of some fine works of art. To these have been recently added a most valuable acquisition — a Cartoon by Raphael — which is now in the possession of the Royal Academy, having been lent to that institution, and which we have not therefore enjoyed the pleasure of seeing. In the room thus decorated by the hand of genius the committee sits every Wednesday that determines all applications for admlssion-^a most delicate and important duty, and one that is so bound up with the peculiar history of the in stitution that we can have no better opportunity of relating its rise and progress than the present. Addison, in one of his periodical essays in the 'Guardian' (No. 105), says, " I will mention a piece of charity which has not yet been exerted among us, and which deserves our attention the more because it Is practised by most of the 342 LONDON. nations about us. I mean a provision for foundlings, or for those children who, through want of such a provision, are exposed to the barbarity of cruel and un natural parents. One does not know hoAV to speak on such a subject without horror; but what multitudes of infants have been made away with by those Avho brought them into the Avorld, and Avere afterwards ashamed or unable to provide for them ! There is scarce an assizes Avhere some unhappy Avretch is not exe cuted for the murder of a child ; and how many more of these monst-ers of In humanity may Ave suppose to be AvhoUyundlscovered, or cleai-ed for Avant of legal evidence 1 " In consequence of this, and probably similar appeals, the matter at that time proceeded so far that various persons left by their Avills sums for the support of the projected charity ; but it Avas not until 'Captain Thomas Coram came upon the scene, about ten years later, that the scheme assumed a tangible shape. This gentleman, Avho had been bred to the sea, and Avas then the master of a vessel trading to the colonies, became, it is said, interested in the work to which he Avas about to devote the greater part of his life and energies, from the circumstance that, in passing to and fro betAveen Rotherhithe and London in pur suance of his avocations, he frequently-saAv infants exposed in the streets, deserted by their parents, and left to perish through the inclemency of the seasons. Coram accordingly took the matter in hand ; and, unappalled by seventeen years of diffi culties, held it firmly to the last, and until he saAv the complete establishment of his darling institution. Every kind of appeal had he to "urge, many personal humiliations to undergo, before arriving at this result. The example of the chief countries of the continent, viewed in connexion Avith the child-murders and exposures which they had been said to remedy — ca'IIs which there Avas no denying ¦existed also In England — furnished his strongest and most forcible argument, and Avhich he pressed upon the attention of all persons of rank, power, or wealth, who he thought Avould assist him. Never Avas philanthropist more indefatigable than Coram ; and, like other good men of his class, his perseverance did not always meet with the most courteous acknowledgment. A copy of Coram's me morial and petition to Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia is deposited among the records of the Hospital, at the bottom of Avhich Coram has written the fol lowing note : — " N.B. —On Innocents' Day, the 2Sth of December, 1737, I wentto St. James's Palace to present this petition, having been advised first to address the lady of the bedchamber in Availing to introduce it ; but the Lady Isabella Finch, who -was the lady in waiting, gave me very rough words, and bade me begone with my petition, which I did, without opportunity of presenting it. " Tho>ias Coram." It Avas as Avell perhaps the Princess and her Avaiting-woman did not hear the Captain's opinion of their conduct at the moment he found himself thus dis missed. History recordeth not his Avords, but no doubt they were sufficiently piquante ; for neither Coram's habits nor ambition were of the courtier's nature. He evidently thought the rough seaman no discredit to the honest man or the warm-hearted ]jhilanthropist, and there Avere others enlightened enough to think the same. When he presented at last his petition for a charter, he pre sented with it three memorials : the first signed by tAventy-one " ladles of quality and distinction," duchesses &c. ; the second by the husbands of the said ladles. THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 343 and other noblemen and gentlemen ; the third by justices of the peace residing near London, " and other persons of distinction." The ansAver Avas the grant of the charter by George IL, on the 17th of October, 1739, which recited that " Thomas Cbram, in behalf of great numbers of helpless Infants daily exposed to destruction, had, by his petition, represented that many persons of quality and distinction, as Avell as others of both sexes, being sensible of the frequent murders committed on poor miserable infants by their parents to hide their shame, and the Inhuman custom of exposing new-born children to perish in the streets, or training them up in idleness, beggary, and theft, had, by Instruments in writing, declared their intentions to contribute liberally towards the erecting an Hospital, after the example of other Christian countries, and for supporting the same," The charter then -appoints a body corporate of governors and guardians, including John Duke of Bedford, and three hundred and fil'ty other persons, among Avhom were several peers, the Master of the Rolls, the Chief Justices and Chief Baron, the Speaker, the Attorney and Solicitor General, and Coram — certainly a goodly assemblage to conduct the affairs of the infant charity. The preliminary measures having been taken, on the 26th of October, 1740, there appeared on the door of the house in Hatton Garden (distinguished by the shield above it, painted by Hogarth, and the first of his numerous gifts to the charity) the folloAving notice : — " To-morroAV, at eight o'clock in the evening, this house will be opened for the reception of tAventy children, under the following regulations : — No child ex ceeding the age of two months Avill be taken in, nor such as have the evil, leprosy, or disease of the like nature, Avhereby the health of the other children may be endangered ; for the discovery Avhereof every child is to be inspected as soon as it is brought, and the person Avho brings it is to come in at the outward door and ring a bell at the inward door, and not to go away until the child is returned or notice given of its reception ; but no questions whatever will be asked of any person who brings a child, nor shall any servant of the house presume to en deavour to discover Avho such person is, on pain of being discharged. All persons who bring children are requested to affix on each child some particular Avriting, or other distinguishing mark or token, so that the children may be known if hereafter necessary." The twenty children accordingly Avere taken in, and a notice affixed over the door, " The house is full." We may Imagine the scene Hatton Garden presented at that moment, AvIth probably five times as many mothers with their infants rejected as had been chosen, and gazing upon that notice with all tho heartburnings and rage of the unsuccessful. In a competition where the choice seem.s necessarily to have lain among the strongest, or those who could best elboAv their way through the clamorous and excited croAvd. These melancholy and dis- .graceful scenes Avere subsequently got rid of by an ingenious balloting process ; •all the women being admitted into the court-room to draw balls from bags, those Avho drew black ones were summarily dismissed, those who drew white were en titled to an admission for their children if eligible, whilst those Avho drcAv red might remain to draAv once more among themselves for any vacancies left open by the ineligibility of any of the former class. In 1745 the Avestern wing of the present Hospital was opened and the house at Hatton Garden given up ; the other two portions of the edifice soon followed, and in 1 747 the chapel Avas begun. And here, full of years and honours., was 344 LONDON, buried Coram, in 1751, the first person interred In the place. His had been a busy as well as a benevolent nature. He did not confine his exertions to the -foundation of this Hospital, but embarked in various other useful and patriotic objects chiefly in connexion with the colonies. His colonial experience and views indeed were so much esteemed by Horace Walpole— the first Lord Walpole and uncle to the Horace — that in writing, on some subject of the kind, to his brother Sir Robert from the Hague, Avhere he was then ambassador, he says, " Lose no time in talking Avith Sir Charles Wager, Mr. Bladen, and one Coram, the honestest, the most disinterested, and the most knowing person about the plantation I ever talked with."* Hoav " disinterested" he was we may judge from the fact that at the age of eighty-two he found himself destitute. This state of things was of course not long left unremedied. Arrangements were made to raise an an nuity by subscription, but, in order to be sure that they were not offending Coram by the scheme. Dr. Brocklesby waited upon him, and put the question plainly to him. The old man's reply was truly dignified. " I have not wasted," said he, " the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess that in my old age I am poor." A deed, yet carefully preserved among the Hospital records, shoAvs the result of the subscription : it is dated March 30, 1749, and binds the parties whose names are subscribed to it to pay the different sums annexed, amounting in all to a hundred and sixty-one guineas yearly. Coram lived only two years to enjoy this evidence of the respect of his fellow-men. He died on the 29th of March, and in the evening of the 1st of April following was burled in the chapel. The body was met at the gate by the Governors and the children, who then preceded it two and two together towards its last earthly home. Immediately before the coffin the charter was borne by a person on a crimson velvet cushion. The pall was supported by numerous distinguished persons On entering the chapel, already filled to the uttermost corner by the assembled spectators, a part of the choir of St. Paul's raised the solemn and affecting strains of the burial-service composed by Dr. Boyce, who himself officiated at the organ. An anthem, by the same eminent musician, was also sung during the ceremony. The body Avas finally deposited under the communion-table. During the period from the establishment of the Hospital to about five years after the death of Coram the applications for admission were so constantly be yond the number that the funds would admit, that the Governors ultimately determined to petition Parliament for assistance. The Hospital had evidently grown popular, and the general wish, concurring Avith that of the Governors, was, that it should be able to accommodate all the children offered Avho were eligible by Its constitution. Among the modes proposed for the attainment of this object, prior to the request of regular grants from Parliament, were some of an amusing character : taxes on coals exported from Great Britahi, an additional Sunday turnpike-tax, parish registers of all births, deaths, and marriages, with a fee for every registration, to be thus expended ; and, above all, a poll-tax on bachelors, on the ground that so many of them would doubtless have a personal interest in the welfare of the Hospital ; — these were some of the modes proposed for its support by kind friends or satirical enemies. Parliament received the * Coxe's ' Life of AValpole.' THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 345 application of the Governors favourably, and on the 6th of April, 1756, granted the sum of 10,000/. on the condition that all children under a certain age (first two months, then six, and lastly, as at present, twelve) should be received. The Hospital was at the same time empowered to form provincial establishments: in consequence of which houses were erected at Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Westerham in Kent, Aylesbury, Barnet, and one In Cheshire ; the chief of these, at Ackworth cost above 20,000/. And now commenced the state of things that had well-nigh utterly destroyed the institution, and which for a time caused it to be looked on, and not unjustly, as the greatest curse in the shape of a blessing that well-meant . charity had ever inflicted. The Governors set to work with renewed energy to meet the new demands made upon them, and to fulfil what they esteemed their high vocation. To make the act of application as agreeable as possible, a basket was hung at the gate, and all the trouble imposed on parents was the ringing of a bell, as they deposited their little burdens, to inform the officers of the act. Prostitution Avas never before, in England at least, made so easy. The new sys tem began on the 2nd of June, 1756, on which day 117 children were received, and before the close of the year the vast number of 1783 were adopted by the Institution. Far from being frightened at this army of infants so suddenly put under their care, the Governors appear to have been apprehensive of being neg lectful of the uses and capacities of the institution ; for in the following June appeared advertisements in the chief public papers, and notices at the end of every street. Informing all who were concerned how very widely open were the Hospital gates. Such attention was not ill bestowed ; 3727 children Avere ad mitted that year, and in all, during the three years and ten months this precious system lasted, nearly 15,000 infants were received into the Foundling Hospital! And now for some of the consequences. The first and greatest, the injury to the national morality, is so glaring, that one Avonders how a public body of well-inten tioned and respectable men, such as the Governors, could have ever overlooked it • but what then shall we think of the Parliament? It would have, however, taken some time to prove with tolerable precision the extent of this evil, and the system might not have been brought to such a summary conclusion as it was, but for others more directly palpable to the popular sense, and some of which outraged the very feelings on Avhieh the Institution itself had been based. " There is set up In our corporation (writes a correspondent from a town three hundred miles distant. In one of the chronicles of the day) anew and uncommon trade, namely, the conveying children to the Foundling Hospital. The person employed in this trade is a Avoman of a notoriously bad character. She undertakes the carrying of these children at so much per head. She has, I am told, made one trip already, and is now set upon her journey with tAvo of her daughters, each with a child on her back."* From another quarter we learn that the charge for bringing up children from Yorkshire, four in two panniers slung across a horse's back, was for some time eight guineas a trip, but competition had in that, as in other pursuits, lowered the price. It was perhaps to make up for the reduction in the profits that certain carriers, before leaving the children, actually stripped the little creatures naked * Transcribed from ' Hans Sloane ; a Tale illustrating the History of the Foundling Hospital in London : by John Brownlow :' a little work by one of the ofScers of the hospital, containing many interesting facts relative to thf latter. 346 LONDON. for the sake of the value of their clothing, and thus left them In the basket ! The same authority gives us a glimpse of the effect of such modes of conveyance upon the poor little creatures subjected to them that is too painful to contem plate. He says, referring we presume to the House of Commons, " Has it not In the same great Assembly been moreover publicly averred that, of eight babes brought up out of the country for the Foundling Hospital at one time in a waggon, seven died before it reached London — the only one that lived owing its life to this circumstance, viz. that it had a mother so maternally loth to part with it, and commit it alone to the carrier, that she Avent up on foot along with him, purely that every uoav and then she might give it the breast, and Avatch and sup ply its other needs occasionally, &c. ; keeping pace with the waggon all the Avay for that purpose ? "* As the liberality of the system became more and more apparent, various coun try overseers and other parochlaL authorities began to show hoAV greatly they were charmed Avith it, by occasionally dropping into the basket a child or two that they feared would become chargeable to their parishes, and In some instances by frightening the unhappy mothers themselves into the act, Avhen they had no desire to part with their children. Other parents, again, residing in or near London, Avhose children were dying and who had no means of decently burying them or thought the Hospital had much more, brought them hither at the last stage of Illness, to die not unfrequently between the act of taking them out of the basket and their deliA'ery to the nurses in the Avard. We may here add that among the incidental consequences of the system Avas the charge frequently made against the parents who had deposited their infants in the famous basket of having improperly disposed of them, the suspicions sometimes extending even unto murder. Such cases came before the magistrates ; and the parties accused were detained in custody till certificates of the safe receipt of the child at the Foundling were obtained from the governors. To obviate this inconvenience a billet was delivered, when required, on the arrival of a child at the HospitaL -Such were some of the evils let loose upon society by the parliament of the nation and the governors of the Hospital, through the adoption of the principle of indiscriminate admission. And the fate of the children admitted seems to shoAv that the principle was as carelessly carried out in practice as it Avas vicious in theory. As the infant inundation poured in, the governors began to ask what Avas the best mode of preserving the lives and health of the foundlings com mitted to their care. The advice of the College of Physicians Avas asked and given; but unfortunately measures had been so precipitated xthat the essentials Avere impracticable. Where, for instance, could Avet-nurses be obtained for such multitudes? How could the extraordinary Avatchfulness required under the circumstances — the deprivation of the proper maternal care and the mingling of diseased and healthy children — be given when there were so many requiring care? Seeing these things, Ave may be prepared for the result. Of the whole 14,934 children received under the new system, only 4400 lived to be appren ticed ! Of course parliament did not wait for this consummation before it interfered and stopped the ruinous course it had advised and supported. On the Hth.of February, 1760, a resolution was passed declaring "That the indis- * ' The Tendencies of the Foundling Hospital in its present extent considered : 1760,' THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 347 criminate admission of all children under a certain age into the Hospital had been attended with many evil consequences, and that it be discontinued." At this period there were above 6000 children in the establishment, and Pariiament was bound to continue its grant for their support till neariy the whole of them were apprenticed out. From 1756 to 1771, the years of the Parliamentary con nexion, the national funds contributed it appears no less a sum than 549,796/. 16s,' to the expenses of this ill-judged experiment, Avhich inflicted a shock on the Hospital that had, as we have before observed, Avell-nigh destroyed it. A strik ing evidence of the state of public feeling at the period is afforded by the fact that many of the Governors thought it actually necessary to give the Hospital a noAV name, and a resolution Avas passed, though afterwards rescinded, to denomi nate it " The Orphan Hospital," We conclude this part of our subject by ob serving that, till very lately, some of the children introduced under the basket system were, as aged and imbecile adults, still living in the Hospital, it being a noticeable peculiarity of the latter, that it supports through life any of the children Avho may be unfitted personally or mentally for apprenticeship. The Governors of the charity, after the severe warning they had received, pro ceeded Avith more caution ; they restricted their exertions to the scope of their own funds, sold their country hospitals (the Quakers bought Ackworth and established their famous school) ; and indeed from that time to the present their administration has grown more and more strict, or, in other words, they have endeavoured to reduce the original evils which must belong to all such institu tions to a minimum, and to raise the good they can accomplish to a maximum. Yet it Avas not till 1801 that the most objectfonable practice of taking children without inquiry, on a payment of 100/,, was formally abolished. We now pro ceed to explain the present system and management of the charity in Its more essential and interesting points. A notice on the wall by the Hospital gates informs all concerned that children can only be received Into the Hospital upon the personal application of the mothers, and that the requisite printed forms of admission to be filled up may be obtained at the "Secretary's Office. A copy of this form Is before us, and attached to it we perceive "Instructions," which state among other matters that "no per son need apply unless she shall have previously borne a good character for virtue, sobriety, and honesty." To prevent improper influence, " persons Avho present petitions to the Committee must not previously apply to any Governor, or to any officer or servant belonging to the Hospital, on the subject, on any pretence whatever." The form shows the age of the child, and states that it is wholly dependent on the petitioner, &c. ; and this, properly filled up, is presented person ally by the mother to the sitting members of the Committee, varying generally from eight or ten Governors to double that number. The preliminary inquiries— as, the poverty and good character of the applicant, the illegitimacy of her in fant, the abandonment by the father, and the non-cognizance of the case by any parish authorities — being satisfactorily disposed of, the chief points to which the attention of the Chairman is directed in his questions are to learn what proba bility there may be of the petitioner's return to the paths of virtue, in the event of the acceptation of her child, and which includes the question of the number of persons to whom her shame may be known ; a matter considered to affect greatly 348 « LONDON. the possibility of her maintaining herself honestly, and preserving her station in society. Mr. Wrottesley, in his account of the Foundling Hospital,"' shows very happily, by an imaginary case, the views by which the Governors are actuated in their selection of cases, and the consequent character of the examinations before the Committee, " The most meritorious case, therefore, would be one in which a young Avoman, having no means of subsistence except those derived from her own labour, and having no opulent relations, previously to committing the offence bore an Irreproachable character, but yielded to artful and long-continued seduc tion, and an express promise of marriage ; Avhose delivery took place in secret, and whose shame was known only to one or two persons, as, for example, the me dical attendant and a single relation ; and, lastly, Avhose employers or other per sons were able and desirous to take her into their service, if enabled again to earn her livelihood by the reception of her child. This is considered the most eligible case, and others are deemed by the Governors as more or less so in pro portion as they approach nearer to or recede further from it." The Committee, being satisfied of the eligibility of any particular case, as stated by the mother, cause inquiries to be made into its truth. These inquiries are of an unpleasant character, for the Treasurer's Clerk, on whom the duty devolves, is expressly in structed to avoid, during its performance, divulging any of the facts with which he may be acquainted ; and it is easy to perceive this must be a difficult and onerous task. And this very secrecy, though indispensable, leads sometimes to an act of great immorality — the marriage of the parties in question to persons who are kept in entire ignorance of the most important event of their previous history. The result of the inquiry being also satisfactory, the child is at once admitted if there be a vacancy, or is placed on the books till one is made. The day of admission is Saturday. On leaving her child the mother receives a cer tificate in return, to which is attached a private mark, by which the Hospital authorities may. If requisite, subsequently recognise the child, a corresponding mark being carefully attached to the child's clothing ; but as for the unhappy mother, in all probability from that day forAvard never again will she be able to recognise it ; the connexion between them is utterly severed, except in the event (one of rare occurrence) of her claiming the restoration of the child, and giving the Governors the most satisfactory proofs of her ability properly to maintain it. It is painfully interesting to read Mr. Wrottesley's description of the various modes adopted by many of the mothers to avoid this dreadful severance, Avhich the Hospital Is strict in enforcing. He says, " All kinds of devices are resorted to by the mothers to identify their children ; and extraordinary Instances of in genuity exercised by them with that vIcav are recorded : sometimes notes are found attached to the infant's clothing, beseeching the nurse to convey informa tion to the mother of her name and residence, that the latter may Identify her child during its stay in the country : sometimes mothers have been known to watch for and follow the van on foot, which conveys their children to the country stations (where they are nursed till five years old) ; sometimes to attend the bap tism [in the chapel, on the first Sunday after admission], in the hope of hearing Its jame. If they succeed in identifying the child during its stay at nurse, they can * Report of the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities, p. 781. THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 349 always preserve the identification during its subsequent abode in the Hospital, for the children appear "at chapel twice on Sunday, and dine In public on the same day ; and this gives them opportunities of seeing them from time to time and preserving the recollection of their features. In these attempts at discovery mistakes are, however, sometimes committed, and attentions are lavished on the offspring of others ; instances even have occurred of mothers coming in mourning attire to the Hospital to return thanks for the kindness bestowed on their de ceased children, who were informed on their arrival that they Avere alive and well." When recognition does take place, the officers of the institution have found that the children generally were injured by the indulgences lavished upon them. It is proper to observe that mothers can ahvays obtain intelligence of the health and welfare of their children. The number of children is 360, and it is stated that about eight mothers weekly avail themselves of the privilege in ques tion : some come regularly once a fortnight. We may here say a word on the classes of society to which such parents generally belong. A large proportion are domestic servants ; of twenty -five cases eighteen belonged to this class. The remainder are chiefly daughters of small tradesmen, mechanics, or farmers, or milliners in humble circumstances. The children, as we have incidentally seen, are baptized the day after their admission, and named. Formerly it was the custom to name the children after the chief benefactors and Governors of the institution, but a ludicrous incon venience was experienced from the custom : some of the children, it was found, as they grew up, got a notion into their heads that they had a greater right to the appellation they had received than the mere custom of the Hospital had be stowed : we need hardly add that no sooner was this discovered than the prac tice at once ceased. Names of a very general character are now chosen. Im mediately after their reception and baptism the infants are sent to one of the two stations in the country. East Peckham in Kent and Chertsey in Surrey, with their respective neighbourhoods. The nurses who receive the Hospital children receive 3s. 6d. per week for each, and a gratuity of 10s. 6d. at the end of the first year if the child appears to have been successfully reared. The nurses in each dis trict are under the supervision of paid inspectors. A curious and in many senses gratifying result attends this novel connexion. The nurses and their husbands, generally poor cottagers, not only are called father and mother by the poor orphans, who have practically no other parents, but they almost invariably fulfil their duties in a manner that not only leaves nothing to be desired, but that goes beyond all reasonable expectation. Nature, as If unwilling to have one of her holiest instincts lost under any circumstances, raises up in the breast of strangers the love for these poor castaways that they fail to receive from their parents. Accordingly the parting between the nurses and the children, when the age is attained at which they are removed to London, is generally of a distressing cha racter. In many cases the nurses would evidently, if they could, be but too happy to be allowed to keep the children as their own, and at their own expense, rather than lose them. This is a feature of the management of the Hospital that it would be highly desirable to see altered, if alteration be practicable. The children are by the present mode twice d prived of their parents, and the last depriv ation Is by far the worst, for their affections have then grown strong, and piteous 350 LONDON. must be the suffering when they are rudely torn aAvay from the objects around Avhich they have so long clung. There is even a more serious evil, Ave should fear : the human heart in children is a dangerous thing to tamper with ; is it not likely that, in finding its love thus (cruelly to all appearance) thrown as it were back upon itself, the very instinct of self-preservation may keep it from any such dangerous advances for the future, and so allow it to remain safe at the expense of all those better feelings which are the most wortiiy of care ? In short, if this part of the system does not exactly generate selfishness, it must at least, we should consider, blunt all the finer sensibilities, and lower the standard of humanity, among children so trained. On the return of the children to the Hospital their education commences, which is scarcely of so high a character as Ave should expect from the generally excellent management of the institution. There are, for Instance, iioav in the boys' school, 115 boys, who are taught by a single master;. Avhose duties moreover are not even confined to school-hours,, but extend to the care of the children at meal-times, their clothes, &c. Under these circumstances it Avould be absurd to expect that any high degree of efficiency can be obtained for the imparting a good education even of the plainest kind. It is probable (indeed Ave have heard some thing to that effect) that the Governors are deterred from Avorking any effectual improvement by the fear that public opinion would not sanction them in making the condition of the children more eligible than it is : they fear perhaps that the feeling begot by the unfortunate Parliamentary experiment has not yet entirely vanished, and that the old charge of fostering vice by taking such care of its innocent consequences may be again aroused. If so, we think it is, in the words of the poet, " a lost fear." The children are innocent : that is enough to arouse and support the public sympathy in their favour; and if, as Ave hope, the excel lence of the education here given shall one day attract as much attention as the order, the neatness, cleanliness, and general arrangements of the Hospital do now, we are sure there will be fcAv murmurers. The general interest exhibited in the measures of Dr. Kay for the pauper population of the country, as partially exhibited in the Norwood Schools, may prove at once an example, and the safety of its imitation on the part of all charitable educational institutions. Some of the elder boys, as we have before had occasion to observe, are taught tailoring, now the only trade or occupation pursued in the Hospital ; whilst the girls gene rally are taught to make their oavu clothes, and, as they grow old enough, to assist the Avard-mistress in making up fine linen for the public at certain settled prices, and then to share in the duties of the Hospital household, and learn the mysteries of cleaning, cooking, washing, and ironing. Lastly comes the period of appren ticeship, Avhen the Foundlings finally quit the Hospital that has so long and kindly supported them, and prepare for the arduous struggles of active life. The boys are apprenticed to persons of different trades, and, if required, premiums are given varying from 51. to 10/. ; but in that case the inquiry into the character of the party becomes doubly strict. The girls are never intrusted to the care of unmarried men, nor to married men except with the consent of their wives, nor to persons Avho keep only a single servant. Personal inspection and inquiry as to their conduct and treatment is kept up through the Avhole period of their ap prenticeship, and more particularly with regard to the females. A pleasant cua- THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL, -351 ..om has been instituted of late years of giving to the gradually dissolving con nexion the right tone of feeling preparatory to its final dissolution. Once in every year takes place a meeting of the apprentices at the Hospital, to mingle once more among their youthful associates and elder friends and guardians ; on Avhich occasion a gratuity is given to all who can present a certificate of good conduct from their masters. The principles that shall guide the future conduct of this important charity are of such moment that we shall make no apology for saying a few words on the subject, although our space forbids any elaborate or lengthened disquisition. From the cash account* of the Hospital for the year 1841 we percelA'e the annual receipts exceed 1 1,000/. ; and as all those large and valuable houses belonging to the charity which surround it are held on leases, the actual income in the course of a fcAv years will be at least 50,000/. ! As a natural consequence, the number of the children may be very greatly increased. f As at present constituted, avIU the Hospital thus confer additional benefits on society ? Mr. Wrottesley's opinion seems to be In the negative. He says, " Now it would seem that not only does general indiscriminate admission encourage licentiousness, but that, for a like reason, any facilities afforded for disposing of the offspring of illicit connexions without compromising the, reputation of the parents have also a direct tendency to produce a similar result, and a tendency proportionable to the degree in Avhich such facilities are afforded; and that the amount of mischief produced by any system under which illegitimate children are provided for on such terms can be always accurately estimated by observation of the number and class of the ob jects obtaining relief therefrom, and the circumstances under Avhich relief Is given." The " tendency" referred to cannot be denied ; neither can the fact that the existing arrangements do most decidedly keep it doAvn and render it com paratively innoxious. That this is a fact, and one that, although Mr. Wrottesley does not notice it, must ansAver all theories on the question, is evident from the following statements : — Sir Thomas Bernard, a former Treasurer, and the author of a carefully written and, to his credit be it said, impartial account of the Hospital, expressly says, " It is Avorthy of observation that no instance has come to the knotv- ledge of the Committee of any woman so relieved who has not been thereby saved from Avhat she would in all pirobablllty have been Involved in — a course of vice and prostitution." Again, the gentleman we have before referred to, the treasurer's clerk, referring to an experience of many years, and extending up to the present time, informs us thathe remembers but a single case Avhere the reception of the child has been followed by subsequent misconduct on the part of the parent. We do not knoAV hoAV it is possible to desire a much stronger answer to the charge of encouraging "licentiousness." There are evils in the system unquestionably ; the separation of the child from the mother, and the deceit practised in subsequent marriages, are serious ones, and, but for the rigid character of th'e regulations, licentiousness undoubtedly would be produced; but do those acknoAvledgments settle the question ? Is it nothing to arrest error In Its onward course, and, if you cannot change it into virtue, to keep it certainly from sinking into vice ? Above * Among the items is one of a gratifying kind — " Legacy of the late Edward Harris, a foundling, £2.5." f The funds already, it appears, admit of an extension in the number from 360 to 400 children, and we under stand a proposition to that effect will shortly be made. 35a LONDON. all, is it nothing to take care of the children who would become the most pitiable victims of such vice ? Let any one consider for a moment the probable fate of the great majority of the sinning but unhappy mothers who have here found re lief, and then further consider what must have been the condition of their chil dren ; would the result have been anything like that shown In the following state ment, where the history of one hundred and three girls after leaving the hospital Is briefly but sufficiently shoAvn ? Of this number seventy-seven at the expiration of their apprenticeship received gratuities varying from two to five guineas for their good conduct, (gratuities only awarded on the presentation of a certificate by their employers,) four died, three became insane or imbecile or invalid, seven forfeited the gratuity for obstinacy without vice, three committed offences during their apprenticeship, but reformed afterwards and became respectable characters, four never applied for the gratuity, and of the whole number three only turned out bad characters. The remaining two were discovered by their mothers during their apprenticeship, and quietly taken away. It is true that in a literal sense the exact object of Coram has not been obtained or found practicable — the taking care of " exposed and deserted" infants ; but it would be difficult to say the Hos pital has not done what Coram must have much more desired, that is, pre vented such infants from being so exposed or deserted ; and certainly, in the present management and influences of the Hospital, there is nothing that Avouid make him less proud of his title as its Founder. iWi^' *'•• .1 -^'¦'*- i- V J I < [Captain Coram. From Hogarth's Picture.] f-^ €«¦ 4r ./-'^ -,..-•' ¦' 1, =M^ f' '- ;fc:^v;"'^i-' "-'^i=3.^^^^B^ ¦'*-'"-n-^^_ [Corn Exchange, Mark Lane.] LXXIII.— THE CORN EXCHANGE. Some of the heartiest vituperations, perhaps, in the language, are to be found \n the racy and entertaining ' Rural Rides' of the late William Cobbett ; but thny are hurled with more especial vigour against the all-devouring " Wen," as he was accustomed to call this great city, Avhich, according to him, drew Into its capacious stomach all the cattle, sheep, corn, and other good things raised by the labour of the country. Besides this, he entertained a prettAr general contempt for that class of dealers who merely hand the produce of the land from one to another, and who do not by their industry change the state of the commodity which they buy and sell. No one would have been more active in putting in force the statutes of the sixteenth century against the " corn badgers" or dealers, who were described as persons " seeking only to live easily and to leave their honest labour," and their proceedings as " very hurtful to the commonwealth of this realm, as well by enhancing the price of corn and grain, as also by the diminish ing of good and necessary husbandmen." '^ This useful class of men Cobbett would have sent to the plough. We believe we may state with perfect truth that • Preamble of 5 Klii. c. 13. VOL. UI, '2 A. 354 LONDON, the prejudices against them have entirely passed aAvay Avithin the last ttvenly years ; but so recently as 1795 Lord Kenyon thundered from the bench, and denounced the " full vengeance of the law" against the corn-dealers. Slow as may be the progress of political knoAvledge, no considerable number of persons Avould noAV applaud such anathemas as these, AvhIch, at the time, Avere loudly re echoed amongst all classes. When England Avas almost exclusively an agricultural country the process of obtaining a loaf of bread Avas a very simple one. The farmer threshed out as much corn as he Avanted and carried it to the miller, and the townsman Avent into the pitched market and bought a sack of Avheat, and he also had direct dealings Avith the miller. The great number of towns in AvhIch markets Avere once held, and which contained only a very scanty population, shoAV how general Avere the means of maintaining direct dealings betAveen the producer and consumer. In these days, at least in London, a man neither buys Avheat, nor deals Avith the miller, nor bakes his oavu bread, so complete is the subdivision of employments. A comparison of the extent to AvhIch the principle is carried in the metropolis and In a large provincial toAvn, so far as concerns the supply of bread, may be found in the Population Returns for 1831, Avhich shoAv that in SouthAvark and Sheffield, each with a population exceeding 91,000, and Avith a difference of less than 200 betAveen them, there Avere 338 bakers in the former place and only 53 in the latter, from which it is plain that in the northern toAvn a great majority of f ami lies dispense AvIth the services of bakers. The relative price of fuel in the tAvo places may in some slight degree partly account for this. But the simple as Avell as the complicated is equally natural in the different circumstances In Avhich they occur. If the tAvo millions of population noAV concentrated Avithin a circle of eight miles round St. Paul's were dispersed over an extensive country, Avith a small number of toAvns of from tAvo to ten thousand inhabitants scattered here and there, one or tAvo containing more than that number, and the capital Avith per haps fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants, the process of supplying the same amount of population Avith the staff of life Avould, under these circumstances, be totally changed. Producers and consumers would be brought generally into contact Arith each other, and fcAv intermediate dealers Avould be necessary. But the Immense supply of corn and grain Avhich London requires for its oAvn con sumption, both for men and animals, is probably draAvn from farms comprising between tAvo and three million acres, or the total produce of six or seven thousand farms of large size; but, considering that other markets are to be supplied, and that something is required for local consumption, it may be said that many thousands of farms contribute some portion of their produce to the supply of London. Noav, as it Avould be totally impossible for the producers in every case to bring their corn to London, it can only reach us through the services of in numerable agents, Avhose useful operations were denounced by the statutes of the sixteenth century. Some of the corn-merchants of London turn over In a year capital amounting to nearly a million and a half sterling, and it is obvious that they cannot themselves attend all the markets from Avhich the supply is in the. first instance collected, and yet, unless it chiefly reached London in great bulks, the process of supplying it would be very expensive. They purchase of the mer ¦ chants at some shipping port, and these again deal Avith others whose transactions THE CORN EXCHANGE. 355 are on a still smaller scale, and who buy directly of the groAver. Each Avatches within his own district the opportunities of profit to be made from supplying the scarcity of one part of the country out of the abundance of another. Dr. Whateiy, the Archbishop of Dublin, has clearly pointed out the value of such services : " The apprehension, on the one hand, of not realizing all the profit he might, and, on the other hand, of having his goods left on his hands, either by his layino- in too large a stock, or by his rivals underselling him — these, acting like an tagonist muscles, regulate the extent of his dealings, and the prices at which he buys and sells. An abundant supply causes him to lower his prices, and thus enables the public to enjoy that abundance, while he Is guided only by the appre hension of being undersold ; and, on the other hand, an actual or apprehended scarcity causes him to demand a higher price, or to keep back his goods in expect ation of a rise. For doing this, corn-dealers In particular are often exposed to odium, as If they were the cause of the scarcity ; while in reality they are per forming the important service of husbanding the supply in proportion to the deficiency, and thus warding off the calamity of famine ; In the same manner as the commander of a garrison or a ship regulates the allowances according to the stock and the time it is to last. But the dealers deserve neither censure for the scarcity which Ihey are Ignorantly supposed to produce, nor credit for the im portant public service Avhich they in reality perform. They are merely occupied In gaining a fair livelihood." The importation of foreign corn, which, in wheat alone, has amounted to about nine million quarters in the last four years, in volves a more extended chain of operations, which reaches from the counting- house of the London merchant to the groAvers in the heart of central Europe, the cultivator in the Steppes of Southern Russia, the settler who has cleared a patch of land in the forests of Canada, and the American farmer on the Ohio. What ploughing, and soAving, and reaping — Avhat threshing, Avinnow- ing, and measuring — before a single grain leaves the spot where it is produced, and how variously are all these processes conducted in the different countries which supply London. What chafferings in hundreds of markets before this supply gets out of the hands of the producer, in its first stage towards the all- devouring metropolis of England ! How various are the modes of transport to the place of shipment, and hoAV great are the contrasts they present : in one case the train of rude bullock-waggons crossing the Russian Steppes, in another the equally rude barge on the Vistula, with its cargo protected only bj"^ an exterior coating of sprouted corn impenetrable to the elements ! Nearly all the maritime ports of England, Scotland, and Ireland, contribute some portion toAvards our supply. In the months of July and August, 1841, there arrived in London 787 vessels from foreign parts laden AvIth foreign corn, 306 being British and 481 foreign. Kent and Essex were at one period almost the only counties from which London drew its supply of corn and grain ; but before even the sixteenth century this Avas no longer the case. StoAV remarked that London " maintaineth in flourishing estate the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and Sussex, which, as they lie in the face of our most puissant neighbour, so ought they, above others, to be con sidered as the greatest strength and riches ; and these. It is well known, stand not so much on the benefit of their own soil as by the neighbourhood and nearness 2a 2 356 LONDON. they have to London," The total Importation of corn, grain, and seeds into Lon don averages at the present time about three and a half million quarters, or about 28,000,000 bushels, annually, besides about 50,000 tons of flour and meal, the weight altogether being at least 530,000 tons. What a vast amount and variety of industry is involved in the creation of this large quantity of agricul' tural produce and in the preparation of it for consumption ! Next to coal, the trade in corn gives the most extensive employment, to shipping in the port of London of any other commodity. Without the stimulus of self-interest the task of supplying London would be beyond the reach of human effort ; and the operations of the " speculator " con duce, in the end, solely to the public advantage. The slightest interference with him is not unattended with danger ; but the jealous spirit of the sixteenth cen tury, if it were uoav possible to give effect to It, would once more place London at < the risk of those serious dearths in the first necessary of life Avhich were of fre quent occurrence, and for which, in part, corn-dealers were ignorantly blamed. We may notice here a few of the restrictions under which the corn-dealers were placed three centuries ago, and also one or two regulations which attempted to deal with the producers in the same spirit. In September, 1549, a proclamation was Issued which prohibited corn-dealers from having more than ten quarters in their possession at one time ; and it directed justices of the peace to look into the barns, and so much as to them seemed superfluous Avas to be sold at a reasonable price, persons being appointed to attend in every market to see that this Avas done.'* Two years afterwards the substance of the above proclamation was em bodied in a statute f which subjected persons buying corn to sell again to heavy penalties. Farmers buying corn for seed were required to sell an equal quantity of their corn in store. When wheat was under 6s. 8d. the quarter it might then be bought by dealers, but they were not to enhance the price or prevent the supply of the market. Corn " badgers," licensed by three justices of the peace, were permitted to buy in open fairs and markets for the supply, of cities and towns. In 1562 there was another statute passed which affected them,J They were to be householders, not less than thirty years of age, and either married or widowers, and the licence was to be only an annual one, to be granted by the magistrates in quarter-sessions. The dealers were also to give securities not to be guilty of engrossing or forestalling, and not to buy out of open market, except under an express licence. These restrictions could not well be maintained with out leading to other artificial arrangements, some of which, so far as they relate to the corn-market of London, we shall briefly notice. For upwards of two centuries the authorities of the City and the principal Livery Companies were accustomed constantly to provide a store of corn against seasons of scarcity, and when prices rose the city granaries were opened for the purpose of keeping them moderate. This was doing nothing more than indivi duals would have done ; but when large floating capitals ready for employment at a moment's notice were not quite so abundant as in these days, it was perhaps Avise as well as benevolent in the City looking with a provident eye towards the means of mitigating the dearths which were so frequently occurring. The Lord • Turner's Hist. Eng. vol. i. p. 173, f & and 6 Edw. VI, c. 14. J 5 Eliz. ,,. 13 THE CORN EXCHANGE, 357 Mayor, as the head of the City, could not but extend his care to those who on such occasions were ready to perish but for his assistance; and It is most pro bable that the practice of forming stores of corn commenced immediately after some severe dearth ; and humanity forbade it to be hastily abandoned. Sir Stephen Brown, in 1438, appears to have been one of the earliest, and most likely was the first. Mayor of London who established a public granary, for which he is eulogised both by Stow and Fuller. The latter says of him, that " during a great dearth in his mayoralty he charitably relieved the wants of the poor citizens, by sending ships at his own expense to Dantzic, which returned laden with rye, and which seasonable supply soon sunk grain to reasonable rates ;" and he adds, " he is beheld as one of the first merchants who, during a want of corn, showed the Londoners the Avay to the barn-door, I mean Spurm- land, prompted by charity, not covetousness, to this adventure," About the same period Sir Simon Eyre, another Lord Mayor, established a public granary at Leadenhall. Nearly a century afterwards (1521) a succeeding Mayor found the city granaries almost empty. " There were not," says Stow, " one hundred quarters of wheat in all the garners of the city, either within the liberties or near adjoining, through the which scarcity, when the carts of Stratford came laden Avith bread to the city (as they had been accustomed), there was such press about them, that one man was ready to destroy another, in striving to be served for their money : but this scarcity lasted not long ; for the Mayor in short time made such provision of wheat, that the bakers both of London and Stratford were Aveary of taking it up, and were forced to take much more than they would, and for the rest the Mayor stoAved it up in Leadenhall and other garners of the city. This Mayor also kept the market so Avell, that he would be at Leadenhall by four o'clock in the summer mornings, and from thence he went to other markets, to the great comfort of the citizens." Occasional memoranda in the City records show the manner in which the City authorities applied their stores of corn to reduce prices in the markets. In 1546 two aldermen were appointed weekly in rotation to purvey and to see that the markets tvere well supplied. In 1559 there is an order for the City's store to be ground and sold to the citizens. InT565 the bridgemaster is directed to put to sale in the markets every market-day four quarters of the City's wheat-meal at 3*. the bushel, and four bushels of maslin (a mixture of wheat and rye) at 2s. 6d. the bushel. A memorandum appears in the year 1573, instructing the Lord Mayor and Aldermen not to allow corn belonging to the City to be sold " better cheap " than the cost price, with all losses and charges added, nor lower than from 2d. to 4id. the bushel under the market-price, unless with the consent of the City companies, and taking an equal quantity of each company. The part which the companies took in this matter will be hereafter noticed. In 1579 the companies were required to send into the market of SouthAvark fifteen quarters of meal per week, till they had disposed of all their old corn at the market-price ; and a fresh stock was then to be provided. In 1580, on account of the high prices, they were directed to take into the market at Queenhithe, every Monday, Wed nesday, and Friday, eight quarters of Avheat, well ground, and to retail it at 3^'. the bushel, " and not more, at their peril." The companies were called upon at two different periods in 1590 to purchase 18,000 quarters of corn. This would 358 LONDON. supply 216,000 persons for one calendar month. In 1617 they Avere ordered to supply the markets at 4d. the bushel under the market prices. Under such a system the operations of private traders Avould often be attended Avith great hazard, and this of itself Avould create the deficiency and the consequent high prices Avhich the City authorities endeavoured to remedy. The money to purchase corn and grain for the City granaries Avas raised by loans and contributions from the Mayor and Aldermen, from the City Companies,- and sometimes from the citizens. In 1521 there is a resolution in the City re cords to the effect that " the Chamberlain should become bound to persons lending money for provision of corn for the City ;" and in another entry of the same year the bridgemaster is ordered to make the necessary purchases of wheat. This officer appears to have been Intrusted Avith the office of buying the City's corn, Avhich Avas at one period entirely stored at the Bridge-house. Mr. Herbert, in his ' History of the Livery Companies,' says that the Companies Avere first re quired to assist In provisioning the City in 1521. The Common Council passed an act " for 1000/. to be borrowed on account of the great dearth and scarcity of Avhcat which had then lately been, and Avas more like to ensue, if good and politic provision Avere not shortly made and had ;" and it Avas in consequence agreed that " in all goodly haste the said sum should be levied and paid by the FelloAvships of sundry mysteries and crafts of this City, by Avay of a prest and loan." The Lord Mayor and Aldermen fixed the sums to be contributed by" each Company ; and the Wardens of the Companies Avere to assess the members of their respective FelloAVshlps. In 1559 the Aldermen agreed to advance a sum of 10/. each to wards raising a permanent corn-fund. About the same time the Companies were called upon to assist in purchasing " the Avheat that is now come beyond sea." There being need of a further provision, a second application Avas made to certain of the twelve Companies, In consequence of an offer made to the Common Council, from an English grower probably, Avho Avas " minded to send " certain wheat, "If he might be ascertained of the price thereof." He was offered I4j. the quarter for as much " good and sound Avheat" as he could supply. The following year the Wai'dens of the principal Companies offered, on the part of fheir respective FelloAA'ships, to provide certain sums of money toAvards purchasing Avheat from abroad. In March, 1552, the Wardens of the greater part of the Companies, in obedience to the precepts of the Common Council, " did lovingly grant, assent, and agree to disburse and lay out, by the Avay of loan, for the provision and buy ing of certain Avheat in France to and for the City's use," the several sums re spectively agreed upon. In June they Avere again called upon to buy " some of the rye then at the Avater-side." The Companies Avere not, hoAvever, always in a complaisant humour, and often grumbled sorely Avhcn their money Avas not repaid. The Drapers' Company, in 1560, having shown some reluctance to comply Avith a corn-precept, were peremp torily ordered by the Lord Mayor to collect and pay over the sum of 300/,, being the amount of their assessment. Next year they asked for a return of their money, but were offered instead wheat out of the-Bridge-house at 23.y. the quarter ; and if this offer were refused, the Wardens Avere " to move and persuade them gently to forbear their said money" until the corn in the Bridge-house could be conveniently sold. In 1573 the Common Council called upon the Companies for THE CORN EXCHANGE. 359 a larger sum than usual for the purchase of wheat, urging the existence of pre sent scarcity, and the necessity of preventing " extremities ;" and, as the follow ing extract from the precept shows, the Companies were threatened Avith the Queen's displeasure in case of refusal : " By the Mayor. — Forasmuch as all com mon policy requireth the prevention of extremities, and considering, as you knoAv, the urgent and present necessity, and the lack of provision and other grain for furniture of this so great and populous city, of the Avant whereof the Queen's Majesty and her most honourable Council are not ignorant, but, having special care and regard to the same, are not a little offended and displeased, with some grief'that there hath been no better provision heretofore made, and that presently the city should be no better stored, by reason Avhereof the prices of corn and grain are much dearer In this city than in any other part of this realm, have not only at sundry times and Avith gentle means, but also Avith some terror, as well in the Star Chamber as in other places afore the Council, given as admonition that the same her Majesty's city and chamber may not be unfurnished for lack of good provision." In reply to this the Companies complained that former loans were still unpaid ; but the City pleaded that losses had been sustained from the bad quality of some of the Avheat they had purchased, and offered to repay the Com panies in tAVO thousand quarters of good wheat from Sussex, and the same quantity from their last year's stores. In 1577 it Avas debated Avhether the City should provide stores of corn on loans from the Companies, by orders from the Court of Aldermen, or whether the Companies should provide and keep their own stores ; and the result of negotiations on the subject Avas that the Companies Avere to find their own stores, Avhich Avere to be laid up at the Bridge-house, and to be subject to the control of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Mr. Herbert, in the work already quoted, says that the garners at the Bridge-house Avere divided into tAvelve parts, which Avere appropriated by lots to each of the great Companies. They took possession on the 4th of November ; and tAvo days afterwards Avere required to purchase their annual stock, amounting to 5000 quarters, at 28.y. the quarter. • The City had ten ovens at this place ; six of large size, and the remainder one- half less. One of the Sheriffs left 200/. In 1516 towards building these ovens. In 1596, the Companies built granaries at their OAvn halls. Two years before there was a prospect of scarcity, and, as there had been large importations of wheat and rye from abroad. Sir John Spencer, the Lord Mayor, obtained an order from the Queen's Council to compel the Companies to purchase some of this foreign supply, but about the same tims Sir John Hawkins applied for the use of the City granaries and ovens at the Bridge for the navy. The Lord Mayor urged that. If this request were granted, the Companies would cease to make provision of corn, on the ground that they had no place for storing it ; and, for greater security in future, the Companies adopted the plan of keeping their stock at their respective halls. Soon after the commencement of the seventeenth century, the difficulty of keeping up the ancient practice of providing a store of corn appears greatly to have increased. In 1630 the Companies were to forfeit 3s. to the poor for every bushel Avhich they had neglected to provide according to their due pro portion. In 1631, Avhcn ordered to buy Avh'eat and rye from abroad, they refused 360 LONDON. In 1632 the Wardens of some of the Companies who had neglected to store their granaries were committed. With the Tudors had departed many of those re strictions which perhaps had some use in their day ; but the greater freedom of trade no longer rendered it necessary for the authorities to supersede the trans actions of private dealers. At length, Avhen the system had become almost entirely exhausted and worn out, the Great Fire destroyed the granaries, mills, and ovens at the Bridge and in other parts of the City, and the custom of pro viding stores of corn was not again resumed. In undertaking the task of regulating prices in the markets the City autho rities were under the necessity of imposing restrictions and framing arbitrary regulations, which at once created the excuse for their interference, and in creased the difficulty of doing so in a beneficial manner. The general internal commerce of the country Avas subject to a host of impediments. Thus at one time the Lord Mayor and Aldermen could not contract with a person at Harwich to purchase wheat for the City in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, without first obtaining a licence from the Lords of the Council. Licences were at the same time required to enable them to contract " with other discreet persons, who were to purchase corn in other parts of the realm where they thought best," In one year of scarcity (1586) the magistrates in the country round London attempted to keep the supply of corn for the consumption of their respective neighbourhoods, and hindered its being brought to London, Strype says that on this occasion the Lord Mayor applied for redress to Lord Burleigh, who was regarded as the City's patron. In 1554 the Lord Mayor wrote to the Lords of the Council to borrow a thousand quarters of wheat for victualling the City, and prayed that it might be exempted from the grasp of the purveyors. The Council agreed to lend the above quantity for three months. To carry out their plans fully, it was necessary for the City to pry narrowly into the operations of the bakers and others. In one year " straight commandment " was given to the bakers not to buy any meal but of .the City's store at the Bridge-house, when the quantity Avhich each of them was allowed to take, and the price, were fixed by the Lord Mayor, In 1546 there is an entry to the effect that Henry Hoke, brewer, is to have but 200 quarters of the Avheat to be bought of the merchants of the Steel-yard, " albeit that they have sold him more, as they say." These merchants were at one period the sole importers of foreign corn, and in times of scarcity were not allowed to sell either to bakers or brcAvers without the City's licence. In 1600 no chandler or other person was to harbour in his house any corn but for his own spending, merchants importing corn excepted. In 1622 the Court came into the City as borrowers of corn. The letter ad dressed on this occasion by the Duke of Lennox to the Wardens of the Grocers' Company is given in Mr. Herbert's ' History of the Companies ;' and we here reprint it, as a curious illustration of the times : — " To our loving Frieuds the Wardens and Assistants of the Company of Grocers of the City of London. After our hearty commendations : Whereas, by the neglect of his Majesty's purveyors, his house is at this time altogether unfurnished with wheat, by means whereof there is a present want of one hundred quarters of wheat for the service of his household : we do therefore pray and desire you that out of your stock his Ma jesty may be supplied with thirty or forty quarters of your best and sweetest Avheat THE CORN EXCHANGE. 361 until his own provision may be brought in, the which we do faithfully promise shai.l be paid unto you again in November next at the furthest ; and because it is intended that by the exchange thereof you shall have no loss, we have therefore committed the care thereof to Mr. Harvey, one of his Majesty's officers of the Green Cloth, who shall see the same duly answered and brought into your granary at the time appointed; and so, not doubting of your willing performance upon so present and needful an occasion, we bid you heartily farewell. Your lovlno- friends, Lennox, T. Edmond, J. Suckllnge. Whitehall, 27th September, 1622." The Wardens had either no great quantity of wheat in their granary, or had very little faith In the promises of courtiers, for they debated on the subject a consi derable time ; and Mr. Harvey, who was in attendance, being called in, he pro mised " so to mediate that ten quarters should be taken in satisfaction of the whole demand." Whether the loan was repaid or not does not appear. The following trick was very likely to occur in transactions amongst parties who had not the strong impulse of personal interest to open their eyes to Im position and fraudulent collusions. In 1631 some cunning speculators, who had imported a quantity of rye which did not sell very readily, obtained the ear of the Lords of the Council ; and the Lord Mayor being applied to by them, he wrote to the Companies, urging them to buy the importer's stock. He stated that " divers merchants trading to the east countries had of late brouo-ht Into the kingdom great quantities of corn, being rye, which for quality was as good or better than the growth of this kingdom, though they had no need for It ;" but, on the suggestion of the Lords of the Privy Council, the importers were contented to sell it at 8d. per bushel less than it cost them ; and, for the encouragement of future speculators, the said Lords recommended the Lord Mayor to press the City Companies to buy it at the prices offered, and blamed him for not having compelled them to do so. The Lord Mayor accordingly di rected the Companies to buy some of this rye. The Grocers' Company, in reply, prayed to be excused, on the ground that the act of Common Council orders the provision of wheat only, and not rye ; they had already furnished the markets at a loss of 400/., and had still 400 quarters in store ; and they stated that, even in times of dearth, the poor would not eat barley or rye, either alone or mixed with tAvo- thirds wheat, so that 500 quarters of rye, the proportion they were now called upon to purchase, would require 1800 quarters of wheat to mix with it; and they added that the stores mixed in this Avay were still on hand ; and, lastly, they remarked that both Dutch and English merchants were offering rye at a loAver price than that which they were urged to buy. The ancient ports for landing corn Avere Queenhithe and Billingsgate, where the customs duties were ^pald. According to an inquisition in 1302, bakers and others buying corn at Queenhithe paid Id. for the metage, porterage, and car riage. There was a principal meter and eight master-porters, each of whom had three porters under him, who were bound to provide each a horse with seven sacks for carrying the corn away when purchased. The charge for metage and for porterage as far as NoAvgate, Fleet Bridge, Cripplegate, &c., was \d., and for places nearer a smaller sum."" A new warehouse was built at Queenhithe "¦ See No. L., ' The Cuslom House,' vol. ii. p. 404. 362 LONDON. during the sixteenth century for stowing the corn craned out of the barges and lighters, to the building of Avhich Sir John Lion, who had filled the office of Lord Mayor, left the sum of 100/. in 1554. In 1565 this warehouse was enlarged at the cost of the City. It appears, hoAvever, that quite at the close of the century the corn-market at Queenhithe Avas nearly deserted, and the meters and porters no longer " lived Avell of their labours," as they had formerly done. StoAV says, Avriting at this time, that " the bakers of London and other citizens travel into the countries, and buy their corn of the farmers after the farmers' prices." The corn-market on Cornhill, Avhich gives its name to one of the City Avards, and that of St. MIchael-le-Quern Avere the ancient corn-markets of the City; StoAV speaks of the one on Cornhill as having been " time out of mind there holden." The proper name of the other Avas St. Michael-ad-Bladum, or at the Corn, " because," says StoAV, " In place thereof Avas sometime a corn-market." It Avas at the West-end of Cheapside ; and the parish is uoav united to that of St. Vedast in Foster Lane, Bread Street, which also gives its name to one of the wards of the City, Avas anciently the market for bread, though in Stow's time it Avas AvhoUy inhabited by " rich merchants, and divers fair inns be there," Stow had read, but Avhere he does not state, that in 1396 Basing Lane, a little to the eastAvard of Bread Street, Avas once called the Bakehouse, " Avhether meant for the king's bake house, or of bakers dwelling there and baking bread to serve the market In Bread Street, Avhere the bread Avas sold, I know not," To force traders of all kinds to A'end their commodities as far as possible in the open market was the common policy of the middle ages, founded upon a considerate regard for the interests of the poorer cla.sses of consumers ; and the tolls Avere, no doubt, an object of some importance. In 1302, according to Stow, the baiters of London " were bounden to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the market."' An ordinance of the year 1318 states that they Avere bound to take the bread in a basket into the King's market, so that. If It were not " competent according to the market of corn, the baker's body should answer for it." The FelloAvship of Bakers held four hall-motes during the year to determine respecting " enormi ties" of Avhich the members of their craft had been guilty. In 1370 a Stratford baker, for making bread less than the assize, Avas drawn on a hurdle through the streets of the City, Avith a fool's-cap on his head, and about his neck Avere susr ponded his loaves of deficient Aveight. In the Assize of Bread, given in Arnold's ' Chronicle,' the penny Avheat-loaf of Stratford-le-Bow was to weigh six ounces more than the penny Avheat-loaf of London, and the penny loaf of Stratford Avas to be equal in weight to the three-halfpenny wheat-loaf of London. The object of the assize of bread Avas to compel the bakers to increase the size of their loaves in proportion to the fall in the price of Avheat. Thus, according to the assize fixed at the commencement of the last century, Avhen wheat Avas 30s. the quarter the penny loaf Avas to Aveigh rather more than sixteen ounces ; and Avhen Avheat rose to 66.9., the Aveight of the penny loaf Avas reduced to about seven ounces ; a margin of 12?, the quarter being alloAved for the cost of baking and other charges. The assize of bread for the City of London was regulated by statute in the reign of Queen Anne, and Avas finally abolished in 1815, It was an ancient THE CORN EXCHANGE, 363 custom of the Bakers' Company to present a loaf of wastel and one of cocket out of the oven to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, in which state it was to be Avelghed. The materials were purchased by four " sAvorn and discreet men" in the sack, upon the pavement, in each of the three markets of Gross-church, St, Botolph, Bishopsgate, and Queenhithe, — a quarter of bread-corn or meal being purchased at each market. The bakers of London were forbidden by ancient ordinances to bake loaves of household bread to sell at more than twopence each, except at Christmas, under the penalty of forfeiting such larger loaves to the poor; and neither they nor others Avere to utter or sell by retail, except at funerals and at Easter and Christmas, either spice-cakes, buns, biscuits, or other spice -bread. The bakers of Stratford, to whom allusion has been made, were for several centuries engaged in supplying the city AvIth bread, but they had ceased to fre quent It about thirty years before StoAV Avrote. They bought the corn AvhIch came by the river Lea. Stow gives the following account of them : — " Ye shall understand that of old time the bakers of bread at Stratford Avere allowed to bring daily (except the Sabbath and principal feasts) divers long carts laden AvIth bread, the same being tAvo ounces in the penny wheat-loaf heavier than the penny Avheat-loaf baked in the city, the same to be sold in Cheap, three or four carts standing there, between Gutherans (Gutter) Lane and Foster Lane, and one cart on Cornhill, by the Conduit, and one other in Grass Street." The Cheap, or market (now Cheapside), presented scenes as varied and animated during the middle ages as the Toledo of Naples in the present day. The shops in the Cheap resembled sheds, and many of the dealers had simply stalls or standings, for which they paid a rent of from 11*. to "ZSs. a-year. Around the old cross of Cheap the mercers sold their spices, drugs, toys, and small Avares generally, A number of other dealers had their shops or stalls in the street of Cheap, the appearance of AvhIch in the fourteenth century resembled a market or fair. In a time of scarcity the Stratford bread-carts Avould be surrounded by a clamorous throng, or there Avould be uproarious hilarity at the sight of the. dis honest baker draAvn on a hurdle through the busy thoroughfare. Of the other class whose avocation brings them to the corn-market — the millers — avo have not much information. The monks of Rochester had a mill at SouthAvark before the Conquest, and the Templars had mills on the River Fleet, Avhich, on the complaint of the citizens, Avere removed in 1199, after inspection by the Mayor and the Constable of the ToAver, in consequence of their diverting the stream. In 1255 there were floating mills for grinding corn on the Thames, Avhich Avere set in motion by the tide. In 1588 the Lord Mayor permitted four corn-mills to be erected on the river at the Bridge-house. The other ancient corn-markets, besides those of Cornhill and St. Michael-le- Querh, Avere those at Leadenhall, NoAVgate, Queenhithe, Graschurch, and SouthAvark. The situation of the City granaries has already been mentioned. First they Avere at Leadenhall and the Bridge-house ; at the latter place in the first instance for the City only, and then for the tAvelve great companies, until they kept their stores of corn at their OAvn halls. At one time the City had gra naries at BridcAvell and at Christchyrch. At the beginning of the last century the metropolitan corn-market Avas held 864 LONDON. at Bear Quay, in Thames Street ; Queenhithe was the great market for flour and meal; and the White Horse Inn meal-market, near Holborn Bridge, is mentioned, and is doubtless the one alluded to by Strype as appointed to be held near the river Fleet. The present system of factorage in the corn-trade is stated to have existed only about one hundred and fifty years. The traditional report of its origin ascribes it to the custom of a number of Essex farmers, who frequented an inn at Whitechapel, leaving with the landlord or waiter samples of the corn and grain, of which they had small parcels unsold, with a commission to sell for them, and thus they were not compelled to attend the next market. The predecessor of one of the oldest houses now in the trade, in beginning to sell by commission, had a stand on Tower Hill, and in the course of a few years the number who were profitably engaged in the same way had so much increased, -that the old Corn Exchange in Mark Lane was projected and opened in 1747. Eighty years afterwards a second Corn Exchange was contemplated, and was opened in 1828. The two buildings adjoin each other. In Mark Lane. The lower part of the Old Corn Exchange consists of an open colonnade, with modern Doric pillars very singularly placed. There are windoAvs in the two stories forming the upper part of the building. The interior forms a court In which the factors have their stands. In a critical Avork on the ' Edifices of Lon don,' by W. H. Leeds, Esq., it Is remarked of this building that it might pass for the model of the atrium, or place of audience, in a Pompeian house, with its impluvium (the space in the centre in which the rain fell). The New Corn Ex change is in the Grecian Doric style. It is favourably situated for so narrow a locality, being placed at a bend of the street, so that the stranger comes upon It unawares, and it presents several features of originality in design and other points of interest to the architectural student, which are elaborately criticised in the work of Mr. Leeds just alluded to. The interior is lighted by a lantern with vertical lights in the centre space Avithin the columns, and the compartments on each side have skylights in their ceilings. The stands of the corn-factors, to the number of eighty and upwards, are along the sides of the building. On them are placed small bags and wooden bowls with samples of different kinds of grain, and behind is a desk for the factor or his cleri<, Avith something of the convenience of a counting-house. Lightermen and granary-keepers have stands as well as corn -merchants, factors, and millers. The seed market is held in another part of the building. In the north wing is a tavern and coffee-room, and the opening in the south side of the other Aving communicates Avith the Old Corn Exchange. The metropolitan market for corn, grain, and seeds is now entirely confined to Mark Lane. The market-days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the first being by far the busiest day of the three ; and the hours of business are from ten to three. A bargain does not become valid until an hour after the commence ment of business on the next market-day. The general commercial reader will perhaps be interested in knowing that wheat is paid for in bills at one month, and all other descriptions of corn and grain in bills at two months. But the Kentish " hoymen," who may be distinguished, by their sailors' jackets, are privileged by the custom of the market to sell for ready money, though of course they sell only what they bring up themselves. They have stands free of expense, and pay less for metage and dues than others. The Essex dealers also enjoy some privileges. THE CORN EXCHANGE. 365 Their origin, in both cases, is said to have been in consideration of the men of Kent and Essex having continued to supply the City at a time when It was ravaged by the plague. On the arrival of a cargo of corn or grain in the river it is subject to a variety of regulations which are but little known out of the trade. Whether it be from our own ports or from a foreign country, a number of dues are collected by the City authorities, under the several heads of water-bailllage, groundage, Lord Mayor's and cocket dues. The city claims by prescription the right of measur ing corn, as well as several other articles which enter the port of London, aud the crew are not permitted to undertake this duty, but it is performed by the sworn corn-meters and the fellowship porters. In 1833 the total charge upon the public for metage of corn was 23,626/., out of which the City derived a net pro fit of 5819/. The number of corn-meters is one hundred and fifty. They are appointed by a committee of the corporation of London, called the Coal and Corn Committee, and attend daily at their office in Tower Street and Brook's Wharf. to be at all times ready for whoever requires their services. The senior meters have the choice of work, and the junior is obliged to undertake whatever is offered, though he may sometimes be a loser by the job, as he may be required to mea sure a small quantity of corn In any part of the river between Staines and Yantlet Creek. The fellowship porters are three thousand in number, and are appointed by the Alderman of Billingsgate Ward, who is ex-officio Governor of the Fellowship. They have a prescriptive right to the porterage of all corn, fruit, salt, potatoes, &c., coming into the port of London ; and the number always at work is about fifteen hundred. The seniors have the choice of work in the same manner as the coal-meters. These two bodies show what the ancient state of Industry was In England when nearly each sort of employment was surrounded by certain privi leges and monopolies, A provision is made for the corn-meters when they be come old and infirm, and this is done out of the metage charges. All the corn and grain from Kent, most part of that from Essex, and part of that from Suffolk, is brought to London in sacks. Foreign and Irish corn, English oats and barley, and peas and beans, are brought In loose bulk. The quantity brought in each ship varies from 200 to as many as 2500 quarters, and even 3000 quarters. The vessels from Kent and Essex bring from 300 to 500 quarters at a time ; those from Norfolk and Suffolk average 500 or 600 quarters ; and from Ireland [Thames Cora Buge ] 366 LONDON. the quantity varies from 700 to 1100 or 1200 quarters. The largest cargoes are brought from the Baltic and Odessa. About 37^ bushels of Avheat, or 4 quarters 5^ bushels, Aveigh a ton— about 45 bushels of barley, and 55 or 56 bushels of oats, while beans and peas are rather heavier than wheat. The cargo of a Kentish hoy sometimes belongs to as many as tAventy different farmers. When the ship is ready for delivery, the meter, and seven or sometimes eight of the felloAVship porters, go on board. Tavo of the latter dip into the bulk AvIth their concave Avooden shovels, and the meter completes the filling up of the bushel, Avhen one of the tAvo porters passes the strike over the surface, and "a third holds the sack into Avhich the other two pour the contents of the bushel, Avhich is hoisted up by the three porters on the deck, one of Avhom bears It over the ship's side. It is shot into the lighter in loose bulk, and, on arriving at the granary. It is again measured, and carried in sacks to the floor Avhere It is in tended to be stored, Avhen it is again shot loose. When sold, the buyer sends sacks for it to the granary, and another measuring takes place. The meter and his attendants are able to measure 600 or 700 quarters of oats a-day, and even 800 quarters a-day are occasionally measured ; but it is a goojd day's Avork to measure 450 quarters of barley or 400 quarters of Avheat. When wheat arrives In sacks it is measured at the rate of 70 an hour, containing 35 quarters. To accomplish this the meter and his seven or eight men are required to be very active. Four men are employed in the hold, and three men and the meter are on deck. Tavo of the former raise the sack, and at the same instant the other tAVO place the slings under it, and Immediately those on deck hoist it up, the contents are poured into the bushel, and the meter passes the strike over the surface. Tavo of the three men hold the bushel, the third holds the sack, AvhIch, as soon as filled, is hoisted over the side of the vessel. The granaries are lofty and spacious buildings of six or seven floors or stories, those of the largest kind being capable of holding from six to seven thousand quarters of corn on each floor ; but the granaries, of course, vary in size, some only being able to contain tAvo or three thousand quarters. They are numerous about Bermondsey and Shad Thames, Avhere the largest are ; but there are granaries on each side of the river from GreeuAvich to Vauxhall. Those in Avhich foreign corn is bonded are places of greater security, and admit of the regulations of the Custom House being strictly foUoAved. The granaries adjacent to the Commercial Docks are chiefly used for foreign corn, and some, thouo'h not any large quantity. Is stored in the Avarehouses at each of the docks. The peculiar restrictions relating to the Importation of fi)reign corn sometimes render it expedient to keep it in the granary for several years, the fluctuating duty ranging so high that, Avith all the charges upon it, it cannot be liberated at a profit. Four or five years ago above 2000 quarters of Avheat were throAvn into the river rather than the OAvners Avould submit to pay the high duty or keep it for a longer period subject to granary rent and other charges. In the last four years the duty has sunk to the Ioavcs' point during one Aveek in each year, and this event being foreseen, or perhaps being designedly brought about by the merchants and importers Avithholding supplies In anticipation of the rise of prices and the fall of duty, an immense quantity of corn is suddenly taken out of bond the moment the duty sinks. Above tAvo million quarters of wheat were THE CORN EXCHANGE. 367 liberated In September and October, 1841, a large proportion of Avhich would be bonded In the port of London. The Aveek in Avhich the duty falhs to the loAvest point is the harvest of the speculator, to Avhich he has long looked anxiously forward. The arrival of ships from abroad is noAv an object of the utmost solicitude, as a foAv hours may make a difference of several thousand pounds to a large importer. The number of corn-vessels which do arrive is so great that Avarehouses, granaries, and the river itself in many places, is completely blocked up ; but the large quantity suddenly brought into the market depresses prices, the duty mounts again, and a vessel which arrives on a Friday instead of a Thursday not only loses the advantage of the Ioav duty and high prices, but the cargo may have to remain for months in the granary. The expense of granary- rent and fire-insurance is about 5*. per Aveek on one hundred quarters of Avheat. Corn and grain, the produce of our oavu soil, is kept in the granary as well to improve its condition as to wait the chance of favourable markets. By being frequently turned and screened it becomes hard and better adapted for grinding, and though it loses in measure it gains in weight. The expense of turning and screening a hundred quarters of Avheat is about 2s. per week. The number of establishments AvhIch arc engaged in supplying the metropolis AvIth corn and grain, seeds, malt, flour, meat, and bread is as foUoAvs, according to the Post-Office Directory for 1842: — Corn-merchants 75; corn and flour factors 138; corn- dealers 243; millers 26; bakers 1375; confectioners 285. The number of bakers in Paris is about 600, and, the population of London being twice as great, there Is about the same proportion of bakers to the inhabitants in each capital ; but the proportion of the latter is rather greater in Paris, and the baker there does not enjoy that profitable part of the business Avhich his brethren in London do, namely, that of baking the dinners of thousands of families, but he confines himself to his loaves and " fancy " breads. The bakers of Paris are compelled to have a certain quantity of flour in store at the Grenler de Reserve ou d'Abondance, besides keeping up the stock in their shops to a fixed amount. This is the commercial policy of an age Avhich has not yet learnt to rely upon the ever-active agency of self-interest. All such regulations are mischievous, since they are attempts to supersede a principle which operates more advantageously for society than any artificial rules devised by human Avisdom. Dr. Whateiy remarks of this principle, that, "If the time should ever arrive Avhen the structure of human society, and all the phenomena connected Avith if, shall be as Avell un derstood as astronomy and physiology. It avIU be regarded as exhibiting even more striking instances of Divine wisdom;" and- he bids us mark the insuperable difficulties which ensue when an attempt is made to set it aside, and the ad mirable order Avhich results from its being alloAved perfect freedom of action in all commercial operations. " Let any one," he says, " propose to himself the problem of supplying AvIth daily provisions of all kinds such a city as our me tropolis. Any considerable failure in the supply, even for a single day, might produce the most frightful distress, since the spot on Avhich they are cantoned produces absolutely nothing. Some, indeed, of the articles consumed admit of being reserved in public or private stores for a considerable time; but many, including most articles of animal food, and many of vegetable, are of the most perishable nature. As a deficient supply of these, even for a foAV days. 368 LONDON, would occasion great incO|Pvenience, so a redundancy of them would produce a corresponding waste. Moreover, It is essential that the supplies should be dis tributed among the different quarters, so as to be brought almost to the doors of the inhabitants ; at least within such a distance that they may, without an inconvenient waste of time and labour, procure their daily shares. Moreover, whereas the supply of provisions for an army or garrison is comparatively uniform in kind, here the greatest possible variety is required, suitable to the wants of various classes of consumers. Again, this immense population is ex tremely fluctuating in numbers; and the increase or diminution depends on causes, of which, though some may, others cannot, be distinctly foreseen. Lastly, and above all, the daily supplies of each article must be as nicely adjusted to the stock from which it is drawn — to the scanty, or more or less abundant, har vest — importation — or other source of supply — to the interval which is to elapse before a fresh stock can be furnished, and to the probable abundance of the new supply, that as little distress as possible may be undergone ; that, on the one hand, the population may not unnecessarily be put upon short allowance of any article, and that, on the other hand, they may be preserved from the more dreadful risk of famine, which would ensue from their continuing a free con sumption when the store was insufficient to hold out." Interior of the Old Corn Excbaige.] [The Chapel.] LXXIV.— ELY PLACE. Pausing the other day on Holborn Hill to mark the gallant efforts of a team of horses to draw some more than usually heavy load up the steep acclivity, and wondering if this dangerous nuisance would ever be removed, our eyes, as they turned away from the contemplation of the painful and apparently hopeless task, fell upon a printed notice, which stated that divine worship was duly performed at certain periods in *S/. Etheldreda' s Chapel. The notice was attached to the iron gates enclosing the quiet and respectable-looking locality known as Ely Place, immediately opposite St. Andrew's Church and Churchyard, where rests in death poor Chatterton. And who was St. Etheldreda? A Saxon saint? And why had a modern Chapel been dedicated to such an antique personage ? Or was the Chapel of St. Etheldreda a relic of the once famous Palace of the Bishops of Ely ? We may here observe that it Is a peculiarity of London, that Avhilst few cities are richer with the "spoils of time," there are none which, having such wealth, present to the cursory glance fewer evidences of it. The progress of street Improvements, the rage for building wherever a vacant space could be pounced upon, and the little reverence felt for edifices having no claims of the strictly useful kind to put forward^ have all conspired to destroy a thousand VOL. IU. 2 B 370 LONDON. Interesting vestiges of the past,, and to shut up the remainder in all sorts of corners and bye-ways. In passing from one extremity of London to another, say from Whitechapel to Hyde Park Corner, or from Kennington Common to Isling ton, one scarcely sees half a dozen edifices that directly remind us of events above a century or tAvo old ; but, at the same time, let us suddenly stop In almost any part of our Avanderings, and inquire Avhat memories of an older time do hang about the neighbourhood, and Ave are almost sure to find It rife Avith associations of the deepest interest ; and if we step into the next solitary -looking street or alley, there Is a very fair chance of our lighting upon some building which, however previously unfamiliar to the material eye, has often risen upon our imagination, crowded with the acto'rs In a memorable story. In looking on St. Etheldreda's Chapel, which stands a little back from the houses, near the centre on the left hand, Ave perceive very plainly In Its age and the beauty of the single but very large windoAv which forms the front before us, that its antique name Is no pretence, and that it is doubtless the episcopal and palatial building. But how altered in every other respect is the entire aspect of the neighbourhood, even from Avhat it Avas only seventy years ago ! Let us imagine ourselves entering the precincts from Holborn at some such period. The original gate-house, Avhere the Bishop's armed retainers were Avont to keep Avatch and ward In the old style, Avas now gone, and we entered from Holborn at once upon a small paved court, having on the right various offices supported by a colonnade, and on the left a wall dividing the court from the garden. The garden of Ely Place 1 Does not that word recall to our readers the incident which, having found its way Into the pages of our great poet, has made Ely Place a household Avord, and given to the locality a charm that Avill outlive all local changes, and make it still famous when not one stone shall remain upon another of anything that be longed to Ely Place ? We allude of course to Richard III, (then Duke of Glou cester) and the straAvberrles. How closely Shakspere followed the historical truth, Ave see in the foUoAving passage from Holinshed, where he describes the scene in the ToAver AvhIch ended in the sudden execution of Hastings : — " On the Friday (being the 1 3th of June) many lords assembled In the ToAver, and there sat in council, devising the honourable solemnity of the King's (the young Edward V.'s) coronation, of Avhich the time appointed then so near approached, that the pageants and subtleties Avere In making day and night at Westminster, and much victuals killed therefore, that afterwards Avas cast away. These lords so sitting together communing of this matter, the Protector (Gloucester) came in amongst them, first about nine of the clock, saluting them courteously, and excusing him self that he had been from them so long, saying merrily, that he had been a sleeper that day. After a littie talking with them, he said unto the Bishop of Ely, ' My lord, you have very good strawberries at your garden In Holborn ; I require you let us have a mess of them.' ' Gladly,' my lord, quoth he ; • would God I had some better thing as ready to your pleasure as that !' And there withal. In all haste, he sent his servant for a mess of straAvberrles :" a curious preliminary to, the 'murderous act Avhich the Protector Avas then meditating. The Bishop himself was that same morning arrested with Lord Stanley and others by the strawberry-loving Gloucester. I'his garden seems to have been altogether an object of care Avith the episcopal owners; for, at a later perioa, we ELY PLACE, 371 sftali find the Bishop, when obliged to grant It on a lease to Sir Christopher Hatton, stipulating for the right of walking in it, and of gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly. Passing from the court we reached the entrance to the great hall, Avhich ex tended along in front and to our left. This fine edifice, measuring about 30 feet In height, 32 in breadth, and 72 in length, Avas originally built Avith stone, and the roof covered with lead. The Interior, lighted by six fine Gothic windows,' Avas very interesting. It had its ornamental timber roof, its tiled and probably originally chequered floor. Its oaken screen at one end, and its dais at the other ; and Avhen filled Avith some of the brilliant and picturesque-looking crowds that have met under Its roof, must have presented a magnificent spectacle. Here " old John of Gaunt," Avhen driven from the Savoy by Wat Tyler and his asso ciates, who burnt it, exercised no doubt the hospitality common to the great barons of the feudal ages, in all its prodigality : he died in the palace in 1399. And here have been held some of the most memorable of feasts : those formerly given by the newly-elected Serjeants of laAv. The one of Michaelmas Term, 1464, is only noticeable from the circumstance, that Avhen the Lord Mayor came to the banquet, and found a certain nobleman. Grey of Ruthin, then Lord Treasurer of England, advanced to the chief seat of state, instead of himself, as according to custom he conceived ought to have been done, he marched off with all his alder men to his own house, where he compensated his faithful adherents by a splendid banquet. But some of the other Serjeants' feasts at Ely Place were attended by features of greater Interest. Thus at the one which took place In 1495, Henry VII. was present with his Queen. This was one of the occasions on Avhich the victor of Bosworth strove to correct a little the effect of his sordid habits, his general seclusion, and his gloomy, inscrutable nature, which altogether prevented him from obtaining the popularity which Is agreeable to most monarchs, even to those the least Inclined to purchase It at any considerable cost. "The King,"says his great historian Bacon, " to honour the feast, was present with his Queen at the dinner ; being a prince that Avas ever ready to grace and countenance the professors of the laAV ; having a little of that that as he governed his subjects by his laAvs, so he governed his laws by his laAvyers." The last incident of this kind that Ave shall mention was also one of the most splendid ; and the particulars pre served In connection with It afford some curious glimpses of the economy of a great dinner in those days. In 1531 eleven new Serjeants were made at once, and it Avas determined that the feast should be proportlonably splendid. As Stow remarks, it Avere "tedious " to set down the entire " preparation offish, flesh, and other victuals spent in this feast, and Avould seem incredible" If Ave did : Ave therefore extract a foAV only of the items which composed this gigantic bill of fare, and which are interesting as showing hoAV the relative value of money and pro visions have altered. There were tAventy-four " great beefs," br oxen, at 26s. 8d. each, and one at 24*, ; one hundred " fat muttons," at 2s. lOd. ; fifty-one " great veals," at 4*. 8d. ; thirty-four " porks " (or boars), at 3*, 3d. ; ninety-one pigs, at 6d, ; ten dozen " capons of Greece of one poulter," \s. 8d. ; nine dozen and six capons of Kent, at 1*. ; innumerable pullets, at 2d. and 2Jc?., ' pigeons at 2d., and larks 5d. the dozen ; and, lastly, there Avere fourteen dozen swans at a price not mentioned. The entertainment lasted five days ; aud on Monday, the principal 2b2 372 LONDON. day (13th November), the King, Henry VIII., and his Queen, Catherine, dined with the Serjeants, " but in two chambers," parenthetically remarks Stow. At this very time the final measures were in progress for the divorce of the unhappy Queen, and the marriage with Anne Boleyn. Besides these distinguished per sonages, the foreign ambassadors honoured the Serjeants with their presence, who had also a chamber to themselves. In the hall sat, at the chief table, Nicholas Lambard, the Lord Mayor ; the question of precedency having evidently been decided in favour of the civic dignitary. With him were the Judges, Barons of the Exchequer, and certain Aldermen. The Master of the Rolls and the Master of the Chancery were supported at the board on the south side by numerous worshipful citizens ; whilst on the north side of the hall sat more alder men, with merchants and others. And these filled the lower part of the hall. The remainder, comprising knights, esquires, and gentlemen, Avere placed in the gallery, in the cloisters, which extended round a large quadrangle behind the hall, and, still more room being demanded. In the chapel. At the same time all the different crafts of London banqueted in their halls ; whilst, curious enough, the parties chiefly concerned, the Serjeants of Law and their wives, kept In their own chamber. Animating and picturesque as must have been the hall of Ely Place at such times, there Avas yet one other period when it must have exhibited a scene almost without parallel. Here were arranged all the details of that famous masque, with its attendant anti-masque, Avhich we have already briefly noticed in our account of Whitehall* (reserving the detailed description of its principal features — the arrangement and the procession — for the present paper), and from hence it departed. Not the least interesting circumstances attending this splendid pageant are the character and position of the men who, as we shall presently perceive, had the management of the affair, and of him who has made himself its historian. This is Whitelock, the learned and estimable lawyer, who, during the period preceding, comprising, and following the Commonwealth, enjoyed the respect of all parties, and has left us one of the most valuable records of the momentous events he witnessed and participated In. His heart Avas evidently in this masque and anti-masque, from the pains he takes to describe it, and the space he devotes to it in his great work. The year before the getting up of the masque Prynne had published his ' Histrio-Mastix,' just mentioned — a tremendous in vective against plays and players, masques and masquers, and generally against sport and amusement of every kind. The Queen Henrietta Maria, about the same time,-acted a part in a play or pastoral with her maids of honour, so that Prynne's remarks told personally against the court; and to this circumstance, as well as to his being in Laud's hands, may be attributed the infamous severity of Prynne's punishment. But before that punishment took place, the members of the four Inns of Court designing a masque " as an expression of their love and duty to their majesties," It was whispered to them from the court " that it would be well taken from them ; and some held it the more seasonable, because this action would manifest the difference of their opinion from Mr. Prynne's new learning, and serve to confute his ' Histrio-Mastix ' against interludes." So the benchers " agreed to have this solemnity performed In the noblest and most * Vol, i. p. 354. ELY PLACE. 373 stately manner that could be invented." Two members from each house weie accordingly chosen to form together a committee, among whom were Whiteiock himself, Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon), and Selden. These set to work ; each member undertaking some particular portion of the important whole, Whitelock's share being the music, and very Indefatigable in his vocation, as well as proud of it, he seems to have been. He thus shows us how he performed his task. " I made choice," he says, " of Mr. Simon Ivy, an honest and able musician, of excellent skill In his art, and of Mr. Lawes (a name familiar to every lover of- Milton), to compose the airs, lessons, and songs for the masque, and to be master of all the music under me." He goes on to say what meetings he had of " English, French, Italians, Germans, and other masters of music ; forty lutes at one time, beside other instruments in~ concert." At last, all being pre pared, one Candlemas day In the afternoon, " the masquers, horsemen, musi cians, dancers, and all that were actors in this business, according to order, met at Ely House in Holborn ; there the grand committee sat all day to order all affairs ; and when the evening was come, all things being in full readiness, they began to set forth in this order down Chancery Lane to Whitehall." In reading the following description, we must not forget to keep in view all through it the dark background of a winter evening, and the crowds of spectators lining the whole way from the gates of Ely House to those of Whitehall : — " The first that marched were twenty footmen in scarlet liveries, with silver lace, each one having his sword by his side, a baton In one hand, and a lighted torch" in the other: these were the Marshal's men, who made way, and were about the Marshal, waiting his commands. After them, and sometimes in the midst of them, came the Marshal, then Mr. Darrel, afterwards knighted by the King : he was of Lincoln's Inn, an extraordinary handsome proper gentleman. He was mounted upon one of the King's best horses and richest saddles, and his own habit was exceeding rich and glorious ; his horsemanship very gallant ; and, besides his Marshal's men, he had two lackeys who carried torches by him, and a page in livery that went by him carrying his cloak. After him followed one hundred gentlemen of the inns of court, five-and-twenty chosen out of each house, of the most proper and handsome young gentlemen of the societies ; every one of them was mounted on the best horses and with the best furniture that the King's stables and the stables of all the noblemen in town would afford, and they were fortvard on this occasion to lend them to the inns of court. Every one of these hundred gentlemen was in very rich clothes, scarce anything but gold and silver lace to be seen of them ; and each gentleman had a page and two lackeys waiting on him In his livery by his horse's side : the lackeys carried torches, and the page his master's cloak. The richness of their apparel and furniture, glit tering by the light of a multitude of torches attending on them, Avith the motion and stirring of their mettled horses, and the many and various gay liveries of their servants, but especially the personal beauty and gallantry of the handsome young gentlemen, made the most glorious and splendid shoAv that ever Avas beheld in England. After the horsemen came the anti-masquers, and, as the horsemen had their music — about a dozen of the best trumpeters proper for them, and in their livery ,_ sounding before them, —so the first anti-masque, being of cripples and beggars on horseback, had their music of keys and tongs, and the 374 LONDON. like, snapping, and yet playing in a concert before theiil. These beggars were also mounted, but on the poorest, leanest jades that could be gotten out of the dirt-carts or elsoAvhere : and the variety and change from such noble music and gallant horses as Avent before them, unto their proper music and pitiful horses, made both of them more pleasing. The habits and properties of these cripples and beggars Avere most Ingeniously fitted (as of all the rest) by the committee's direction, wherein (as in the whole business) Mr. Attorney Noy, Sir John Finch, Sir EdAvard Herbert, Mr. Selden, those great and eminent persons, and all the rest of the committee, had often meetings, and took extraordinary care and pains in the ordering of this business, and it seemed a pleasure to them. After the beggars' anti-masque came men on horseback, playing upon pipes, whistles, and instruments sounding notes like those of birds of all sorts, and In excellent con cert, and were followed by the anti-masque of birds. This was an owl in an ivy- bush, Avith many several sorts of other birds in a cluster about the oavI, gazing as It Avere upon her : these were little boys put Into covers of the shapes of those birds, rarely fitted, and sitting on small horses, with footmen going by them with torches in their hands, and there were some besides to look unto the children ; and this Avas very pleasant to the beholders. After this anti-masque came other musicians on horseback, playing upon bagpipes, hornpipes, and such kind of northern music, speaking the following anti-masque of projectors to be of the Scotch and northern quarters ; and these, as all the rest, had many footmen AvIth torches Availing on them. First in this anti-masque rode a fellow upon a little horse with a great bit in his mouth, and upon the man's head Avas a bit, with headstall and reins fastened, and signified a projector, who begged a patent that none in the kingdom might ride their horses but .with such bits as they should buy of him. Then came another felloAv, with a bunch of carrots upon his head and a capon upon his fist, describing a projector, Avho begged a patent of mo nopoly as the flrst Inventor of the art to feed capons fat with carrots, and that none but himself might make use of that Invention and have the privilege for fourteen years, according to the statute. Several other projectors were in like manner personated in this anti-masque ; and It pleased the spectators the more because by it an information Avas covertly given to the King of the unfitness and ridiculousness of these projects against the laAv ; and the Attorney Noy, who had most knowledge of them, had a great hand in this anti-masque of projectors." After this and the rest of the anti-masques Avere passed followed chariots with musicians, chariots Avith heathen gods and goddesses, then more chariots with musicians, " playing upon excellent and loud music," and going immediately next before the first grand masquer's chariot. This "Avas not so large as those that went before, but most curiously framed, carved, and painted with an exquisite art, and purposely for this service and occasion." Its colours ^were silver and crimson, " the chariot Avas all over painted richly with these colours, even the Avheels of it, most artificially laid on, and the carved Avork of It Avas as curious for that art, and It made a stately shoAV. It Avas draAvn Avith four horses, all on breast, and they were covered to their heels all over Avith cloth of tissue of the colours of crimson and silver, huge plumes of red and white feathers on their heads and buttocks ; the coachman's cap and feather, his long coat, and his very whip and cushion of the same stuff and ELY PLA.CE, 375 colour. In this chariot sai the four grand masquers of Gray's Inn, their habits. doublets, trunk-hose, and caps of most rich cloth of tissue, and wroaght as thicK with silver spangles as they could be placed, large white silk-stockings up to their trunk-hose, and rich sprigs In their caps, themselves proper and beautiful young gentlemen. On each side of the chariot were four footmen In liveries of the colour of the chariot, carrying huge flambeaux in their hands, which AvIth the torches gave such a lustre to the paintings, the spangles, and habits, that hardly anything could be invented to appear more glorious." Similar chariots similarly occupied folloAved from each of the other three Inns of court, the only difference being in the colours. And thus the procession reached Whitehall, where the king, from a window of the Banqueting House, (perhaps the very one through which he passed afterwards to the scaffold,) beheld, Avith his queen, the whole pageant pass before him ; and so delighted Avere the royal spectators, that a message was sent to the marshal, requesting him to conduct the procession round the Tilt Yard opposite, that they might have a second vIoav. This done they entered the palace, where the masque, to which all this was but as a pre liminary, began; "and," says Whitelock, "was incomparably performed in the dancing, speeches, music, and scenes ; the dances, figures, properties ; the voices, instruments, songs, airs, and composures ; the words and actions were all of them exact, and none failed In their parts," Henrietta Maria was so charmed with everything, that she determined to have the whole repeated shortly after. The night, or rather, we presume, morning, ended with dances. In which the queen and her ladies of honour AVere led out by the principal masquers. The expenses of this spectacle were not less than 21,000/. ; " some of the musicians had 100/. a-piece, so that the whole charge of the music came to about 1000/," Continuing our view of the palatial remains as they were seventy years ago : — [.Remains ot th'j falace, 1172.] 376 LONDON. beyond the hall, and touching it at the north-west corner, were the cloisters, en closing a quadrangle nearly square, of great size, and having in the midst a small garden, made perhaps after the grant of the principal garden to Hatton. Over the cloisters were long, antique-looking galleries, Avith the doors and win dows of various apartments appearing at the back : in the latter traces of painted glass, the remnants of former splendour, were still visible. Lastly, at the north-Avest corner of the cloisters, in a field planted Avith trees and surrounded Avith a wall, stood the chapel, noAv the only remain of all that Ave have described, and of the still more numerous buildings that at one time constituted the palace of the Bishops of Ely. From this description Ave perceive the changes that seventy years have Avrought ; and Ave may here observe, as a passing illustration of the general history of the neighbourhood, that in the maps of London, of the date of 1560, Ave see on this side of Holborn only a single row of houses with gardens at the back ; Ave see Field Lane, as a lane, merely opening to the fields; Avhilst Saffron Hill stands in a fair meadoAV, AvIth a footpath across it, and bounded by Turnmill Brook and the Avail of the garden of Ely Place. The subjects that have hitherto engaged our attention — the feasts and the masque — Avere incidental occurrences in the records of the Palace, having no con nexion with any of the objects of its foundation. These Ave have accordingly dismissed first, and may uoav pursue, Avithout interruption, the more direct history. The earliest notice of Ely Place refers to the concluding part of the thirteenth century. John de Kirkeby. appointed Bishop of Ely in 1286, left by will a messuage and nine cottages to form the foundation of a residence for his succes sors, suitable to their rank. The next bishop, De Luda, who died in 1297, still further carried out the vIcavs of his predecessor, and most probably erected the chapel ; as Ave find that a bequest, contained In his will, was accompanied with the condition that his immediate successor should give one thousand marks for the support of three chaplains : De Luda himself left houses for them. The cha pel Avas dedicated to St. Etheldreda, the patron saint of the cathedral church of Ely, and a noticeable personage. She was the daughter of Anna, King of the West Angles, and was born about 630 in Suffolk. She had two husbands, her first being Tonbert, an East Anglian nobleman, her second Egfrid, King of Northumberland ; but she persevered, " with both husbands, to live in a state of virginity." Having obtained Egfrld's consent to her retirement from court, she took the veil ; and, Avhen her husband again brought her to his home, she fled to the Isle of Ely, part of her doAver with her first husband, Tonbert. Here she began the erection of the cathedral, assisted by her brother Adulphus, King of the East Angles. " Bede informs us that from Etheldreda's entering upon her office as abbess, she never Avore any linen, but only Avoollen garm.ents ; that she usually ate only once a-day, except on the greater festivals, or in times of sick ness ; and, if her health permitted, she never returned to bed after matins, AvhIch were held at midnight, but continued her prayers In the church till break of day. Her sanctity, and the discipline observed in her monastery, recommended this austerity of life to the esteem of many, and gained abundance of converts. Persons of the noblest families, and matrons of the highest rank, devoted them selves to religion under her government ; and some even of royal state thought ELY PLACE. 377 proper to quit their high station to become members of her society : as her eldest sister, Sexburga, Queen of Kent ; Ermenilda, the daughter of Sexburga, Queen of Mercia ; andWurburga, the daughter of Ermenilda; all of whom are stated to have been members of the monastery in the lifetime of Etheldreda, and to have succeeded her in their order as abbesses of Ely."* She died, as good a saint as she had lived, of a contagious .disorder, which she had fore told Avould carry away herself and a certain number of her household; and was buried, by her express orders, in a wooden coffin, in the common cemetery of the nuns. Bishop Hotham was the next benefactor to the episcopal residence, and by him the whole appears to have been first brought into a state of completeness. Camden speaks of Ely Place as " Avell beseeming bishops to live in ; for which they were beholden to John de Hotham, Bishop of Ely under King EdAvard III." Among the other and subsequent prelates who have contributed largely to its extension or improvement Is the well-knoAvn Arundel, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who expended great sums here in repairing and adorning the whole, and who erected a handsome and large front towards Holborn, in the stone-work of which his arms remained in Stow's time. And thus by various individuals, and at different times, Avas Ely Place at last made one of the most splendid of metropo litan mansions. And uoav, following the usual course of most history, which, as soon as It has described the rise and complete prosperity of its subject, Avhether empires, institutions, or, as in the present case, an individual edifice, has Imme diately to trace the successive steps of the decline and fall, Ave pass pn to narrate the proceedings which form the most interesting portions of the history of Ely Place. At the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth an act was passed, empowering the Queen, on any episcopal or archieplscopal vacancy, to take any lands belong ing to the see, paying the value in tenths and Impropriate rectories. This bill was opposed by various ecclesiastics, and among them one who was destined to be a victim to the exercise of the power. This was Dr. Cox, afterwards Bishop of Ely. Whilst this prelate held the see, there came one day to court, in a masque, a gentleman who attracted Elizabeth's particular attention, it is said for his elegant person and graceful dancing, but also, probably, for the vivacity and entertainment of his conversation. This was a young Templar, who had already distinguished himself among his companions, as one of the authors of the tragedy of ' Tancred and Gismund,' performed by the society to which he belonged before the Queen In 1568. Elizabeth uoav made him one of her Pensioners, next a Gentleman of. the Privy Chamber, then Captain of the Guard, Vlce- Chancellor, and Privy Counsel ; and, lastly, to the astonishment of every body. Sir Christopher Hatton appeared as Lord Chancellor. The lawyers were unable to stifle their indignation. They thought, with Fuller, " he rather took a bait than made a meal at the inns of court, whilst he studied the laws therein ;" and yet he was raised to the highest honours of the profession ! Some of the Serjeants at law refused to plead before him. But Hatton, though neither a deeply read nor an eminently practical laAvyer, had sagacity and firmness enough to hold at ? ' Monastico»v' vol. i, p. 467. 378 LONDON. once his place, and prove himself in effect qualified for It. In all doubtful cases he was accustomed to have the advice of one or two legal friends who possessed Avhat he Avas deficient of; and the result Avas, after all, that Lord Chancellor Hatton's decisions held by no means a low reputation in the courts of law. It was whilst Sir Christopher Avas in the high road to prosperity, but some years before he attained the Chancellorship, that he took a fancy to a portion of Ely Place as a residence, and induced the Queen to be his negotiator. Bishop Cox was unAvilling, but who can say "No" to a Queen, unless. Indeed, In the last extremity ? So, on the 20th of March, 1576, Sir Christopher's heart Avas gladdened with a grant of " the gatehouse of the palace (except tAVO rooms used as prisons for those who were arrested or delivered in execution to the bishop's bailiff, and the lower rooms used for the porter's lodge) ; the first court-yard within the gate-house to the long gallery, dividing it from the second ; the stables there ; the long gallery, with the rooms above and beloAV it, and some others; fourteen acres of land; and the keeping the gardens and orchards for tAventy-one years, paying at Midsummer Day a red rose for the gate-house and gardens, and for the ground ten loads of hay and ten pounds per annum ; the bishop reserving to himself and his suc cessors free access through the gate-house, Avalking In the gardens, and to gather tAventy bushels of roses yearly." Sir Christopher Immediately entered upon possession, bought some little tenements near it, and laid out nearly tAvo thou sand pounds in the Improvement of the estate. This done. Sir Christopher thought he should very much like to have the property in perpetuity, instead of by the tenure of a feAV years' lease, so he once more goes to the Queen, and desires her good offices. The mode in which " good Queen Bess " set to work Is very striking . she simply Avrote to the bishop, modestly desiring him to demise the premises to her, till he or his successors should pay 1995/. to Sir Chris topher (the sum he had expended), as Avell as whatever he might afterwards expend on the property. The bishop's ansAver Avas straightforward, and befitting the dignity of his position. He said " that they should want an orchard and ground, and that they should be too much straitened ; but that in his con science he could not do It, being a piece of sacrilege. That Avhen he became Bishop of Ely, he had received certain farms, houses, and other things, which former pious princes had judged necessary for that place and calling. These he received by the Queen's favour from his predecessors ; and that of these he Avas to be a stoAvard, not a scatterer. That he could not bring his mind to be so ill a trustee for his successors, nor to violate the pious wills of kings and princes, and, . in effect, rescind their last testaments. He put the Queen in mind of that rule of nature and of God, not to do that to another which one would not have done to one's self ; and that the profit of one is not to be Increased by the damage of another — nay, he told her that he could scarcely justify those princes Avhich transferred things appointed for pious uses unto uses less pious." * He was, however, obliged to submit to a conveyance of the property to the Queen, who Avas to re-convey it to Hatton, but on the condition that the Avhole should be redeemable on the payment of the sum laid out by Hatton. And this Avas all the bishop Avould do : no amount of persecution (and he was subjected to so • Maitland. vol. ii. p, 978. ELY PLACE. 379 much that he more than once besought leave to resign) could bend him Into a final alienation of the property. Sir Christopher, hoAvever, had succeeded to a certain extent In obtaining his wishes, and during the remainder of his life con tinued, when convenient, to reside here. Gray's picture of Hatton in his manor- house at Stoke Pogis woXild, no doubt, be equally applicable to many a scene in Ely House before the royal favour began to change. " Full oft within the spacious Avails, When he had fifty winters o'er hira, My grave lord-keeper led the brawls, The seal and maces danc'd before him. His hushy beard and shoe-strings green. His high-crown'd hat, and satin doublet, Mov'd the stout heart of England's queen. Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it," But Elizabeth, among a few other unamiable qualities, possessed more than a touch of avarice ; and the Lord Chancellor being injudicious enough to put her love for him in the one scale, and a debt of some forty thousand pounds in the other, was at once cured of .any conceit that her numerous favours might have generated. There Is a touch of homely pathos in the passage in which Fuller alludes to the close of the Chancellor's fortunes and life, Avhich makes one forget the apparently inherent weakness of character then exhibited. The quaint but excellent biographer of the ' Worthies,' says, — " It broke his heart that the Queen (which seldom gave loans, and never forgave due debts) rigorously demanded the present payment of some arrears which Sir Christopher did not hope to have remitted, but did only desire to be forborne ; failing herein in his expectation, it went to his heart, and cast him into a mortal disease. The Queen afterwards did endeavour what she could to recover him, bringing, as some say, cordial- broths unto him with her own hands, but all Avould not do. Thus no pulleys can draw up a heart once cast down, though a Queen herself should set her hand thereunto.'' His death took place in Ely House in 1.591. The Queen had had much trouble in inducing Cox to consent to the arrange ment we have mentioned, and his successor in the see. Dr. Martin Heton, seemed equally disinclined to fulfil It Avhen it Avas made ; so in a fit of fury the Virgin Queen sat down and penned one of the most characteristic of epistles. It Avas short, but it is difficult to see how more could have been expressed in the longest epistle, " Proud Prelate "You know Avhat you was before I made you Avhat you are noAV ; If you do not immediately comply with my request, by G — d I Avill unfrock you, "Elizabeth.'' -The exact nature of the request here referred to, or of the ansAvcr, docs not seem to be recorded; but Ave find, during the term of the good Bishop AndrcAvs, who was translated from Ely to Winchester, some attempt Avas made to pay off the mortgage ; and finally Bishop Wren, the uncle of the Illustrious architect, tendered the money and obtained a sentence In the Court of Bequests against the 380 LONDON. then possessor of the property. Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the widow of the Chan cellor's nephew, who had inherited his estates and title. But this was in the time of the Long Parliament, before which Wren Avas impeached ; and this ar rangement (for Lady Hatton agreed to deliver up the property on payment of the sums laid out), coming to its knowledge, was stopped, and a resolution passed that " the estate of the Lady Hatton, being good in law, is not redeemable in equity, nor subject to the said pretended trust." Wren was imprisoned for nearly tAventy years, during which time almost the whole of the palatial buildings, with the exception of those described in the early part of this paper as standing in the last century, were pulled down, and the famous garden built into the present Hatton Garden. In the same period certain parts of the edifice had been used by the parliament both as a prison and a hospital ; so that when Bishop Wren, at the Restoration, was freed from prison and returned to his home here, we may imagine the desolate appearance of everything. He had begun his residence at Ely Place AvIth the hope of restoring entire to the see the half- alienated Hatton property; he ended it with the conviction that it was not only for ever lost, but that the remainder of the property Avas so injured as to be really unfit any longer for its purposes. He oommenced a laAvsuit, Avhich, after dragging its slow length along through the remainder of his life and the term of the next three bishops, was only settled in that of the fourth bishop, Patrick, by the latter consenting to accept a fee farm rent of the value of 100/. a-year. We have incidentally referred to Lady Elizabeth Hatton, but that lady must not be dismissed so summarily. Ely Place, or rather the portion of it which she occupied, and which was called Hatton House, possesses some memorable recol lections in connexion with her history. At the death of her first husband. Sir William Newport, Avho on the death of his uncle took the name of Hatton, she Avas young, very beautiful, of eccentric manner, and a most vixenish temper. She Avas rich Avithal, and Avooers were numerous. Among them came two re markable men, already rivals in their profession, and now to be rivals in a tenderer pursuit : these were Coke and Bacon. And some noticeable scenes must have no doubt taken place in Hatton House during the progress of this remarkable courtship. How Lady Hatton's two distinguished lovers hated each other we know, before this new fuel was added to the flame. Both were powerfully supported. Coke had been already appointed Attorney- General by the Queen, in spite of the most powerful efforts of the ill-fated Earl of Essex to obtain the appointment for Bacon, so that he was already on the high road to fortune; on the other hand. Bacon's ever-faithful friend — alas! that it should have to be remembered how ungratefully he was roAvarded ! — Essex, pleaded personally his cause Avith the beautiful widow and with her mother. To the latter he says in one of his letters, " If she Avere my sister or my daughter, I protest I would as confidently resolve to further it as I now persuade you ;" and again in another, " If my faith be anything, I protest, if I had one as near me as she is to you, I had rather match her AvIth him than with men of far greater titles." Essex, In these last Avords, had hit the right mark; it was the " greater titles," most probably, that at last decided Lady Hatton to accept Coke,'and, like many other clever people, lived no doubt to repent of a choice formed on ELY PLACE. 381 such considerations, when she found she had rejected a Chancellor. And what a marriage it was ! After many years of continued quarrel and recrimination, a circumstance occurred which made them at once bitter enemies. In 1616 Coke by his unbending judicial integrity, lost the favour of James, and with it the Chief Justiceship which he then held : his mode of obtaining a restoration of the first, and an equivalent for the second, stands in strange contrast. This Avas the marriage of his daughter to Sir John Villiers, afterwards Viscount Purbeck, brother to the haughty favourite, then supreme at Court. It is to Lady Hatton's credit that she determinedly refused, as long as she could with any prospect of utility, to consent to this bargain and sale of her child, then only in her sixteenth year, and who had a great aversion to the match. At first the mother and daughter ran aAvay, and secreted themselves at Oatlands, where Coke, having discovered their retreat, came armed with a warrant, and broke open door after door till he found the fugitives. The Privy Council were now inundated with appeals and counter- appeals, and disturbed with brawls when the parties were before them. Mr. Chamberlain, writing to Carleton (May 24, 1616), says, "The Lord Coke and his lady have had great wars at the Council-table. The first time she came accompanied with the Lord Burghley and his lady, the Lord Danvers, the Lord Denny, Sir Thomas Howard and his lady, with I know not how many more, and declaimed so bitterly against him, and so carried herself, that divers said Burbage could not have acted better." We have also a glimpse of the do mestic history of Hatton House at this period, in one of her appeals to the Council, where she speaks of her husband entering upon all her goods, breaking into Hatton House, seizing her coach and coach-horses, nay, her apparel, which he detained ; thrusting her servants out of the doors without wages or any con sideration, &c. However, she at last consented to the match, which was the prin cipal cause of these unseemly proceedings, although she continued to live at Hatton House, separated from her husband ; and, this unpleasant business settled, she returned, with as great a zest as ever, to the amusements she chiefly delighted in. Some years before she had played a conspicuous figure In the per formance of Ben Jonson's ' Masque of Beauty,' when fifteen of the choicest Court beauties had been selected as actors for the solace of royalty ; and now again, in 1621, we find her at the same vocation, in the representation of the 'Metamor phosed Gipsies,' at Burley-on-the-HIll — James again being the chief spectator. In this piece the fifth gipsy Is made thus to address her : — " Mistress of a fairer table Hath no history, no fable ; Others' fortunes may be shown — ; You are builder cf your OAvn ; And whatever Heaven hath given you, You preserve the state still in you. That which time would have depart. Youth, without the help of art. You do keep still, and the glory Of your sex is but your story." As a specimen of the vixenish temper of this lady, we may observe that Lady Hatton, for a considerable period, had Gondomar,"' the Spanish ambassador, for * Prynne, in his famous work, notices Gondomar's residence at Ely House; and his witnessing, with thousands 382 LONDON. her next-door neighbour — he occupying, we presume, the palatial portion of the building. Howel, In a letter to Sir James Crofts, March 24, 1622, says, " Gondomar has ingratiated himself with divers persons of quality, ladies especi ally, yet he could do no good upon the Lady Hatton, Avhom he desired so lately that, in regard he Avas her next-door neighbour (at Ely House), he might have the benefit of the back gate to go abroad into the fields, but she put him off with a compliment; Avhereupon in a private audience lately with the king, among other passages of merriment, he told him my Lady Hatton Avas a strange lady, for she Avould not suffer her husband. Sir EdAvard Coke, to come In at her fore-door, nor him to go out at her hack-door; and so related the whole business." We need not pursue her career any farther, as we have already noticed that she was still flourishing at the period of the sitting of the Long Parliament, Avhen Hatton House was decided to be her oavu. Her daughter's marriage turned out as might have been expected : Viscount Purbeck went abroad only three years after, and she led a life of profligacy that had once narrowly brought her to the chapel of the Savoy to do penance in a white sheet. The condition of the episcopal portion of Ely Place, after the final loss of that originally granted to Hatton, became more and more deplorable. In the Har- leian MSS.* Is the record of a statement which appears to have been made by one of the bishops about the period to which we allude. It declares that now, instead of the " spacious dAvelllngs, house and manor, with gardens, closes, out houses, and all conveniences, pleasantly situated," which originally belonged to them, " the greatest part of the dwelling-house is pulled doAvn," and the bishops are " confined to less than half. Several cellars are possessed by others, even under those rooms of the house which the bishop hath uoav left to dwell in, and they are intermixed with the cellars he uses, having lights and passages Into the cloisters ; and the most private parts of the house, even half of the vault or burying place under the chapel, Is made use of as a public cellar, or was so very lately, to- sell drink in, there having frequently been revellings heard during divine service." Under these circumstances any attempts at reparation seem to have been thought useless, and the buildings gradually fell Into decay. In 1772, during the time of Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Ely, an act of parlia ment Avas obtained, enabling the see to transfer the property to the crown for 6,500/., Avhich, AvIth 3,600/. due for dilapidations from the family of the preceding bishop, Avas to be expended in providing a new toAvn residence. And thus was founded the present episcopal mansion In Dover Street. An annuity of 200/. was also settled by the croAvn on the Bishops of Ely as a part of the ar rangement. The property Avas resold by the croAvn, Avben the hall, cloisters, &c. AA'erc pulled doAvn, and the present Ely Place built. The chapel alone Avas reserved, the lease of Avhich, after passing through various hands, was purchased in the present century, and presented to the National Society, by Mr. Joshua Watson, Its treasurer, for the use of the children of its central school in Bald win's Gardens, This arrangement being given up, the chapel Avas for some time of bther persons, the performance of ' Christ's Passion ' in tue nail, probably the last of the dramatic mytteries exhibited in England, • No. 3789. ELY PLACE, 383 closed, but of late years It has again been re-opened, and is now regularly used. In spite of patchings and modernlslngs, St. Etheldreda's Chapel retains mueh of its original aspect. On looking at the exterior (as shoAvn In the engrav ing on our first page). If avo shut our eyes to the lower portion, where a part of the window has been cut aAvay and an entrance made Avhere evidently none Avas ever Intended to exist, we perceive the true stamp of the days when men built the cathedrals ; works which no modern art has rivalled, and Avhich yet seemed so easy to them, that the names of the architects have failed to be preserved. And in the Interior the effect of the tAvo Avindows, alike In general appearance, yet dif fering in every respect in detail. Is magnificent, although the storied panes AvhIch we may be sure once filled them are gone. The bold arch of the ceiling, plain and Avhitewashed though uoav be its surface, retains so much of the old effect, that, though Ave miss the fine oak carvings, Ave do not forget them. The noble roAv of windows on each side are In a somoAvhat similar condition ; all their exqui site tracery has disappeared, but their number, height, and size tell us Avhat they must have been In the palmy days of Ely Place ; and. If we are still at a loss, there is fortunately ample evidence remaining in the ornaments which surround the upper portions of the AvindoAvs In the Interior, and divide them from each other. We scarcely remember anything more exquisite in architecture than the fairy- like workmanship of the delicate pinnacle-like ornaments which rise between and overtop these wIndoAvs. Of the original entrances into the chapel one only remains, Avhich is quite unused, and is situated at the south-west corner of the edifice. Stepping through the doorway into a small court that encloses It, we perceive that It has been a very beautiful, deeply-receding, pointed arch, but now so greatly decayed that even the character of its ornaments is but partially discoverable. Here too is a piece of the wall of one of the original buildings of the palace — a stupendous piece of brickAvork and masonry ; and, on looking up, one of the octagonal buttresses, Avith its conical top, Avhich ornamented the angles of the building, is seen. Descending a flight of steps, Ave find a Ioav wIndoAv looking Into the crypt, the place which was so desecrated, according to the bishop's com plaint. It is noAv filled AvIth casks ; and Ave can but just catch a glimpse of the enormous chestnut posts and girders with which the floor of the chapel is sup ported. The chapel, like all the other parts of Ely Place, has its memories, though none of those recorded are of a very extraordinary character. Evelyn has tAvo notices worthy of extraction on the subject. The first runs thus: — "Nov. 14, 1668. In London. Invited to the consecration of that excellent person the Dean of Ripon, Dr. Wilkins, noAv made Bishop of Chester, It Was at Ely House : the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr, Cosin (Bishop of Durham), the Bishops of Ely, Salisbury, Rochester, and others officiating. Dr, Tillotson preached. Then Ave went to a sumptuous dinner In the hall, Avhere Avere the Duke of Buckingham, Judges, Secretaries of State, Lord Keeper, Council, noblemen, and innumerable other company, who Avere honourers of this incomparable man, invariably beloA'ed by all who kncAV hkn." The other notice refers to a more personal matter, and ia Interesting for that very reason, as connected with an estimable man : — " 27th 384 LONDON. April, 1693, My daughter Susanna Avas married to William Draper, Esq,, in the chapel of Ely House, by Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln, since Archbishop, I gave her in portion 4000/, Her jointure is 500/, per annum, I pray Almighty God to give his blessing to this marriage." Lastly, we may notice an amusing circumstance that occurred at the time of the defeat of the young Pretender by the Duke of Cumberland, in 1746, and which Cowper thought worthy of notice in his ' Task :'— " So in the chapel of old Ely House When wandering Charles, who meant to be the Third, Had fled from William, and the news was fresh, The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce And eke did rear right merrily two staves Sung to the praise and glory of King George." [Staircase, Goldsmitba' Hall.] LXXV.— GOLDSMITHS' HALL. We will not say, — in Imitation of the well-known phrase. He who has not seen Paris has seen nothing, — he who has not seen the Goldsmiths' Hall has not seen London ; but It may be safely asserted that, without a glance Into the interior of this noble building, no one can form a just conception of the wealth, luxury, and, we must add, taste, of some of our great civic companies ; which, however they may now have ceased to be Identified AvIth any very large portion of the commercial greatness of London, were undoubtedly the originators of that great ness, and the guardians through all sorts of troublous times of the comparatively free and enlightened principles on which alone commercial prosperity can be based. But those times are now past ; and the Companies generally, like the victors In a good fight, seem to have little else to do but to sit down, eat, drink, and make merry, and discourse of all the alternations of good and evil fortune by which the previous contest was marked. Grasping monarchs can no longer haunt their visions with fines and rumours of fines, as the price of the mainte nance of their rights ; needy ones can no longer hold out the expectation of fresh privileges to be obtained by the all-persuasive mediation of citizen gold. But with the conflict and the danger, the glory and the influence have passed away. Trade, so much Indebted to them whilst yet but a young weakling, has grown VOL, III. ^ c 386 LONDON. strong and robust, and can take excellent care of himself. The leading-strings of one day have become shackles at another ; ahd so the giant throws them off, or bursts through them. Let him not, hoAvever, forget Avhat he was; or be ungrateful to those Avho have aided so greatly to make him what he is. The Goldsmiths' Company, more fortunate than most of its early brethren, is still essentially a business Company. It has so happened that the peculiar pri vilege intrusted to them from a very early period, of assaying and stamping articles made of the precious metals, has not been found to be attended Avith any important disadvantages ; so in their hands the privilege still remains,* notwith standing the enormous increase of business that must have taken place. This circumstance to a certain extent favourably distinguishes the Goldsmiths' Com pany f from the other great civic Companies, and promises to it a longer lease of power and consideration. He Avho has once seen the present Hall of the Company will not forget its position at the back of the Post Office ; for the very circumstance that such a magnificent building should be so curiously and badly situated strikes every one with surprise. There it is, however, not yet eight years old ; and, con sequently, there for the next two or three centuries we may be sure it will remain. Of course, this is a matter over which the architect, Mr. Hardwick, could have no control. Perhaps the best, or at least the most convenient way, to enjoy the view of its exterior, is to pass from St. Martin's-le-Grand through the Post Office, and there, standing on the top step, and leaning your back against the wall, the eye at once takes In two fronts of the building, the superb west or principal faqade, one hundred and fifty feet broad, with its attached Corinthian columns and beautiful Italian windows ; and the south, one hundred feet broad, with its decorating pilasters. In some respects the enforced prox imity of the spectator to the building is advantageous; as, for instance, iu following the details of the beautiful Corinthian entablature, Avhich is supported by the entire front of the western faqade, and continued quite round the edifice. The solidity of the Hall is as noticeable as its splendour. The plinth, six feet in height, is formed of large granite blocks from the Haytor quarries, Devonshire ; , whilst the Avails are built of Portland stone. Some of the single blocks used in the shafts of the columns, and in the entablature, weigh as much as twelve tons. The roof is covered with lead. Within, Ave enter first into a low square vestibule, Avhere sits the porter in his old-fashioned high circular chair ; a place Avhich, though handsome. Is unpre tending, and enhances by contrast the lofty staircase partially seen through the glazed screen opposite. As we pass through the screen Ave find ourselves In a scene of true architectural splendour. The broad staircase ascends direct before us, then branches to the right and left to the landing or gallery at the top, which extends along the walls on either side and behind us. Above, at a great height, we look on the richly carved ceiling of the dome, where around a concealed open ing In the centre play beams of green and golden light. Pendant from the * 'This bmsiness is carried on in apartments at the back of the Hall, having a separate entrance. t And, we may add, the Apothecaries' : these two are tVie oul;? Compa'nies that retain the old right of contfoi over their retpectlve businesses. GOLDSIVIITHS' HALL, 38/ dome hangs a massive lamp, revealing, when lighted on festive occasions, new beauties in this most beautiful of staircases. Among the other features of the place are the double screens of Corinthian columns with their classic ornaments Diana and the Hart, and Apollo ; the lofty pictures occupying the upper part of the wall before us, comprising portraits of George IV, by Northcote, and George III, and his Queen presented by William IV, from the Palace at Ken sington ; the bust of William IV, by Chantrey In the niche below ; and lastly the sculpture on the four square pedestals which ornament the balustrade of the first flight of stairs. These are four youthful Cupid- like figures typical of the seasons, by Mr. Nixon, two only being yet completed In the marble. The first figure Is Intently examining a bird's nest, a circumstahce suggestive of one of the most interesting 6f spring associations ; the second has a Avreath oi summer flowers hanging gracefully round it, and leads a full-grown lamb ; the third has Its arms filled AvIth goodly sheaves of corn, whilst autumnal fruits are Avreathed about its body; and the fourth, a charming figure, is confronting the rude winter Avirids, and with difficulty holding close its drapery. Ascending to the gallery, pausing noAV on the stairs, leaning now over the balcony to admire the beau tiful combinations of form which every fresh position commands, we find several doors; one at the top of the staircase on each side opening to the Livery Hall situated beyond the staircase, and others through rich corridors or passages to a suite of apartments extending along the Avestern front of the building, and over the outer vestibule through Avhich we have passed. And first comes the Court-room on the right of the northernmost corridor. This is an apartment for the meetings of the Court of Assistants, and is handsomely decorated. The stucco ceiling in particular is of very elaborate workmanship ; from It hangs a large glass chandelier, now covered up, but the nature of which Is made knoAvn by the delicate tinkle produced by every passing vehicle. On a sideboard, carefully preserved beneath glass, is one of the most interesting remains Ave possess of the Romans in London, the little altar-piece engraved in the ac count of Roman London,* which Avas dug up during the late rebuilding of the Hall. It has evidently been a fine piece of Avorkmanship, for, although the sur face of the stone is greatly corroded, the beauty of the outlines of the figures still Arrests the attention af the first glance : the position of the dog may be mentioned as exceedingly expressive and graceful. On the walls hang some Interesting pictures. Here is Janssen's rich and beautiful portrait of Sir Hugh Middleton, Avith a shell in his left hand, typical of the great work of his life, the bringing. the springs of Hertfordshire to London. The share that the unfortunate Sir Hugh presented to the' Goldsmiths' Company, of which he Avas a member, is noAv worth, Ave believe, betAveen 200/. and 300/. annually. Another portrait we may mention Is that of Sir Thomas Vyner, Knight and Baronet, 1666, the gentleman referred to in the following title of one of the printed accounts of the annual Lord Mayor's pa geants. We must premise that the Goldsmiths still make it a matter of etiquette to keep up some of the old state and ceremony on these occasions, which, but for them, would lose half the splendour that yet remains to them. They have, j'ndeed, a very ancient reputation In matters of the kind. When Henry VL * Vol, i, p. 281. g c 2 388 LONDON. expected the coming of the Queen Margaret of Anjou from France, he wrote to the Goldsmiths, as a craft which had at all such times " notably acquitted them," to prepare themselves to do her honour. And the splendour of their appear ance at the appointed time showed how they appreciated the application. The title in question runs thus : ' The Goldsmiths' Jubilee ; or, London's Triumphs, containing a description of the several pageants ; on Avhich are represented emblematical figures, artful pieces of architecture, and rural drawings, with the speeches spoken In each pageant. Performed October 29, 1674, for the enter tainment of the right honourable and truly noble pattern of prudence and loyalty. Sir Robert Vyner, Knt, and Bart., Lord Mayor of the City of London, at the proper costs and charges of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. The King's most sacred Majesty and his Royal Consort, their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York, Prince Rupert, the Duke of Monmouth, several foreign ambassadors, chief nobility, and Secretaries of State, honouring the City with their presence. Composed by Thomas Jordan,' The procession and pageant together seem certainly to have been a handsome affair. We can only notice the last, which consisted of tAVO parts, the one illustrating, in an Inge nious manner, the Company's arms, the other Its trade and history. The first pageant consisted of " a large triumphant chariot of gold, richly set with divers inestimable and various-coloured jewels, of dazzling splendour, adorned with sundry curious figures, fictitious stories, and delightful landscapes," In this is " an ascent of seats up to a throne, whereon a person of majestic aspect sitteth, the representor of justice, hieroglyphlcally attired in a long red robe, and on It a golden mantle fringed with silver ; on her head long dishevelled hair of flaxen colour, curiously curled, on which is a coronet of silver; in her left hand she advanceth a touchstone (the tryer of truth and discoverer of falsehood) ; In her right hand she holdeth up a golden balance, with silver scales equi-ponderent, to weigh justly and impartially; her arms dependent on the heads of two leopards, which emblematically intimate courage and constancy : this chariot is drawn by two golden unicorns, in excellent carving work, with equal magnitude to the life, on whose backs are mounted tAvo beautiful raven-bjack negroes, attired according to the dress of India; on their heads wreaths of diverse-coloured feathers ; in their right hands they hold golden cups ; in their left hands two displayed banners, the one of the King's, the other of the Company's, arms. All which represent the crest and the supporters of the ancient, famous, and worship ful Company of Goldsmiths," Of the Trade Pageant Thomas Jordan writes — " On a very large pageant Is a rich seat of state, containing the representor of the patron to the Goldsmiths' Company, St. Dunstan, attired in a dress properly expressing his prelatlcal dignity, in a robe of fine white lawn, over which he weareth a cope or vest of costly bright cloth of gold down to the ground ; on his reverend grey head a golden mitre, set with topaz, ruby, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire ; In his left hand he holdeth a golden crozier, and in his right hand he useth a pair of goldsmith's tongs. Beneath these steps of ascension to his chair, in opposition to St. Dunstan, is properly painted a goldsmith's forge and fur nace, with fire and gold In it, a workman blowing with the bellows. On his right and left hand there is a large press of gold and silver plate, representing a shop of trade ; and further In front are several artificers at work on anvils with GOLDSMITHS' HALL, 389 hammers, beating out plate fit for the forgery and formation of several vessels in gold and silver. There are likewise in the shop divers wedges or Ingots of gold and silver. And a step below St, Dunstan sitteth an assay-master, with his class frame and balance, for trial of gold and silver according to the standard. In another place there is also disgrossing, drawing, and flatting of gold and silver wire. There are also finers melting, smelting, finingj and parting gold and silver both by fire and water. And in a march before this orfery * are divers miners. In canvas breeches and waistcoats, and red caps, bearing spades, pickaxes, twi- bills, and crows, for to sink shafts and make adlts.f The devil also appearing to St. Dunstan Is catched by the nose at a proper Qu (cue), which is given in his speech. When the speech is spoken the great anvil Is set forth, with a silver smith holding on it a plate of massive silver, and three other workmen at work, keeping excellent time in their orderly strokes upon the anvil," Pageants of this character had meaning in them, and must have had at least one beneficial effect, that of making the handicraft arts interesting and their pursuit honourable : we wish we could say as much of the civic pageants of the present day. The connection of St. Dunstan with the Goldsmiths' Company is a curious subject, and one that meets you at every step In their history, as well as In still more palpable shapes in their Hall. Here, for instance, in the Court Room is a large painting, said to be by Julio Romano, but we should think incorrectly, devoted to the Saint's glory. In the foreground appears St. Dunstan, a large figure in a rich, robe, and crozief In hand; in the background, by an amusing licence, we see him again, performing his. memorable deed of taking the devil by the nose; and above appears the heavenly host, no doubt applauding the deed, and apparently signifying as much to the St. Dunstan in the front of the pic ture. Then, in the records of the Hall we read of St. Dunstan's almsmen ; of St. Dunstan's feast on St. Dunstan's day ; of St. Dunstan's eve ; of splendid tapestry made at a great expense in Flanders in illustration of St. Dunstan's exploits, and used for the decoration of the Hall;;j; of St. Dunstan's statue. In silAJ^er gilt, set with gems, which formerly surmounted the screen of the Livery Hall, and which was broken up at the period of the war against images during the Reformation, and turned to the " most profit of the house ;" of St. Dunstan s cup, in which the goldsmiths frequently drank to his memory ; of " St. Dunstan's light " in St. John's Zachary Church ; and of the chapel of St. Dunstan, with another image, in St. Paul's Cathedral. The origin of this connection is no doubt to be found in the circumstance that, when Dunstan left the court of Athelstan in disgust and retired to Glastonbury, he employed himself occasionally in the formation of articles useful to the church, as crosses and censers. Eccle siastics were then among the most skilful of artificers, for Edgar had directed * From the French, " Orfevrerie," we presume, expressive of the goldsmith's art and ware. f Modes of communication. X The account of " Money delivered to Mr. Gerard Hughes for the rich arras for the hanging of the Hall," the tapestry in question, contains some interesting items : we extract the following. It appears there was " Paid for the devising of the story, for the exchange making of the money, and for costs and charges of Mr. Hughes's servant lying there (in Flanders), and for the canvas, &c., 29/. 8s. 8rf." Then in the " charges for making of the stories in white and black," there was paid to " four masters, every of them for sixteen days," at a shilling a-day , 3/. 4j. a boy was paid to " sharp their colours," that is, point the chalk or charcoal with which they sketched, 2d. a-day ; " the translating of the story out of English into Dutch," to enable the foreign workmen to under stand it, cost lOt. The entire expense of the work was about ddOA 390 LONDON. that priests. In order " to increase knoAvledge, should diligently learn some handi craft." And it was whilst Dunstan Avas thus employed that the devil, having, unfortunately for himself, tempted him once too often, Avas seized In the un pleasant manner already described- The holy man immediately became famous. The goldsmiths in particular, Avho seem to have looked on him as one of their craft, now, or soon after, adopted him as their founder and patron saint. We may here add that, in the list of jewellery belonging |;o'EdAvard I., mention is made of a goid ring, with a sapphire, " pf the Avorkmanship of St. Dunstan." The business transacted in the Court Room Ig, of course, the ordinary business of the Company, as the management of estates, charities,* &c,, and presenting, therefore, no interesting features. But it was not so once, when rebellious apprentices had to be Avhipped or otherwise punished, when offending members had to be repri manded, sometimes kneeling before the assembled ofiScers, or when the table was covered Avith goodly collections of gold and silver articles, and sometimes eyen " pieces of napery " and " cloths of gold," brought as pledges to the Company, who seem to have occasionally dabbled in the pawnbroking trade from a very early period. , One of the entries on this subject, given in Mr. Herbert's valuable work on the Livery Companies of London, refers to the year 1386. Besides their ordinary duties, the Wardens were occasionally called in to decide matters of a less official nature between the different members of the Company, but where their knowledge or position were found useful. A great deal of jealousy existed at all times betAveen the foreign and English goldsmiths, which sometimes led to serious disputes. A difference of a more friendly nature Avas that brought before the Wardens in the reign of Edward IV., when tAvo workmen, Oliver Davy, citizen and goldsmith of London, and " White Johnson, Alicant stranger, goldsmith," of the same city, contended for the palm of superiority in the " cunning Avorkman ship " of their craft. The honour of the respective countries Avas concerned in the struggle, and a high tribunal alone Avas thought worthy of giving a decision. So at a meeting at the Pope's Head in Lombard Street, in the presence of seve ral distinguished members of the Goldsmiths' Company, the foUoAving arrange ment, after due consideration, Avas made. First, that Oliver Davy should "make, Avork, and grave inward, by the hands of an Englishman, or 'prentice English, in four puncheons of steel, in the breadth of a penny sterling, a cat's face outAvard embossed in one of the said puncheons, and the same cat's face to be graven in- Avard in another of the same puncheons, and a naked man outward embossed In the third puncheon, and a naked man luAvard to be graven on the fourth puncheon." White Johnson was to do exactly the same thing by the hands of an Alicant stranger, or Alicant's child, taking his liberty of Avhat nation he Avould Avithin the city of London, town of Westminster, or borough of SouthAvark, It Avas further agreed that the Wardens of Goldsmiths' Hall should decide between them, taking Avith them, to ensure impartiality, three English and three Alicant goldsmiths. The loser in the struggle Avas to pay the winner a croAvn, his costs for making his puncheons, and provide a dinner at the Hall for the * The property of the Company and the estates it holds in trust for charitable purposes are matters not allowed to come before the public. The Company itself, we may here observe, consists of a master (the office is now held by the Sovereign), a prime and three other wardens, 21 assistants, and 150 liverymen, The chief officer is tlie clerk, whose position is generally considered to be highly lucrative and influential. GOLDSMITHS' HALL. 391 Wardens and for all parties concerned, " And whereas Oliver Davy brought into the Goldsmiths' Hall at his day, as is before limited by the said wager, four puncheons, in breadth of a penny sterling, , , , . made by the hands of Thomas Cotterell, the apprentice of the said Oliver, and the said White Johnson brought, by the space of six weeks after that, contrary to his wager, but two puncheons, one of a cat's face graven inward, and another Avith a naked man graven iuAvard, of a more breadth than his wager, made by the hands of little Court Dutchman, dwelling in the borough of SouthAvark," the wager is adjudged to be avou by Oliver Davy, We do not see hoAV, to use Mr, Herbert's phrase, the " honour of England " was advanced by the decision, as no opinion whatever seems to have been expressed as to the real merits of the respective Avorks. Very proud, hoAV ever, do the English goldsmiths appear to have been of the result, for when, after having kept the Avhole six puncheons five years, Oliver Davy brought them Into the Goldsmiths'. Hall, at the instance of the Wardens, and gave them to the Company, the former, Avith great solemnity, ordered them " to be laid in the chest with six keys, to that intent that they be ready, if any such controversy hereafter fall, to be shoAved that such traverse hath been determined aforetlmes ; and that no Wardens hereafter bear them out of the said Hall, but to remain perpetually in the said place for the cause aforesaid. And that this present Avriting be laid with the said puncheons In the said chest, that men may under stand hereafter the cause of the making of the said puncheons." We may here add that the foreign goldsmiths had at an early period a quarter to themselves, and Avere regulated by members of their own nation, under the control, hoAvever, of the English company, to whose funds they contributed in the shape of fees for apprentices, for admission into the craft, and for licences, also for fines, just the same as the other goldsmiths of London. We have an interesting glimpse of the customs among the artificers in the fifteenth century in one of tAvo documents presented by the German and Dutch goldsmiths to the Wardens of the Com pany in 1444 and 1452, The last consists of the " Information given to the Wardens by the Dutchmen Goldsmiths enfranchised in the City of London," and states that " the rule in their quarter of goldsmiths is such that there shallno man come to no good city nor town, but he shall be known from Avhence he cometh, for to occupy the craft of goldsmiths, and that he be true born, and not defective proved. And at his coming in he must put him in service with a master of the said craft. And if he will continue and ¦ dAvell there a certain time for to set up a house or a shop of the said craft, he must present himself, or else the master that he dwelleth AvIth must present him, to the masters of the craft to set the rule upon him hoAV long space and time It shall be ere he take house or shop of the said craft, at the discretion of the masters, some more, some less, as they find him able, and well named, and of good bearing," Before quitting the Court Room Ave must not forget to mention the Avhite marble chimney-piece which Avas brought from Cannons, the former seat of the Duke of Somerset, The lateral supports consist of two very large and boldly sculptured terminal busts, attributed, Ave are told, to Roublliac by a late eminent sculptor. Leaving the Court Room, and crossing the corridor or passage, Ave enter the DraAving-room, a scene of almost unsurpassable luxury and splendour. Immense • 392 LONDON. mirrors cover a considerable portion of the walls, and the remainder. In panels. Is hung with crimson satin bordered by white and gold mouldings ; the white stucco ceiling is exquisitely wrought with an interminable profusion of flowers, fruits, birds, beasts, and scroll-work ornaments, relieved at the comers of the room by the gay colours of the coats of arms ; the soft thick carpet, of a rich maroon ground, presents In the centre the Goldsmiths' arms in all the splendid and proper colours of their heraldic emblazonry, and is as splendidly bordered ; the curtains are of crimson damask, gold-embroidered ; the chairs and ottomans are covered with crimson satin and gold, the tables are of gold and the most beauti ful marbles, and the chimney-piece and grate of an exceedingly sumptuous kind. Add to these features the chandelier hanging from the roof, with its thousand glittering pendants ; imagine it lighted, and colours more varied and brilliant than rainbow ever presented shifting and glancing to and fro ; behold the room Itself thronged with fair and magnificently dressed ladies, their costume only the more impressive from the contrast with the sober dresses of the gentlemen ; — and you have altogether as superb a scene of the kind as, with few exceptions, the social life of England could afford. The chief object of interest in the Court Dining-room, the next of the suite, is the chimney-piece, where in the centre two boys hold a wreath enclosing a head, whose melancholy history is told in the thin, almost attenuated-looking features and sad expression. It is Richard IL, the monarch from whom the Goldsmiths' Com pany may be said to have received their principal charter of incorporation ; Ave say principal, for In all the Goldsmiths received' from the time of Edward III. to Elizabeth no fewer than fifteen charters — some of confirmation only, which the Companies of an early day were accustomed to get from time to time, in order to refresh the memory of any ihoiiarch who might otherwise be suddenly requiring a very heavy fine, — and othefS granting new privileges. And we may here fitly pause aAvhile to notice the fearlys history of this Company, The goldsmith's is perhaps, above all other mailual arts requiring any considerable taste and skill, the one in which the English have excelled from a very early period. About 628 Bishop Wilfred built a church at Ripon, in Yorkshire, the columns and porticoes of which were enriched with gold, silver, and purple ; and a sumptuous copy of the Gospels, in a case of pure gold set with gems, was among the dona tions then made. In the Ashmolean Museum a piece of ornamental workman ship in gold that was made for Alfred the Great Is still preserved, and the work manship is of a high order, though the design is rude enough. Again, among the plunder of the Conquest taken over to Normandy by William, on his first visit to his native country after the great event which has made his name so memorable, were a variety of articles, such as golden vases, chased cups of gold and silver, Saxon drinking-cups made of large buffalo-horns, and ornamented at the extremity, which filled the people of that country with astonishment, and shoAvs how far before their conquerors were the Saxons of that day In the gold smith's craft. William of Poictevin, whose whole account shows what a strong impression the wealth of England had made upon him, speaks expressly of the men excelling in every species of elegant workmanship. A still stronger proof perhaps is to be found in the admiration elicited from Pope Adrian (our country man) when Robert, Abbot of St. Alban's, sent to him two golden candlesticks : GOLDSMITHS' HALL. 393 the Pontiff declared he had never seen more beautiful workmanship. Matthew Paris also describes a large cup of gold made by Baldwin, a goldsmith, for the same Abbot Robert, " which was adorned with flowers and foliages of the most delieate workmanship, and set round with precious stones in the most elegant manner." The service of the churches must have contributed greatly to call forth and to encourage talent of this kind ; for, besides the numerous utensils required, there were the gorgeous shrines to decorate and enrich, labours on which immense quantities of the precious metals were lavished during the middle With the firm consolidation of the kingdom that took place on the cessation of those civil wars, which, owing their origin to the state of things produced by the Conquest, Avere only ended In 1265 by the fall of De Montfort, and the consequent increase of the general prosperity, the monarchs no doubt became more luxu rious and expensive. The wardrobe account of Edward I.'s plate and jiewels is exceedingly curious, and illustrates In various points the manners and customs of the age, as well as the state of the goldsmith's art. Ade vras ihe. King's Tartificer, no doubt the chief goldsmith of his day. The list comprises, thirty-four pitchers of gold and silver, ten gold cups, ten cups of silver (gilt and pjaln, some having stands, and enamelled), and above one hundred other cups of silver ; also a pair of knives with silver sheaths, enamelled, with a fork of crystal; a pair of knives with ebony and Ivory handles and studs, a large ewer set all over witb, pearls, a comb and looking-glass of silver gilt, enamelled, and a silver bodkin' in- a leathern case ; gold, silver, and crystal crosses, some set with sapphires, and enclosing relics, and one with emeralds and other precious stones, enclosing a great piece of the real cross of Christ ; pikes of gold and silver, shrines, silver trumpets, gold clasps, rings, a large silver girdle ornamented with precious stones ; a large Image of the King in silver, habited in a surcoat, and with a hood over his head and a silver plate under his feet; and five serpent tongues. in a standard of silver. Lastly, there are four royal crowns, one set with fcubfes,' emeralds, and great pearls; another with rubies and emeralds; another -with Indian pearls; and a fourth, a great crown of gold, with emeralds, sapphires, of the east, rubies, and large eastern pearls — this was the coronation crown. Among this splendid col lection Avas the " gold ring with a sapphire " before mentioned, which, we are told, was of the workmanship of St. Dunstan. A body of men, comprising among their members skill to accomplish works of the kind here indicated, and who, from the very value of the materials on which they worked, must have been per sons of character and consideration, were not likely to be the last to seek the protection of the Guild, or general association of those engaged In their pursuit ; indeed. If we had the means of knowing the early history of these associations, we should probably find the -goldsmiths were among the first. If not the very first, to defend themselves, their properties, and their personal freedom in this manner. Not that we are to look upon the artificers of that period as so many peaceful citizens, who were nothing except when banded together. Not a man of them but knew how to defend himself. If he were attacked, by the skilful use of his own trusty weapon : a circumstance that made the members of the chief trades, when In union, truly formidable bodies. This is Illustrated In an Incident that has been preserved of a quarrel between the goldsmiths and the merchant tal- 394 LONDON. lors about the middle of the thirteenth century, when their animosity proceeded so far that they, and their respective friends, met by mutual consent one night, to the number each of five hundred men completely armed, and commenced a regular battle, which was so fiercely maintained that, before the Sheriffs could succeed In bringing a great body of the citizens to put a stop to the proceedings, several were killed and many Avounded on both sides. The combatants suffered severely. In the whole, for their display of martial valour— thirteen of the ringleaders perishing on the scaffold. The earliest mention of the goldsmiths as a guild occurs In the beginning of the century marked by this combat, when Henry II. fined the adul terine or unlicensed guilds ; and among those who were the most heavily mulcted were the goldsmiths. From this time to the reign of Edward III. we find no thing particularly deserving notice in the history of the Guild, but In that reign they began to bestir themselves to acquire a neAV and more commanding position. The petition presented to Edward and his Council in Parliament, In the first year of his reign, gives us an interesting glimpse of the state of the trade at that time in London. In this petition they show " that no private merchant nor stranger heretofore were wont to bring into this land any money coined, but plate of silver to exchange for our coin. And that it had been also ordained, that all Avho were of the goldsmlth^s trade were to sit in their shops in the high street of Cheap ; and that no silver in plate, nor vessel of gold or silver, ought to be sold in the city of London, except at or in the Exchange, or in Cheapside among the goldsmiths, and that publicly, to the end that the people of the said trade might inform themselves whether the seller came lawfully by such vessel or not. But that now of late the said merchants, as well private, as strangers, brought from foreign countries into this nation counterfeit sterling, whereof the pound was not worth above sixteen sols of the right sterling ; and of this money none could know the true value but by melting it doAvn. And also that many of the said trade of goldsmiths kept shops in obscure turnings and bye-lanes and streets, aud did buy vessels of gold and silver secretly, Avithout inquiring whether such ves sel were stolen or lawfully come by ; and. Immediately melting it down, did make if Into plate, and sell it to merchants trading beyond sea, that It might be exported. And so they made false work of gold and silver, as bracelets, lockets, rings, and other jcAvels ; in Avhich they set glass of divers colours, counterfeiting right stones, and put more alloy in the silver than they ought, Avhich they sold to such as had no skill In such things." They add, also, that " the cutlers, in their work-houses, covered tin with silver so subtilly, and with such sleight, that the same could not be discerned and severed from the tin ; and by that means they sold the tin so covered for fine silver, to the great damage and deceit of the King and his people." The answer to this petition Avas very satisfactory, granting to the goldsmiths, apparently, everything they desired. Merchants were no longer to bring any sort of money from abroad, but only plate of fine silver ; gold smiths Avere prohibited from spiling gold or silver Avrought, or plate of silver, to any such merchants to be carried out of the kingdom ; " none that pretended to be of the same trade should keep any shops but in Cheapside, that it might be seen that their works Avere good and right ;" and lastly, — and this Avas the most important concession of the whole, — those of the same trade might elect honest, laAvful, and sufficient men, best skilled In the said trade, to inquire of the mat- GOLDSMITHS' HALL. 395 ters aforesaid, to reform defects, and inflict due punishment upon offenders. In this, the first charter, the Company are addressed as the King's " beloved, the Goldsmiths of London :" npr was the charter In question all the evidences of his love ; he subsequently empowered them to purchase estates to the value of 20/. yearly for the support of decayed members : a gift of ten marks, it mtist be ob- servecj, had something to^dowlth all this beneficence. In the reign of Richard II. the Company became, as before stated, essentially, though still not nominally. Incorporated, as " a perpetual community," with " liberty to elect yearly for ever four Avardens, to oversee, rule, and govern the said craft and community." Subsequent monarchs from time to time confirmed and enlarged their privileges, till EdAvard IV, in express words ordained them a " corporation, or body incor porate, by the name of Wardens of the Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London," and gave them the poAver of Inspecting, trying, or regulating aU gold and silver works throughout the kingdom. Lastly, we may observe that, being opposed in their trade search and assay, during the reign of Henry VII., that monarch gave thein additional power to imprison or fine defaulters, to seize and break unlawful work, to compel the trade within three miles of the City to bring- their work to the Company's common-hall to be assayed and stamped, and in case it was not standard to utterly condemn the same. The searches referred to must have led to some curious scenes. The trade Avas divided among foreigners and natives, whose chief places of resort at first were Cheapside and the Imme diate neighbourhood of the Goldsmiths' Hall, but who by the time of Henry VIII. had extended their shops to different parts of London and Westminster. The Sanctuaries Avere very naturally the resort of numbers of the dishonest portion of the trade ; and in the Goldsmiths' books, under the date of 20 Henry VI. , we find a not unamflslng Instance in point : — " Also it Is to remember that the 20th day of Aprils, the year of King Henry above Avritten, the said Wardens Avent to Saint Bartholomew's, and there they spake Avith the Prior of the same place, of such untrue workers that were Inhabiting In the same place, the Avhich the Prior knew not. And while the Wardens and the Prior stood together came one John Tomkins, that was sometime a good workman of goldsmiths' craft. And there the Prior commanded him to go Avith him and with the Wardens, for to bring him to his chamber. And when they came there, he would not let them in. And the Prior made him to deliver his key to him. And then they Avent in ; and there they found divers bandis of latten, the which to let in goblets forthAvIth. And also there was found a piece in the bed straw, the Avhich Avaa copper, and silver above ; the which was likely for to have been sold for good silver. And while it Avas a-doing the said false varlet stole aAvay out of the place, or else he had been set In the stocks." Besides general quarterly searches, Ave find the Wardens Avere always on the watch on the occasion of any unusual assemblage of persons likely to buy trinkets, and more particularly during fairs. Like some of the similar searchers of the present day with regard to weights, due Avarning Avas given to delinquents to hide whatever they chose. In read ing the account of the array of the search, one sees very plainly that the worst rogues must have escaped amidst so much ceremony. First came the beadle Avith his Insignia of office, and in full costume; then the Avardens in their hoods and livery, the Company's clerk, two renter wardens, two brokers. 396 LONDON, with porters and other attendants properly habited. These on " St, Bartho lomew's Eve went all along Cheap, for to see what plate is in every man's desk and girdle ;" then into Lombard Street. And on the following day they went through the fair " to . see every hardware-man's show, for deceitful things, beads, gauds of bead's^ and other stuff ; and then," adds the ' Manner and Order of Proceeding ' from which we quote, " they are to drink,' when they have done, where they please." The legislature had at differerit periods endeavoured to assist the searchers in the attainment, of the common object, honest trade, by various regulations. In 1403 an act was Jiasled, stating that> "whereas many fraudulent artificers, imagining to deceive the common people, do daily make lockets, rings, beads, candlesticks, harness for girdles, hilts, chalifces, and sword-pommels, powder- boxes, and covers for cups; of copper and lattenj like to gold; and silver, and the same sell and putin gage to many men not having full knowledge thereof for whole gold and silver," in future no such articles shall be gilt or silvered, whether with Or without intention to deceive,' under a penalty of 100/, The only exceptions were articles for the use of the Church, most of Avhich might be made of silVered-copper or latten, "so that ahvays in- the foot, or some other part, of every such ornaihent so to be madej the copper and the latten shall be plain, to the intent that a man may see whereof the thing is made, for to eschew the deceit aforesaid." A curious and' at the same time frightful incident Of an earlier time Is mentioned in Arnold's ' Chronicle,'- AVhere^-" all the -goldsmiths of London " themselves are statpd toi-have been the delinquents, Iti 1278 these, with "all those that kept the'Change, and many other men of the. City, Were arrested and taken for buying of plates of silver, and for change of great money for small money [we presume, by recolning and giving their own coin for the King's], which were indicted by ' the* wards of the City; 'and on' the, Monday next after the Epiphany, the Justices sitting at the Guildhall to make deliverance, that is to say. Sir Stephen of Pencestre, Sir John of Cobham, and other which that these lust (pleased) to associate- to thenij and there were prejudged and drawn and hanged three English Christian meni ^and two hundred four score and twelve English Jews!" Such was %he-wholesSde butchery dignified by the name of justice in the thirteenth century/ = ' - - ; - ;• From the Court Dining-room pass we now through the passage and across the top of the staircase to the Livery Hall,- "m&'fitiing conclusion of the whole we have beheld. This is a room of great siz». and noble proportions, measuring about eighty feet in length, forty in Avidth, and thirty-five in height. Noble ranges of scagliola Corinthian columns insulated from the wall, and raised on lofty pedestals, support the roof, which is one . dark but most rich mass of orna mental decoration, and from which hang numerous chandeliers. Five lofty win dows in the side that faces you as you enter shed a rich light through the place, being more than half filled with armorial bearings ; and the remainder of the unoccupied space is marked off into small square compartments of ground glass, which alone give a fine effect to the windows whilst excluding a bad view, A - screen, and gallery above, ornament the one extremity, and a niche for the display of the Company's plate the other. This niche is an elegant contrivance. The back Is lined with plain scarlet drapery, and in the centre Is a wooden framework similarly covered, which, with the assistance of the light admitted from GOLDSMITHS' HALL. 397 above, displays the treasures of the Company in a pyramidal form with the happiest effect. Many of the separate articles of that pyramid have a history of themselves ; we can only mention one of them :; — the cup. This is by no less an artist than Cellini, and Avas presented by Queen Elizabeth (who Pennant ob serves was " particularly kind to the citizens, and borrowed money of them on all occasions") to Sir Martin Bowes, whilst he was Lord Mayor, by whom it was presented to his brethren the Goldsmiths,. with a charge to drink his health at certain periods in it, and to have a good dlnnei* afterwards : we believe we are not hazarding too much to say that neither of these debts of gratitude are neglected. On each side of the niche is a mirror of unusual size, with busts in front, at their base, of George III. and George IV. Between the scagliola pillars, adorning the side opposite to the window, are lofty portraits, kingly or queenly subjects as usual (the loyalty and church-and-state pride of the Goldsmiths' Company are well known) ; comprising portraits of Queen Adelaide by Sir Martin Archer Shee, William IV. in the appropriate costume of a " Sailor King," and her present Majesty, by Sir George Hayter. In looking again at the richly stained arms which Mr. Willement has placed In the windows, consisting of the arms of the twenty-five Members of the Court of Assistants, at the period of the opening of the Hall In 1835, and of other assistants who have since died, a sugges tion occurs which we think deserves consideration. In the annals of the Com pany, many are the worthies whose life and character must have an interest for the members ; surely their arms should be here. There is Gregory de Rokesley, for instance, goldsmith, who was eight times Lord Mayor of London, keeper of the King's Exchange, and chief Assay Master of all the English Mints, And If these recommendations are not sufficient, there is one better still. This is the man whom honest Stow praises for having refused to compromise the dignity of his office, by answering as mayor a mandate to attend the King's Justices In the Tower, but who showed his individual respect for it by throwing off his civic robes at the Church of AUhallows, Barking, and then obeying the mandate as a private Individual. The act led not only to his arrest, but to the arrest of the liberties of the City for a time. Then again there is Sir Nicholas Farindon, who gives name to the Ward of Farringdon, and the various benefactors of the Company, among whom Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491, should not be forgotten. This gentleman built " the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops" In Cheapside, which Stow describes as containing In number " ten fair dwelling- houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly builded four stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmiths' arms, and the likeness of wood men in memory of his (the builder's) name, riding on monstrous beasts; all which is cast in lead, richly painted over, and gilt: these he gave to the gold smiths, with stocks of money to be lent to young men having those shops," &c. These, Ave presume, were the goldsmiths' stalls which Hall so oddly describes in connexion with the pageants on the occasion of the marriage of Henry VIII, with his first wife, as " being replenished with virgins in white with branches of white wax," Numerous other members of still greater general reputation will readily occur : It will suffice to mention the admirable Sir Hugh Middleton, and Sir Francis Child, goldsmith. Lord Mayor, and founder of the first regular banking- house in England, the well-known and highly respectable establishment In Fleet 398 LONDON, Street, The chief difficulty that might have been experienced in carrying into effect the plan proposed has been anticipated by the careful Stow ; the arms of the oldest member we have here mentioned, Rokesley's, for Instance, will be found among the engravings of the ' Survey.' The mention of Sir Francis Child recalls one of the most important cir cumstances in the history of the Company, — its connection Avith the origin of the mighty system of modern banking. Our earliest bankers were, as Is well knoAvn, the Jews ; though, as their system seems to have been to receive deposits of goods, or title-deeds, &c., as security, they were perhaps more correctly called paAvn- brokers. Ih the thirteenth century a more respectable class of men, the Lombards, or Italian merchants, then recently settled in England, began to obtain much of this tratde. The goldsmiths, we have already seen, Avere occasldn^lly bankers, in the only sense In which banking as yet existed, so early as 1386, in imitation, probably, of the Lombards. And till the seventeenth century matters remained in this state. At that tinie a concurrence of pecilliar circumstances led them to embark largely in the business. In Anderson's ' History of Commerce ' is given a curious account bf these circumstances, on the authority of a rare pamphlet of the date of 1676, entitled, ' The MySfery of the new-fashioned Goldsmiths, or Bankers, discovered.' From this ptiblication it appears that the London mer chants had been generally accustomed to deposit their money In the Tower, in the care of the Mint Master. A little time before the meeting of the Long Parlia ment, Charles I. seized there 200,000/., professedly as a loan, of course not only Avithout the consent, but to the extreme Indignation, of the unfortunate OAvners. No inore money after that time found its way into the Mint for the sake of security. And then, according to the pamphlet, it became customary with mer chants and traders to Intrust their cash to their clerks and apprentices : a striking evidence, by the Avay, of the terrible state of insecurity of men's property before the breaking out of the civil war. When the latter burst like a storm over the \vhoIe country, many of these clerks and apprentices took the opportunity of re lieving themselves of the dulness of the shop and desk, and their masters at the same time of fhe superfluous cash they had placed in their hands ; and thus a neAV and better mode of disposing of such money became Indispensable. At last, about the year 1645, the merchants begaii to place their funds in the hands of the Goldsmiths, who now first added this the essential feature of a bank to their ordinary occupations of buying and selling plate and foreign coins of gold and silver, of melting and culling these articles, some to be coined at the Mint, and the rest to be used in supplying the general dealers in the precious metals, jew eller's, &c. The wealth and reputation of the Company would at once give con fidence In the UOAV mode, and consequently the business transacted increased so greatly in amount as to become a matter of very high importance and considera tion. " It happened," says the writer of the pamphlet, " in those times of civil commotion, that the Parliament, out of the plate and from the old coin brought into the Mint, coined seven millions into half-crowns ; and there being no mills then in use at the Mint, this new money was of very unequal weight, sometimes twopence and threepence difference in an ounce ; and most of It was. It seems, heavier than It ought to have been In proportion to the value In foreign parts." What follows is a sad charge against the respectable Company which has a St. GOLDSMITHS' HALL. 399 DtinStan for Its founder. " Of this the goldsmiths made, naturally, the advan tages usual in such cases, by picking out or culling the heaviest, and melting therti down, and exporting them. It happened also that our gold coins were too Weighty, and of these also they took the like advantage. Moreover, such mer chants' servants as still kept their masters' running cash had fallen Into the way of clandestinely lending the same to the goldsmiths at fourpence per cent, per diem (about six per cent, per annum), who by these and such-like means were enabled to lend out great quantities of cash to necessitous merchants and others weekly or monthly, at high Interest ; and also began to discount the merchants' bills at the like or an higher rate of Interest." It Avould have been worth while to see the puzzled looks of the merchants when they first found the In genious use their clerks had made of their money ; and the whole affair must have occasionally led to some amusing scenes, — clerks perhaps sometimes dis counting themselves instead of through the goldsmiths, and, possibly, their OAvn masters' bills as they circulated In due course of trade, not for their masters, but with their masters' own money ; but their impudence may not have ventured quite so far as that. Respecting the goldsmiths as bankers, the pam phlet continues, — " Much about the same time they began to receive the rents of gentlemen's estates remitted to town, and to alloAv them and others who put cash Into their hands some interest for it (the clerks had taught them this, we suppose) if it remained but for a single month in their hands, or even a lesser time. This was a great allurement for people to put their money Into their hands, which would bear Interest till the day they wanted It. And they could also draw it out by one hundred pounds, or fifty pounds, &c., at a time, as they wanted It, with infinitely less trouble than If they had lent it out on either real or personal Security. The consequence Avas, that it quickly brought a great quantity of cash into their hands, so that the chief or greatest of them were now enabled to supply Cromwell with money In advance on the revenues, as his occasions recjtiired, upon great advantages to themselves." This system continued on the Restoration, the goldsmiths principally confining the lending part of the new business to Government, but borroAving, we presume, from who ever chose to lend. They gave receipts for the sums deposited, which, passing from hand to hand, became a virtual kind of bank-notes. In this brief detail we see in operation nearly all the parts of a modern banker's business. But con cerns of such magnitude, and involving principles which, according as they are right or wrong, materially influence to prosperity or distress the entire nation, require all the thought and skill and capital ot those concerned In its manage ment. Some of the more Intelligent goldsmiths soon perceived this, and also that magnificent fortunes would no doubt be realized by those who, possessing the requisite qualifications, should first devote their exertions solely to It. Francis Child was the first of these persons, and may, therefore, be very pro perly called the " father of the profession."* He Avas originally ah apprentice to William Wheeler, goldsmith and banker, Avhose shop Avas on the site of the present banking-house. Child married his master's daughter, and thus suc ceeded to the estate and business. The latter, we presume, from the very cir cumstance of his being generally acknowledged to be the first regular banker, ? Peunant. 400 LONDON. thenceforth, or at least subsequently, confined his business entirely to the bank* ing department. He died in 1713 as Sir Francis Child, and after having served the offices of sheriff, lord mayor, and member of parliament for the City. Having been so recently erected, of course the Hall has, properly speaking, no history, unless the splendid banquet Avhich marked its opening on the 15th ot July, 1835, be esteemed such, when the Duke of Wellington, and many other distinguished personages connected with the same political party, were among the guests. There was certainly one feature of that meeting worthy of notice — the declaration of the Prime Warden, who, in stating that the creation of a buUding-fund had long been in contemplation for the re-erection of their man sion, added, " by means of that fund they had been enabled to complete this great structure without trenching on the charitable funds of the Company : not one pension had been abridged — ^no charity was diminished — not one ' single petition for the relief of their poorer brethren was rejected." /:•?¦ [Goldsmiths' Hall. Exterior View.] LONDON EDITED BY CHARLES KNIGHT. VOLUME IV. InterloiConrt of Somerset Honse. LOl^DON": HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1851. CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV. THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS OF EACH PAPER. LXXVI.— BEER LXXVII.— BANKS LXXVIII.— THE FLEET PRISON LXXIX.— FLEET MARRIAGES LXXX.— ¦WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. I. LXXXI.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. II. LXXXII.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. III. LXXXIII.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. IV. LXXXIV WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. V. LXXXV.— OLD LONDON ROGUERIES . LXXXVL— LONDON BURIALS LXXXVII.— LONDON FIRES LXXXVIII.— BILLINGSGATE LXXXlX.— SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON CHURCHES AT THE CLOSE OF THE FOURTEENTH ,CENTURY . XC— SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE IN LONDON XCI.— OLD ST. PAUL'S. No. I. XCII.— OLD ST. PAUL'S. No. II. XCIII.— SOMERSET HOUSE XCIV.— THE OLD BAILEY . XCV.— PUBLIC REFRESHMENT XCVI.— NEW ST. PAUL'S. No. L XCVII.— NEW ST. PAUL'S. No. II. XCVIII.— INNS OF COURT. No. I. XCIX.— INNS OF COURT. No. IL C THE READING ROOM OF MUSEUM . THE W. Weir . J. .C. Platt 3. Saunders G. L. Cbaik J. Saundebs G. Dodd J. C. Platt W. Weib . G. L. Cbak J. Saundebs BRITISH J. C. Platt J. Saundebs G. Dodd J. Saunders ,) Anoh . . Anoh Paob 1 17 33 49 65 81 97 113 12914S161 177 193 209 225241 257 273 269305321 337353 369 385 X 2 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. LXXVI.— BEER. The Brewer's Drayman .... The Brewer's Dray .... Consumption of Beer in London Passage in Franklin's ' Memoirs ' . . Roderick Random and Strap . . . The Capabilities of Beer appreciated by Gold. smith in an Artistical point of view . , Visit of the Royal Family to Whitbread's Brewery Extracts from Peter Pindar . . The Domestic and Political History of Beer im. mortalized by Hogarth and Gilray Hogarth's ' Beer Street ' • . . Union between Beer and Art and Literature Johnson's Room at Barclay and Perkins's Brew house ...... Mandeville and Franklin . . . First cultivation of Hops in England Beer a staple Article of Export in the Sixteenth Century ...... The London Company of Brewers incorporated in 1427 Songs in Praise of Ale .... Chaucer's Miller ..... Increase of Alehouses in the time of Elizabeth Statistics of the Beer Trade in London in the year 1585 and 1591 .... Foreign Beer Trade a cloak for the Smuggling of other Commodities .... Pa ox 1 1 2 3 4 Pm Persecution of Alehouse-keepers under the Long Parliament ...... Beer an indifferent Liquor down to the time of the Revolution ...... Progress of the London Beer Trade from the Re- volution to the accession of George III. . Change in the Character of London Beer in the reign of Queen Anne ..... Introduction of Pale Ale in London . . Sir Harry Quickset and Isaac Bickerstaff at Dick's Coffee-house .... Improvement in the Beer Trade in 1732 . The "Mug-houses" Magnitude of the Great London Breweries Description of a Brewery in the • Penny Maga zine ' . • The Heidelberg Tun Immense jprofits derived from the business of Brewing . . " London Particular ' Guinness's Stout . FaT0 114 114 114 114 114 114 Death of Chaucer in 1400 .... 115 Poem composed by Chaucer on his Death-bed 115 Frightful Circumstances attending the last Days of Spenser . . . . , . 115 Introduction of Spenser to Queen Elizabeth by Raleigh . , . , . , .115 Order given by Queen Elizabeth that Spenser should be rewarded for his Poems . .115 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoe Verses presented to Queen Elizabeth by Spenser 115 Burial of Spenser , . . , . 116 Attendance of Spenser's Poetical Brethren at his Funeral 116 Inscription on Spenser's Monument . . 116 Tomb of Beaumont . . . . .116 Friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher . . 116 Remark of Schlegel on Beaumont and Fletcher 116 Monument erected to the Memory of Drayton by the Countess of Dorset .... 116 Inscription on Drayton's Tomb . . .116 Drayton's • Poly- Olbion ' . . . .117 Tablet to the Memory of Ben Jonson . .117 Anecdote of Ben Jonson and the Dean of West minster ....... 117 Cowley's Funeral . . . . .117 Monument erected to Cowley's Memory . . 117 Dryden's Tomb ...... 117 Pope's Couplet on Dryden's Tomb . . 118 Death of Dryden in 1700 . . . .118 Circumstances attending the Funeral of Dryden 118 Rowe's Monument ..... 120 Inscription by Pope on Rowe's Monument . 120 Matthew Prior's Tomb . . . .120 Gay's Monument ...... 120 Tombs of Denham and Macpherson . . 121 Memorial of Milton 121 Shakspere's Memorial . . . , . . 121 Memorials to Phillips, Butler, Gay, 'Thomson, Mason, and Goldsmith .... 121 Character of Goldsmith .... 121 Latin Inscription by Dr. Johnson on the Tablet raised to Goldsmith's Memory . . . 122 Paoi Barrow's Tablet and Bust .... 122 Body of Johnson interred in Westminster Abbey 123 Johnson's Monument in St. Paul's , , 123 Garrick's Monument ..... 123 Charles Lamb's depreciation of Actors . . 123 Handel's Monument . . . . .123 Handel's Commemorations .... 124 Fitting up of Westminster Abbey for the First Commemoration in 1783 .... 124 Last Commemoration in 1834 . . . 124 Tablet to the Memory of Granville Sharp . 124 Incident that led Granville Sharp to make the first attempt to Emancipate the Negroes . 124 Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 . . 125 Busts of St. Evremond and Shadwell , . 125 Mrs. Pritchard's Monument .... 125 Monument to the Memory of the Great Duke of Argyll 125 Statue of Addison ..... 125 Remarks by Addison on Westminster Abbey . 125 Addison's conduct to Gay on his Death-bed . 126 Addison's Burial described by Tiokell . . 126 Tombs of Cumberland and Henderson . . 126 Monument erected to Camden, Master of West minster Abbey . . . . . .126 Monument of Dr. Busby .... 126 Sheridan s Tomb ...... 127 Destitute state in which Sheridan died . . 127 Desertion of Sheridan by his Friends and Ad mirers ....... 127 Magnificence of Sheridan's Funeral . . 127 ILLUSTRATIONS. 33. Poets' Corner . . 34. Monument of Dryden 35. Monument of Barrow 36. Plan of Westminster Abbey Designers. Engraven Smallwood Jackson . 113 Clarke . 118 ,j . 122 Sly Sly . 128 LXXXIV.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. 5. A WALK THROUGH THE EDIFICE. .Effect produced on the mind by a first or occa sional Visit to the Abbey Memorials . .Absence of any systematic Arrangement of the Objects of Interest in Westminster Abbey Westmacott's Monument to the Duke de Mont- pensier ....,,, Beauty of the Old Monuments in Henry VII.'s Chapel ....... Westminster Abbey an unsuitable place for Modern Monuments .... Best mode of examining the Abbey Memorials Finest Interior View of the Abbey Monuments in the Southern Aisle of the. Choir Memorial to Major Andr6 in the Nave of West minster Abbey ...... Mutilation of the Figures on Andre's Monu ment ....... Monuments by Roublliac of Hargrave, Fleming, and Wade ...... Actors and Actresses buried in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey ..... Funeral of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey . . Tombs of Vertue, the Engraver, aud Benjamin Cooke ....... Sir L. Robinson's Monument, by Read . Memorial to Congreve ..... Inscription on Congreve's Tomb . . . 129 129 130 130 131 132 132132 132 132 132 133133 133133 133134 Congreve's disposal of his Property Burial Place of Dean Atterbury . Mrs. Oldfield's Burial Dress Statue of James Craggs . . Inscription by Pope on Craggs' Tomb Memorials occupying the Western End of the Northern Aisle of Westminster Abbey Monuments to Mrs. Jane Hill and Spencer Per. ceval ..... Screen erected by Mr. Blore . . Sir Isaac Newton's Monument Stained-glass Windows of the Western Front of Westminster Abbey . , . Interior of the Nave .... Monuments in the North Aisle of the Choir Epitaph on Purcell's Tomb Memorials to Samuel Arnold and Blore . Memorials to Dr. Burney and Dr, Croft . Lord Mansfield's Monument . Memorials to Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Castlereagh Canning, Wilberforce, and G rattan Military and Naval Memorials Monument, sculptured by Westmacott, to Mrs, Warren and Child . Inscription on the Tomb of the Duke and Du chess of Newcastle .... Inscription on the Tablet to Grace Scott 134 134 V,4134134 134135 135 135135 135ise 136 136136 138 137 137 138 138 138 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Roubiliac's Monument to Sir Francis Vere Roubiliac's last Work .... Monument to General Wolfe, in Islip's Chapel Monuments in the Chapel of St. John the Bap. tist ...... Monument to Lord Hunsdon Tomb of the Earl of Exeter . Inscription on the Earl of Exeter's Tomb Colonel Popham's Alabaster Monument . Tombs of Abbots Colchester and Fascet . Circumstance to which is attributed the Death of Bishop Ruthall .... Watt's Statue in the Chapel of St. Paul . Monument of Lord Bourchier . Monument to Sir Giles and Lady Daubeny Punning Inscription on the Tomb of Sir John and Lady Fullerton .... Beauty, of Westmacott's Monument to the Duke de Montpensier . ... . Tomb of the Duke of Buckingham . Tomb of the Duke and Duchess of Richmond Paok 138138139 139139139 139 139 139 139139140140 140 140 140140 PAes 140 140 141 Mary Queen of Scots' Monument . Funeral of Monk D^ike of Albemarle . . Monument of the Earl of Halifax . . . Institution of the Order of the Knights of the Bath .,..*. ^ The Order of the Knights of the Bath remodelled by George IV. . ..... Ceremony of the Installation of a Knight of the Bath Precautions taken by George I, for the Health of his infant Grandson, on knighting him . Archway beneath Henry V,'s Chantry . Tomb of Henry V The Chapels of St, Nicholas, St. Edmund, and St, Benedict ...... Monuments in St. Nicholas's Chapel . . Tomb of William de Valence, Eafl of Pembroke Tomb of John of Eltham, son of Edward II. . Brass Effigy of Eleanor de Bohun . . . The Choir 143 Abbot Ware's Mosaic Pavement . . . 143 141141 141 142 142 142 142 142 143143 143 ILLUSTRATIONS. 37. Brass from Tomb of Sir Thomas Yaughan 38. Statue of James Watt . 39. Monument of the Earl of Mansfield 40. Monument of Mary Queen of Scots 41. Tomb of Henry V. 42. Monument of Aymer de Valence . Designers. Engravers. Fairholt Heavisydb C. Lanose^iii Sly Clarke Jackson Shepherd Sly Shepherd Sears Thompson Sly 129131 137 141143 144 LXXXV.— OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. A Police Reporter the truest Historian of his Age Primitive Simplicity still lingering in the Coun try Parts of England .... Expedient frequently employed by London Thieves ...... Coney-catching ..... Robert Greene's ' Notable Discovery of Co z'enage '...... The Setter, the Verser, and the Barnacle Coney-catching practised not only in London, but throughout England . . . Pickpockets' Laws .... Barnard's Laws ..... ' Greene's Ghost haunting Coney-Catchers ' Various Cheats not noticed by Greene in his ' Notable Discovery of Cozenage ' . New Rogueries invented after the publication of Greene's Tract .... Cant Language of Thieves and Beggars . Barman's ' Caveat, or Warning for Common Cursitors '..... Pedlers' French ..... 145 146 146148 148 148149 150150 151 151 152152 153153 Various Vocabularies of the Thieves' Language appended to modem Publications . ' The Groundwork of Coney-catching ' . Origin of the Thieves' Language . . Thomas Decker's ' Bellman of London' . Mistaken Notion of the Identity of the Gipsy and Cant Languages .... Extirpation of the Gipsies from England Harman 's Cursitors, or Vagabonds . A Counterfeit Crank .... Nicholas Geniugs and Nicholas Blunt . Lodging-Houses resorted to by Thieves and Wandering Beggars . . • . . Chief Places of Residence of the London Tinkers Similarity between the Fool and the Knave Money-dropping and Ring-dropping . ' The Countryman's Guide to London ' . Description by Sir John Fielding of the Trick of Ring-dropping ..... Most effective way of legislating against swin dling and thieving . . . , , Which the greater public Nuisance, the Cheater or the Cheatee ..... ILLUSTRATIONS. 43. Mulled Sack 44. Genings and Blunt 45. Sir John Fielding . 46. Man and Woman in Stocks Designers. Engraven. Wells S. Sly Anelay Jackson 153 153 153153154 154 155 155156 156 156 157158138 158159 160 145156 158160 LXXXVL— LONDON BURIALS. Church Burial-grounds .... Origin of the Custom of burying in and around Churches ...... 161 I Catacombs near Rome . . . » ^ . let Burials of the Christians in the Roman CatR- 163 I comha -, . . - , . 162 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoe Erection of Altars and formation of Churches in the Catacombs 163 Establishment of the Christian Religion by the Conversion of the Emperor Constantine . 162 Burial of Constantine in the Temple of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople . . . 163 Privilege of being interred in a Church ob tained by Princes distinguished for Piety . 163 Committee of the House of Commons appointed in March, 1842, to investigate the State of the Burying-grounds of London . . .163 Evidence given before the Committee of the overfilling of London Burial-grounds . . 163 Immense Number of Bodies interred beneath Enon Chapel 164 Mode employed by the Minister of Enou Chapel to dispose of the Bodies interred there . 164 Burning of the Coffins . . . . . 164 The Removal of decayed Bodies a generally re cognised Mode of making Room in the Burial- grounds of London ..... 165 Explanation of the remarkable Capacity of the Burial-grounds of the Metropolis . . 165 Proceedings in St, Clement's Churchyard, de scribed in the Evidence of W, Chamberlain . 165 Incident related by Chamberlain in his Evi dence before the Committee . . .166 Minor Practices of the Gravediggers in the Me tropolitan Burying-grounds . • .166 Crimes committed by Fox, the Sexton of St. Anne's, Soho . . . . . .166 Varieties of Climate to which a Metropolitan Gravedigger is exposed .... 166 Gravediggers' Sports . . . . .167 Horrible Circumstance narrated by Lyons in his Evidence before the Committee . . .167 Sensations experienced by the Gravediggers in opening a Grave . . . . .167 Gravediggers usually an intemperate set of Men 167 Instances of the Effects produced by inhaling the Vapours of a Vault .... 167 Sudden Deaths occasioned by Persons descend ing into newly-opened Vaults . . .168 Account given by Mr. Walker of a tragic Cir cumstance attending a Burial at Montpelier in France ...... 168 Pasb Certain Phenomena usually considered as mi raculous attributable to the Effects of mephitic Vapours 168 Effects of the Metropolitan System of Burial on the Public Health 158 Effluvia from the Graves considered as one Cause of Fever and Disease in the Metropolis 169 Story illustrating the Evils attending the Inter ment of Bodies in and around Pljices of Wor. ship , 169 Burial-grounds of France, Spain, and Germany 170 Cemeteries of Liverpool and Manchester . 1 7Q Act passed in 1832 for the formation of the Cemetery at Kensal Green . . . 170 Grounds of the Kensal Green Cemetery . .171 Chapel for the Dissenters in the Kensal Green Cemetery ...... 171 Chapel for the use of the Members of the Church of England 171 The Catacombs 171 The Chapel Colonnade . . . .171 Monument by Sievier . . . . .171 Erection of Funeral Monuments calculated to improve the Public Taste . . . .172 Curious and interesting Monuments scattered about the Grounds of the Kensal Green Ce metery , 172 System of mapping out the Ground practised by the Cemetery Companies . . . .173 Improvements capable of being made in the Ar rangements of the Cemetery Companies . 173 Peculiarities of the Cemetery at Stoke New- ington . . ¦ . . . .174 Residence and Death of Dr. Watts at Abuey Park 174 Tradition that the Remains of Oliver Cromwell are interred in Abney Park . . .174 Expenses of Burial in the present Cemeteries . 174 Neapolitan System of Burial . . .175 Customs of Tuscany regarding the Burial of the Poor ....... 175 Act brought' in by Mr. Mackinnon, to prevent future Interments in Churches ... 175 Regulations regarding the Consecration and Management of Cemeteries . . , 175 ILLUSTRATIONS. 47, Cemetery, Kensal Green 48. Norwood Cemetery 49. Highgate Cemetery , Designers. Engravers. Tiffin Jackson . 161 »> » • . 173 j» • . 176 LXXXVII.— LONDON FIRES. " Fire !" the most startling and irresistible of rallying words . . . . . . 1 77 A Fire in London at night . . . .177 Difference in the Manner in which Fires are regarded by the Populace in different Coun tries ....... 178 Account of a Fire in the Metropolis given by the London Correspondent of ' Le Temps ' . 178 Improvements made latterly iu the Fire Esta- lilishment at Paris ..... 179 Statistics of London Fires .... 179 Amount of Fires in the Metropolis during the Period of Nine Years .... 179 Paragraph in ' The Times' of Aug. 21, 1835 . 179 Minute Details collected and recorded by the l/oudon Fire Establishment . • • 179 Average Number of Persons destroyed yearly by Fire In London . . . . .180 Fire-escapes constructed within the last few Years . . . ... . . 180 Small Number of Lives saved by Fire-escapes . 18© Extract from Mr. Leigh Hunt's ' Companion ' . 181 Arrangements for extinguishing a Fire more extensive than those relating to the Safety of the Inmates ...... 181 Means employed to extinguish a Fire in earlier times ..•...«• 181 First Fire-engine known in England . . 181 Stanza by Di7den, descriptive of the customary Usages at a Fire in his Day . • Construction of a Fire-engine in Germany in 1657 182182 xii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Pxsi Invention of anew Fire-engine in 1672 . .182 Introduction of Fire-engines into England . 182 The Pompes Portatives of Paris . . _ . 182 Principles of Science on which the Action of the Fire-engine depends .... 182 Fire-police System in 1668 .... 183 Regulations for the Suppression of Fires made by the Corporation of London after the Great Fire 183 Improvements made by the Insurance Compa nies in the Construction of Fire-engines . 184 Independent Fire-engine Establishments main tained by the Insurance Companies of Lon don 184 Sir Frederick M. Eden's Plan for the Formation of a General Fire-engine Establishment . 184 Union of Three Fire-engine Establishments in 1825 . . . . ~ . . .184 Formation of the present " London Fire-engine Establishment" 184 General arrangements of the London Fire-engine Establishment ...... 185 Changes made in Fire-engine Establishments since the Year 1833 185 Risks encountered by the Brigade-men in the Discharge of their Duty . . . .185 Means adopted to. give .prompt Information on the Occurrence of a Fire . . . .185 Pasi Alarms of Fire caused by Atmospherical Pheno mena . . . . . . . ISij Coolness and System displayed in the Proceed ings of the Brigade-men .... Igg Smoke-proof Dress worn by the Brigade-men at a Fire 187 Ascensive tendency of Smoke . . .187 Floating Fire-engines on the Thames . . 188 Principle of Insurance Companies . . 168 Foreign Fire Insurance Companies . . 189 Life Insurance Company established in the Reign of Queen Anne ..... 1B9 Life Insurance Offices in London . . . 189 Principal Fire Offices in London . . . 189 Contribution Societies ..... 189 Extent to which the System of Insurance is carried ....... 19C In early Times the Curfew deemed the most im portant Preventive Measure against Fire , 190 Different Applications of the Term Curfew . 190 Ancient Curfew in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Gosling 191 Custom of ringing the Curfew Bell . . 191 Means proposed within the last Half-century for the Prevention of Fire .... 191 Mr. Loudon's Plan for rendering Houses Fire proof ....... Ifl] Lines by Dryden ..... 192 ILLUSTRATIONS. 60. First Fire-engine . 51. Smoke-proof Dress . 52. Dress of the Fire-brigade , 53. Floating Fire-engine on the Thames 54, Couvre-feu .... Designers. Engraven. Fairholt Sears . 177 Tiffin Jackson . 187 t, « . 187 » . 188 Fairholt S. Sly . 192 LXXXVIII.— BILLINGSGATE. Derivation of the Name of Billingsgate -. ^'f . 193 Queenhithe the most important Landirigr^lace in London until the Reign of Henry III* , "^.. 193 Inquisition held in the Reign of HenryJIj. touching the ancient Payments and Customs of Queenhithe ..... r. 194 Regulations made in 1468 respecting the Dis charge of Cargo at Billingsgate and Queen hithe . , 194 A Peculiarity of Old London . . . 194 Houses in Old Fish Street . . . .194 The Old Fish Market 194 The Stocks Market 195 Establishment of some of the principal Fish mongers in Bridge Street in the reign of Ed ward II 195 Stock Fishmongers' Row .... 195 Prices of Fish in the reign of Edward I. . . 195 Combination formed in 1320 against the Fish mongers of Fish Wharf . . . .196 Endeavour of the Fishmongers in 1363 to effect a Monopoly ...... 196 The Fishmongers' Company one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the City Companies in the Fourteenth Century .... 196 Affray between the Fishmongers and Skinners 196 Precedency of the Stock Fishmongers settled in 1509 196 The Fishmongers formed into a Guild . , 196 The Fishmongers' earliest Charter uf Incorpo ration 197 Civic Honours conferred upon Members of the Fishmongers' Company .... 197 Statue of William Walworth in Fishmongers' Hall 197 Inscription on the Pedestal of Walworth's Statue , 197 Privileges of the Fishmongers' Company at tacked in 1382 197 Restoration of the Fishmongers to their full Privileges 197 Monuments to Fishmongers in the Old Churches in the Vicinity of the Fish Markets 197 Lovekin and Walworth , . , . 198 Funeral Pall in the possession of the Fish mongers' Company ..... 198 Stock Fishmongers a superior Class to oth^r Fishmongers . , . . . . 198 Fairs of Stourbridge, St. Ives, and Ely . . 198 Letters Patent obtained for the Establishment of a Fair at Lynn ..... 198 Irregular Practices of the Fishmongers at Lynn 198 Tusser's recommendation to Husbandmen . 198 Lines from ' February's Husbandry' . . 199 Consumption of Salt- Fish .... 199 Diminished consumption of Fish in London in the latter part of the Sixteenth Century . 199 Act passed in 1699 for making Billingsgate a Free Market for the Sale of Fish . . 199 Abuses practised by the Billingsgate Fishmongers 199 Plan suggested by Mr. Houghton for supplying Fish to Inland Towns .... 199 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiil Act passed in 1749 for making a Free Market for the Sale of Fish in Westminster Plans for supplying the Metropolis with Fish . Formation of a Fish Association Attempt in 1830 to establish a Wholesale Fish Market at H ungerford Market Lines by Wordsworth descriptive of the Ap pearance of London in the early Summer Morning ....... Billingsgate on a Winter's Morning . . Delivery of the Cargoes .... Uncertainty bf the Prices of the Fish brought to Billingsgate . . , Improvement in the Language and Behaviour of the Frequenters of Billingsgate . Ward's ' Loudon Spy ' . . . . , Paoi 200200200 201 201201202 202 203 204 Pam Billingsgate before the introduction ot Steam boats 204 Angling near London Bridge . . . 204 John Reeves ...... 204 Number of Sailing-vessels at the different Ports in England 205 Description in the ' Brighton Herald ' of a Sale of Fish on the Coast ..... 205 The supply of Fish to London effected by the Railways from the Southern Coast . . 206 Supply of Salmon to Billingsgate Market . 206 The Salmon Trade at Berwick . . . 107 Mode of Packing Salmon in Ice . . . 207 Average Quantity of Salmon brought to Billings gate 208 Fish an unimportant Article of Diet in England 208 ILLUSTRATION, 65. Billingsgate Market Designer. Tiffin Engraver. Jackson 193 LXXXlX. -SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON CHURCHES AT THE CLOSE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. The Existing Churches of London only a portion of those which existed before the Great Fire Remains of the Parochial Church of St. Michael Remains of an ancient Church of Gothic con struction in Leadenhall Street The City now wholly a place of Mercantile Business ....... The Churches of London, Past and Present Destruction of Churches at the Reformation and in the Great Fire .... The end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century the most fiourishing period of the Churches of London . . . Destruction of the Romish Church . . The Romish Church at the height of its Power and Usefulness at the close of the Fourteenth Century ..,,... Chaucer's Picture of the Omnipresence of the Church ....... The OfBce and Dignity of the " Limitour '' Houses of the Mendicant Friars in London The Monks a more Aristocratical race than the Mendicant Friars ..... Chaucer's Monk ...... Monasteries of London in the Fourteenth Cen tury ....... Priory of the Holy Trinity at Aldgate . . Origin of Portsoken ..... The Nunneries of London .... The Priories of the West End of London in the Fourteenth Century ..... St. Martin's and St. Paul's .... 209 210 210 210 211 211 211 212 212 212 214214 215 215216316216216 217217 The Churches of London about and before the year 1400 Appearance of Loudon in the Fourteenth Cen tury Walbrook and Langburn .... Part of London contained within the City Walls ¦. Parish Churches and Chapels within and with out the City Walls ..... Appearance and Distribution of the Ecclesi astical Buildings iu the Fourteenth Century Straggling semi-rural Appearance of London in the Fourteenth Century .... Reason for the Multiplication of Churches in the Fourteenth Century .... Poverty of the Priests , , . . . The Church identified with the whole Domestic Life of the Citizens of London . . Chaucer's London Citizens .... Cleanliness of the Inhabitants of the Low Country North of the Tweed . Regulations of the " Fraternity of Good Men " begun in the year 1375 iu the Church of St. James, Garlickhithe ..... The Fraternity of All Souls .... Influence of the Fraternities en the Citizens of London ....... The Folkmote of the Citizens of London . Pilgrimages ...... Account given by Maitland of the Profligacy of the Priests in the Fourteenth Century , ILLUSTRATIONS, 56. Tower of St, Michael's, Cornhill . 67, St. Michael le Quern 58, Porch of S. Alphage . . • Designers.Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 217 218 218 318 218 219 220 220221 231221 221 222 333333233 323323 209313324 XC— SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE IN LONDON. Present modes of Thieving and Pocket-picking the same as in the Times of Elizabeth and James ....... 235 Important Changes in the Character of London Roguery and Crime ..... 236 Management of the Police in England a few Years back 227 Glimpse given by Fielding in his ' Tom Jones ' of a Country Magistrate of his Day . . 227 The Basket Justice ..... 227 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoi Picture of the London Trading Justice in Fiehiihg's ' Amelia ' .... 228 Jonathan Thrasher, Esq, . . . . 228 Evidence of John Townseud before a Commit tee appointed to inquire into the State of the Police of the Metropolis .... 228 The Police System from 1780 to 1816 . . 228 Police Bill passed in 1792 .... 228 Sir John Fielding 238 Measures taken to give Respectability to the Bow Street Magistrates . , . . 229 Trade in the Restoration of Stolen Property car ried on by Jonathan Wild .... 229 Execution of Wild at Tyburn iu 1725 . . 229 Jonathan Wild's Evidence at the Trial of But ler Fox . . . , . . .230 Wild's Evidence at the Trial of John James in 1732 . , • . . . .230 Account of his own Proceedings, given by Wild, in his Evidence at the Trial of three Persons indicted for several Robberies iu January, 1723 ' 231 Conviction and Execution of Blueskin in 1725 231 Rewards given by Act of Parliament for the Ap- prehehsion of Highway-Robbers . . . 232 Trial of Berry, Salmon, Macdonald, and Gaha- gan 232 Macdonald and Berry exposed in the Pillory . 232 Paok Deaths of Gahagau and Salmon . . . 232 Plan adopted by Thief-takers to apprehend an innocent Person ..... 332 A Blood-feast .••... 233 Trial and Imprisonment of Yaughan and his Confederates 233 Evidence of Mr. Birnie before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817 . . ¦ 233 John Townsend's Philosophy . . , 234 The State Lottery , i . . , 234 Illegal Trading in the Insurance of Lottery Tickets .234 Highway Robberies . . . . . 235 Decrease in the Frequency of Highway Rob beries 236 Unsparing and merciless Application of the Pe nalties of the Law with the view of putting down Highway Robberies . . . . , 236 Continual War between Law and Crime , 236 InefBciency of the Law to diminish Crime . 237 Crime not capable of being extinguished by the Reformation of a Criminal . . . 237 A Prison rightly to be considered not a School, but a place of restraint and punishment . 238 The Exertions of Philanthropy incapable of stopping the Career of Vice . . . 238 59. 60, 61. ILLUSTRATIONS, Interior of Bow Street Police Office about 1816, partly from a Print by Rowlandson ...... Jonathan Wild ........ Towusend, the Police Officer Tiffin Engravers. Jackson 225 230235 XCI.— OLD ST. PAUL'S. Ahecdote told by Bede, of the Sons of Sebert, and MellituB, Bishop of London . . . 341 Church, dedicated to St. Paul, erected by Eth- elbert. King of Kent, and Sebert, his ne phew 243 Evidences adduced by Wren to prove that the earliest Metropolitan Church was founded hy St. Paul 243 True Period of the Foundation of the first Chris tian Church in London .... 343 Conversion of King Lucius to Christianity . 243 FaganuB and Damianus sent by Pope Eleuthe- rius to instruct the People of England in Christianity 343 The latter Part of the Second Century probably the Period of the Erection of the first great Church in London ..... 343 Destruction of the Church during the Persecu tion of the Christians under the Emperor Dioclesian 343 Temple to Diana supposed to have been built on the Site of the present St. Paul's . . 243 Roman Remains dug up under the Foundations of St. Paul's 344 Circumstances connected with the early History of St, Paul's 344 Camera Dianse on St. Paul's Wharf Hill . 344 Probable Truth of the Tradition regarding the Temple to Diana 344 Appearance of one of the Apostles to Lauren- tius. Archbishop of Canterbury . . . 245 Erection of St. Paul's by Erkenwald in the be ginning of the Sixth Century ... 345 Benefactions to St. Paul's from the Kings of England 245 Destruction of St, Paul's by Fire in the Reign of William the Conqueror .... 345 A new Church dedicated to St. Paul, com menced by Bishop Maurice towards the close of the Eleventh Century .... 245 Reasons to which are attributable the grandeur and beauty of early Architecture . . ~ . 346 Seal of Bishop Maurice .... 246 Richard de Beaiuneis ..... 246 Additions to St Paul's made in the Reign of Henry in. 346 Mode in which Money was obtained for the Construction of St. Paul's .... 247 Costly Adoi-nments of the Interior of a Cathe dral 247 Festival of the Conversion of St Paul . . 348 Festivities at the Bishop's Palace on the occa sion of the Visit of Edward III. and Queen Philippa after the great Tournament in Smith- field .... i .. 348 Appearance of St. Paul's Cathedral on tlie Day of the Festival of the Conversion of its Patron Saint ....... 243 Costume of 'the Beginning of the Fifteenth Cen tury 248 Order of the Procession on St. Paul's Day . 249 Offering of a Doe at the High Altar of St. Paul's 349 The Huntsman ...... 250 The Coinmemoration of St. Erkenwald's Burial in St. Paul's Cathedral . . . .350 Superstition respecting St. Erkenwald's Litter . 250 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoi Dress of the Bishop at the Ceremony of the Com memoration of St. Erkenwald's Burial . 250 St. Erkenwald's Shrine . . . .251 Ornaments used in the Adornment of the , Shrine .•'...•. 351 Gifts of Money or Jewels laid before the Shrine of St. Erkenwald 251 Processions of the Flagellants in the reign of Edward III 251 Sculptured Image of Our Lady in the Nave of Old St. Paul's 352 Tomb of Sir John Beauehamp . . . 352 Effigies of Eustace de Fauconberge and Henry de Wengham ...... 352 Tomb of Henry de Lacy in St. Dunstan's Chapel ....... 252 Our Lady's CJiapel ..... 253 Altar of Our Lady 253 Pass Monument to the Memory of Ralph de Heng- ham 253 Melancholy Fate of Sir Simon Burley . . 253 "Tombs of Sebba and Ethelred . . . 353 incidents in the reign of Ethelred the Unready 253 Death of Edward the Atheling . . .354 The High Altar of Old St, Paul's . . .254 Picture of St. Paul to the right of the High Altar 254 Oratory of Roger de Waltham, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral 254 Monument of John of Gaunt . . . 255 Charges of Innovation and Heresy brought againstWickliffein 1377 , . . .355 Irritation of the Mob against John of Gaunt . 355 Outrages committed by the Mob on the Savoy Palace ... . , . . . 256 Measurements of Old St. Paul's takeii in 1315 350 ILLUSTRATIONS. 63, East Window, from the Choir 63, St, Faith's 64. Dress of Citizens' Wives in the beginning of the Fifteenth Century ......... Designers, Tiffin Freeman Engravers. Jackson . BVRBOWS 241 247 249 XCII.— OLD ST. PAUL'S. No. 2. Election of the Boy-bishop on St. Nicholas's Day 357 Power of the Boy-bishop during his Rule . 357 The Sphere of the Boy-bishop not confined to the Church 258 Panegyric sang by a Boy-bishop on Queen Mary 258 Theatrical Representations of Old St. Paul's . 258 The Mysteries, or Holy Plays . . . 258 Presentation of the Banner of St. Paul to Ro bert Fitzwalter . . . ' , . 259 The Great Bell of St, Paul's . . . .359 Patriotism and Christianity in the Thirteenth Century 359 Exterior Of Old St, Paul's in the Fifteenth Century 260 PardonrChurch Haugh .... 260 Gilbert Becket aud the Emir's Daughter . 261 Baptism of the Mother of Thomas i Becket . 261 ' Death leading away all Estates ' . . . 361 ' The Dance of Machabree ' . . . .361 Dialogue between Death and the Emperor . 361 ' Death leading away all Estates," probably sug gested by the Ravages of the Plague . . 262 Death and the Tregetour .... 262 Library of St. Paul's 262 The Bell Tower 262 Injury done by Lightning to the Spire of St. Paul's in 1444 .... i . 263 Correspondence between the Authorities of St, Paul's and Queen Anne Boleyn's Vice- Chamberlain 263 Evidence of the Progress of the Reformation . 263 Completion of Coverdale's Translation of the Bible in 1539 264 Dissolution of the Chantries in the reign of Ed ward VI 364 The Church stripped of its Valuables and Orna ments in the reign of Edward VI. . . 264 Masses kept up in the Chapels ofSt. Paul's in 1549 265 Joy of the Catholic Party on the Accession of Mary 265 Destruction of the tall Steeple of St. Paul's in 1561 365 Reparation of St. Paul's in 1566 . . .266 Additioua made to St. Paul's by Inigo Jones . 366 Instances of Zeal in the Restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral 366 Abolition of Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, in 1643 266 Dugdale's St. Paul's 266 Injury done to St. Paul's in the reigns of Henry VIIL, Edward VI., and Elizabeth . . 367 Damage done by Protector Somerset to St. Paul's in the reign of Edward VI. . . 367 Tablet to Linacre in Old St. Paul's . . 367 Sir Philip Sidney's Monument . . . 267 Monuments to Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon 268 Visit of Queen Elizabeth to Bacon at Gorham- bury 368 Monument of the Earl of Pembroke . . 368 Memorial uf Dean Colet .... 268 Peculiar purposes for which St. Paul's was occasionally used by the Church and State . 268 King John's acknowledgment of the Supremacy of the Pope read in St. Paul's in 1313 . 368 Degradation of the first English Martyr from the Priestly Order 269 The Lollards' Tower . . . . . 269 Murder of Richard Hunne'in the Lollards' Tower in 1514 269 Acts of Atrocity committed hy the Authorities of St, Paul's 270 State Pageants and Exhibitions in St. Paul's . 270 Welcome given to Louis of France by the Lon doners in 1216 . . . . .370 State Pageant at St. Paul's on the Marriage of Prince Arthur with Katherine of Arragon . 270 Uses to which the Public were accustomed to turn the Nave and Aisles of St. Paul's . . 270 Traffic in Benefices at St. Paul's . . .371 Paul's Walk 271 Origin of the Popular Phrase of Dining with Duke Humphrey ..... 271 The Exterior of St. Paul's a popular place for various Public Proceedings . ¦ . 37 1 First Lottery drawn before the Western Doors of St. Paul's in 1669 271 XTl ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. 65. Old St. Paul's, before the Destruction of the Steeple 66. Baptism of the Mother of Thomas a Becket . . 67. Reading the Chained Bible .... 68. Inigo Jones's Portico ..... Designers. Engravers. Paos Tiffin Jackson . . 257 Fairholt Sly . 260 KiRCHNER . 264 POYNTEB Jackson . . 272 XCIII,— SOMERSET HOUSE. 273 273 2'74274 274 274 274275 275 375 275 275 Residences of Noblemen in the City in the Fif teenth Century ..... Mansion of the Earl of Salisbury . . Residence of the Marquis of Winchester in Austin Friars . . . . . ' . Mansion of the Earls of Northumberland in Fenchurch Street ..... The Pope's Head Tavern in Cornhill . Gradual Removal of the Nobility from the City to the West End of London . . Northumberland House .... Baynard's Castle , , . . . Council held at Baynard's Castle in the Reign of Lady Jane Grey ..... Residence of King Stephen at Tower Royal, in Vintry Ward .,,... Flight of the Mother of Richard II. to Tower Royal, during Wat Tyler's Insurrection Mansion of Henry VI. in the Old Jewry Occupation of the Palace of Bridewell by Henry VIII 275 Elevation of Edward Seymour to the Earldom of Hertford 275 The Earl of Hertford created Duke of Somerset in 1546 275 Mode in which the Duke of Somerset obtained Space and Building Materials for the Erection of his Palace in the Strand . . . Demolition of the Charnel-house of Old St. Paul's by Protector Somerset , , , Means of Aggrandisement pursued by Protector Somerset ...... Somerset committed to the Tower in 1549 . Charges brought against Somerset . . . Execution of Somerset in 1552 - . Old Somerset House the first Building of Italian Architecture executed in England . . Somerset House assigned to the Princess Eliza beth on the Death of the Protector Somerset House the Residence of Anne of Den mark, Queen to James I. . Visit to England of Christian IV. of Denmark in 1608 278 Death of Anne of Denmark in 1618 . . 278 Somerset House settled for Life on Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I. ... Act passed during the Protectorate for selling Somerset House ..... Re-establishment of Henrietta Maria at Somer set House after the Restoration . . . 279 276276276276 276 277277 277278 279 279 Verses by Cowley 'On the Queen's repairing Somerset House' ..... 279 Additions made to Somerset House by Henrietta Maria 280 Queen Henrietta's Court .... 280 Extracts from Pepys's Diary .... 280 Visit of Pepys to the Queen's Chapel . . 280 Death of Queen Henrietta in 1669 , . , 21il Somerset House the sole Residence of Catherine of Braganza on the Death of Charles II. . 281 Titus Oatess Plot 281 Mysterious Death of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey 2!il Execution of Three Persons charged with the Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey . . 281 Later Years of Catherine of Braganza . . 281 Somerset House appropriated to the Use of the Public in 1775 282 Street Aspect of Old Somerset House . . 282 Sir William Chambers appointed Architect of the New Somerset House .... 282 Exterior of Somerset House .... 282 View of the Thames from Somerset House . 282 Somerset House app'roprlated to the Exhibition of Paintings of the Royal A eademy . , 283 Meetings of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries at Somerset House . . . 283 Apartments in Somerset House assigned to the Royal Astronomical and the Geological So cieties 283 School of Design ..... 283 King's College 283 Uses to which Somerset House is applied for several Departments Of the Government . 383 The Audit Offices ..... 284 The Tax Officre 284 The Stamp Office ,...', 284 Machinery for stamping Postage Envelopes . 285 Office of the Poor Law Commission in Somerset House 285 Means practised in the Sixteenth Century for diminishing the Sufferings of Poverty , . 286 The Poor Law Commission appointed in 1834 as a Central Board for regulating the Mode of administering Relief to the Poor . . 286 Registrar General's Office .... 286 Parish Registers first ordered to be kept in 1538 287 No Official Returns of the Population of Eng land existing previous to the Census of 1801 . 287 The Tithe Commission .... 287 ILLUSTRATIONS. 69. Somerset House, Strand Front 70. Old Somerset House 71. Anne of Denmark . 73. James I. Lying in State ....... 73i Medal struck to oommemorate the Murder of Sir E. Godfrey Designers. Engravers. Anelay Jackson . . 273 Cleghorn Byfield . 277 Fairholt Smyth . 278 II Sears . 279 ») Holloway . 288 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XCIV.— THE OLD BAILEY. An Old Bailey Crowd on Court Days . . Vacations at the Old Bailey .... Act passed for the Establishment of a Central Criminal Court in 1S34 . . Judges of the Central Criminal Court . . Interior of the Old Bailey .... The Old Court . ... Bailey supposed to be a Corruption of Bail Hill Arrangements of the Court .... The Representative of the Lord Mayor . . The Judge and the Attorney-General . . Prisoners charged with a Fraud upon the Court of Chancery ...... Epitaph written on Colonel Francis Charteris . Jack Sheppard ... . . . . Extract from the ' Annals of Newgate ' . . Incidental Passage in the History of the Old Bailey ....... The Judges of Charles I. tried at the Old Bailey , after the'Restoration ..... Trial of the Regicides in 1660 Harrison's Address to the Court at his Trial in 1660 . Courage exhibited by Colonel Carew . Defence of Harry Marten .... Condemnation of Harrison, Carew, and Marten Paoi 290 291 291 291 391 391 291 393292 293 293294294294295 295295 397 297397 Cook and Hugh Peters . . . • Execution of Harrison at Charing Cross . Touching Incidents connected with the Execu tion of Hugh Peters . . . . , Execution of Colonel Scott .... The Ryehouse Plot Algernon Sidney's last Words at his Trial in 1683 Trial of Lord William Russell . . Suicide of the Earl of Essex . . . . Execution of Lord William Russell The Old Bailey Dinners .... The Press Yard . . . . . . Custom of torturing Persons who refused to plead when called upon at the Bar Alteration in the Law iu the Reign of Henry IV, Statute of 12 Geo. Ill Torture infiicted upon Mary Andrews in 1721 . Trial of Major Strangeways, chai-ged with the Murder of his Brother-in-Law . . Mode in which Major Strangeways' Guilt was discovered ...... Sentence and Death of Major Strangeways . Returns from the annual Statements published by the Governor of Newgate Statement for 1841 of the Classification of Crimes, aud of the Punishments awarded . ILLUSTRATIONS. 74. Court of the Old Bailey 75. Gang of Prisoners being conveyed to Trial Designers. Tiffin Engravers. Jackson Paos 297298 298 298 299299299300 300 300 300 301 301 301 301301 302302303304 289 304 XCV.— PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. Description given by Addison of the Origin of Clubs ....... The Kit-Cat Club Clubs in the latter Part of the Eighteenth Cen tury Extract from Prior's ' Life of Goldsmith ' . The Literary Club ..... Clubs of the Lower Classes .... Clubs of the West End of London ... The Club Houses of Pall Mall Hotel-like Regulations of the London Club Houses ....... Extract from Mr. Walker's ' Original ' . . The Reform Club House .... Kitchen of the Reform (!lub .... Arrangements for economising Heat in the Kit chen of the Reform Club .... The Clerk of the Kitchen .... Use made of the Steam Engine in the Kitchen of the Reform Club ..... Taverns of the Eighteenth Century . . Chocolate Houses ..... Modern Taverns ...... Fashionable Hotels of the present Day Houses comprising the Features of Inn, Hotel, Tavern, and Coach Office .... Refreshment Houses of the Middle and Humble Classes of Society ..... Public Place of Cookery on the River's Bank, described by Fitzstephen .... 305306 306306 306 306307307 307 307 308 308308309310310 310310 311 311 311311 Lines from Lydgate's ' London Ljckpenny' . 312 Roderick Random and Strap's Visit to a Cook's Shop in a Cellar in London ... 312 London Eating-houses . . . . .313 Eating-houses in Bishopsgate Street . . 313 Eating-houses of the West End of London . 313 Routine of Proceedings at a London Eating- hoUse . . . . . . .313 Proceedings at the Alamode Beef Houses . 314 Lower Class of Soup-houses in the City . . 314 Chop-houses of the City .... 314 A LondonWaiter ..... 315 Ordinaries of the present Day ... 315 Indirect arrangement by which a Dinner may be procured in London . . . .315 Coffee-rooms and Coffee-shops of London . 316 Don Saltero's Coffee-house .... 316 Sketch of Don Saltero in the 'Tatler' . . 316 Floating Coffee-house on the Thames . . 316 Saloop 316 Committee appointed in 1840 to inquire into the Operation of the Import Duties . . 317 Evidence given before the Committee by the London Coffee-house Keepers . . .817 Evidence given hy Mr. Letchford before the Committee of the House of Commons . 318 Coffee-rooms occasionally used as Dining-rooms 3 1 8 Cigar Divans and Chess- rooms . . .319 The baked Potato Dealer . . . .319 The Ham-sandwich Man . . . .319 ILLUSTRATIONS, 76, Coffee Stall .... 77, Floating Coffee-house on the Thames 78. Baked Potatoes ... Dwignen. Engraver*. Tiffin Jackson . . 309 Fairholt Sladeb • . 317 Tiffin Jackson . . .320 svlii ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. XCVI,— NEW ST. PAUL'S. No. L Incident connected with the commencement of the Building of New St. Paul's . Superiority of St. Paul's over every other Build ing in London Finest View of St. Paul's obtained from Black friars Bridge ...... Advantages of the spot chosen for the erection of St Paul's View of St. Paul's from Ludgate Hill Decorations of the Western Fafade of St. Paul's Monuments by Bird in Westminster Abbey Works by Bird at St. Paul's .... Processions to St. Paul's in the reign of Queen Anne to return Thanks for Marlborough's Successes ...... Disgrace of the Duke of Marlborough . . Peace of Utrecht ...... Lines by Sir Samuel Garth on Queen Anne's Statue at St. Paul's .... The Dome of St. Paul's .... Sculptured Phoenix by Cibber, on the Pediment of the South Portico of St. Paul's . . Convocation or Chapter House of St. Paul's Cathedral ...... The Clerical Parliament .... Attempt of the Clergy in the reign of William and Mary to turn their nominal Powers into real ones ... ... Meeting of the two Houses of Convocation in February, 1701 Contests between the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation in the reign of Queen Anne . Architecture of St. Paul's .... 321331 322 322 322323 323323 333334 334 334335 335 325 325 325 326 Paok Pao, Ecclesiastical Architecture since the decline of the Roman Catholic Religion . . , 327 Associations connected with the Cathedrals of England ....... 327 Plan of St. Paul's 338 View of the Interior of St. Paul's obtained from the Western Doors 328 Side Aisles of St, Paul's . . . ,328 Works of Gibbons in the Choir of St. Paul's . 329 Evelyn and Grinlin Gibbons .... 329 The High Altar of St. Paul's ' . . .329 Performance of Divine Service at St. Paul's . 330 Curiosities of St. Paul's deserving of Notice . 330 Musical Meeting for the benefit of the Sons of the Clergy 330 Meeting at St. Paul's of the Charity Children of London ...... 330 Galleries over the Aisles of the Cathedral . 331 Library of St. Paul's 331 The Bell of St. Paul's 331 Mode in which the Bell of St. Paul's is hung . 332 The Whispering Gallery . . . .332 Paintings by Sir James Thornhill in the Cupola of St. Paul's 332 Wren's Design for Ornamenting the Interior of the Dome ...... 333 Construction of the Dome of St. Paul's . . 333 Relative Forms and Dimensions of the Four Chief Cupolas of Modern Times . . . 333 First Gallery around the Dome of St. Paul's . 333 i Interior of the Chief Dome .... 334 View from the Top of St, Paul's . . .335 Diorama of London iu the Colosseum . . 333 ILLUSTRATIONS. 79. View of St. Paul's from the North-east . 80. State Coaches ..... 31. Convocation or Chapter House, St. Paul's . 82. Plan of St. Paul's S.l. Section of the Belfry of St. Paul's 84. Parallel Sections of the Four Principal Domes of Europe 85. The Choir of St. Paul's Designers. Engravers. Prior Jackson . 321 Fairholt Slader . 323 Wells Sears . 326 POTNTER Jackson . 328 3) j> . 332 Clarke » . .334 Priok . 336 XCVII.— NEW ST, PAUL'S. No. II. The Monuments of St, Paul's . . . Monument to Major-General Hay . Impersonations of Valour and other Deities on Major-General Hay's Monument . • Monument to Captain Faulkner . . Westmacott's Monument to Lord Collingwood Sir Ralph Abercromby's Memorial ... Flaxman's Memorial to Nelson . . . Monument by Chantrey to the memory of Major- General Houghton ..... Memorials to Captains Mosse and Riou . . Act of Intrepidity performed by Riou recorded on his monument ..... Anecdote of Captain Riou related in Southey's ' Life of Nelson' Death of Riou at the Battle of Copenhagen . Monument to Johnson by Bacon . . . Statues of Howard and Reynolds . . . Passage from Northcote's ' Life of Reynolds' . Plan proposed by the Members of the Royal Academy for ornamenting the interior of Ca thedrals and Churches .... 337 338 338 339339 340340340 341341 341341 342 342 342 342 Offer of Sir Joshua Reynolds to undertake the adornment of St. Paul's .... 343 Rejection of Reynolds' offer by the Bishop of London 343 Blunificence of Bishop Newton, Dean of St. Paul's 344 The Crypt, or Vault of St, Paul's . . .344 Tomb of Sir Christopher Wren . . . 344 Tombs of Lawrence, West, Opie, Barry, and Reynolds 344 Tombs of Mylne and Rennie ... 344 The resting-place of Nelson . . . ,345 Two Incidents in the Life of Nelson . . 345 Nelson's Prayer before the Battle of Trafalgar 345 Death of Nelson ...... 345 Strange Present made to Nelson by Captain Halliwell after the Battle of the Nile . . 346 Funeral of Lord Nelson .... 346 Graves of Dr. Boyce, and George Dance, the architect , 347 - Remains of the Monuments of Old St. Paul's . 347 Effigies of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Dean Colet 347 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. six Birth and Education of John Donne . . Donne appointed Secretary to the Lord Chan cellor Ellesmere ..... Marriage of Donne with the Daughter of Sir George More ...... Discharge of Donne from Lord EUesmere's Ser vice . . . • . • . Privations and Sufferings endured by Donne ¦and his Wife ...... Proposition made to Donne by Dr. Morton Kindness and Generosity of Sir Robert Drewry to Donne ...... Separation of Donne and his Wife . . . Paoi 348348348 348349 349349349 Vision seen hy Donee whilst absent from his Wife at Paris ...... Conversation bstween King James aud Donne Donne's ' Pseudo- Martyr ' .... Donne made Royal Chaplain in Ordinary Characteristics of Donne's Sermons . . Affliction of Donne at the Death of his Wife . Donne made Dean of St. Paul's . . Reminiscences of Donne's Connection with St. Paul's Latter Days of Donne ..... Statue of Donne ...... Poem written by Donne on his Death-bed ILLUSTRATIONS. 86. Interior of St. Paul's — the Dome and Transept 87. Tomb of Sir Christopher Wren 88, Monument over Nelson's Body in the Crypt 89. Statue of Dr. Donne .... Designers, Pkioh Tiffin Engravers, Jackson Pass 350 350351 351 351351 351 351 351 352352 337 344 3il 352 XCVIII.— INNS OF COURT. THE INNER AND MIDDLE TEMPLE. Toundatien of the Inns of Court . . . 353 Establishment of the Court of Common Pleas . 354 Origin of the Custom of the Serjeants at Law sitting in Paul's Walk .... The Temple demised by the Knights Hospi tallers to certain Students of the Law . . Fortescue's Description of the Temple . • Expense of Education at the Inns of Court . Mention of the Inns of Court in Feme's ' Glory of Generosity ' ..... The Four Inns of Court .... The Inns of Coturt and Chancery in the Time of Stow Benchers, Utter Barristers, Inner Barristers, and Students ....... Mootings or Discussions on Abstruse Points of Law . . . . . Damage done to the Temple during Wat Tyler's Insurrection ...... Division of the Inn into the Inner and Middle Temple ....... Vindictive Feeling of the ancient Mobs of Lon don against the Lawyers . . . Jack Cade's Complaints against the Law and its Instruments . . . . Murder of the Students and Burning of the Temple Libraries by the Followers of Jack Cade . . . ... The Temple granted by Letters Patent to the Lawyers of London by James I. . Elegant Appearance and Convenience of the Temple . . . . . . .357 The Inner Temple Garden .... 357 The Temjile Garden a celebrated Promenade towards the close of the Eighteenth Century Cognizances of the Societies of the Inner and Middle Temples 358 Hall of the Inner Temple . . . .359 Portraits Of Littleton and Coke . . . 359 354 354354 355 355 355 355 355356 356 356356 356 357 357 358 Benefits conferred on his Country by Sir Edward Coke Law Terms ...'... A Dinner in the Hall of the Inner Temple . The Christmas of 1561-2 kept in great Splen dour at the Inner Temple . . . ' . Play performed at Westminster by the Gentle men of the Temple ..... Forty Gentlemen of the Inns of Court appointed to be Barriers at Court in 1615 . . . Mask performed by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple at the Marriage of the Daughter of James I. ...... Visit of Charles II. to the Temple in 1661 Festivals at the Temple at Halloween, Candle mas, and on Ascension Day . . Feast at the Temple described by Gerard Leigh Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie . . . The Parliament Chamber .... Quarrel between the Temple and the City . Hall of the Middle Temple . . . . Communication made to the Society of the Middle Temple, offering to hold the Chancery Courts in Vacation in their Hall . . Want of a Hall to the Middle Temple mentioned in a MS. in the British Museum written in the Reign of Henry VIII. Arms of Legal Worthies emblazoned on the Windows of the Middle Temple Hall . Busts of Eldou and Stowell .... Portraits in the Hall of the Middle Temple View of the Hall from the Western End . Extract from the ' Templar's Diary ' . . Representation of 'Twelfth Night' in the Middle Temple Hall in 1601 The Templars' Feasts ..... Evelyn's love of Solitude .... Old House in King's Bench Walk Anstey's Rooms iu the Temple . . . ILLUSTRATIONS. 90. Inner Temple Hall 91. Temple Gardens 92. Sir Edward Coke 93. Charles I. . 94. Middle Temple Hall ¦ ¦«¦•• Designers. Engravers. Anelay Jackson Sargent II Anelay Gray Sears Jackson 360 -3S0 360360 360 361 361 361 361 36. 362 363363 363 364 364 364 364304 3C63G6 3fi6367 367368368 353358 359 363 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XClX.— INNS OF COURT. No. IL Lincoln's inn — grat's inn. Chancsiy Lane Chancery Lane an almost impassable Thorough- . fare till the year 'x540 .... Palace of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln . Inn of Court built on the Site of the Earl of Lin coln's Mansion ..... Lincoln's Inn Gateway .... Escutcheons of the Lacy Family on the Gate house of Lincoln's Inn .... Buildings in the Interior of Lincoln's Inn . Lincoln's Inn Gardens ..... The New Square ..... The Stone Buildings ..... LinOoln's Inn Fields ..... Statue of Erskine in Lincoln's Inn Hall . Career of Thomas Erskine . . . • Festivities at Lincoln's Inn .... The " King of the Cooknies" . . . Christmasings at Lincoln's Inn ... Prohibition of Long Hair and Lace Ruffies in the reign of Elizabeth .... Samuel Foote ...... Revels at Lincoln's Inn in 1661 . . . Masques ....... The Library of Lincoln's Inn . . . Accumulation of Books in Lincoln's Inn Library greatly forwarded by an Order »f James I, . Donations of Sir Matthew Hale to the Library of Lincoln's Inn , , . . . I^incoln's Inn more occupied by Counsel at tending the Equity Bar than by Common- law Lawyers ...... The Manor of Portpoole .... Page 369 370370 370370 371371371372372372372 372373374374374 374 374375 375 375375 375376 Inn, of The Mansion of Portpoole, or Gray's leased to certain Students of the Law . Gray's Inn Lane ..... Garden of Gray's Inn .... Hall and Chapel of Gray's Inn The " Chauntry of Portpoole " . . Internal Economy and Manners of Gray's Inn Masques and Bevels at Gray's Inn Comedy acted at Gray's Inn in 1527 . Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Amias Paulet . , Eminent Members of Gray's Inn . . Anecdote of Lord Burleigh's Gray's Inn Days Rebellion of the Barristers and Students Gray's Inn in 1667 . . . . . Romilly at Gray's Inn ..... Curran's Account of his Introduction and D^bfit at one of the Debating Societies of Gray's Iim The Inns of Chanceiy ..... Sun-dial in the Garden of Clement's Inn . The Serjeants' Inns ..... The Inns of Court not so much a Place of Resi dence as formerly , . . , . Mode of admitting Students to the Inns cf Court Examination Undergone by a Student before being called to the Bar .... Different Degrees among the Members of the Inns of Court ...... Privileges of the Benchers .... Authority of the Benchers in the Rejection of an Applicant for Admission .... Evidence taken before the Common-law Com missioners ...... The Irish Inns of Court .... (¦lu 37fi377 377377 377 378 378378 378 37»378379 380 380 380 381381 381 382 383 ILLUSTRATIONS. 95. Lincoln's Inn Hall . 96. Lincoln's Inn Gateway 97. Stat;,'e of Erskine 98, Gray's Inn Hall . 99. Monument of Bacon . 100. Cecil . . . . Designers. Engravers Anelay Jackson Cleghorn Lee . Clarke Jackson Anelav Fairholt Sears Harvey, Jackson C— THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 384 384 369371373 376377 a78 Entrance to the Reading-room of the British Museum ....... 385 Mode of ascertaining the average Number of Visitors to the Museum .... 385 The Reading-room 386 Occupants of the Reading-room . . . 386 London never without its Literary Factories . 388 Fielding's Sketch of a Literary Factory of his Day 388 Pope's Distich on Ralph .... 389 Ralph's History of England . . . .389 Johnson's Literary Employments on his first arrival in London ..... 389 Anecdote of Johnson told by Richardson . 389 Professional Book-maker of the Present Day . 390 Adventurers in the World of Letters . . 391 Newspaper and Novel Readers frequenting the British Museum Reading-room . . . 392 Admission to the Library of the British Mu seum nearly indiscriminate ... 393 The Appearance of the mere Man of Letter* • 393 The Discoverers and Editors of Old MSS. . 394 Burns's Picture of the Musings of the Littnry Man 395 The Lady Visitants to the Reading-room of the British Museum ..... 395 Monomaniacs occasionally found in IkiS Reading- room ....... 396 " Crammers "...... 397 Management of the Librsuiy trf the British Mu seum ....... 397 Incompleteness of the Library . . . 397 Measures necessary for the Improvement of the British Museum Library .... 398 The Miseries of the Reading-room . , 398 The Reading-room on a Foggy Day . . 398 The fogged-out Author . . , . 399 Departure of the Frequenters of the Reading- room 399 ILLUSTRATIONS. 101. Reading-room, British Museum 102. A Public Reading-room in 1616 Designets. Tiffin Fairholt Engraveis. Jackson Murdon , 383 40C EsEATUM. — At p. 396, for " Scudoni'i romances/' read Soudiri't romances. [From Hogarth's ' Progress of Cruelty.'] LXXVI.— B E E R. Hogarth blundered when he introduced the brewer's drayman as a type of the " progress of cruelty." The man is asleep : he would not willingly hurt a fly, to say nothing of a child, but, " much bemused with beer," he knows not the mischief his wheels are doing. He can scarcely even be accused of carelessness, for how could he expect a child to be there unguarded ? It is the nurse or mother that is to blame. Nobody who has to do with beer is inhumane. Beer cannot make a rogue an honest man — even the ale of Lichfield could not work that miracle upon Boniface — but it mollifies his temper. " I have much to say in behalf of that Falstaff,'' and, though scarcely so near akin, we have much to say in behalf of that brewer's drayman. Look at his smock-frock, his hat, his gracefully-curving, ponderous whip : beside the sceptre of an Ulysses or Agamemnon it would show like the pendent birch beside a bare hop-pole, and yet would crush a Thersites more effectually. When cracked in the horses' ears it knells like a piece of artillery. And so accoutred as the brewer's drayman was in the days of Hogarth, so may he still be seen in the streets of London, perched upon or striding beside his stately dray. He is one of the unchanged, unchangeable monuments which live on through all transmu tations, telling a story of forgotten generations to a race which remembers them not — like the circle of grey stones which beneath a grove of embowering oaks witnessed the inhuman rites of the Druid, and now obstruct the reaper's sickle amid the golden grain — like the little drummer-boys, all so like each other that the man in his grand climacteric could fancy them the same he gazed after in his childhood, and take the elf, at this moment loitering before the guardhouse in Hyde Park, for the identical one to whom the " friend of humanity" gave six pence, and "nice clever books by Tom Paine the philanthropist," The brewer's dray is worthy of such an ancient pillar of the constitution Benjamin the Waggoner and his poet are both right eloquent in praise of their "^ lordly wain," Nor need it be denied that it had a stately and imposinjf pre sence of its own, alike amid the thunder-storm in the mountain gap, or VOL. IV B 2 LONDON. " With a milder grace adorning The landscape of a summer morning. While Grassmere smoothed its liquid plain The moving image to detain ; And merry Fairfield, with a chime Of echoes, to its march kept time, When little other sound was heard, And little other hus'ness stirr'd. In that delightful hour of halm. Stillness, solitude, and calm." But every one must feel that one half of the beauty of the Westmoreland waggon is owing to the associations that cluster around it ; whereas the brewer's dray suffices in itself. When the head of the foremost of its colossal horses is seen emerging from one of those steep, narrow lanes ascending from the river side to the Strand, (sometimes is it there seen, though the coal-waggon has pre-eminence in that locality of dark arches looking like the entrance to the Pit of Acheron,) there is a general pause in the full tide of human life that flows along the thoroughfare. Heavily, as though they would plant themselves into the earth, the huge hoofs, with the redundant locks dependent from the fet locks circumfused, are set down, clattering and scraping as they slip on the steep ascent ; the huge bodies of the steeds, thrown forward, drag upward the load attached to them by their weight alone j in a long chain they form a curve quite across the street, till at last the dray, high-piled with barrels, emerges from the , narrow way like a reel issuing from a bottle, and, the strain over, the long line of steeds and the massive structure, beside which the car of Juggernaut might dwindle into insignificance, pass smoothly onwards. It is no unimportant element of London life that is launched with all this pomp and circumstance into its great thoroughfares. There is a system organ ised, by which the contents of these huge emissaries from the reservoirs of the breweries are diverted into a multiplicity of minor pipes and strainers which penetrate and moisten the clay of the whole population. From " morn till dewy eve" the huge, high-piled dray may be seen issuing from the brewery gates to "convey barrels to the tap-houses, and nine-gallon casks, the weekly or fortnightly allowance of private families. At noon and night the pot-boys of the innu merable beer-shops may be seen carrying out the quarts and pints duly received at those hours by families who do not choose to lay in a stock of their own ; or the mothjers and children of families, to whom the saving of a halfpenny is a matter of some consequence, may be seen repairing with their own jugs to these beer-conduits. You may know when it is noon in any street in London by the circulation of beer-jugs, as surely as you may know when it is 11 a.m. by seeing housekeepers with their everlasting straw reticules and ninbrellas. And in ad dition to these periodical flowings of the fountains must be taken into the account the " bye-drinkings" of carmen, coal-whippers, paviours, &c. at all hours of the day — of artisans at their " dry skittle-grounds,'! and of medical students and other " swells" at taverns. It is not easy to form an estimate of the quantity of beer annually strained through these alembics, but we may venture upon what Sir Thomas Browne would have called " a wide guess." In 1836 the twelve principal brewers in London brewed no less than 2 119,447 barrels of beer. The quantity of maU BEER. 3 wetted by all the brewers in London in that year was 704,313 quarters ; the quan tity wetted by the illustrious twelve, 526,092 quarters. According to this pro portion, the number of barrels of beer brewed in London, in 1836, could not fall far short of 3,000,000. The beer manufactured for exportation and country con sumption may be assumed, in the mean time, to have been balanced by the im portation of Edinburgh and country ales, and Guinness's stout. In 1836 the popu lation of the metropolis was estimated at l,500,00u. This would give, hand over head, an allowance of two barrels (or 76 gallons) of beer per annum for every inhabitant of the metropolis — man, woman,- and child. This is of course beyond the mark, but perhaps not so much so as one would at first imagine. At all events, these numbers show that beer is an important article of London consump tion : thus corroborating the inference naturally drawn frori the high state of perfection to which we find the arrangements for injecting it into all the veins and arteries of the body corporate have been brought. There is a passage in Franklin's ' Memoirs' which illustrates the minuter details of the injecting process in his day : — "I drank only water : the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great drinkers of beer We had an alehouse boy, who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast, with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock^ and another when he had done with his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom ; but it was necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong himself. He had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every week for that vile liquor." The pressman whose bibbing feats are here recorded, it must be admitted, rather verged towards excess in his potations : he did not administer the malt in homoeopathic doses ; but his lack of moderation conferred no right upon " the water-drinking Ame rican " (as the " chapel " christened Franklin) to vilify " the good creature Beer " by the epithet " vile liquor." Beer is to the London citizen what the water in the reservoirs of the plain of Lombardy, or the kahvreez of Persia (which is permitted to flow into the runnels of the landowners so many hours per diem), is to the village peasantry of those countries. It is one of those commonplaces of life — those daily-expected and daily-enjoyed simple pleasures which give man's life its local colouring. The penning of the sheep in a pastoral country — " the ewe-bughts, Marion" of Scottish song — is poetical, because the bare mention of it calls up all the old accustomed faces, and sayings and doings, that make home delightful. In London it is our beer that stands foremost in the ranks of these suggestions of pleasant thoughts. Therefore it is that a halo dwells around the silver-bright pewter pots of the potboy, and plays, like the lightning of St. John, about the curved and tapering rod of office of the brewer's drayman. Therefore is it that the cry of " Beer !" falls like music on the ear ; and therefore it is that in the song of the jolly com panion, in the gibe of the theatrical droll, in the slang of him who lives " on the etep" (of the 'bus), in the scratching of the caricaturist, the bare mention of beer is at any time a sufficient substitute for wit. It needs but to name it, and we are all on the broad grin. Beer overflows in almost every volume of ]^'ielding and Smollett. There never b2 4 LONDON, was hero who had a more healthy relish for a cool tankard than Tom Jones, There is an incident which all our readers must recollect in the story of Booth's Amelia, that positively elevates brown stout into the region of the pathetic. As for Smollett, the score which Roderick Random and Strap run up with the plau sible old schoolmaster, fancying all the while he is teaching them, is perhaps too rural an incident for our present purpose ; but the pot of beer with which Strap made up the quarrel with the soldier, after the misadventure which attended his first attempt to dive for a dinner, was of genuine London brewing. Goldsmith appreciated the capabilities of beer in an artistical point of view how could the author of Tony Lumpkin fail ? He has immortalised it both in prose and verse. The story of the Merry- Andrew out of employment, whom he picked up in the Green Park, would have lost great part of its zest had it not been told over " a frothing tankard and a smoking steak." Who does not feel that the conversation of the imprisoned debtor, porter, and soldier, about an ap prehended French invasion, is rendered more pointed by the good malt liquor that takes a part in it ? — " ' For my part,' cries the prisoner, * the greatest of my apprehensions is for our freedom. If the French should conquer, what would become of English liberty ? My dear friends, liberty is the Englishman's pre rogative; we must preserve that at the expense of our lives; of that the French shall never deprive us. It is not to be expected that men who are slaves them selves would preserve our freedom, should they happen to conquer.' ' Ay, slaves,' cries the porter, ' they are all slaves, fit only to carry burthens, every one of them. Before I would stoop to slavery, may this be my poison,' and he held the goblet in his hand, 'may this be my poison — ^but I would sooner list for a soldier.' The soldier, taking the goblet from his friend, with much awe, fervently cried out, ' It is not so much our liberties as our religion that would suffer from such a change : ay, our religion, my lads. May the devil sink me into flames,' such was the solemnity of his adjuration, ' if the French should come over, but our religion would be utterly undone.' So saying, instead of a libation, he applied the goblet to his lips, and confirnaed his sentiments with a ceremony of most per severing devotion." And, without the allusion to beer, how dry would have been his description of the region where authors most abound ! — " Where the ' Red Lion,' staring o'er the way. Invites each passing stranger that can pay ; Where Calvert's hutt, and Parson's black champagne. Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane ; There, in a lonely room from bailiffs snug, The Muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug." To a poet of a later day than poor Goldy it was given to sing a royal visita' tion to a London brewhouse ; and as our readers may expect us, while upon this subject, to introduce them to the interior of one of these great - establishments, they may prefer visiting it while a king is there. The hurry of preparation to receive the illustrious guest was spiritedly sung by the modern Pindar : — " Muse, sing the stir that Mister Whitbread made. Poor gentleman, most terribly afraid He should not charm enough his guests divine, He gave his Maids new aprons, gowns, and smocks ; And, lo ! two hundred pounds were spent in frocks To make the Apprentices and Draymen fine. BEER. 5 Busy as nor ees in a field of clover. Dogs, cats, and stools and chairs, were tumbled over. Amid the Whitbread rout of preparation To treat the lofty ruler of the nation." The irreverend manner in which the poet describes the rapidity with which the royal questions were huddled on each otlier may be passed over. Suffice it to say, that, by the clack of interrogatories, — "Thus was the Brewhouse fill'd with gabbling noise. While Draymen and the Brewer's Boys Devour'd the questions that the King did ask In different parties were they staring seen, Wondering to think they saw a King and Queen ; Behind a tub were some, and some behind a cask. Some Draymen forced themselves (a pretty luncheon!) Into the mouth of many a gaping puncheon ; And through the bung-hole wink'd, with cunning eye, To view, and be assured what sort of things Were Princesses, and Queens, and Kings, For whose most lofty stations thousands sigh. And, lo ! of all the gaping Puncheon clan, Few were the mouths that had not got a man." The picture of Majesty examining " a pump so deep" with an opera-glass of Dollond is good, but we hasten to the " useful knowledge " elicited on the oc casion : — " Now Mister Whitbread serious did declare. To make the Majesty of England stare. That he had butts enough, he knew, Placed side by side to reach along to Kew. On which the King with wonder swiftly cried, ' What, if they reach to Kew, then, side by side. What would they do, what, what, placed end to end ?' To whom with knitted, calculating brow. The man of beer most solemnly did vow Almost to Windsor that they would extend. On which the King, with wondering mien, ' Repeated it unto the wondering Queen. On which, quick turning round his halter'd head, The Brewer's horse, with face astonish' d, neigh'd : The Brewer's dog, too, pour'd a note of thunder. Rattled his chain, and wagg'd his tail for wonder. Now did the King for other Beers inquire. For Calvert's, Jordan's, Thrale's entire ; And, after talking of their different Beers, Ask'd Whitbread if his Porter equall'd theirs." The Muse of Painting, at least the Muse of Engraving, was equally assiduous with the Muse of rhythmic words in its attention to the staple liquor of London. Hogarth has immoutalised its domestic, and Gilray its political history. In his engraving of ' Beer Street ' Hogarth has been rapt beyond himself There is a genuine "tipsy jollity "- breathed over all the groups. The key-note is struck by the refreshing draughts of the tailors in the garret ; it rises to a higher pitch in the chairmen, one of whom wipes his bald head while the other drinks ; it •becomes exuberant in the lusty blacksmith brandishing the astonished French LONDON. [From Hogarth's ' Beer Street.'] porter in. one hand and his pewter-pot in the other ; and it soars to genuine poetic inspiration in the ingenious artist who is painting with such unutterable gusto, " Health to the Barley Mow." Gilray, under the inspiration of good ale, became classical and allegorical. The Castor and Pollux of his 'Whig Mytho logy ' are two lusty brewers of his day — incarnations of strong beer. His ' Medi tations on a Pot of Porter ' are bold and grotesque in conception, yet executed in conformity to the severest rules of sculptural grouping. His ' Triumph of Quassia' is worthy of Poussin. This union between beer on the one hand and art and literature on the other was not a mere playful fiction of the imagination. The fine spirits of London loved good ale as Burns loved his " bonny Jean," whom he not only be-rhymed but took unto his wife. It was no mere Platonic flirtation that they kept up with the beer-barrel. The brows of Whitbread were bound with the triple wreath of brewery, the drama, and senatorial oratory ; his own brewhouse, St. Stephen's, and Drury Lane Theatre were rivals in his aff'ections. The names of Thrale and Johnson must go down to posterity together. We have often had occasion to sigh over the poverty of London in the article of genuine popular legends — one brewhouse is among the exceptions. The workmen at Barclay and Perkins's will show you a little apartment in which, according to the tradition of the place, Johnson wrote his dictionary. Now this story has one feature of a genuine legend — it sets chronology at defiance. It is no invention of a bookman, but the unsophisticated belief of those who know books less from personal inspection than by report, as Isomething the knowledge of which makes a learned man. Before Johnson made his acquaintance with the Thrales, two men eminent in their way in literature, the one belonging to the generation of authors who pre ceded the Doctor, the other destined to earn his full harvest of praise after the lexicographer had retired upon his pension, shook hands over a cup of good ale- Mandeville and Franklin had a meeting when the former visited London in BEER. 7 early life, which is thus noticed by the latter in his Autobiography : — " My pamphlet by some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled 'The Infallibility of Human Judgment,' it occasioned an acquaintance between us : he took great notice of me, called on me often to con verse on these subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale-ale house in Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Doctor Mandeville, author of the ' Fable of the Bees,' who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most fa cetious, entertaining companion." It is worthy of remark that Franklin has not a word to say against the " vile liquor " when it was imbibed by one he felt flattered by being introduced to ; and it may also be observed in passing, that we are here introduced to the out-spoken sceptics of London, with whom Frank lin sympathised as completely in his youth as he did with those of Paris in his advanced years. The former he found in pot-houses. Mandeville was a gentle man, but Chubb and the others always look like the arguers of some cobblers' debating society. The French wits, on the contrary, were men of fashion ; and yet it may be doubted whether there were not more nerve and shrewdness in their homely English predecessors. The difference is illustrative of the varied characters of the two cities as well as of the individuals. This "exaletation of ale" scarcely belongs to the very oldest period of our literature. Chaucer gets eloquent at times upon the subject of " a draught of moist and corny ale," and Skelton has sung its praises ; but the dramatists of the Elizabethan age made little account of it. " Our ancestors drank sack, Mrs. Quickly," Shakspere speaks rather compassionately of that " poor creature small beer," Nor was it altogether an affectation of being more recherche in their drink : the ale of the olden time must have been at best but a sorry tipple. Hops only came into cultivation in England about 1524; before that time brewers made a shift with broom, bay-berries, and ivy-berries — sorry enough substitutes. Ale was almost certain to get "eager" before it was ripe. Nor was this all : in the minute and specific directions for brewing which are to be found in Holinshed it may be seen that it was the custom to eke out the malt with a liberal admixture of unmalted oats. From the trial of Beau Fielding, quoted in a former paper, it would appear that an inferior sort of liquor called oat ale was in use in families. The truth is, that they were only learning to brew drinkable beer in London about the time of Shakspere. It appears from the information collected by Stow that in the year 1585 there were about twenty-six brewers in the City, suburbs, and Westminster, " whereof the one-half of them strangers, the other English." Hops appear to have been grown in great quantities in the vicinity of the Pomeranian Hanse Towns as early as the thirteenth century, and beer to have been one of the staple articles of export from these great trading commu nities. The circumstance of so many of the London trewers in the sixteenth century being foreigners seems to point to the conclusion that hops, and persons capable of teaching the right way to use them, had been imported about the same time. The London Company of Brewers was incorj orated, it is true, in February, 1427, and bore for a time their coat of arms impaled with that of Thomas a Becket. The Company, however, and its trade, do not appear to have emerged 8 LONDON. into consequence until the confirmation of their charter in July, 1559, the second of Elizabeth. That there had been songs in praise of ale before this time argues nothing for its goodness. The decoction of malt and oats, bittered by ivy berries, must have been much such a mess as the " boosa" of the Upper Nile and the Niger: it made men tipsy, and when tipsy they bestowed exagge rated praises on the cause of their exhilaration. This is the utmost that Chaucer finds to say for "the ale of Southwark" in his time. The symptoms of his Miller, by which the host saw that he " was dronken of ale," are those of a man who drinks to get drunk, not because the liquor is palatable. His very gestures show it : — " The Miller that for-dronken was all pale. So that unethes upon his hors he sat. He n' old avalen neither hood ne hat, Ne abiden no man for his curtesie. But in Pilate's vois he gan to eric. And swore by armes and by blood and bones." The delicious rapidity and incongruity with which his images crowd upon each other in the prefatory speech he delivers show the state he was in, and, what is more to the purpose, his boasts show that he is proud of his condition : — " Now herkeneth, quoth the Miller, all and some ; But first I make a protestatioun That I am dronke, I know it my soune." This is the full amount of the spirited eulogy : — " Back and side go bare, go bare. Both feet and hand go cold ; But belly, God send thee good ale enough. Whether it be new or old." In Elizabeth's day beer was rising in estimation : alarmed by the increase of alehouses, the Lord Mayor, aided by the magistrates of Lambeth and Southwark, suppressed above two hundred of them within their jurisdictions in 1574, and the example was followed in Westminster and other places round London. It was about this time, or perhaps later, that the saying, " Blessed be her heart, for she brewed good ale," first came up. Launce, in the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' speaks of it as quite of recent origin. But as yet beer (the name is said to have come in with hops, to distinguish the improved liquor from the old-fashioned ale) seems to have been chiefly in request with those who could not afford wine. Prince Hal apologises for longing for it ; Falstaff never tasted it ; it was the most raffiah of all his followers, Bardolph, whose meteor nose glared through the alehouse window, undistinguishable from its red lattice blinds. The years 1585 and 1591 are the earliest for which we have found any statis tics of the beer trade of London, The twenty-six brewers in 1585 brewed among them 648,960 barrels of beer. This they sent to their customers in opei barrels before the process of fermentation was completed; at least it is to the loss occasioned by its being transmitted in that state that, in their answer to a complaint against them made to the Chancellor, they attribute the enormous deficiency of one gallon in nine. In 1591 the " twenty great brewhouses, situate on the "Thames side from Milford Stairs in Fleet Street till below St. Cathe- BEER. 9 tine's," brewed yearly the quantity of seven or eight brewings of sweet beer or strong beer for exportation to Embden, the Low Countries, Dieppe, &c. The produce of all these brewings might amount, one year with another, to 26,400 barrels. This trade was often interrupted ; for as soon as corn began to rise in price, the exporting brewers were complained of as the cause, and a proclama tion issued to " restrain from brewing any sweet or strong beer to be transported by casks as merchandise," or what was called portage beer. The apprehensions were probably unfounded, for the foreign beer trade seems to have been little more than a cloak for the smuggling of very different commodities. A complaint was made to the treasurer of England in 1586, that "There was deceit in the vessels of beer that were transported ; that under the name of these passed many barrels stuff"ed with prohibited goods, as pike-heads, halberd-heads, pistols and match, candles, and soles of shoes of new leather, cut out in pairs of all sizes, and the like, the bungs of the barrels being besmeared with a little yeast, to the hindrance of the Commonwealth and the profit of enemies." Fal staff made bitter complaints, and swore there was no faith in villanous man, because he found a little lime in his sack : had he been a beer-drinker, how he would have grumbled at such a dainty mixture as is here described ! The re turn barrels were employed in the conveyance of more delicate wares : — " Another deceit that the strangers, foreigners, and others practised with the brewers and their servants was packing up cases and pieces of silk, and delivering them as empty barrels on the brewer's wharf. The brewers straight besmeared them with yeast, and so sent them to the merchants' houses, as barrels of beer for the household, to the hindrance of the Queen's customs." Some notice was taken, in the paper on St. Giles's, ancient and modern, of the persecution of the alehouse-keepers under the Long Parliament. Enough was said then to show that ale, as a drink, had become a popular favourite. That the excise imposed upon beer, in 1643, was found worth the continuing, may be taken as a proof that^the liquor was improving. " Muddy ale" would have been driven out of the market by such an increase of price. Down to the time of the Revo lution, however, although good ale might be met with in wealthy families who could afford the expense of making it — or in corn districts, which, in that age of bad or no roads, enjoyed no facilities for conveying their surplus grain into more sterile districts (which may account for the high terms in which Boniface spealui of his ale in the ' Beaux Stratagem ') — English beer seems to have been rather an indiffierent liquor. The ecstacies in which lamb's-wool, and other ways of dis guising it, are spoken of, show that it was taken merely for its intoxicating effects, and that its taste required to be disguised. Who would think of spoiling^ the XXX of Barclay or Goding with foreign admixtures ? An anonymous writer in the 'Annual Register for 1760' enables us to trace the progress of the London beer-trade from the Revolution down to the accession of George III. In the beginning of King William's reign, the brewer sold his brown ale for 16*. per barrel; and the small beer, which was made from the same grains, at 6s. per barrel. The customers paid for their beer in ready money, and fetched it from the brewhouse themselves. The strong beer was a heavy sweet beer : the small, with reverence be it spoten, was little better than the washings of the tubs, and had about as much of the extract of malt in it as tho lO LONDON. last cup of tea which an economical housewife pours out to her guests has of the China herb. A change came over the character of London beer in the reign of Queen Anne, owing to two very different causes : the duty imposed upon malt and hops, and taxes, on account of the war with France, on the one hand, and the more frequent residence of the gentry in London on the other. The duty on malt exceeding that on hops, the brewers endeavoured at a liquor in which more of the latter should be used; The people, not easily weaned from the sweet clammy drink to which they had been accustomed, drank ale, mixed with the new-fashioned bitter beer, which they got from the victualler. This is the earliest trace our anti quarian researches have enabled us to detect of the very palatable beverage " half-and-half" The gentry introduced the pale ale, and the pale small beer, which prevailed in the country; and either engaged some of their friends, or some of the London trade, to brew their liquors for them. The pale beers being originally intended for a more affluent and luxurious class, the brewers who en gaged in this new branch of the business paid more attention to the condition in which it was delivered, increased their store of casks, and kept them in better order. The pale ale was more expensive than the old London beers : its price was 30s. a barrel, while the brown ale was selling at 19*. or 20*., and the bitter beer at 22*. But the spreading of a taste for the new drink, and the establish ment of " pale-ale houses," such as that in which Franklin met Mandeville, stimulated the brown beer trade to produce a better article than they had hitherto made. " They began," says the writer before alluded to, " to hop their mild beer more ; and the publican started three, four, sometimes six butts at a time ; but so little idea had the brewer or his customer of being at the charge of large stocks of beer, that it gave room to a set of moneyed people to make a trade, by buying these beers from brewers, keeping them some time, and selling them, when stale, to publicans for 25*.. or 26*. Our tastes but sldwly alter or reform : some drank mild beer and stale ; others what was then called ' three-threads,' at 3d. a quart, but many used all stale, at 4d. a pot." This we may imagine to have been the state of the beer-trade when Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheel barrow, Knt., and company, accompanied Isaac Bickerstaff", Esq., to Dick's Coffeehouse : — " Sir Harry called for a mug of ale, and ' Dyer's Letter.' The boy brought the ale in an instant, but said they did not take in the ' Letter.' ' No !' says Sir Harry. ' Then take back your mug : we are like, indeed, to have good liquor at this house.' .... I observed, after a long pause, that the gentlemen did not care to enter upon business till after' their morning draught, for which reason I called for a bottle of mum ; and finding that had no effect upon them, I ordered a second and a third : after which Sir Harry reached over to me, and told me, in a low voice, that the place was too public for business; but he would call upon me again to-morrow morning at my own lodgings, and bring some more friends with him." About the year 1 722 a bright thought, we are told, occurred to the brewers— that they might improve their trade by improving their liquor ; at least such is the only meaning we can. attach to this oracular passage : — " The brewers con ceived there was a mean to be found preferable to any of those extreme.s, which was, that beer well brewed, from bf img kept its proper time, becoming mellow. BEER. 1 1 that is, neither new nor stale, would recommend itself to the public." The author proceeds : — " This they ventured to sell at 23*. a barrel, that the victualler might retail at 3d, a quart. Though it was slow at first in making its way, yet, as it certainly was right, in the end the experiment succeeded beyond expectation. The labouring people, porters, &c., found its utility ; from whence came its appellation of porter or entire butt. As yet, however, it was far from the perfection in which we have since had it. For many years it was an esta blished maxim in the trade that porter could not be made fine or bright, and four or five months was deemed the age for it to be drunk at. The improvement of brightness has since been added, by means of more age, better malt, better hops, and the use of isinglass." Thus auspiciously commenced the high and palmy age of London's beer, which has ever since gone on improving in quality and estimation. Thus commenced the age in which it was to become the favourite beverage of a succession of racy thinkers and learned men, from Mandeville to Dr. Parr and Charles Lamb. Thus commenced the age in which it was to prove a Helicon to a peculiar and unrivalled race of artists and poets in prose and verse — of Hogarth and Fielding, of Smollett, of Goldsmith, of Gilray. Thus commenced an age in which it was to become a word of household love throughout the busy and hearty land of Cockaigne — itself a familiar and cherished friend, known in the playful moods of affection as "porter," "stout," " brown stout," "double stout," "entire," "heavy wet," " lush," " beer," and all the varieties of X's. It was beer that kept the race of Brunswick on the throne in the days while "pretenders" were still alive. The "mug-houses" were seminaries of true Pro testant and revolution principles. There were the adult adherents of the new dynasty to be found — " their custom ever of an afternoon," — when their leaders wanted to get up an anti-popery panic and row ; and there did the apprentices bold of London imbibe the principles of their seniors, not diluted, but rendered palatable, by the liquid in which they were administered. More anxious and watchful for the interests of the established government than that government itself, they nosed out Jacobite plots before they were concocted, and not unfre quently drubbed the civil and military servants of the powers that were, because their efforts came short of the exorbitant demands of their own beer-blown zeal. Often were the authorities obliged to repel the furious love of these idolaters, lest they should be killed with kindness ; and hard knocks seem to have had no effect in rendering them less loving. They were as ardent Hanoverians after a score of them had been knocked on the head for a row as before. They were the mob of the corporations, for the unincorporated mob of London— a much more numerous but less disciplined body — owned a divided allegiance to the prize fighters and pickpockets on the one hand, and to the Jacobites on the other— both parties in general uniting against the heroes of the "mug-houses," yet unable, with all their superiority of numbers, to make head against them. Gin was the liquor of this less reputable rabble ; but gin only gave courage, not thewes and sinews ; beer gave both, and therefore the mug-houses triumphed. These are tales of the times of old, for both mug-houses and their frequenters have been long extinct. Their last warlike display was in setting on foot Lord George Gordon's anti-popery riots. Gilray drew upon his antiquarian lore when 12 LONDON. he portrayed Charles James Fox conciliating the pot-boys of Westminster, and his enraptured auditors bellowing "A mug ! a mug !" The wonderful magnitude of the great London breweries is a familiar source of wonderment. The stacks of casks that might reach, placed side by side, from London to Eton — the vats in which parties could dine and have dined — the colossal machinery which performs the functions discharged by men and women in the puny brewages of domestic and antique beer-making— the floods of brown stout accumulated in the huge receptacles, large enough to be the reservoirs of the water companies of moderate towns — the coopers, smiths, sign-board painters, and other artisans, who lend to the interiors of the great breweries the appear ance of small towns — all these matters are familiar to the flying visitors of Lon don and their home-keeping cousins, who listen with wonderment to their tales of the metropolis. Is any man ignorant of these things ? — he may find them written in the ' Penny Magazine ' thus : — " Sunk in the floor of the tun-room, beneath the ' rounds,' is an oblong tank lined throughout with white Dutch tiles, and intended for the occasional recep tion of beer. This tank would float a barge of no mean size, being about a hundred feet in length, and twenty in breadth. " On proceeding westward through the brewery from the main entrance, all the buildings which we have yet described are situated at the right hand; but we have now to cross to the southern range, separated from the other by an avenue, over which a large pipe crosses to convey the beer from the ' rounds ' to the store- vats. These vats are contained in a series of store-rooms, apparently almost in terminable : indeed, all that we have hitherto said as to vastness is much exceeded by the array which here meets the eye. On entering the store-buildings, we were struck with the silence which reigned throughout, so different from the bustle of the manufacturing departments. Ranges of buildings, branching out north, south, east, and west, are crammed as full of vats as the circular form of the vessels will permit : some larger than others, but all of snch dimensions as to baffle one's common notions of 'great' and 'small.' Sometimes, walking on the earthen floor, we pass immediately under the ranges of vats (for none of them rest on the ground), and might then be said to have a stratum of beer twenty or thirty feet in thickness over our heads ; at another, we walk on a platform leve' with the bottom of the vats ; or, by ascending steep ladders, we mount to the top, and obtain a kind of bird's-eye view of these mighty monsters. Without a guide, it would be impossible to tell which way we are trending, through the labyrinth of buildings and lofts, surrounded on all sides by vats. At one small window we caught a glimpse of a churchyard, close without the wall of the store house ; and, on further examination, we found that the buildings belonging to the brewery, principally the store-rooms, have gradually but completely enclosed a small antique-looking churchyard, or rather burial-ground (for it does not belong to any parochial church). In this spot many of the old hands belonging to the establishment have found their last resting-place, literally surrounded by the buildings in which they were employed when living. " The space occupied as store-rooms may in some measure be judged, when we state that there are one hundred and fifty vats, the average capacity of each of which, large and small together, is upwards of thirty thousand gallons. The BEER, 13 town of Heidelberg, in Germany, has gained a sort of celebrity for possessing a tun of vast dimensions, capable of holding seven hundred hogsheads of wine ; but there are several vats among those here mentioned, in each of which the Heidelberg tun would have ' ample verge and space ' to swim about. Subjoined is a sketch of one of these large vats, each of which contains about three thousand barrels, of thirty-six gallons each, and weighs, when full of porter, about five hundred tons." With other matters to a similar purport. In Murray's edition of ' Boswell's Johnson ' the curious reader will find an estimate of the immense profits which have been made by brewers ; and from the records of the Bankruptcy Court he will learn with what ease and in how short a time large fortunes have been sunk in that branch of business. Generally speaking, however, brewers appear, like their horses and draymen, to be a sub stantial race. They belong, many of them, to the old city families : the names of the leading brewers at the beginning of the reign of George III, are, in not a few instances, the names of the leading brewers of our own day ; and in some cases the " company " is, properly speaking, the same, though the names have been changed. The increase of brewers has kept pace with London's increase in other respects. The 26 brewhouses of the reign of Elizabeth had become about 55 in 1759-60, and upwards of 148 in 1841. The number of barrels of beer bre^i'Sd by the twelve principal brewers in London was — 284,145 in 1782; 1,097,231 in 1808; and 2,119,447 in 1836. The genuine London beer (although we learn from the ' Brewers' Annual ' that there are only three brewers in London — Reid, Meux, and Courage — who do not brew pale ale, and that there are a few who brew nothing else) is the brown stout. It is the perfection — the ideal of the " berry-brown ale" and the " nut-brown ale" of the old songs. It is what the poet of those antediluvian days fancied, or a 14 LONDON. lucky accident enabled their brewers at times to approach. No disparagement to the pale and amber ales, infinite in name as in variety ; to the delicious Win chester ; to the Burton, which, like Sancho's sleep, " wraps one all round like u blanket;'' to Hodgson's pale India ale, so grateful at tiffin when the thermo meter is upwards of 100, and the monotonousness-creating punkah pours only a stream of heated air on the guests ; to the Edinburgh (we mean the Edin burgh as it is not to be had in London *) ; " London particular" is the perfection of malt liquor. As Horace says of Jupiter, there is nothing " similar or second to it" — not even among liquors of its own complexion. Guinness is a respectable enough drink, but we must say that the ascendancy it has gained in many coffee houses and taverns of London is anything but creditable to the taste of their frequenters. Its sub-acidity and soda-water briskness, when compared with the balmy character of London bottled stout from a crack brewery, are like the strained and shallow efforts of a professed joker compared with the unctuous, full-bodied wit of Shakspere. As for the mum of Brunswick, which enjoys a traditional reputation on this side of the water, because it has had the good luck to be shut out by high duties, and has thus escaped detection, it is a villanous compound, somewhat of the colour and consistence of tar — a thing to be eaten with a knife and fork. We will be judged by any man who knows what good liquor is — by a jury selected from the musical amateurs of the ' Coal-hole,' the penny-a-liners who frequent the ' Cock ' near Temple Bar, and the more sedate but not less judicious tasters who dine or lunch daily at ' Campbell's' in Pope's Head Alley. Should it be objected that such a tribunal, composed exclusively of Londoners, might be suspected of partiality, let it be a jury half composed of foreigners — Liibeck, Goslar in Saxony, and any town in Bavaria can furnish com petent persons to decide such a question. The German students are in general (at least in the north) devout beer-drinkers, but they are of the class who love " not wisely but too well " — they drink without discrimination. It is among the Philister of Germany that you must look for connoisseurs in beer. But the favour in which London beer stands in so many and various regions of the earth may be received as the verdict of a grand jury of nations in its favour. Byron sings — " Sublime tobacco, that from East to West Cheers the tar's labours and the Turkman's rest ;" and he might have added that wherever tobacco is known and appreciated, there too have the merits of London porter been acknowledged. The learned Mei- bomius.t who, in a Latin quarto, has dilated upon the subject of "beer, tipple, and all other intoxicating liquors except wine," with the completeness and mi nuteness of a true German naturalist, and with that placid seriousness which- might make what he says pass for a joke if there were only wit in it, or for * Good Edinburgh ale must be allowed time to ripen into excellence. When bottled, it ought to be cloyingly sweet, and so glutinous that when some is poured upon the palm, and the hand held closed for five minutes, im mersion in warm water is required before it can be opened again. After bottling, the ale ought to stand five fears in a cool dry cellar, and four months near a Dutch oven in frequent use. It is then at its best ; but even then it is more like a liqueur to be sipped than a liquor to be drunk. f Joan. Henrici Meibomii de Cenrisiia Potibusque et Ebriaminibus extra Viuum aliis Commentariua : Hel. mestadii, 1668, 4to. BEER. 15 learning if it contained anything worth knowing, has judiciously remarkea that smoke-drinking and beer-drinking are natural and necessary complements of each other. The mucilaginous properties of the beer are required to neutralise the narcotic adustness of the Nicotian weed ; and London beer, being the per fection of its kind, naturally takes the lead of all other kinds of beer. Accord ingly we find it not only on the shores of the Baltic, where the habit of swilling their own indigenous malt liquors might be understood to have predisposed the natives to its use, but under tropical skies, and among the disciples of the first great teetotaller, Mahomet. On the Nile and Niger, as has above been hinted, this is not so astonishing. There the natives had already a kind of beer of their own ; and where once a taste for malt has taken root, it would take a cleverer fellow than Mahomet to eradicate it. Burckhardt, in his Nubian travels, gives us a tolerable notion of how vainly the Faquirs and Santons preach against indulgence in boosa; and the last letter from poor Anderson, the only one of Park's European companions who survived to perish with his leader, boasts of having got drunk upon boosa with a Moor, and licked his boon companion in his cups. That people accustomed to put up with bad liquor should take kindly to good when it came within their reach is quite natural. It is among the Osmanli, and the Arabs, and the multiform sects of Hindustan, that we are to look for the real triumph of London beer. In the country last mentioned it is true the high-hopped pale ale of Hodgson, Bass, and others . famous in that line, appears to be in greater demand ; yet the genuine brown stout will be found in a respectable minority. Probably, too, a minute examina tion would show that it is only at the tiffins of the Europeans that Hoagson's beer is most run upon, and that the dusky natives do more affect the generous liquor that comes nearer to their own complexion. In the tropical climates of the West, among the fiery aristocracy of Barbadoes, the shrewd hard-headed book-keepers of Jamaica, the alternate votaries of the gaming-table and the languishing Quadroons of New Orleans, bottled porter reigns supreme. Pale ale is a favourite of long-standing in India. It and the darker kinds of beer crept into Arabia, through the English merchants trading to the Red Sea, at least as early as the time of Niebuhr. That traveller saw a serious elderly Mussulman tipple down repeated glasses of Mr. Scott's beer ; gravely remarking " that Mahomet had only forbidden drinking to intoxication, but that as the vulgar did not know when to hold their hands, it was necessary to make them take the total abstinence pledge ; that he, it might appear to his respected enter tainers, although a learned man, and an aged man to boot, drained no moderate draughts of their beer, but that he did so solely because he knew that it did not intoxicate." The Scheich must either have been a notorious old humbug, or profoundly simple, to say of good London beer that it did not intoxicate. The Turks, of whom Dr. Clarke tells us in his voyages about the Dardanelles and Egypt, were scarcely more candid, but considerably more ingenious. After the French had been driven out of Egypt, a British trading vessel, which had been fitted out to Alexandria by a speculative dealer in beer counting upon the thirst of a British Army in a hot climate, arrived just too late for the market it had counted upon. This was a black look-out for the poor fellow who united in u LONDON. his person the responsibilities of skipper and supercargo ; but by good luck ?here were then, as now (though not to the same extent), some of those question able cnaracters called antiquaries and the like prowling about Egypt, who were on a convivial footing with some of the laxer sort of Turks, The Osmanli tasted the porter at the houses of their Frank friends, and, rather liking it, were not slow to discover that Mahomet could not possibly have prohibited a liquor of which he had never heard, and, without affecting, like Niebuhr's friend, to believe that it did not intoxicate, drank copiously. The skipper found the Turks better customers than the Franks ; and we believe the sale of the article has continued to increase both at Alexandria and Constantinople, Porter-drinking needs but a beginning ; wherever the habit has once been acquired it is sure to be kept up. London is a name pretty widely known in the world : some nations know it for one thing, and some for another. In the regions of the East India Company, where missionary exertions are not much favoured, it is known as theresidence of " Company Sahib ;" in the islands of ocean it is known as the place whence the missionaries come ; the natives of New Holland naturally regard it as a great manufactory of thieves ; the inhabitants of Spanish America once looked upon it as the mother of pirates. But all nations know that London is the place where porter was invented ; and Jews, Turks, Germans Negroes, Persians, Chinese, New Zealanders, Esquimaux, Copper Indians, Yankees, and Spanish Americans, are united in one feeling of respect for the ^tive city of the most universally favourite liquor the world has ever known. [London Drayman.! CBank of England.] LXXVII.— BANKS. The President of the United States, in his message to Congress in 1839, pointed to London as " the centre of the credit system ;" and, speaking of the increase of banks in the States, he said that " the introduction of a new bank into the most distant of our villages places the business of that village within the influ ence of the money-power in England." The power here alluded to, that of great accumulated wealth, is one of the most remarkable characteristics of England. It is the offspring of the unrivalled skill, sober and masculine intellect, and untiring industry of the people, aided by free institutions and the rich natural resources of a country placed in an admirable position for intercourse with her neighbours and with the world at large. There is not any circumstance which so much distinguishes a young country like the United States," wonderful as may be its latent resources for future opulence, as the absence of masses of capital, ready at any moment to be moved hither and thither wherever a profit is likely to be realized. The railroads, canals, roads, and most of the great improve ments of the States could not have been completed without English capital. There is, indeed, scarcely an important enterprise in any quarter of the globe which is not in some degree sustained by the " money-power" of Enp-rand The daily operations connected with her monetary system apply to a debt of 837,000,000/,, an annual revenue of 51,000,000/,, an annual circulation of bills of exchange amounting to between 500,000,000/. and 600,000,000/., an issue of VOL. IV. c 18 LONDON. 35,000,000/. of bank-notes constantly afloat, besides Exchequer bills and Govern ment securitie.?, and a metallic currency amounting to many millions sterUng in gold and in silver. The immense amount of floating capital is put into motion by the operations connected with our vast foreign and domestic trade and internal industry, by the large expenditure of the Government, of the landed aristocracy, and of other persons in the enjoyment of private wealth. Here is ample employment both for the Bank of England and for private banks. The Jews and the Lombards were the earliest money-dealers in England. The former were settled here in the Saxon times, and as early as a.d. 750. In the reigns of the first three Norman kings they appear to have lived undis turbed, but from the commencement of Stephen's reign they began to be cruelly persecuted, and about 1290^ in the reign of Edward I., they were banished the kingdom. Hume remarks that the Jews, being then held infamous on account of their religion, and their industry and frugality having put them into pos session of the ready money of the country, the lending of this money at interest, which passed by the invidious name of usury, fell into their hands. It was not until 1.546 that the taking of interest was rendered legal — the rate was fixed at 10 per cent. In 1552 the statute was repealed, but was re-enacted in 1571. In 1624 the legal rate of interest was reduced to 8 per cent. ; in 1651 to 6 per cent. ; in 1714 to 5 per cent. In 1834 the Bank of England paid 2 per cent, on 1,500,000/. sterling in its hands belonging to the East India Company The Lombards are understood as comprising the merchants from the Italian republics of Genoa, Lucca, Florence, and Venice. Stow, describing the streets in the vicinity of the Bank, says, " Then have ye Lombard Street, so called of the Longobards and other merchants, strangers of divers nations, assembling there twice every day." He shows that the street had its present name before the reign of Edward II. , that is, in the thirteenth century, and probably much earlier. The Lombards and other foreigners engrossed the most profitable branches of English trade ; and it was natural, from tlieir greater wealth, that they should supersede native merchants, They assisted the King with loans of money, and enabled him to anticipate his ordinary revenue. It is probable that the greatest amount of money-dealing during the middle ages Avas carried on by the Royal Exchangers, There were laws against export ing English coin; and as the exchanging of the coin of the realm for foreign coin or bullion was held to be an especial royal prerogative, a " flower of the crown," the King's Exchanger, was alone entitled to pass the current coins of the realm to merchant-strange-rs for those of their respective countries, and to supply foreign money to those who were going abroad, whether aliens or Englishmen, The house in which this business was transacted was commonly called the Exchange, In the reign of King John, the place where the Exchange was made in London was in the street now called the Old 'Change, near St, Paul's. In the reign of Henry VII, the office of Royal Exchanger fell into disuse, but was re-established in 1627 by Charles I., who asserted in a proclamation on the subject that no person of whatever quality or trade had a right to meddle with the exchange of monies without his special licence. He appointed the Earl of Holland to the sole office of " changer, exchanger, and outchanger ;" and this measure having excited a good deal of dissatisfaction, a pamphlet was published the next year BANKS, 19 by the King's authority,* defending the King's prerogative, which,, it was asserted, had been exercised without dispute from the time of Henry I, until the reign of Henry VIII., when, as it was stated, the coin became so debased that no exchange could be made. This first afforded the London goldsmiths an op portunity of leaving off their trade of " goldsmitherie ;" that is, the working and selling of new gold and silver plate, and to turn exchangers of plate and foreign coin for English coin. The proclamation concluded by stating that " for above thirty years past it has been the usual practice of those exchanging goldsmiths to make their servants run every morning from shop to shop to buy up all weighty coins for the mints of Holland and the East countries, whereby the King's mint has stood still." The manner in which the goldsmiths gradually came to act as bankers has already been fully described.-|- Their business rapidly increased, and their numbers also. In 1667 they were in the most flourishing state, when a run occurred, the first in the history of English banking, to awaken thom to one of the dangers of their avocation. This was occasioned by the alarm into which London was thrown by the spirited attack of the Dutch on Sheerness and Chatham. A few years afterwards a much more serious crisis oc curred. On the 2nd of January, 1672, the King suddenly shut up the Exchequer by the advice of the Cabal Ministry. This monstrous proceeding, equivalent to an act of national bankruptcy, spread ruin far and wide. Charles had borrowed of the goldsmiths the sum of 1,328,526/., and neither interest nor principal could be obtained. Thus, previously to the establishment of the Bank of England, the goldsmiths were the bankers of London, and laid the foundation of the present metropolitan banking system. Of the oldest private banks in London it is said that Child's, next to Temple Bar, can prove its existence from 1663, and the business has been carried on from that date to the present time on the same pre mises; the origin of Hoare's bank, in Fleet Street, is traced to 1680; and that of Snow's, of the Strand, to 1685. The firm of Stone, Martins, and Stones, of Lombard Street, claim to be the immediate successors to Sir Thomas Gresham. Soon after the Revolution several schemes were suggested by different indi viduals for the establishment of a national bank. The plan adopted was that of Mr. William Paterson, a Scotch gentleman, who, according to his own ac count, commenced his exertions for the establishment of a national bank, in 1691. He had in view, from the first, the support of public credit, and the relief of the Government from the ruinous terms upon which the raising of the supplies and other financial operations were then conducted. The lowest rate, he tells us, at which advances used to be obtained from capitalists, even upon the land-tax, was 8 per cent., although repayment was made within the year, and premiums were generally granted to subscribers. On anticipations of other taxes, counting premiums, discount, and interest, the public had sometimes to pay 20, 30, and even 40 per cent. ; nor was the money easily obtained when wanted, even on such terms. It was no uncommon thing for Ministers to be obliged to solicit the Common Council of the city of London for so small a sum as J iii ^000/, or 200,000/,, to be repaid from the first returns of the land-tax ; and * ' Cambium Hegius, or the OfiSce of His Majesty's Exchanger Royal,' t No. LXXV., ' Goldsmiths' Hall,' p. 398. c2 20 LONDON. then, if the application was granted, particular Common Councilmen had in like manner to make humble suit to the inhabitants of their respective wards, going from house to house for contributions to the loan.* Paterson, however, expe rienced considerable difficulty in prevailing upon the Ministry to investigate his scheme. King William was abroad when the proposal was brought before the Cabinet in 1693, and it was debated there at great length in the presence of the Queen, The project was ultimately laid before Parliament, where it was made a thorough party question. Notwithstanding the opposition, an Act was passed, which, in imposing certain duties, "towards carrying on the war with France," au thorized their Majesties to grant a commission to take subscriptions for 1,200,000/. out of the whole 1,500,000/. which the new taxes were expected to raise, and to incorporate the subscribers into a company under the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. Interest at 8 per cent, was to be allowed upon the money advanced, and also 4000/. a-year for management, making the whole annual payment to the Company 100,000/. The Company were to be enabled to purchase lands, and to deal in bills of exchange, and gold and silver bullion, but were not to buy merchandise, though they might sell unredeemed goods on which they had made advances. This Act received the royal assent on the 25th of April, 1694. The subscription for the 1,200,000/. was completed in ten days, 25 per cent, being paid down ; and the Company received their royal charter of incorporation on the 27th of July. The new establishment soon proved its usefulness. Bishop Burnet, in his ' History,' says, " The advantages that the King and all concerned in tallies had from the Bank were soon so sensibly felt that all people saw into the secret reasons that made the_ enemies of the con stitution set themselves with so much earnestness against it." Paterson, the projector of the Bank, remarked that it " gave life and currency to double or treble the value of its capital ;" and he ascribes to it no less an effect than the successful termination of the war. The Bank has ever since continued to make advances to the Government according to the necessities of the public service, and in 1833 the Government were indebted to it in the large sum of 14,686,804/. According to its original charter, the Bank was not to lend money to the Go- rernment without the consent of Parliament, under a penalty of three times the sum lent, one-fifth part of which was to go to the informer; but in 1792 an Act was passed abrogating this clause, with the understanding that the amount of sums lent should be annually laid before Parliament. In 1718 the subscription for a loan to Government was made at the Bank in stead of at the Treasury, and it has long had the entire management of the public debt. Since 1833 the allowance for that service has been reduced to 130,000/, a-year, having previously been 250,000/.; but before 1786 it was at a still higher rate, a reduction having then taken place from 562/. 10*. to 450/. per million : the original allowance, however, was not less than 3333/. 6s. 8d. per million. In 1697 the Bank charter was renewed until 1711 ; in 1708 it was further continued to 1733; in 1712 to 1743; in 1742 to 1765; in 1763 to 1786; in 1781 to 1812; in 1800 to 1833; and in 1833 it was renewed until 1855, with a proviso that if, in 1845, Parliament thought fit, and the money owing by the • Paterson's 'Account of his Transactions in Relation to the Bank of England,' folio, 1695 ; quoted in ' Pict, Hist, of England,' vol. iv. p, 692. BANKS. 21 Government to the Bank were paid up, the charter might be Avithdrawn. On the renewal of the charter in 1708, the Bank received a most important addition to its privileges by the prohibition of partnerships exceeding six persons carrying on the business of bankers. The period of renewing the charter has, however, usually been made use of for the purpose of securing more advantageous terms with the Bank. Almost as soon as it had been established the Bank was called upon to assist the government and the country in the entire recoinage of the silver money. The notes of the new bank and Montague's Exchequer bills Avere destined to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the calling in of the old coin ; but as these notes Avere payable on demand, they were returned faster than coin could be obtained from the Mint, and during 1697 the Bank was forced to resort to a plan tan tamount to a suspension of payment — giving coin for its notes, first by instal ments of 10 per cent, once a fortnight, and afterwards only at the rate of 3 per cent, once in three months. The Directors also advertised that, while the silver Avas recoining, " Such as think it fit, for their convenience, to keep an account in a book Avith the Bank, may transfer any sum under 51. from his own to another man's account." During the crisis the notes of the Bank fell to a discount of 20 per cent., and the Directors made two successive calls of 20 per cent, each on the proprietors of the Bank, Avhich Avere but feebly responded to. The Bank at length got through its difficulties, and started afresh in its course. Fortu nately it escaped being draAvn into the vortex of ruin occasioned by the South Sea bubble, though, being called upon by the Government at this crisis to act with a vicAV of supporting public credit, it had at least a narroAV escape. We pass onto 1745, the year of the rebellion, when the march of the Pre tender's army into England threw London into consternation, and a run on the Bank for gold Avas the consequence. Its affairs Avere highly prosperous, and its capital exceeded 10,000,000/., but, unfortunately, it was not abundantly pro vided Avith specie, and the Directors, in order to gain time, resorted to the ex pedient of paying in silver, and even did not disdain the advantage of using sixpences to accomplish this object. During the riots of 1780 a danger of another kind Avas experienced, and the Bank Avas certainly in some risk of being plundered. Since this affair a party of the foot-guards is stationed within the Avails of the Bank every evening, and the Directors keep a table for the officer in command. By far the most important epoch in the history of the Bank occurred in 1797. The precious metals may be transmitted to any of the great commercial capitals of the continent at an expense of 5s. or J per cent. ; and Avhenever the balance of payments to those capitals is adverse to this country to such an extent as to render it more economical to send gold than to remit bills, the Bank is drained of its treasure. In this Avay there AVas a great efflux of bullion in 1795 and 1 796, Avhich Avas increased by the necessity of importing foreign corn and by the enormous prices to which competition Avith the French had raised the price of naval stores in the Baltic. The domestic circumstances of the country aggravated the effect of this drain of the precious metals. The transition from peace to Avar had suddenly interrupted the labours of many great branches of industry ; and a number of country banks had failed, spreading consternation and 22 LONDON. alarm in every direction, and creating an internal demand for specie as well as the one from abroad. Coincident Avith these circumstances Avas the alarm of invasion, Avhich induced many to hoard the sums drawn from the banks. These causes were in full operation up to Saturday, the 26th of February, 1797, Avhen the Bank treasure Avas reduced to 1,086,170/. On that very day a Gazette Extraordinary was published announcing the landing of some troops in Wales from a French frigate. The alarm on the subject of invasion was deep and universal. At this critical juncture it was determined by an order in council to restrain the Bank from paying its .notes in cash ; and a messenger Avas sent to George III, at Windsor, requesting him to come to toAvn on the following day to be present at the council. The newspapers of the day state that it was the first time during his reign that the King had come to town or transacted business on a Sunday. The order suspending cash payments Avas drawn up at this council. In this document the unusual demand for specie was attributed to " ill-founded and exaggerated alarms in different parts of the country;" but as there Avas reason to apprehend an insufficient supply of cash to meet this demand, it was determined that the Bank " should forbear any cash in payment until the sense of Parliament can be taken on that subject, and the proper measures thereupon adopted for maintaining the means of circulation, and supporting the public and commercial credit of the kingdom at this important juncture." The next morning the croAvds assembled at the Bank Avith a vicAV of demanding gold, received a hand-bill containing an official notice, in Avhich the Directors stated that, in pursuance of the order in council communicated to them on the previous evening, they would " continue their usual discounts for the accommo dation of the commercial interest, paying the amount in bank-notes ; and the dividend warrants will be paid in the same manner." The Directors assured the public that " the general concerns of the Bank Avere in a most affluent and pros perous situation, and such as to preclude any doubt as to the security of its notes." On the same day a meeting Avas held of merchants, bankers, and others, at Avhich a declaration was agreed to, which received above four thousand signa tures, binding the parties to use bank-notes to any amount both in paying and receiving money. As Parliament Avas sitting, a Committee of Secrecy Avas ap pointed, Avhich reported that the Bank had a surplus beyond its debts of 3,825,890/,, exclusive of the debt of 1 1,684,800/. due from the Government, The consequences of the Bank suspension are memorable, and a number of important monetary operations immediately became necessary. On the 6th of March the Bank announced that they Avere ready to issue dollars valued at 4.f. 6d. each. They Avere Spanish dollars, Avith the impress of the London Mint, Before they Avere issued it Avas ascertained that their value Avas about tAvopence more than stated, and on the 9th of March another notice appeared, stating that they would be "issued at 4*. 9d. each. In 1804 the Bank issued five-shilling dollars, and subsequently "tokens" for 3*, and for 1*. 6d. Ten days after the Bank suspended cash payments, namely, on the 10th of March, an Act Avas passed authorizing the Bank to issue, for the first time, notes for 1/. and 21. The first Bank Restriction Act Avas passed on the 3rd of May following the suspension of cash payments. It indemnified the Bank Directors against the consequences of complying with the order in council, and prohibited them BANKS. 23 paying cash except for sums under twenty shillings. The Act Avas to be in force until the 24th of June, only fifty-two days ; but tAvo days before it expired a second Act was passed, continuing the restriction until a month after the com mencement of the succeeding session ; and accordingly, on the 30th of the ensuing November, a third Act Avas passed to continue the restriction until six months after the termination of the Avar. On the Peace of Amiens the restriction Avas renewed until the 1st of March, 1803 ; and hostilities having re-commenced, it was continued until a definitive treaty of peace should be concluded. During the existence of the Bank restriction. Acts Avere passed declaring it illegal to take bank-notes at less, or gold for more, than the nominal value. In 1810 the famous Bullion Committee declared that gold and Bank paper Avere of equivalent value. At length the great struggle Avas brought to a close ; but 1816 being a period of great commercial distress and embarrassment, the Bank restriction Avas con tinued until July, 1818. In April, 1817, the Bank gave notice that after the 2nd of May ensuing all notes of 1/. and 21., dated prior to the 1st of January, 1816, would be paid in cash; and in September of the same year the Directors stated that they Avould be prepared to pay cash for notes of every description dated prior to 1st of January, 1817, While the Bank was fulfilling these engagements a Bill Avas carried through both Houses of Parliament, in 1819, in tAVO days, restraining it from paying away more of its gold in pursuance of the notices of April and September, 1817, Above five millions sterling in gold had already been paid, the greater part of Avhich had been re-exported and coined in foreign money. The bill commonly known as Peel's Act was passed in the same year. It provided for the absolute resumption of cash payments by the 1st of May, 1823, continuing the restriction as to payments in paper until February 1, 1820 ; and in the intervening period from the latter date to May, 1823, the Bank Avas required to pay its notes in bullion of standard fineness, but Avas not to be liable to a demand for a less quantity than sixty ounces at one time. The Bank Directors had noAv to raise 20,000,000/. sterling of gold from foreign countries in the course of four years, to pay off first their OAvn II. notes, amounting to 7,500,000/., and then the small uotes of the country bankers, about 8,000,000/. more, besides providing for the convertibility of all their oAvn liabi lities. After the 1st of May, 1821, they commenced paying off their notes under 51. in a new gold coinage, consisting of sovereigns and half-sovereigns, of Avhich above 9,500,000/. sterling had been received from the Mint. In 1822 the Bank was prepared to pay off the country small notes, when, " Avithout any communi cation with the Bank, the Government thought proper to authorize a continuation of the country small notes until 1833,"* The bullion which the Bank had thus fruitlessly provided to facilitate this operation amounted to 14,200,000/, In December, 1825, occurred the "Great Panic." One of the great predis posing causes of this event Avas the reduction in 1822 and 1823 of the interest on tAVO descriptions of public stock comprising a capital of 215,000,000/. The Bank agreed to advance the money to pay off the dissentients, of Avhom, amongst so large a body, there would no doubt be a considerable number. Many of these persons, annoyed at finding their incomes diminished, were disposed to invest their capital in speculations of very doubtful if not hazardous character. * Memorandum by the Bank Directors delivered to the Parliamentary Committee in 1832. 24 LONDON. The years 1823 and 1824 Avere remarkable for the feverish excitement with Avhich all sorts of projects for the profitable employment of money were regarded England had not been in such a Avhirligig of speculation since the unfortunate South Sea scheme above a century before. Besides many millions of foreign loans which Avere contracted for, the total number of joint-stock projects amounted to 626, and to have carried them all into execution would have re quired a capital of 372,000,000/. sterling.* There were not fewer than 74 mining companies, with an aggregate capital of 78,000,000/. sterling. The imagination revelled in visions of unbounded wealth to be realized from the mines of Mexico, of Brazil, of Peru, of Chili, of the Rio de la Plata, or from one or other of the six hundred schemes which dazzled the eyes of the public. " In all these speculations only a small instalment, seldom exceeding 5 per cent., AVas paid at first ; so that a very moderate rise on the price of the shares pro duced a large profit on the sum actually invested. If, for instance, shares of 100/., on Avhich 51. had been paid, rose to a premium of 40/., this yielded on every share a profit equal to eight times the money Avhich had been paid. This possibility of enormous profit by risking a small sum was a bait too tempting to be resisted ; all the gambling propensities of human nature were consequently solicited into action; and croAvds of individuals of every description hastened to venture some portion of their property in schemes of which scarcely anything Avas known except the name."t The Avildness of speculation Avas not, hoAvever, confined to joint-stock projects, but reached at length to commercial produce generally. Money Avas abundant and circulated with rapidity ; prices and profits rose higher and higher ; and, in short, all went merry as a marriage bell. At length the tide turned, and there Avas a fearful transition from unbounded credit and confidence to general discredit and distrust. In February, 1825, the bullion in the Bank had been reduced by some 3,000,000/. sterling since the commencement of the previous October, but it still amounted to 8,750,000/. In consequence, hoAvever, of the previous heavy demand for the produce of other countries the exchanges Avere unfavourable, and the drain of bullion still continued. In August the Bank treasure was diminished to 3,634,320/, ; and thus, Avhen the period of discredit arrived, and such a reaction Avas the necessary consequence of the previous madness of speculation, the Bank was ill able to sustain the violent pressure. The real panic began on the 5th of December, when a London bank failed at which the agency of above forty country banks Avas transacted. The effect of this single event Avas tremendous. Lombard Street Avas filled Avith persons hastening to the different banks to withdraw their investments or to ascertain if they had succumbed to the general shock. On the 6th several other banks failed. The Bank had ceased to issue its own notes for sums under 51. ; but the country bankers, Avhose small notes Avere still in circulation, Avere subject to a run in every part of the country, and the demands for gold through so many channels of course finally affected the Bank ; but it boldly kept its course, paying away gold as soon as called for in bags of tAventy- five sovereigns each. J Instead of contracting their issues, as the Directors ^ English's ' Complete View of the Joint-Stock Companies formed during the years 1824 aud 1825.' \ • Annual Register' for 1824. J The largest amount of gold coin that could be paid during banking hours (from nine to five) iu one day, by twenty-five clerks, if counted by hand to the persons demanding it, is about 50,000.'. On the l4th of May, 1832, BANKS, ' 25 of 1797 had done under a similar crisis, they resolutely extended them. On one day they discounted 4200 bills. On the 8th of December the discounts at the Bank amounted to 7,500,000/.; on the 1 5th they were 11,500,000/. ; and on the 29th 15,000,000/. All mercantile paper that had any pretensions to security Avas freely discounted. On the 3rd the circulation of the Bank was 17,500,000/,, and on the 24th it Avas 25,500,000/. Mr. Jarman, one of the Directors at this period, stated to the Parliamentary Committee of 1832 the steps Avhich the Bank took during this crisis : — " We took in stock as security ; aa'c purchased Exche quer bills ; Ave not only discounted outright, but Ave made advances on deposits of bills of exchange to an immense amount ; and Ave were not upon some occasions over nice, seeing the dreadful state in which the public Avere," The severest pressure was experienced during the week ending 1 7th December, when fortu nately a pause occurred. Mr. Richards, Avho Avas Deputy-Governor of the Bank at this time, in his evidence before the same Committee, said : " Upon that Saturday night (17th December) Ave Avere actually expecting gold on the Monday ; but what was much more important, whether from fatigue or whether from being satisfied, the pubUc mind had yielded to circumstances, and the tide turned at the moment on that Saturday night." And being asked if the supplies expected on Monday would have been sufficient to have saved the Bank from being drained, he said : " During the Aveek ending on the 24th there was a de mand ; but the supply that came in fully equalised it, if it did not do more ; and the confidence had become as nearly as possible perfect by the evening of the 24th." In this latter week a box containing betAveen 600,000 and 700,000 one-pound notes, Avhich had been placed on one side as unused, Avas discovered, it is said by accident, and these were immediately issued. Mr. Jarman, alluding to this circumstance, said : " As far as my judgment goes, it saved the credit of the country," This, however, is probably attributing too much weight to the matter, seeing that the great pressure Avas over in the previous week. To use the Avords of another Bank Director : " Bullion came in and the mint coined ; they worked double tides ; in short, they were at Avork night and day, and we Avere perpetually receiving gold from abroad and coin from the mint," On the 24th of December the Bank treasure was reduced to 426,000/. in coin, and 601,000/, in bullion; together, 1,027,000/, On the 28th of February, 1797, Avhen the Bank suspended cash payments, its stock of coin and bullion Avas rather greater, being 1,086,170/. The Bank, hoAvever, was only just saved from a second suspension ; but the Government absolutely declined to entertain such a proposition Avhen the Directors intimated the probability of their being run dry. The panic of 1825 hastened several changes in the constitution of banks. On the 13th January, 1826, the Government made a communication to the Bank Directors, proposing the establishment of branch banks in some of the principal towns, and that the corporation should surrender its exclusive privilege restrict ing the number of partners in a bank, except within a certain distance of London, thus paving the way for the introduction of Joint-Stock Banks. In pursuance of those suggestions the Bank established branches at Gloucester, Manchester, when 307,000/. in gold was paid, the tellers counted 28 sovereigns into one scale aud 25 into the other, and if they balanced continued the operation until there were 200 in each scale. In this way 1000/. can be paid in a tew minutes. The weight of 1000 sovereigns is 31 lbs. : 512 bank-notes weigh 1 lb. 26 LONDON. and Swansea, and at several other places in the following year, much to the dis satisfaction of the country bankers : the number of branches is noAV tAvelve. In 1826, also, an act was passed permitting banks to be established beyond sixty-five miles of London Avith any number of partners. In 1833, on the renewal of its charter, the Bank surrendered other of its privileges, in consequence of Avhich Joint-Stock Banks issiling their notes might be established at a distance of sixty- five miles from London, and within that distance — that is, in the metropolis — provided they issued only the notes of the Bank of England. There are now above a hundred Joint-Stock Banks in England, several of which are established in London ; and many private banks in the country have been thrown open to joint-stock associations. In 1835 the Directors of the Bank of England came to the resolution of refusing to discount all bills drawn or indorsed by joint-stock banks of issue. A slight run on the Bank occurred in 1832, Avhen the Reform Bill received a check. The largest sum paid in one day in. exchange for notes was 307,000/. Little or no alteration has been made in the constitution of the Bank since it Avas first incorporated. The Government of the Bank rests entirely with the Governor and Deputy- Governor and tAventy-four Directors, eight of Avhom go out every year, and eight others are elected by proprietors holding 500/, of Bank Stock ; but, practically, the eight who come in are nominated by the whole court, — that is, a " house list " containing their names being submitted at a general meeting, no opposition is made to their appointment. There are four general meetings in the course of the year ; but beyond these, and the regular commu nications Avhich take place betAveen the court and the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there is no control over their proceedings ; and the Ministers of the CroAvn have no legal authority to enforce any alteration in the policy of the Directors, though their vieAVs are of course always con sidered Avith attention. The Governor and a select committee of three Di rectors who have passed the chair sit daily at the Bank. On the Wednesday a court of ten Directors sit to consider all London bills sent in for discount. On another day there is a full meeting of the Directors, Avhen all London notes of more than 2000/. come under revicAV, and a statement is read of the exact position of the Bank, The "Bank parlour" is an expression commonly used in reference to the decisions of the Bank Directors, The total allowance of the Directors is about 8000/, a-year. They are not usually large holders of Bank Stock, The qualification for Governor is 4000/, ; Deputy- Governor, 3000/. ; and Director, 2000/. In 1837 the Governor of the Bank appeared in the ' Gazette ' as a bankrupt. Independent of their capital lent to Government, noAV amounting to about 11,000,000/., on which the Bank receives interest at 3 per cent., and a sum o-ene- rally amounting to about 2,000,000/., called the " rest," being undivided profits, the floating capital of the Bank on the 13th of August last consisted of 19,000,000/. taised by the circulation of notes, and 9,000,000/. of deposits, making together above 28,000,000/. Oncthird of this capital is kept in coin and bullion, accord ing to a principle which the Directors have acted upon for several years, and the other two-thirds in Exchequer Bills, Government securities, and bills of exchange. If this proportion is disturbed by the number of bills offered for discount, the BANKS. 27 Bank sells Government securities and adds to its stock of bullion. The profits of the Bank are derived from the interest on Exchequer bills and other Govern ment securities, from mercantile bills discounted, the management of the public debt, from its permanent capital, its notes in circulation, and from the use of the deposits, on Avhich it does not allow interest. During the war the "rest " reached the large sum of 6,000,000/. The principal heads of receipt in 1 832 Avere as follows :— -Interest on commercial bills 130,695/.; on Exchequer bills 204,109/. ; the dead-weight annuity 451,51 5?.; interest on capital received from Govern ment 446,502/. ; allowance for management of the public debt 251,896/. ; in terest on private loans 56,941/.; on mortgages 60,684/.; making, with some other items, a total of 1,689,176/. In the same year the expenses, including losses by forgery and sundry items, were 428,674/. ; the composition for stamp duty was 70,875/. ; and 1,164,235/. Avas divided amongst the proprietors. In the first of the above heads is included the expense for conducting the busi ness of the funded debt, 164,143/. ; the expense attending the circulation of pro missory notes and post bills 106,092/. ; and the expense of the banking depart ment, of which the proportion for the public accounts may be estimated at 10,000/. ; making a total of 339,400/. Of course a very large staff of clerks and heads of departments is required to manage this enormous establishment. In 1832 there Avere employed 820 clerks and porters, and 38 printers and engravers, and there were also 193 pen sioners, chiefly superannuated clerks, who received in pensions 31,243?., averag ing 193/. each. In the same year the salaries to 940 persons, including 82 at the branches in the country, amounted to 211,903/., averaging 225/. each. The house expenses amounted to 39,187/., exclusive of the alloAvance of 8000/. to the Directors, During the existence of the Bank Restriction Act a still larger number of clerks was required, and their number is said at onetime to have been 1100. Avery strong corps of volunteers was formed entirely of officers and clerks of the Bank. In 1 822, when the abolition of small notes took place, the Bank gave liberal pensions or "an equivalent payment in ready money to those clerks whose services were no longer required. The name of Abraham NcAvland will here probably occur to many readers. He Avas appointed a clerk in the Bank in 1748, was made chief cashier in 1782, and resigned his office in 1807, having accumulated a fortune of 130,000/. as a servant of the Bank during nearly 60 years. For 25 years he never slept beyond its walls. The Bank clerks are admitted between the ages of 17 and 25, on the nomination of a Director. At the age of 1 7 the salary is 50/., increasing 10/, every year until the clerk is 21, and after that age the increase is 51. yearly till he is 25, and then .is extended to 81. annually until it attains the maximum of 260/, The pro motion is by seniority, except as respects some of the principal situations,* The number of clerks in private banks varies from forty or fifty to about a hundred. Before 1759 the Bank issued notes for no loAVer sum than 20/., but in that year it commenced issuing notes for 15/. and 10/. ; in 1794 notes for 51. ; and in 1797 its whole economy was changed by the restriction of cash payments, and the issue of U and 21. notes. In 1815 it had 27,500,000/, in circulation in notes. In August, * ' The Clerk ;' forming a number of the Guides to Service and Trade; 28 LONDON. 184'2, the total amount of its circulation Avas 19,000,000/, Its notes d,re a legal tender, except at the Bank and its branches, Avhere they are convertible to gold on demand. The Bank never re-issues the same notes, even if they are returned on its hands the day they are sent out. The machinery for printing and numbering notes is very ingenious : — " The apparatus consists of a series of brass discs, of Avhich the rim is divided by channels into projecting compartments, each containing a figure. The numbers 1 to 9 having been printed in the course of the revolution of the first disc, and this disc having returned to figure 1, the second disc comes into play, and presents a 0, and the tAVO together therefore print 10. The first disc now remains stationary, until, in the course of the revolution of the second disc, the numbers 1 to 19 have been printed, Avhen it presents the figure 2, and does not again move until another revolution of the second disc completes the numbers 20 to 29. Thus the tAvo discs proceed until 99 notes have been num bered, Avhen the third disc comes into operation, and with the tAVO first produces 100, consequently the first disc performs one hundred revolutions to ten of the second, and one of the third."* In 1820 an Act Avas passed authorizing the Directors to impress by machinery the signatures to the notes, instead of being subscribed by hand. The first fol-gery of a bank-note occurred in 1758, Avhen the person who forged it was convicted and executed. In 1781 it Avas decided that the Bank Avas not liable for the payment of forged notes. A more easily fabricated instrument Avas never issued, and detection only ensued Avhen the note reached a certain department of the Bank, Avhere its spuriousness Avas detected from certain private marks. The consequence Avas that forgery, Avhich was a comparatively rare crime before 1797, became a very common offence; and every year public feeling Avas outraged by the execution of numerous victims to the facility with Avhich the wretchedly-engraved notes of the Bank were imitated. In 1820 there Avero 101 persons convicted of forgery, and 272 for having forged notes in their possession. In 1818 the number of persons executed for forgery Avas 24. Tavo remarkable cases of forgery by Avhich the Bank Avas a loser to a large amount occurred in 1803 and 1824. In the former year Mr. Astlett, one of the chief cashiers, by re-issuing Exchequer bills, defrauded the Bank to the amount of 320,000/. The other case Avas that of Mr, Fauntleroy, the acting partner of a bank in Berners Street, Avho, in order to keep up the credit of the house, forged poAvers of attorney, by Avhich he sold out of the funds large sums of money belonging to different persons, continuing to pay the dividends upon them until his detection, Astatement Avas found at the banking-house, in Fauntleroy's hand-writing, acknoAvledging his crime. It Avas dated May, 1816, and a postscript was added to the following effect : — " The Bank began first to refuse to discount our acceptances, and to destroy the credit of our house : the Bank shall smart for it." The total loss to the Bank from Fauntleroy's forgeries amounted to 360,000/. We cannot afford much space for an account of the extensive pile of build ings in which the business of the Bank is carried on. Sir John Soane, the late architect to the Bank, fixed the fair amount of rent Avhich he thought should be paid for the Bank at 35,000/., and 5000/. for fixtures, &c., making a total rental '* ' Encyclopedia Britannica.' BANKS. 29 of 40,000/. The business Avas conducted for many years at Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry. On the 3rd of August, 1732, the Governors and Directors laid the first stone of their ncAv building in Threadneedle Street, on the site of the house and garden formerly belonging to Sir John Houblon, the first Governor of the Bank : it was from the design of Mr. George Sampson, and Avas opened for business on the 5th of June, 1 734. At first the Bank buildings comprised only the centre of the principal or south front, the Hall, Bullion Court, and the court yard. The east and Avest Avings were added by Sir Robert Taylor, between the years 1766 and 1786 ; and the remainder of the structure was completed by Sir John Soane, Avho was appointed the Bank architect in 1788. He rebuilt many of those parts constructed by Sampson and Taylor, and the Avhole of the edifice as it noAv stands may be said to be from his designs. It noAV covers an irregular space of four acres, comprising the greater part of the parish of St. Christopher. The exterior walls of the south side measure 365 feet ; the length of the west side is 440 feet; of the north side 410 feet ; and of the east side 245 feet. This area comprises nine open courts — the Rotunda, committee-rooms, apartments for officers and servants, and the rooms appropriated to business. The principal suite of rooms is on the ground-floor, and, having no apartments over them, the light is admitted from above by lantern lights. and domes. The number of rooms beneath this floor and beloAv the surface of the ground is greater than of those above ground. Here are the vaults in which the Bank treasure is depo sited. The material used throughout the greater part of the edifice is stone, and every means have been taken to render it indestructible by fire. Any person may walk into the Rotunda and most of the principal apartments. Speaking of the Pay Hall, Avhere bank-notes are issued and exchanged for cash. Baron Dupin, in his ' Commercial PoAver of Great Britain,' says, " The administration of a French bureau, Avith all its inaccessibilities, Avould be startled at the vicAV of this hall." It is 79 feet long by 40 Avide, and forms a part of the original building by Sampson. A statue of King William, Avho is called " the founder of the Bank," Avas placed here when the business was transferred from Grocers' Hall. Amongst the principal apartments of the Bank is the Three per Cent. Consol Office, 90 feet long by 50 Avide, designed from models of the Roman baths, and constructed without timber. The Dividend and Bank Stock Offices are designed in a similar style. The Chief Cashier's Office, simply decorated and lighted by large and lofty Avindows, is 45 feet by 30. The Court Room is a handsome apartment of the Composite order from Sir Robert Taylor's design. It is lighted on the south side by Venetian Avindows, looking out upon a pleasant area planted with trees and shrubs, which was formerly the churchyard of St, Christopher's. The private bankers of London are the successors of the "new-fashioned bankers," Avho, about the middle of the seventeenth century, added the trade of money-lending to that of goldsmiths. An alteration in the state of the laAv relating to promissory notes, in 1705, Avas very favourable to the increase of private banks; but it Avas not until after the middle of the century that they became distinguished for their great wealth and immense business. The num ber of private banks in London fifty years ago Avas 56, of Avhich only 24 are iioav in existence. The number is at present 74, including 7 colonial and 8 joint- 30 LONDON. stock banks. Lombard Street still maintains its ancient fame as the great centre of the dealers in money. Although 8 private banks have been discon tinued in this street within the last thirty years, there are 13 still remaininj besides notaries and stock-brokers. Of tho remaining 46 banks there are 13 Avest of Temple Bar, 4 in Smithfield, 1 in Shoreditch, and the rest are chiefly Avithin a stone's throAv of the Royal Exchange. The late Duchess of St. Alban's Avas, and the present Countess of Jersey is, a partner in a banking-house. A recent publication,* Avhich contains some lively remarks on the subject of bank ing, as Avell as discussions on its scientific principles, gives the following sketch of a banker of the old school : — " He bore little resemblance to his modern suc cessor : he Avas a man of serious manners, plain apparel, the steadiest conduct, and a rigid observer of formalities. As you looked in his face you could read, in intelligible characters, that the ruling maxim of his life, the one to which he turned ail his thoughts, and by Avhich he shaped all his actions, was, that he Avho Avould be trusted with the money of other men, should look as if he deserved the trust, and be an ostensible pattern to society of probity, exactness, frugality, and decorum. He lived — if not the Avhole of the year, at least the greater part of the year — at his banking-house ; was punctual to the hours of business, and always to be found at his desk. The fashionable society at the Avest end of the toAvn, and the amusements of high life, he never dreamed of enjoying." There are few persons of Avealth or Avho are engaged in trade who do not find the advantage and convenience of having an account at a banker's. Ordinarily one-tenth, or even so little as one-tAventieth, of the capital belonging to the firm or to its customers is sufficient for current demands. The remainder is invested in securities Avhich are readily convertible, and in discounting mercantile bills. The London bankers are also the agents of the country banks. The annual profits of the two most prosperous private banks in London are estimated at 90,000/. each. Coutts's bank and Glyn's, the former in the Strand, the latter in Lombard Street, are very fair representations of a class — the bank of the wealthy aristocracy and that of the commercial Avorld. " Coutts's," says the author of ' Banks and Banking,' " resembles not a feAV of the greatest establishments this country has produced, in having sprung from a small beginning, and OAved.its fortune to the sagacity and perseverance of an humble individual, who was re markable at the outset of his career for strict economy. It is principally a bank of deposit, and can hardly be said to have a commercial character. The number of its discount accounts is small, and perhaps there is not a house in London in Avhich fcAver bills are cashed during the year. The only branch of general bank ing business in which it at all enters into competition with the principal firms in the City, is the agency to country banks. Coutts's have always done the toAvn business of some of the best Scotch banks. EveryAvhere in England, and par ticularly in London, all great things go in tides. Coutts's has for years been the bank of the monied portion of the nobility — of persons who are seldom without having sums of 10,000/., and even 100,000/., lying to their credit. Early in the reign of George III. different members of the royal family, and many of the landed aristocracy of England and Scotland, began to bank at Coutts's, and they have since increased to a multitude. Enormous balances are thus accumulated, ? ' Banks and Banking.' BANKS, 31 and the safest and most profitable description of business in which a banker can be engaged is steadily transacted by the firm." On the other hand, " Glyn's is a complete contrast to Coutts's : here, in addition to a large portion of the ac counts of the nobility and landed gentry, is the greatest number of commercial accounts in London ; and here scenes of bustle and animation take place daily of which it is not easy to convey an adequate idea. About three o'clock all is life, activity, and vigour ; the place is a fair, and more like a great change than the Royal Exchange itself used to be. Though the bank is spacious, and the counters are packed with clerks as close as they can stand together, you may sometimes have to wait tAventy minutes before your turn to be served arrives. Tavo mighty streams of money are constantly ebbing and flowing across the counters ; and half a million is said to be no uncommon sum for the firm to settle at the Clearing-house of an afternoon." We shall conclude this paper with a short notice of the Clearing establishment above alluded to, which was set on foot by the private bankers in 1770. The present Clearing-house is situated in the corner of a court at the back of the Guardian Insurance Office, in Lombard Street, The business was previously conducted in an apartment in the banking-house of Messrs. Smith, Payne, and Smiths, and still earlier at the banking-house of Messrs. Barnetts and Co., all in Lombard Street. The object of the Clearing-house is to save time and money. The cheques and bills of exchange, on the authority- of which a great part of the money paid and received by bankers is made, are taken from each of the clearing- bankers to the Clearing-house several times in the day, and the cheques and bills drawn on one banker are cancelled by those Avhich he holds on others. The joint-stock banks are excluded from this association of private bankers. Some of the private bankers, from the nature of their business, do not require the aid Avhich these clearances afford, and others are too distant to maintain the neces sary rapidity of communication Avith the Clearing-house. Perhaps there are not more than half-a-dozen persons in London, unconnected with banking, Avho have entered the precincts of this celebrated establishment ; but an authentic detail of its arrangements has recently been published by Mr. Tate, author of the ' Modern Cambist,' to Avhich Ave must refer those who desire something more than a general idea of the system.* The Clearing-house is fitted up with desks for each of the present twenty-seven clearing-bankers, Avhose names, taking the first of each firm, are arranged in alphabetical order as follows, over each desk : — BarclayBarnard Barnetts Bosanquet Brown Curries Denison Mr. Tate says, " The rapidity with which the last charges are required to be entered, and the bustle which is created by their swift distribution through the room, are difficult to be conceived. It is, then, on the point of striking four, and on days of heavy business, that the beauty of the alphabetical arrangement of the * ' The System of the London Bankers' Clearances Explained and Exemplified.' Dorrien Masterman Stevenson Fuller Prescott Stone Glyn Price Veres Hanbury Robarts Weston Hankey Rogers Williams Jones Smith Willis, Lubbock Spooner 32 LONDON, clearers' desk is to be seen. All the distributors are moving the same way round the room, Avith no further interference than may arise from the more active press ing upon or outstripping the slower of their fellow- assistants. With equal celerity .jre their last credits entered by the clearers. A minute or two having passed, all tlie noise has ceased. The deputy-clearers have left with the last charges on their houses ; the clearers are silently occupied in casting up the amounts of the accounts in their books, balancing them, and entering the differences in their balance sheets, until at length announcements begin to be heard of the probable amounts to be received or paid, as a preparation for the final settlement. The four o'clock balances having been entered in the balance-sheet, each clearer goes round to check and mark off his accounts Avith the rest, with ' I charge you,' or ' I credit you,' according as each balance is in his favour or against him." In 1810, Avhen forty-six banks settled Avith each other at the Clearing-house, the accounts cancelled in one day have sometimes, it is said, amounted to 15,000/. In the Appendix to the Second Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Banks, there is a return of the payments made through the Clear ing-house for the year 1839, and, omitting all sums under 100/., the total was 954,401,600/. The average for each day Avould consequently be rather more than 3,000,000/. sterling (the actual payments range from 1,500,000/. to 6,250,000Z.), Avhile that of the sums actually paid Avas about 213,000/. It h-as, however, sometimes happened that a single house has had to pay above half a million of money. The payments through the Clearing-house of three bankers, in 1839, ranged from 100,000,000/. to 107,000,000/. each. [London and Wcrtmiastcr Bank, Throgmorton Street.1 >^ [^ l''iliililM'JIIIIIIIFiDII:'ltfl 'A Lfel . - -' [Interior of the Prison.] LXXVIII.— THE FLEET PRISON. The earliest mention of this place carries us back to times as different in spirit as they are remote from those of the present day. In the first year of the reign of Richard of the Lion Heart, we find that monarch confirming to Osbert, brother to Longchamp, Chancellor of England, and to his heirs for ever, the custody of his palace at Westminster and the keeping of his gaol of the Fleet in London : so that next to their own homes the kings of England in the twelfth century thought it a matter of the highest importance to take care of the homes of their enemies. In the third year of John's reign we find a similar instance, when the Archdeacon of Wells received the custody of the palace and the prison, together with the wardship of the daughter and heir of Robert Leveland. And no doubt if the history of its narrow cells and subterranean dungeons could be opened unto us, we should perceive, in the ample use they made of it, sufficient reason for their anxiety as to its safe custody. But up to the sixteenth century that history is little better than a sealed book. The burning of the prison by the followers of Wat Tyler seems to have been the only very noticeable event prior to the period mentioned. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the records of the Fleet become suddenly filled with matters of the deepest interest in connexion with the religious martyrs of the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary, and those who might almost be called the political martyrs of the Star Chamber in the reign of Charles I. A manuscript referred to in the account of the Fleet Prison in the ' Beauties VOL. IV. 1? 34 LONDON. of England and Wales,' which is stated to be in the British Museum, but which we have not been able t-o find, gives the " Names of all bishops, doctors, &c., that were prisoners in the Fleet for religion, since the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a.d. 1558;" and in the list are comprised the names of three bishops, six doctors, and eight priests. The same manuscript also gives the names of all such " temporal men " as were in confinement for the same crime of Avorshipping God according to their conscience, and among these are some per sons of rank and title. In the following reign Ave arrive at the history of one of the most venerated of British martyrs. Bishop Hooper, whose connexion with the Fleet was altogether of an unusually curious as well as interesting kind. On the accession of Edward VI., or at least as soon as the struggles between the am bitious nobles of his court for place and poAver were decided, and the extensive insurrection which marked the early part of the reign had been put down, the Protestant party, now reinforced by the incalculable amount of influence be longing to a king sympathising with their opinions, became bolder in their attacks on the old religion; and, among other measures, Bonner, Gardiner, Heath, and Day, and other distinguished Catholic bishops, were deprived of their sees, and their places filled by the most eminent of their religious opponents. One of the nominations made on the vacancy of the see of Gloucester was that of Hooper, in the year 1550. But, to the surprise of every one. Hooper, whose views may be characterised as resembling those of the Puritans of a later time, refused to wear a canonical habit during the ceremony of consecration. His friends — Cranmer and Ridley, Bucer and Peter Martyr — strenuously advised him to yield, but he would not ; and hence his first commitment to the Fleet Prison, we might almost say by his own friends. For several months he per sisted in his determination, but eventually a kind of compromise was made ; he was to wear the obnoxious vestments during his ordination, and Avhen he preached before the king, or in his cathedral, or any public place, but not upon less important occasions. He was then set free, ordained Bishop of Gloucester, and subsequently Bishop of Worcester : but it was not long before he returned to the Fleet, though under very different circumstances. In 1553 Mary became Queen, and before some three months had elapsed, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Coverdale, and a host of other distinguished Protestants were in prison on various charges, and also Hooper, whose commitment was for having a wife, and other demerits. This Avas his second and final commitment to the Fleet, which he was only to quit for the stake and the fire, in the chief town of his first diocese, Gloucester. His relation of his sufferings at this period is a most pathetic record, and illustrates in a forcible manner the misery which these struggles to decide the truth of opinions by force have inflicted on our country, as Avell as the utter incompetency of such influences to achieve the object desired. He says, on "the first of September, 1553, I was committed unto the Fleet from Rich mond, to have the liberty of the prison ; and within five days after I paid for my liberty five pounds sterling to the warden for fees, who immediately upon the payment thereof complained unto Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and so I was committed to close prison one quarter of a year, in the lower chamber of the Fleet, and used very extremely. Then by the means of a good gentle- Avoman 1 had liberty to come down to dinner and supper ; not suffered to speak THE FLEET PRISON. 35 with any of my friends, but as soon as dinner and supper was done to repair to my chamber again. Notwithstanding Avhile I came down thus to dinner and supper the warden and his wife picked quarrels with me, and complained untruly of me to their great friend the Bishop of Winchester. After one quarter of a year and somewhat more, Babington, the warden, and his wife, fell out with me for the wicked mass ; and thereupon the warden resorted to the Bishop of Win chester, and obtained to put me into the ward, where I have continued a long time, having nothing appointed to me for my bed but a little pad of straw and a rotten covering, with a tick and a few feathers therein, the chamber being vile and stinking, until by God's means good people sent me bedding to lie in. Of the one side of which prison is the sink and filth of the house, and on the other side the town ditch, so that the stench of the house hath infected me with sundry diseases. During Avhich time I have been sick, and the doors, bars, hasps, and chains being all closed and made fast upon me, I have mourned, called, and cried for help; but the warden, when he hath known me many times ready to die, and when the poor men of the wards have called to help me, hath com manded the doors to be kept fast, and charged that none of his men should come at me, saying, ' Let him alone ; it were a good riddance of him.' And amongst many other times he did thus the 18tli of .October, 1533, as many are witness. I paid always like [the same sum as] a baron to the said warden, as well in fees as for my board, which was 20*. a-week, besides my man's table, until I was wrongfully deprived of my bishoprick, and since that time I have paid him as the best gentleman doth in his house ; yet hath he used me worse and more vilely than the veriest slave that ever came to the hall commons. The said warden hath also imprisoned my man, William Downton, and stripped him out of his clothes to search for letters, and could find none, but only a little remem brance of good people's names that gave me their alms to relieve me in prison : and to undo them also the warden delivered the same bill unto the said Stephen Gardiner, God's enemy and mine. I have suffered imprisonment almost eighteen months ; my goods, living, friends, and comfort taken from me ; the Queen owing me by just account 80 pounds or more, — she hath put me in prison and giveth nothing to find me ; neither is there any suffered to come at me, whereby I might have relief. I am with a wicked man and woman, so that I see no remedy (saving God's help), but I shall be cast away in prison before I come to judgment. But I commit my just cause to God, whose Avill be done, whether it be life or death,"* But it Avas not to be as the desponding prisoner feared; a death he esteemed a thousand times more glorious was to be his. After some months' confinement he Avas examined several times and required to recant, and on his refusal condemned, on the very night after John Rogers had so bravely suffered in Smithfield, to tread the same fiery path to another world. He Avas told that he was to be burnt among his own people at Gloucester, where accordingly he was brought to the stake on the 9th of February, 1555, and burnt by a slow fire. In reading of such transactions one can scarcely avoid pausing to ask if it is really the acts of men that Ave are recording. But dreadful as Avere the torments, the courage to endure them was fully equal : and in this, as in numerous other cases, we have reason to be thankful that Avhilst '*' From ' Fox'a Martyrs,' folio ed. in three voli., vol. iii., p, 1369, d2 36 LONDON. crimes of the deepest dye against humanity have been committed in the sacred name of religion, it is religion that has given to humanity a power to endure all extremes, to triumph in the endurance, to become, in a word, something more than human. Turn we now from the victims of religious bigotry, to the sufferers from poli tical oppression, as exercised through the medium of the memorable Star Chamber, The Fleet, as the King's prison, was no doubt from the earliest times the place to which this half secret and wholly irresponsible tribunal was accustomed to send the persons who fell under its displeasure ; and this view is further confirmed by the circumstance that whilst during the reign of Charles I. we find it frequently used in this way, we do not perceive any intimation of the practice being then a new one. The tAvo most interesting cases that belong to this part of the history of the Fleet, are those of Prynne and Lilburne. In a late number* we have referred to the effect of Prynne's publication, the ' Histrio-Mastix,' on the court, and the desire of the latter that the lawyers of the different inns might by the splendour of their Masque confute Mr, Prynne's "new learning." Pity that the King was not satisfied with that and similarly legitimate modes of confuting. In the year following that of the Masque, Laud being then Archbishop of Canterbury, Prynne was brought into the Star Chamber for the publication of his notorious book, which, be it observed, had been written four years before, and printed two years. So little dignity was there in the prosecution, that the personal offence he had given was allowed to be made conspicuous. The accusation having stated he had compiled and put in print a libellous volume, added, " although he knew well that his Majesty's royal Queen [who Avas rehearsing a part herself at the time the contents of Prynne's book became first known at court], the Lords of the Council, &c., were in their public festivals oftentimes present spectators of some masques and dances, and many recreations that were tolerable and in themselves sinless, and so declared to be by a book printed in the time of his Majesty's royal father," &c. He Avas also charged with aspersing the Queen, and with writing of the King in "terms unfit for so sacred a person." Now there was no doubt that Prynne would have made the world and all living in it a gloomy piece of business, if his views could have been carried into practice, with all their legi timate deductions, and that Lord Cottington's remark upon his trial had as much truth as satire in it, — " If Mr. Prynne should be demanded what he would have, he liketh nothing : no state or sex ; music, dancing, &c,, unlawful CA'en in kings : no kind of recreation, no kind of entertainment, no, not so much as hawking ; all are damned," But what then? Such were the man's conscientious opinions; and those who thought them deserving of anything better than ridicule, whose weapons — wit and humour — have a kind of natural vocation to destroy all such ascetic philosophy, were perfectly at liberty to confute them by as big a book as that in which they had been expounded. But as Charles's ancestors had been convinced, beyond the power of anything to unsettle their conviction, that what was their religion they could also make the people's, so now did he and his coun sellors act apparently on the firmest belief that they could, and therefore ought to destroy every opinion that did not harmonise with theirs on all other matters, from the greatest to the most trivial subjects, from the government of the country * 'Ely Place,' vol. iii,, p, 372. THE FLEET PRISON. 37 down to the management of a holiday. This time the mistake was to be attended with fatal consequences. The trial of Prynne in the Star Chamber should be for ever memorable, as an example of the reckless disregard of law, justice, common sense, and humanity, which can be perpetrated by irresponsible judges, even though they have among them men distinguished in their ordinary public career or in private life for qualities of an opposite nature. The following extracts will give a sufficient idea of the course of the trial, and the mode of determining the sentence : — " For the book," said Richardson, the Lord Chief Justice, " I do hold it a most scandalous, infamous libel to the King's Maiesty, a most pious and religious King ; to the Queen's Majesty, a most excellent and gracious Queen, such a one as this kingdom never enjoyed the like, and I think the earth never had a better," &c. Then followed quotations from the book, full of outrageous opinions on plays and players and dancing, and then the first part of the sentence : " Mr. Prynne, I must now come to my sentence ; although I am very sorr}-, for I have known you long ; but now I must utterly forsake you, for I find that you have forsaken God," [the whole tenor of Prynne's book was to lead men, in his way, to draw nearer to God,J " his religion, and your whole alle giance, obedience, and honour, which you owe to both their excellent Majesties, the rule of charity to all noble ladies and persons in the kingdom, and forsaken all goodness. Therefore, Mr. Prynne, I shall proceed to my censure, wherein I agree with my Lord Cottington : First, for the burning of your book in as dis graceful a manner as may be, whether in Cheapside or Paul's Churchyard And because Mr. Prynne is of Lincoln's Inn, and that his profession may not sustain disgrace by his punishment, I do think it fit, with my Lord Cottington, that he be put from the bar, and degraded in the University, and I leave it to my Lords, the Lords Bishops to see that done ; and for the pillory, I hold it just and equal, though there were no statute for it. In the case of a high crime it may be done by the discretion of the court, so I do agree to that too. I fine him 5000/., and I know he is as well able to pay 5000/, as one-half of 1000/, ; and perpetual imprisonment I do think fit for him, and to be restrained from writing — ^neither to have pen, ink, nor paper — yet let him have some pretty Prayer-Book, to pray to God to forgive him his sins ; but to write, in good faith I would never have him : for, Mr, Prynne, I do judge you by your book an insolent spirit, and one that did think by this book to have got the name of a Reformer, to set up the Puritan or Separatist faction." So much for the Lord Chief Justice of England. Coke followed; and, with that exquisite inconsistency which characterizes all the arguments on which these monstrous perversions of the powers of government were founded, spoke of the necessity of mildness and toleration to the vices of society, whilst the intolerance of himself and his colleagues was determining on a sentence almost without parallel in their country for its cruelty and injustice. If one could forget the object and occasion of Cokes speech, and of the Earl of Dorset s, who followed, there is something in them to admire : they here and there met Prynne's book with mingled ridicule and argument, which, uttered in a different place, might have convinced many minds wavering between the old and " new learning." Here, such passages were worse than thrown away. Indeed, if there was one mode more certain than another to make wit, and humour, and eloquence fail 38 LONDON. to cause truth to be perceived as truth, and therefore to make its cause still more hopeless for the time, it was the employment of such influences in the uncon genial atmosphere of the Star Chamber. Among other passages of the Earl's speech was one capital hit : — " My Lords, when God had made all his works, he looked upon them, and saw that they Avere good : this gentleman, the devil having put spectacles on his nose, says that all is bad." But, immediately after this vein, comes a volley of vulgar abuse ; and, lastly, from the lips of the gallant and accomplished courtier, an addition to the sentence which it would be scarcely right to attribute to the Earl on the authority of any less satisfactory voucher than his own words : — " Mr. Prynne, I do declare you to be a schism-maker in the Church, a sedition- sower in the Commonwealth, a wolf in sheep's clothing — in a word, omnium malorum nequissimus. I shall fine him 10,000/., [the Lord' Chief Justice had been too lenient it seems,] which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserA'cth. I will not set him at liberty, no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who, though he cannot bite, he Avill foam. He is so far from being a sociable soul, that he is not a rational soul ; he is fit to live in dens with such beasts of prey as Avolves and tigers like himself: therefore do I condemn him to perpetual imprisonment, as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men, nor see light. Now, for corporal punishment, my Lords : I shall burn him in the forehead, and slit him in the nose ; for 1 find that it is confessed of all that Dr. Leighton's offence* was less than Mr. Prynne's — then Avhy should Mr. Prynne have a less punishment? He that was guilty of murder was marked in a place where he might be seen, as Cain was." Still not satisfied, the Earl added, — " I should be loth he should escape Avith his ears ; for he may get a periAvig, which he noAv so much inveighs against, and so hide them, or force his conscience to make use of his unlovely love-locks on both sides. Therefore I would have him branded on the forehead, slit in the nose, and his ears cropped too." The Avhole of these almost incredible barbarities were inflicted : pillory, branding, mutilation of nose, and loss of ears; and then the unfortunate but firm unyielding man was remanded to his prison — the Fleet. Sir Simond d'Ewes, Avho may well say that most men Avere affrighted at this " censure," visited him in prison shortly after, to comfort him. He " found in him," he says, " the rare effects of an upright heart and a good conscience, by his serenity of spirit and cheerful patience." It should be observed that, through the whole of the " trial," Archbishop Laud Avas present. Indeed, it is said that Charles himself would not have taken that step against Prynne, but for the advice of Laud. He therefore was looked upon by the Puritans as the real author of the proceeding ; and the circumstance should be borne in mind, in reading the particulars of the prelate's own fate, as having contributed, with Laud's subsequent conduct to Prynne, probably more than any other single fact, to make his judges so inexo rable. Laud's second attack on Prynne, Avhen the remainder of his ears were hacked off, and he was sent to Carnarvon (but, unfortunately for the prelate's comfort, found his journey almost a triumphal procession), took place after the removal of Prynne into the Tower, so Ave pass on to another Star Chamber case. * Writing against the Queen and the Bishops in a book entitled ' An Appeal to the Parliament, or Sion's Plea against Prelacy.' THE FLEET PRISON. - - 39 Scarcely six months had elapsed after the last-mentioned barbarities, when the Star Chamber, utterly reckless of the signs of the times, called before it John Lilburne (with his printer, Wharton), for the publication of libellous and seditious books, called ' News from IpsAvich.' The prisoners both refused to be sworn to answer the interrogatories of the court ; and the principal, Lilburne, said no free- born Englishman ought to take it, not being bound by the laAvs of his country to accuse himself: he became subsequently well known under a phrase borrowed from this reply, as Free-born John, They were both remanded to the Fleet for the present, but on the 13th of February (1638) were again brought up and pressed to re-consider their determination. Still inflexible, they were sent back to the Fleet under a fine of 500/, each, and with an addition in lilburne's case of a remarkable punishment. Foiled in their attempt to break men's spirits by fines, imprisonments, brandings, slitting of noses, &c., another degrading punish ment was now borrowed from the felon-code, — whipping. " To the end," runs the sentence, "that others may be the more deterred from daring to offend in the like manner hereafter, the court hath further ordered and decreed that the said John Lilburne shall be whipt through the street from the prison of the Fleet unto the pillory, to be erected at such time and in such place as this court shall hold fit ; and that both he and Wharton shall be set in the said pillory, and from thence returned to the Fleet." The pillory was placed between Westminster Hall gate and the Star Chamber, and Lilburne was whipped from the prison thither " smartly." And how did he bear this mingled torture of the body and mind ? Rushworth says, " Whilst he was whipt at the cart and stood in the pillory, he uttered many bold speeches against tyranny of bishops, &c,, and when his head was in the hole of the pillory he scattered sundry copies of pamphlets (said to be seditious), and tossed them among the people, taking them out of his pocket," The Star Chamber Council Avas sitting at the time, and informed of this last-mentioned incident ; when, consistent in their acts, they ordered hira ¦to be gagged immediately, which Avas done, Lilburne then stamped with his feet, and the people understood his meaning Avell enough, that he would speak if he were able. This was not all. At the same sitting of the Council an order was made directing that Lilburne should be " laid alone with irons on his hands and legs in the wards of the Fleet, Avhere the basest and meanest sort of pri soners" Avere used to be, with other regulations in a similar spirit. This punish ment also was carried into effect for a time, but ultimately brought to a summary conclusion through an accident in the prison. "Lilburne," says Rushworth, "hav ing for some time endured close imprisonment, lying with double irons on his feet and hands, and laid in the inner wards of the prison, there happened a fire in the prison of the Fleet, near to the place where he was prisoner, which gave a jealousy that Lilburne, in his fury and anguish, Avas desperate, and had set the Fleet Prison on fire, not regarding himself to be burnt with it ; whereupon the inhabitants without the Fleet (the street then not being five or six yards over from the prison door) and the prisoners all cried, "Release Lilburne, or we shall all be burnt! " and thereupon they ran headlong and made the Warden remove him out of his hold, and the fire was quenched, and he remained a prisoner in a place where he had some more air." He continued in prison till November the 3rd, 1640, when the Long Parliament began, and then he was released, and 40 LONDON. immediately applied to the House of Lords for redress, who granted it in the most satisfactory manner: not merely declaring his sentence and punishment most unjust and illegal, but ordering the erasure of the proceedings from the files of all courts of justice, " as unfit to continue on record." On the breaking out of the Civil War, Lilburne fought bravely, we need not say on which side. He had a narroAV escape in the war. He was taken prisoner, and would have been proceeded against as a traitor by Charles and hanged, but the Parliament arrested the act, that growing into a system would have made the war a thousand times more terrible than it was, by immediately declaring they would retaliate. But Free-born John was one of the most impracticable as well as courageous of enthusiasts ; (Marten said of him, if there were none living but himself, John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne against John ;) and the Parliament pleased him little better than the King ; so he wrote against them too, and was banished, upon pain of death if he returned. But Free-born John would and did return, and was immediately arraigned at the Old Bailey, where he was pub licly acquitted, " which, for joy, occasioned a great acclamation of the people present." He died a Quaker, and was buried in Moorfields, four thousand citizens and other persons honouring his remains by following them to the grave. In con- [Lilburne, tlie Furitan.j THE FLEET PRISON. 41 eluding our notice of the cases of Prynne and Lilburne, those important links in the history of the reign of Charles, we may observe that they embody in the most striKing shape the principles of arbitrary power, which the King, with Laud and his other counsellors, strove to enforce upon the people of England, and to which they received for answer — the Civil War and the scaffold. Gloomy as our theme must continue the course of our narration. Hitherto the sufferings and horrors we have described have had no further connexion with the Fleet Prison than that that edifice was the place of confinement of the prisoners in question during the execution of their respective sentences ; now we have to deal with the horrors of the prison-house itself. And if in the process of that gradual extinction of all such places, for debt at least, which the spirit of the times promises to effect, we could be reconciled to the preservation of any one, as a kind of visible record and warning of the atrocities that were once perpe trated in them, the Fleet should be that place : it in every way deserves such a bad pre-eminence. It appears that this prison was used for the confinement of debtors from the thirteenth century at least, probably from the earliest period of its existence : a petition from John Fraunceys, a debtor in the Fleet, a.d, 1290, is still preserved,* The first document in point of time that gives us any accurate idea of the state of the prison is a complaint of the prisoners, in 1586, to the Lords of the Council, They state therein that the warden had let the victualling and lodging of the prisoners to two "very poor men," who, having " neither land nor any trade to live by, nor any certain wages of the said warden," and "being also greedy of gain, lived by bribery and extortion," The essential evils were pointed out as clearly in these few words in 1586, as they could be in the appalling facts which were discovered by the famous committee of 1727: and what a fearful amount of human suffering might not have been spared by the simplest of remedies at that earlier time — that of making the warden and all his servants perfectly independent, as to the amount of their emoluments, of those under their care. Almost every atrocity (we do not know, indeed, that an exception can be found) perpetrated in the Fleet Prison in the beginning of the eighteenth century may be traced directly to the operation of the one passion — thirst for gain. This will appear clearer as Ave proceed. Nu merous abuses and oppressions had of course been set on foot at the period to which we have referred by these " very poor men," and which are pointed out by the prisoners in their petition ; but as we shall meet with every one of them in a much darker shape at a later period, we need not here dwell upon them. Some temporary kind of relief seems to have been granted in answer to this complaint ; in the same year a commission or order having been granted, which the Recorder, Fleetwood, at the desire of the Archbishop of Canterbury, abbre viated and explained. In 1593 the prisoners again endeavoured to obtain effectual redress by a bill in parliament ; and it Avas high time, if we may believe their allegations, for noAv they attribute murders and other misdemeanors to the deputy warden, Joachim NeAvton, Nothing of importance seems to have fol- "lowed this application, and another century of suffering passed over the unhappy tenants, shut out from the world, and subjected, without the possibility of redress, to extortions, indignities', and privations of every kind, chequered only by bru- * ' Rot, Pari.,' vol. i., p. 47. 42 LONDON. talities of a deeper and occasionally fatal nature. Still there Avas moving among society a kind of uneasy consciousness that all was not as it should be behind those grim and lofty walls; the tender-hearted sighed as they passed, and dropped some piece of money into the grate, which most probablj" would never reach, or but partially, those for Avhom it was intended ; the philanthropist again and again made some new effort to stimulate inquiry, which the legislature or minister perhaps promised, but forgot to instigate; but still years rolled on, generation after generation of prisoners mourned, arid despaired, and died, and nothing was done. In 1696 new hopes were excited ; a committee of the House of Commons Avas appointed, and for the first time positive evidence was acquired and made public. From the Report of that committee it appeared the custom with regard to the AVarden's underletting the Fleet was continued ; that a Mr. Geary, who appeared before the committee, had agreed to pay 1500/. per annum to the warden for it, on the understanding that there were then 2000 prisoners, whose payments would bring in twice the amount of the rent. We learn from the same Report that there were then about 300 prisoners enjoying the privileges of the Rules, that is, a permission to live outside the prison, but within certain precincts adjoining."" Three years after appeared another Report, we presume from the same committee, in which it is stated that " by the Fleet books it appeareth that 1651 prisoners had been charged from the 28th of April, 1696, to the 1st of December last," whereof but 285 were dis charged by regular procedure, the rest having been allowed to escape for bribes. A resolution at the same time was unanimously agreed to, that the management had been very prejudicial to personal credit, and a great grievance to the whole kingdom. Even yet the poor prisoners seem to have had little of the parlia mentary attention or sympathy ; and it is not improbable that the cruelties and outrageous extortions of which we have now to speak as occurring during the period betAveen the sitting of this committee and that of the next in 17'27, were in a measure brought on by the resolution of 1699 : the officers of the prison might fear from its tenor that the duration of their poAver Avas limited, and so, in their way, determine to make the best use of it while they could. The year 1727 Avas a memorable one in the history of prisons; then it was that the enormity of the system of their management came first fully before the public : and indescribable was the excitement and horror it caused. The poet Thomson has given permanent record to the feelings of the time in a passage of his ' Winter,' which appears to have been written immediately on the publication of the First Report of the Parliamentary Committee : — " And here can I forget the gen'rous band. Who, touch'd with human woe, redressive search'd Into the horrors of the gloomy gaol, Unpitied and unheard, vi'here Misery moans, Where Sickness pines, ivhere Thirst and Hunger burn. And poor Misfortune feels the lash of vice. * The " Rules" extend from the prison entrance to Ludgate Hill, both sides of Ludgate Hill up to the Old Bailey, both sides of the Old Bailey as far as Fleet Lane, both sides of Fleet Lane, and so back along Farringdon Street to the entrance. THE FLEET PRISON. 43 Oh I great design! if executed Avell, With partial care, and wisdom-temper'd zeal. Ye sons of Mercy, yet resume the search : Drag forth the legal monsters into light, Wrench from their hands oppression's iron rod. And bid the cruel feel the pangs they give." The " Sons of Mercy " did execute their task Avell ; the legal monsters were dragged forth into light; nor was retribution wanting, though it came in a different shape from what might have been justly expected. The committee, in the commencement of their Report, observe, that at the passing of the act which abolished the Star Chamber, in the sixteenth year of Charles I.'s reign^ the prison became a. place of confinement for debtors, and for persons committed for contempt from the Courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas ; and that at the same time the fees previously payable by arch bishops, bishops, temporal peers, baronets, and others of loAver degree, or the power of putting in irons, or of exacting fees not to do so, ought to have ceased. Instead of which, however, the Warden " hath exercised an unwarrantable and arbitrary power, not only in extorting exorbitant fees, but in oppressing pri soners for debt, by loading them with irons, worse than if the Star Chamber Avas still existing," The melancholy details which folloAV more than bear out this assertion. We shall now endeavour to show, in as clear and succinct a manner as possible, from the materials provided by the Committee, the general workings of the system. Its grand leading principle was extortion — the agents, force and cruelty ; and one can scarcely avoid a species of admiration at the ingenuity, perseverance, and unfailing energy with which — unappalled by the sight of any suffering, however great, insensible to any sense of shame, however infamous the circumstances — the object and the means were steadily developed to the utmost. Let us suppose Mr. Bambridge (the warden) and his myrmidons to have just received a prisoner, not of the poorest class, and observe his treatment of him. The prisoner, to his surprise, first discovers that, instead of being intro duced into the prison, he is carried to a spunging-house attached to it on the exterior, one of three such places, all belonging to the Warden, and kept, in the present instance, by one of his tipstaffs. His first day's bill explains their pro ceedings, and the alarmed prisoner, who sees that a few days of such expenses will beggar him, asks to be permitted to go into the Fleet, where, at least, there are legal regulations as to moderation of price. The tipstaff has no objection, on receiving the customary fee — a heavy one — for the simple permission. In dignant at the demand, the prisoner probably refuses, and a few days more pass on, his bills growing daily in magnitude, till, in despair, he acquiesces, and is removed into the Fleet; or, on the other hand, if his determination be very great indeed, Avhy, he is shifted into a garret, put with a couple of other pri soners in the same bed, and perhaps ironed till the same result is obtained. Well, he is in the Fleet, or at least he will be, on payment of the prison fees : the best idea we can give of these is to transcribe his bill ; supposing that four actions or detainers are lying against him, every action being paid for separately : — 44 LONDON, £ J. i. For four surrenders at the judge's chambers, to his clerks 9 11 6 To the tipstaff, four fees . . . . .220 To the warden, ditto . . . . . 16 12 0 28 5 6 To Avhich add the previous fee for turning into the house ; 10 10 0 Including, perhaps, some occasional " liberty" to leave the spunging-house, if he has behaved well, or, in other words, " bled freely ;" but in that case he must have taken up his security-bond for the enjoyment of the Rules . . . . i. .660 X* Making a total of . . . £45 1 6* By this time Bambridge has become quite satisfied of the prisoner's ability to bear all that, in his moderation, he wishes to enforce upon him ; so, after the en joyment of the Rules for some time, it is intimated to the prisoner that a present Avill greatly help the memory of the officers as to his really havinjg obtained the right of enjoying them : the present is given. Shortly comes a similar ap plication ; again, again, and again, the demand is submitted to ; but at last, weary with the attempt at impossibilities — to satisfy the insatiable, — or moved by remorse at the conviction that all this money belongs to his creditors, the threat of Corbett's spunging-house ceases to avail ; he steadily and determinedly re fuses. That very day he is again at Corbett's, and the entire system of extortion is once more before him, and must be passed through. But a virulent disease, enhanced by the disgraceful state of the worst apartments of the spunging-house, is raging there : the small-pox is in the house. The unhappy man, half frantic at the danger, implores the Warden to remove him into aiuother spunging-house, or into the Fleet, for he has not had that (under such circumstances) most fatal malady, and the very dread of it will assuredly kill him. The tipstaffs, for once, forget their vocation, and second his petition ; but Bambridge, great man ! is firm : the prisoner dies, his affairs in extricable confusion, and a wife and numer ous family of young children in the deepest distress. Such, with one or two slight exceptions drawn from other cases, is the history of Mr. Robert Castell, a gentleman, a scholar, and an artist,t whose misfortunes brought him into the hands of the Fleet Prison officers ! and such is a fair illustration of the principal branch of the system. We must add to it another highly profitable source of emolument. This Avas, keeping prisoners on the books, as being in the enjoyment of the Rules, who were actually entitled to a legal discharge. The previous Warden, Mr. Huggins, after the appointment of the committee, suddenly discharged 1 19 of such cases, and acknowledged to 52 more that ought to have been discharged, some of them so far back as 1718, 1719, and so on. Our readers may not, per haps, see at once the effect of the manoeuvre ; it was simply this : — Whenever the Warden, or his deputy, felt any very strong desire for money, an escape war- * Fees actually paid by a prisoner, as proved before the Committee, t Kis iiofessiou was architecture, aud he had just finished a translation of Vitruvius. THE FLEET PRISON. 45 rant Avas issued, that is, they declared the man— who, having been in effect legally discharged, was quietly pursuing his avocations — ^had escaped, or run away from the Rules ; accordingly he was arrested, lodged safely at Corbett's, and kept there till he had purchased another temporary freedom. We may have some notion of the profits obtained in this way from the list of 382 persons enjoying the Rules, which was obtained by the committee, who had paid in one year 2828/, 17*. 'id , and whilst it appeared to the committee that the prisoners for the greatest debts had not signed the book. It was also shown that the gratuity to the Warden for the Liberty of the Rules was exacted in proportion to the greatness of the debt ; and if all paid, the account would be three times the before-mentioned sum. But this was nothing to the magnificent soul of a Huggins or of a Bambridge ; so they exerted themselves to make the sum total of profit a much more respect able affair ; and the different irregular modes adopted show their inventive powers in a flattering light. First, there were a great many prisoners who had no chance whatever of paying their debts, from the magnitude of the amount, or who, having the means, had still an invincible disinclination to do so : and both classes agreed in a common desire to get out of the prison, and in being able and willing to pay well for their keepers' assistance. Escapes, accordingly, occurred with marvellous frequency. Huggins confessed to the Committee, that so many had occurred during his wardenship, " that it was impossible to enu merate them," There was no difficulty attending such escapes generally, as the officers would take care previously to make them pay well for Rules and every thing else. But in one case, that of Boyce, a smuggler, charged at the King's suit with a demand of upwards of 30,000/,, it appears Bambridge, then Huggins's deputy, actually made a door through the prison-wall, dismissed the prisoner through it, and repeated the act several times. Large emoluments evidently must have been derived from this source. Next comes the mode illustrated in the case of Thomas Dumay, This man, a prisoner in the Fleet, was allowed to make several voyages to France, where he bought wines, some of which were delivered to Huggins, and for which he paid by drawing bills on Richard Bishop, one of the tipstaffs of the prison : these bills, on presentation, were accepted, and when due properly paid. Credit was thus established, and precaution relaxed. Dumay then drew for a further, and no doubt much larger sum (we do not find the amount stated), and obtained the goods ; but, on presentation, Mr, Bishop de clined accepting any more bills for Dumay, The merchants in alarm sought for Dumay — there he was, back in the Fleet, snugly ensconced as prisoner, laughing with Bishop and Huggins at the success of the trick, and settling no doubt their respective shares. Lastly, to show their condescension we presume, for no very great sums could have been thus derived, the officers laid their hands on the miserable pittances which charity had bequeathed to the poorer prisoners, or dropped into the "box " they were accustomed to send round. Whether the box at the grate, behind which prisoners were accustomed to stand till within the last few years, was similarly laid under contribution does not appear ; from a curious incident mentioned in the Report, we should think it was not : — " Thomas Hogg, who had been about three years a prisoner in the Fleet Prison, and was then discharged by order of court, about eight months after such discharge, passing by the door of that prison, stopped to give charity to the prisoners at the grate. 46 LOMDON, and being seen by James Barnes, one of the said Bambridge's accomplices, thi. said Barnes seized and forced him into Corbett;s spunging-house, where he hath been detained ever since, now upwards of nine months, without any cause or legal authority whatsoever," The only explanation we can venture to offer as to the cause of the somewhat incomprehensible rage of Barnes and his master, is, that as the poor prisoners, who were in technical phrase " on the grate," were enabled by its means better to submit to the discomforts of the Common side (that is, where the prisoners are placed Avho cannot pay for their lodging), and so escai)e the extortions of the officers, the latter felt indignant accordingly at all who aided and abetted ; or else it may be that they hated the very sight of poor prisoners, and of all, and everything belonging to, assisting and comforting them, Alas ' for those poor prisoners : their case was indeed deplorable. If they had a little money, they were suspected of having more, and they were tortured to make them produce it ; if they had none, why even hope Avas denied. The subject makes one heart-sick, and our readers will no doubt feel it a relief to escape from the contemplation ; but the best security against such things happening in the future will be the making indelible the memory of the past. It is that considera tion makes us conclude our notice of the matters disclosed in the Report with a passage from the statement of the case of Jacob Mendez Solas, a Portuguese; and one of the poorer prisoners, Avho was confined for months in a filthy dungeon, manacled and schackled. " This committee themselves saw an instance of the deep impression his suffer ings had made upon him; for on his surmising, from something said, that Bambridge was to return again as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started out of his mouth and nose." The result of the committee's labours was the committal of Bambridge, Huggins, and some of their serArants to Newgate, an address to the crown nray- mg for their prosecution, and the introduction of a bill to remove Bambridge and newly regulate the gaol. The prosecution was a strange affair. On reading the evidence adduced on the trial of these wretches for different murders, it seem* amply sufficient in a legal sense to have insured conviction, and in a moral sense there cannot be a doubt of the guilt of the parties ; yet all escaped by a verdict of Not guilty! Retribution, however, as we have before intimated, was not to be escaped. The painters, like the poets, made them immortal in their infamy, Hogarth, in the picture of Avhich the engraving in the last page is a transcript,* has shown us Bambridge (Avho is under examination, whilst a prisoner is ex plaining how he has been tortured) so vividly, that, whether we pass from it to his known conduct, or from the conduct to this portrait, we are equally struck by the fitness of the tAvo to each other — there is no questioning that this is the man. Twenty years after, it is said, Bambridge cut his throat. An act of parliament, passed in the course of the present year, has directed the abolition of both the Fleet and the Marshalsea as prisons, and for the last three months no new prisoners have been admitted into the former. These are now sent to the Queen's Bench, or, as it is henceforth to be called, the Queen's* The prisoners at present in the Fleet, about ninety in number, are also to be removed thither. As closely pertaining to our subject, we may add that the Act * The faces are all portraits, and the entire scene, no doubt, an exact represeulatiou of the reality. THE FLEET PRISON, 47 also abolishes all kinds of fees or gratuities, and the privilege of the Rules, which was an unjust privilege, as being only alloAved to those who could pay for It. From the circumstance he^-e stated it is most probable that the building itself is doomed, and that before any very great length of time passes the Fleet will be a thing of memory only. The present building Avas erected after the burning of the older one in the Gordon riots of 1 780, when the mob were polite enough to send notice to the prisoners of the period of their coming, and, on being informed it would be inconvenient on account of the lateness of the hour, . to postpone their visit to the following day. That former building also dated its erection from the period of a fire ; its predecessor having been destroyed in the great conflagration of 1666. As we now enter the prison, and passing through the porch, and its small ante-room on the left, where sits the keeper, and reach the area, we are struck by the desolate aspect of everything : a deeper melancholy than its OAvn seems to have fallen upon the place. Few pri soners are to be seen, and these are huddled listlessly together in a corner, rumi nating perhaps on the -classification Avhich is to take place in the Queen's — a feature by no means palatable, we find, to those concerned. Skittles and rackets are alike without worshippers. The coffee-room is altogether disused, and sole guest at the tables sits the tipstaff, its OAvner, and we can see that the promised compensation is but a poor medicine for all his ills. The romance of his life has departed ; no more for him Avill there be " Golden exhalations of the Chum!" Fortunate they to whom that Avord chum is unknown ; who haA'e never in themselves, or through their relations and friends, had cause to investigate the mysteries involved in the words chum, chums, chummed, and chummage. For their information we explain them. The prison chiefly consists of one long brick pile, parallel with Farringdon Street, and standing in an irregularly shaped area, so as to leave open spaces before and behind, connected by passages round each end. This pile is called the Master's Side. The interior arrangements are very simple: — On each of five stories, a long passage from one extremity to the other, with countless doors opening into single rooms on each side. If a pri soner did not Avish to go to the Common Side (a building apart, and to the right of the Master's Side, Avhere he was put Avith several other prisoners into a common room, divided within only by a kind of cabins, for which he paid no thing), he had the choice of going down into BartholomcAv Fair, the lowest and sunken story, where he paid ] *. 3d. per week for the undisturbed use of a room, or up to some of the better apartments, where he paid the same rent, but Avas subject to the operation of the system knoAvn as chummage. Supposing him to have obtained an empty room at first, whenever all the rooms became occupied, he had, in common with his fellow-prisoners, to submit in rotation to a new prisoner being put into his room, or chummed upon him ; and such new-comer could only be got rid of by a payment of 4*. 6d. per week, to enable him partially to pro vide for himself. The latter Avould immediately go to some of the prisoners, who made a business of letting lodgings (fitting up sometimes five or six beds in the room), and make the best bargain he could. There are prisoners'who are said to have accumulated hundreds of pounds by such use of their room, in the course of a fcAV years. We need not add. that their occupation, too, is noAv gone ; 48 LONDON. and, for the first time, they are probably beginning to think it would be as well to try to get out of prison. A volume as interesting as a romance might be written on the characters and lives of some of the chief prisoners for debt in the Fleet, at almost any period of its history ; and now, in its decline, the place is not destitute of such interest. In the group we have just passed, for instance, are a well-known northern anti- poor-law agitator, who is here for a debt to his former master ; a lord ; a bar rister, who seems to have been thoroughly convinced of the truth of the old proverb — " Faint heart never won fair (nor rich) lady " — and has made himself notorious accordingly ; the son of one who was at a certain period one of the great leviathans of the Money-Market ; and, lastly, a gentleman whose mis fortunes, in connection with the Opera House, have engaged' so deservedly the public sympathy. In conclusion, it is perhaps hardly necessary to add that none of the horrors of the last century survived the disclosures then made, though it has been reserved for the present to get rid of a few still remaining abuses by the Act referred to. We have now, it is to be presumed, made our prisons for debt tolerably perfect ; and, as in the story of the medicine prepared with so much care, to be thrown out of the window when done, there remains but tn get rid of them altogethery — a task which the tenor of recent legislation promises to effect very speedily. [From Hogarth's Ptcturc.j % ¦^Tk ¦• [A Fleet Marriage Party. From a print of the dme.] LXXIX.— FLEET MARRIAGES, \y, by any inversion of the Rip Van Winkle adventures, a quiet, respectable I.iondon citizen of the present day could be suddenly abstracted from his home and the year 1842, and, without losing any of his notions derived from that period of the world's history, be again set down, as it were, in the very heart of his native city a century or so earlier, he would meet with stranger things than in his philosophy he had ever before dreamt of as belonging to a time so little removed from his OAvn. The costume, the comparatively miserable and dingy looking shops, the streets, the houses, the public buildings, would no doubt all more or less bewilder him ; but it is not to such general matters we now refer, but to one particular subject of universal interest, which would come befiare him with a thousand perplexing and monstrous features. Suppose him set down at St. Paul's, and wandering down Ludgate Hill towards his home by Holborn Bridge, wondering what makes the people wear such comical hats, long square coats, and endless waistcoats ; and what can have become of all the cabs and omnibuses; and why the City Surveyor allows so many obstructions to exist in the street, as narrow pavements, projecting shop-windows, and overhanging great signs. But his whole attention is speedily engrossed by the novel words, " Would you like to be married. Sir?" He turns hastily, and sees that the question was put by a man in a black coat, but of very uncanonical appearance, who, like Chaucer's Sumpnour, has " a fire-red cherubinnes face," to a genteel young couple passing — raising the deep blush in the face of the one and somC' thing very like it in that of the other, who, however, with a smile, answers in the VOL. IV. 8 60 LONDON, negative, and they pass on • their time has not yet come. " What in the world can this shabby-looking profligate mean?" thinks our worthy citizen ; and begins to remember him of sundry street jokes, familiar in his era, among the populace, and to wonder whether this is one of the same class. But the man in the black coat pursues his vocation, and presently is seen to be not alone in it : others are busy tormenting every pair they meet with the same kind of question, varying only the Avords and manner. He steps aside to try if he can penetrate the mys tery. A bookseller's shop is by his elbow, and in the Avindow he sees the news- pajier of the day, as unlike the double ' Times,' over the pages of which he has been accustomed to luxuriate at his breakfast of a morning, as two things of the same name and object well may be ; and on its front page the first announcement that he reads runs thus : — " Marriages with a licence, certificate, and a eroAvn stamp, at a guinea, at the new ehapel, next door to the china-shop, near Fleet Bridge, London, by a regular-. bred clergyman, and not by a Fleet parson, as is insinuated in the public papers ; and, that the toAvn may be freed [from] mistakes, no clergyman, being a prisoner in the Rules of the Fleet, dare marry ; and, to obviate all doubts, this chapel is not in the verge of the Fleet, but kept by a gentleman who was lately chaplain on board one of his Majesty's men-of-Avar, and likewise has gloriously distin guished himself in defence of his king and country, and is above committing those little mean actions that some men impose on people, being determined to have everything conducted with the utmost decency and regularity, such as shall all be supported- in law and equity."* This makes our worthy citizen's confusion only more confounded; but through the mist he begins to have glimpses of a Avorld Avhere the only occupation is that of getting married, and where, consequently, every kind of device has been neces sarily put in practice for the public convenience. Turning, with an inquiring t-ye, to look for the " plyer" in the black coat, that worthy notices his glance, and thinking he may have occupation for him in vicAv, steps up to him Avith a hand-bill, of which the following is a fac-simile : — G. R. At the true Chapel, At the Old Red Hand and Mitre, three doors from Fleet Lane, and next door to the White Swan, Marriages are performed by authority by the Reverend Mr. Symson, educated at the University of Cambridge, and late Chaplain to the Earl of Rothes, N.B. Without Imposition. " And would you really marry me, if 1 had a partner ready, or get me mar ried, just now?" inquires the more and more surprised member of the respect- • ' Daily Advertiser,' 1749. FLEET MARRIAGES. 5i able ward of Farringdon Without. " Of course we would, Sir, ' is the answer : " and if you are at a loss for a partner, we can find you one directly : a Avidow with a handsome jointure, or a blooming virgin of nineteen ; and" (here he comes closer, and whispers) " if you don't like her there 's no harm done— tear out the entry — you understand." Before he can express his feelings, as a husband and a father, at such an offer, or investigate whether it is really and sincerely made as one that can be fulfilled/ a coach happens to pass sloAvly along, and instantly the plyer starts forward. It contains a single lady, but that is far from an objectionable circumstance. " Madam, you want a parson : I am the clerk and registrar of the Fleet." By this time a second has got to the other window. " Madam, come with me ; that fellow Avill carry you to a pedling alehouse." " Go with me," baAvls a third, half out of breath : " he will carry you to a brandy-shop." And thus the lady is teased and insulted till the coach has passed so far as to show, that the tenant does not intend to be married — to-day at least. Beckoning to the dis appointed but indefatigable plyer, our friend, slipping a piece of money into his hand, remarks, " I am somewhat a stranger to these customs. Could you have got that lady a husband too?" " Plenty, Sir; but I see you are a gentleman, and I '11 explain. Ladies will be sometimes expensive, and get into debt; and thftt generally ends in some unpleasantness. Well, they come here : we have a set of men Avho make a business of being hired as husbands for the ceremony merely : we provide them with one of these, they are married, she gets her cer tificate, and they part. From that time she can plead coverture, as the lawyers say, to any action for debt. We like to meet with such persons, for they pay well. There 's another coach ; excuse me ; perhaps that s one." And therewith he runs off. Our citizen has no thoughts to Avaste on the strange aspect of the place at the< bottom of Ludgate Hill — the ditch running along towards the Thames, and the bridge stretching across tOAvards Fleet Street — for the symbols of the influences to which the whole neighbourhood seems devoted increase at every step. As he turns the corner, a board, placed within a window, stares him in the face, — " Weddings Performed Cheap Here." Another has, — " The Old and True Register." And every few yards along the Ditch and up the adjoining Fleet Lane he meets with similar notices. If anything could now add to our citizen's astonishment, it would be to see the kind of houses where these Hymeneal invitations are put forth so .prominently. The ' Rainbow Coffee-House,' at the corner of the Ditch ; the ' Hand and Pen,' by the prison ; the ' Bull and Garter,' a little alehouse, kept, it appears, by a turnkey of the Fleet ; the ' King's Head,' kept by another turn key; the ' Swan ;' the ' Lamb ;' 'Horse-Shoe and Magpie;' the ' Bishop Blaize' and the ' Two SaAVyers,' in Fleet Lane; the ' Fighting Cocks,' in the same place; the ' Naked Boy,' &c. &c.,— most, if hot all, of them low inns and brandy-shops. Some of these are merely a kind of house of call for the parson and his cus tomers, but sharing in the fee of the former as the price of their favour in sending for him ; whilst the owners of others, of a more ambitious character, E 2 52 LONDON. reply to the questions of the citizen in words something very like those used by the distinguished lady of the great razor-strop maker — " We keeps a parson, Sir ;" and they tell him truly ; the salary being generally about tAventy shillings a week. By this time our citizen's curiosity has become so much stimulated by the evidences of such novel, and, to him, unnatural practices, that he greatly desires to see a wedding performed ; and his curiosity is soon gratified. Two coaches have just stopped opposite the door of the prison itself, containing five females in each, whilst on the top and behind are several sailors ; others, who could find no room, are running with shouts and laughter by the side. In the fulness of their hearts their story is soon told to the bystanders. It appears they were all assembled that morning at a public-house at Ratcliff for the purpose of enjoying themselves with the good things of the house, fiddling, piping, jigging, eating, and drinking, and without any thought of matrimony, till one of the sailors started up, saying, " D me. Jack, I'll be married just now ; I will have my partner," &c. The joke took, and in less than two hours the ten couple before us had started for the Fleet. But they are going into the Fleet ! heedless of the vociferations and anxiety of the neighbouring plyers. The citizen follows them. They stop at the door of a room where stands a coalheaver, who says, " This is the famous Lord Mayor's Chapel ; you Avill get married cheaper here than in any other part of the Fleet." The party enter. The room is, on the Avhole, decently furnished with chairs, cushions, &c., but no parson is visible. Aware of the custom, and at the same time giving it their full approval, the sailors call for Avines and brandy, which the parson deals in as a profitable appendix to his marriage-business ; and search is set on foot for the reverend gentleman. Great is the joviality, and the party for some time overlook the unaccountable length of time the parson is absent. At last the discomfited messenger returns, and in the extremity of his despair at the loss, tells the truth without any circumlocution — his master is dead drunk ! Consoling themselves with the reflection there are plenty more parsons in the Fleet, the party hurry out, but at the very door are met by a most respectable and venerable looking personage, " exceeding Avell dressed in a flowered morning-gown, a band, hat and wig," who, in a tone of the greatest suavity, informs them he is ready to perform the office, and, before they have had time to consider of the application, opens another door, Avhich, from the apology he makes to its tenant in a whisper, and a half-heard hint about sharing, is evidently not his, and proceeds to work. If the worthy citizen has been surprised by all the preliminaries, the performance of the act itself is not of a character to moderate his emotions. As it goes on the drink is passed to and fro; winks, nods, whispers, and roars of laughter form a running accompaniment to the ceremony ; practical jokes are played on Jie reverend functionary, whilst one knoAving fellow, a philosopher, Avho looks * before " as well as " after," gives as his name some facetious epithet, which so tickles the fancy of his brethren, that for some time the service, such as it is, cannot proceed ; and at last the party growing tired, or perhaps other reflections beginning to work even at this late period, declare they are " married enough," FLEET MARRIAGES. 53 and are about to make a summary departure. The parson's suavity now dis appears; with a volley of oaths, which the sailors return Avith interest, he demands his fees ; and, after much squabbling, is paid at the rate of from two or three to five or six shillings per couple for himself and clerk, according to the generosity or wealth of the parties; the parson finishing the Avhole affair by entering the particulars of the case in a dirty memorandum-book, with the ad dition " went aAvay in haste, but married." Such is a brief sketch of the prac tices prevailing in the Fleet, as they were witnessed daily, in effect, by our ancestors a century ago.* Up to 1753, Avhen the Bill passed which annihilated Fleet marriages, and substantially settled the law as it now is, marriage in England was regulated by the common law, which enjoined a religious and public form for the solemnization, but tolerated more private modes; in one sense, indeed, it recognised any mode, for the marriage once performed, no matter in what manner, was held sacred and indissoluble, although the parties aiding and abetting might be punished by the ecclesiastical authorities. One of the earliest clergymen who commenced marrying on a large scale, without licence or the publication of banns, appears to have been Adam Elliott, Rector of St. James, Duke's Place, who acted upon the claim for exemption from ecclesiastical jurisdiction put forth by the City with regard to the two churches of St. James, Duke's Place, and Trinity, Minories. In the parish register of the former, we find 40,000 entries of marriages between the years 1664 and 1691 ! On some days between thirty and forty couple have been married. This mine of wealth, Avhich the ingenious rector had discovered, was not permitted to be worked freely ; he was suspended by the Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, but allowed, on his petition, to return to his vocation after some delay. During his suspension, there appears every reason to suppose the Fleet marriages began, for about that period commence the Fleet Registers. These are the original books in which many of the Fleet parsons entered the marriages they performed, and which, after passing through various hands, among others of those who made a business of advertising them as open to the search of parties interested, and which were considered so valuable as to be frequently a special subject of bequest, were purchased by the Govern ment in 1821. The immediate origin of the Fleet marriages appears to have been as follows : A set of imprudent, extravagant, or vicious clergymen, con fined in the Fleet for debt, and therefore in no condition to be deterred by the penalty of 100/. inflicted by the law on clergymen convicted of solemnizing clandestine marriages, tempted also by the opening made through Elliott's sus pension, conceived the brilliant idea of making a kind of marriage-shops, open at all times, of their rooms in the prison, and most probably under still more liberal arrangements than Elliott had permitted : there was but one difficulty— the suspension from ecclesiastical functions, which was pretty sure to follow — but they knew well the state of the law ; their marriages would be legal even after suspension : so, casting aside every other consideration but the gain that would accrue, they commenced marrying on the easiest terms, and, as they made a point of proclaiming, without hindrance of businessor the knowledge of friends. Their marriages soon became highly popular among certain classes of the com- -* 8ee Bum's ' Fleet Registers :' a work to the autbor of which we must express our great obligations. 54 LONDON. munity, and a fearful nuisance to others. By the beginning of the eighteenth century Ave find the parsons here carrying on an immense trade. In 1705, on the petition of a Mr. Ashton, complaining of divers ill practices in the Fleet, a com mittee examined into the subject of the famous marriages, and reported the existence of many gross abuses in the Fleet, under the sanction of the Warden. From this time some little check appears to have been placed on the latter, but, on the Avhole, the evils Avent on -steadily increasing up to the period of their sudden abolition. And the nature and extent of these cA'ils would not now be believed, but for the decisive and manifold evidence furnished by those most interesting documents the registers before referred to. Two or three hundred of the registers are large books, but the remainder, a thousand or more in num ber, are mere pocket-books, Avhich the parsons or their clerks were accustomed to carry about with them to their places of business : in these they entered the particulars of the marriages immediately after the ceremony, and subsequently transcribed them, if paid to do so, into the larger registers ; an arrangement that by no means prevented them from taking handsome sums for not making such additional entry when parties expressed a desire to have theiT marriage as secret as possible. If anything unusual occurred at a Avedding, a note seems to have been commonly appended ; and these notes form the most valuable and com plete illustration Ave could desire of the system. We begin with a feAv extracts of a somewhat irregular nature, which may be as Avell dismissed first.: — "1740. Geo. Grant and Ann Gordon, bachelor and spinster: stole my clothes-brush." In the account of another marriage we find recorded, " Stole a silver spoon." A wedding at Avhich " the "woman Tan across Ludgate Hill in her shift," in pursuance of a vulgar error that a man was not liable to the debts of his wife. If h« married her in this dress. ¦" I Oct. 1747. Jcihn Ferren, gent., sen., of St. AndrcAv's, Holborn, br., and Deborah Nolan, ditto, spr. The supposed John Ferren was discovered after the ceremony Avere over to be in person a woman." This trick was frequently played, sometimes Ave presume as a joke, sometimes perhaps to endeavour to obtain the advantages before pointed out, of being supposed married in. case of debt, without the danger or extreme degradation of a connexion with the low felloAvs who "married in common." " Married at a barber's shop next Wilson's, viz. : one Kerrils, for half a guinea, after which it was extorted out'of my pocket, and for fear of my life deli vered." " Thomas Monk SaAvyer and Margaret Lawson pawned to Mr. Lilley a hand kerchief and silver buttons for 2s. ;" to help to pay -the fee, no doubt. Another -couple leave a " ring." "Nov. 21, 1742. Akerman, Richard, turner, of Christ Church, bat^., to Lydia Collet, (brought by) Mrs. Crooks. N.B. They behaved very vilely, and attempted to run away Avith Mrs. Crooks' gold ring ;" lent probably for the ceremony. " 1 744. Aug. 20. John Newsam, labourer, of St. James, West'., and Ann Laycock, do., Avid'. and wid*- They run aAvay with the Scertifycate, and left a point of wine to pay for ; they are a vile sort of people, and I will remember them of their vile usage for a achample for the same," FLEET MARRIAGES. 55 At a certain marriage " had a noise for four hours about the money ;" another wa:s, it appears, a " Mar«. upon TicTc ;" whilst at a third " A coachman came and was half married, and would give but 3s. 6d., and went off." We have before referred to the frauds continually practised with regard to certificates ; the following extracts Avill place this matter in the clearest light :— " Nov. 5, 1 742. Jn*. Ellis and Jane Davis, she being dead, left a house in the Market Place, Aylesbury, Tavo FloAver Pots at the door. Wanted by y= Soror and wax work* a sham C. of y'= nuptials, Oct. 7, 1739." And no doubt what was wanted was giA'en ; for whenever parties, from being unable to pay for indulgences, or from the parson being in a fit of repentance, are refused, it is beautiful to see the indignation which overfloAvs in the comment on the circum stance. Here no result is stated, and therefore we may give a shrcAvd guess as to its nature. Another kind of application, Avhich is of continual occurrence, is illustrated in the foUoAving : the cause of the application will be sufficiently clear; indeed, generally the matter is set down in terms too plain for our pages : — " November 5, 1742, Avas married Benjamin Richards, of the parish of St. Mar tin's in the Fields, b'., and Judith Lance, do., spin., at the Bull and Garter, and gave g &f for an ante-date to March the 11th in the same year, Avhich Lilley complied Avith and put 'em in his book accordingly, there being a vacancy in the book suitable to the time." These last fcAv significant Avords show even more strikingly than the numerous entries of similar cases, to what an extent the ante-dating of certificates was carried in Fleet weddings. As a fitting appendix to this part of the subject, it may be observed that even the Fleet parsons had their gradations of assurance and rascality ; in the lowest deep there was still a lower. On the trial of John Miller for bigamy, it Avas sworn by one of the Avit- nesses that anybody might have a certificate at a certain house for half-a-croAvn, AAfithout any ceremony of marriage whatever, and have their names entered in the book for as long time past as they pleased. Another species of accommodation Avas that of secrecy, obtained in various waj% but chiefly by alloAving parties to be married merely by their Christian names, or b)'^ names evidently fictitious: — "Sep. y* ilth, 1745. Edw''. — — and Elizabeth were married, and Avould not let me knoAv their names; the man said he was a weaver, and lived in Bandylcg Walk, in the Borough." Again : " March y^ 4th, 17'iO. William and Sarah , he dressed in a gold waistcoat like an officer, she a beautiful young lady, Avith 2 Tne diamond rings, and a black high crown hat, and A'ery well dressed — at Boyce's." But there was a right and a Avrong way, according to Fleet morality, of obtaining secrecy : the right being to acknoAvlcdge the desire for it, and pay accordingly ; the wrong, to omit these important conditions. This consideration is evidently the moving influence in the following case, although coloured oAJ^er by some virtuous indignation and pretence of injured innocence : — "June 26, 1744. Na thaniel Gilbert, gent., of St. Andrew's, Holborn, and Mary Lupton — at Oddy's. N.B. There was 5 or 6 in company ; one amongst seem'd to me by his dress and behaviour to be an Irishman. He preteijded to be some grand officer in the * What " Soror and wax work'' may mean we confess we are quite unable to divine. Probably the first word may be a contraction of survivor ; but the general sense of the passage is evident enough. + Private marks for the sum. 55 LONDON. army. He y^ said Irish gent, told me, before I saw the woman that was to be married, y' it was a poor girl a going to be married to a common soldier ; but Avhen I came to marry them I found myself imposed upon ; and having a mistrust of some Irish roguery, 1 took upon me to ask what y* gentleman's name was, his age, &c., and likewise the lady's name and age. Answer was made me — ^What Avas that to me ? D — n me 1 if I did not immediately marry them he would use me ill. In short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, I found myself obliged to marry them in terrorem," But the malicious rascal has his revenge : the notice concludes with the words, " N.B. Some material part was omitted." In other particulars respecting the performance of the ceremony, the Fleet gentry seem to have made it equally their rule, when paid for it, to suit the tastes and wishes of their customers. In one case the parties are married abroad, but registered here ; in another, the lady being sick in bed, the marriage is per formed in her chamber ; in a third, the parties are married twice, the first time by "proxy,'' for which they paid "ten and sixpence per total;" and in a fourth, a curious case, a Mrs. Hussey, a Quakeress, who " could not comply with the ceremonies of our church," was " personated by Beck Mitchell ;" whilst at the marriage of John Figg and Rebecca Woodward, in 1743, these men, to satisfy perhaps some religious scruple of the lady, dared, with their hands steeped in infamy, to administer the sacrament. A class of marriages frequently performed here were the parish weddings, as they are called in the Register. " On Saturday last," says the ' Daily Post ' of July 4, 1741, " the Churchwardens for a certain parish in the City, in order to remove a load from their own shoulders, gave 40*. , and paid the expense of a Fleet marriage, to a miserable blind youth, known by the name of Ambrose TuUy, who plays on the violin in Moorfields, in order to make a settlement on the wife and future family in Shoreditch parish. To secure their point they sent a parish officer to see the ceremony performed. One cannot but admire the ungenerous proceedings of this City parish, as well as their unjustifiable abetting and encou raging an irregularity so much and so justly complained of as these Fleet matches. Invited and uninvited Avere a great number of poor wretches, in order to spend the bride's future fortune." But the Overseers only foUoAved the example set them by greater men, the Justices, who were accustomed, when certain cases came before them, to send the parties to be married off hand at the Fleet : the unwilling sAvain consenting rather than go to prison. Perhaps the most painfully interesting cases are those of which the Registers furnish the fewest examples ; not certainly for their unfrequency, but that they were attended by more than ordinary danger of the cognizance of the law, and Avere therefore, no doubt, generally omitted or stated in a Avay that could tell nothing to the uninitiated reader. We allude to the cases of abduction of heiresses and other young ladies of rank or respectability by sharpers, who found the Fleet a wonderful auxiliary to their operations : a moment of hesitation, and the thing was done. We have extracted in a former page the entry of the marriage of a gentleman " in a gold waistcoat like an officer " with " a beautiful young lady," who were married without declaring their surnames : added to that notice are a few words, which, in all probability, indicate aAvorld of misery : "N.B. — There was 4 or 5 young Irish fellows seemed to me, after the marriage was over, to have deluded the young wo- FLEET MARRIAGES. 57 man." The reader will admire the parson's cautious phraseology as regards himself. In other cases there could not even be a pretence of acquiescence alleged on the part of the lady : sheer brute force was resorted to. Such a case is that men tioned in a newspaper of 1719 : " One Mrs. Ann Leigh, an heiress of 200/. per annum, and 6000/. ready cash, having been decoyed away from her friends in Buckinghamshire, and married at the Fleet Chapel against her consent, we hear that the Lord-Chief-Justice Pratt hath issued out his warrant for apprehending the authors of this contrivance, who have used the young lady so barbarously that she now lies speechless.''* But the worthies of the Fleet did not always content themselves with being merely the agents of the villainy of others ; occasionally they got up some profitable affairs of their own. The merit of the following scheme seems to have belonged solely to one of that indefatigable body the plyers : — " On Tuesday, one Oates, a plyer for and clerk to the weddings at the ' Bull and Garter,' by the Fleet gate, was bound over to appear at the next ses sions for hiring one John Fennell, a poor boy (for balf-a-guinea) that sells fruit on Fleet Bridge, to personate one John Todd, and to marry a woman in his name, which he accordingly did ; and, the better to accomplish this piece of villainy, the said Oates provided a blind parson for that purpose. "f Whether John Todd or the lady was to be the victim of this ingenious arrangement does not appeai; very clear ; but we may be sure the plyer knew what he was about when he laid out half-a-guinea in the affair, A more dashing and brilliant exploit is described in an interesting letter in the same newspaper of a later year, written by a lady, who having observed that a relation of hers had already fallen a victim to some of the villainous practices of the Fleet, proceeds to point out the adventure of a lady of her acquaintance. She "had appointed to meet a gentlewoman at the old Playhouse in Drury Lane ; but extraordinary business prevented her coming. Being alone when the play was done, she bade a boy call a coach for*the City. One dressed like a gentleman helps her into it and jumps in after her, ' Madam,' says he, ' this coach was called for me, but since the weather is so bad, and there is no other, I beg leave to bear you company : I am going into the City, and will set you down wherever you please,' The lady begged to be excused ; but he bade the coachman drive on. Being come to Ludgate Hill, he told her his sister, who waited his coming but five doors up the court, would go with her in tAvo minutes. He went and returned with his pretended sister, who asked her to step in one minute, and she Avould wait upon her in the coach- Deluded with the assurance of having his sister's company, the poor lady foolishly followed her into the house, when instantly the sister vanished, and a tawny fellow in a black coat and black wig appeared. ' Madam, you are come in good time, the Doctor was just a going.' ' The Doctor !' says she, horribly frightened, fearing it was a madhouse, 'what has the Doctor to do with me?' To marry you to that gentle man : the Doctor has waited for you three hours, and. will be payed by you or that gentleman before you go.' ' That gentleman.' says she, recovering herself, ' is worthy a better fortune than mine,' and begged hard to be gone. But Doctor Wryneck SAVore she should be married, or, if she would not, he would still have his fee, and register the marriage for that night. The lady, finding she could not ? Original Weekly Journal, Sept 26, 1719. f Grub-Street Journal, Sept, 1732, 58 LONDON. escape Avithout money or a pledge, told them she liked the gentleman so well she Avould certainly meet him to morrow night, and gave them a ring as a pledge, ' Avhich,' says she, ' was my mother's gift on her death-bed, enjoining that, if ever I married, it should be my wedding-ring,' By which cunning contrivance she was delivered from the black Doctor and his tawny crew," The cunning, how ever, might have been spared ; the knaves had obtained, no doubt, the kind of suc cess they alone anticipated. Inferior spirits must have looked upon these exploits with envy, and have half groAvn ashamed of their own little trick of putting back the clocks after the regular hour when a passing sailor and his companion looked more than usually hymeneally inclined, and other manoeuvres of .the like kind. From the preceding statement the general character and habits of' the clergy of the Fleet Avill appear in tolerably vii-id colours ; an immense amount of additional evidence might be adduced to the same effect, showing them before the magistrates, convicted of swearing, of selling liquors, or for some of the drunken practices already described ; here we find one marrying in his night- gOAvn, there another hiccupping out the Avords of the service, while a third ekes out a scanty living by mendicancy : but sufficient has been given to show the operation of the general system, and we, therefore, close our vieAV of the worst evils existing up to the middle of the last century, with a brief notice of some of the individuals who stood out most conspicuously among the actors. Dr. Gaynam, or Gainham, who is said to have been the gentleman emphatically denominated the Bishop of Hell, married here from about 1709 to 1740. He seems to have been proud of his learning, and not at all uneasy as to his vocation ; for Avhen, on a trial for bigamy, he was asked if he was not ashamed to come and own a 'Clandestine marriage in the face of a court of justice, he ansAvered, Avith a polite bow, " Video meliora, deteriora sequor,' The extent of his business is vaguely •shown in"&,Temark he made on another and similar trial, Avhen it was observed that it Avas strange he could not remember the prisoners, whom be professed to have married. " Can I remember persons ?" Avas the reply — " I have married 2000 since that time." Next in reputation to him, but after the I)octor's death, was Edward AshAvell, who died Avithin the Rules of the Fleet in 1746, a "noto rious rogue and impostor," and an audacious villain, who was really not in orders, but who preached Avhen he could get a pulpit: such at least is the character given him in a letter in the Lansdowue MSS, William Wyatt appears to have practised here from 1713 to 1750, His is a curious case. In one of his pocket- book Registers, under the date 1736, we have the following memoranda of a kind of conversational argument between Mr. Wyatt's conscience and interests : — . " Give to every man his due, and learn the way of Truth," says Conscience. Reply : " This advice cannot be taken by those that are concerned in the Fleet Marriages ; not so much as y« priest can do y' thing y' is just and right there, unless he designs to starve. For, by lying, bullying, and swearing, to extort money from the silly and unwary people, you advance your business and gets j' pelf, which ahvays wastes like snow in sunshiny day." '"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," continues Conscience; "the marrying in the Fleet is the beginning of eternal woe." There is no denying the truth of the remark ; on the contrary. Conscience's antagonist, giving up the contest, de- spondingly acknowledges — " If a clerk or plyer tells a lie, you must vouch it FLEET MARRIAGES. . 59 to be as true as the Gospel ; and, if disputed, you must affirm, with an oath, to y truth of a downright d falsehood." Then, after a scrap of Latin, the Avhole ends with the prayer — " May God forgive me what is past, and give me grace to forsake such a Avicked place, where truth and virtue can't take place unless you are resolved to starve." The commentary on this is the fact that business went on so prosperously that, in 1748, we find poor conscience- stricken Wyatt receiving his 57/.. 12*. 9d. for a single month's marriages, merely, no doubt, to keep him from "starving;" and that, in the same year, he set up an opposition chapel in May Fair, in the very teeth of the great man of the place, Keith. Among other parsons of the Fleet who may be summarily passed over are, William Dare, Avho married from 150 to 200 couple per month, and kept a curate to assist him ; John Floud, who married not only at the Fleet, but also at the King's Bench, and the Mint, in Southwark;- James Lando, Avhose advertise ment we transcribed verbatim in the commencement of our paper; Shadwell, a blind parson ; and a host of others. But the greatest is yet behind; this was the far-famed Alexander Keith, the man who, in a published pamphlet against the Act of 1753, could say with some truth, "If the present Act, in the form it noAV stands, should (Avhich I deem impossible) be of service to my country, I shall then have the satisfaction of having been the occasion of it, because the compilers thereof have done it with a pure design of suppressing my chapel, which makes nie the most celebrated man in this kingdom, though," he adds, with delightful modesty, "not the greatest," His principal place was in May Fair, where a chapel had been built about 1720, and himself chosen to officiate; and where he added a new feature to the old system of Fleet Marriages, that of making clan destine marriages fashionable,* H« was excommunicated in 1742, and com mitted to the Fleet in the following year, where, like other great men, he made his very misfortunes, as he, of course, deemed them, redound to his wealth and fame. He opened a little chapel in the Fleet, and commenced a thriving trade there, in addition to his May Fair business, which he kept going on without interruption through the agency of curates. Not the less, however, did he esteem himself a-martyr to the cause. His wife died whilst he Avas in the Fleet, and he had her embalmed, and placed in a kind of funereal state, at an apothe cary's in South Andley-street, in order, as he informed the public, to keep her till he could attend the funeral. Previously, also, one of his sons died here, and the corpse was carried on a bier by two men from the prison to Covent- garden, the procession stopping contimially on the way, to enable the public to read the inscription on the coffin, "which referred to the father'^ persecution." We may add, that Keith himself died in the Fleet in 1758. Of course, the state of things indicated in the foregoing pages did not escape all notice of the Legislature, or of the ecclesiastical authorities. The latter oc casionally suspended a parson or two, and the former passed Acts equally in efficient in practice. Among these may be mentioned the Act of .17 12, which ordered offenders to be removed to the County Gaol ; and which, if energetically carried out, must, one would suppose, have been effectual. But no substantial remedy Avas made or thought of, apparently, till the growth of that feature of the system already alluded to, its becoming fashionable, alarmed the heads of the * See 'Strawberry Hill,' vol. iii., p, 110. 60 LONDON, aristocracy for the safety of their own sons and daughters. And in 1744 the marriage of the Hon. Henry Fox Avith the daughter of the Duke of Richmond* excited a great deal of comment, and a sweeping alteration of the law was talked of. But the immediate cause of the famous Marriage Bill is said, by Horace Walpole, to have been a case which came before Lord Bath, in a Scotch cause, where a man, after a marriage of thirty years, was claimed by another woman, on the ground of a (clandestine) pre-contract. But however that may be, the bill, as it was sent down to Parliament, became a complete battle-ground for jjarty, and gave rise to some of the most curious and interesting of parliamentary debates. In a letter from Walpole to the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, dated StraAvberry Hill, May 24, 1753, that most delightful of gossipers writes: — " It is well you are married. How would my Lady Aylesburyf have liked to be asked in a parish church for three Sundays running ? I really believe she would have worn the weeds for ever, rather than have passed through so impudent a ceremony. What do you think ? But you will want to know the interpretation ' of this new preamble. Why, there is a new bill, which, under the notion of Clandestine Marriages, has made such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony, that every Strephon and Chloe, every dowager and H , will have as many impediments and formalities to undergo as a treaty of peace. Lord Bath invented this bill, but had drawn it so ill that the Chancellor (Hard- wicke) was forced to draw a new one ; and then grew so fond of his own creature, that he has crammed it down the throats of both Houses, though they gave many a gulp before they could swallow it." In his ' Memoirs of the Reign of George II.,' Walpole has given a complete history of the progress of this bill, including his own views upon it. It may be interesting at the present day to see what could make such a man so determined an opponent of a bill which in its chief features, as regards the prevention of clandestine marriages, is not only still in force, but so completely acquiesced in as to be unquestioned. " It Avas amazing," he says, " in a country where liberty gives choice, where trade and money confer equality, and where facility of marriage had always produced populousness — it was amazing to see a law promulgated that cramped inclination, that discountenanced matrimony, and that seemed to annex as sacred privileges to birth as could be devised in the proudest, poorest little Italian principality ; and as if the artificer had been a Teutonic Margrave, not a little lawyer Avho had raised himself by his industry from the very lees of the people, and who had matched his oavu blood with the great house of Kent.J The abuse of pre-contracts had occasioned the demand of a remedy; the physician imme diately prescribes medicines for every ailment to which the ceremony of marriage Avas or could be supposed liable. Publication of banns was already an esta blished ordinance, but totally in disuse except amongst the inferior people, who did not blush to obey the law. Persons of quality, who proclaimed every other * The eminent statesman Charles James Fox was the oflspring of this marriage. f Conway had married the widow of the Earl of Aylesbury. X It seems Walpole could be as slanderous as anybody when he pleased. Lord Hardwicke's father was an attorney ; yet i) is certainly the Chancellor to whom he refers, whose son married the daughter of the Earl of Breadalbane, thf last representative of the " great house of Kent." FLEET MARRIAGES. 61 step of their conjugation by the most public parade, were ashamed to have the intention of it notified, and were constantly married by special licence. Un suitable matches, in a country where the passions are not impetuous, and where it is neither easy nor customary to tyrannize over the inclinations of children, were by no means frequent : the most disproportioned alliances, those contracted by age, by dowagers, were without the scope of this Bill. Yet the new Act set out with a falsehood, declaiming against clandestine marriages as if they had been a frequent evil. The greatest abuse were the temporary weddings clapped up in the Fleet, [we began to think the historian had altogether forgotten these,] and by one Keith, who had constructed a very bishopric for revenue in May Fair, by performing that charitable function for a trifling sum, which the poor successors of the Apostles are seldom humble enough to perform out of duty. The new Bill enjoined indispensable publication of banns, yet took away their validity, if parents, nay, if even guardians, signified their dissent where the parties should be under age — a very novel power ; but guardians are a limb of Chancery ! The Archbishop's (of Canterbury) licence was indeed reserved to him. A more arbitrary spirit was still behind : persons solemnizing marriages without these previous steps were sentenced to transportation, and the marriage was to be effectually null, so close did congenial law clip the Avings of the prostrate priesthood. And as if such rigour did not sufficiently describe its fountain and its destination, it was expressly specified, that where a mother or a guardian should be non compos, resort might be had to the Chancellor himself for licence. Contracts and pre-contracts, other flowers of ecclesiastical preroga tive, were to be totally invalid, and their obligations abolished : and the gentle institution Avas Wound up with the penalty of death for all forgeries in breach oi this statute of modern Draco." No consideration of the character and abilities of the writer can prevent one noAV from smiling at the absurdity of all these invectives against a Bill evidently admirably adapted for curing the evils we have endeavoured to point out, or from feeling something akin to indignation at the gross injustice shoAvn to its author, the great Chancellor Hardwicke, whose very merit, that of probing the mischief to the bottom, and providing a suitable remedy, is here made his crime. But in the House of Commons some of the most distinguished members did not hesitate to give utterance to even Avilder opinions upon the necessity or consequence of the measure. " I must look upon this Bill," said Mr. Charles Townshend, " as one of the most cruel enterprises against the fair sex that ever entered into the heart of man ; and if I were concerned in promoting it, I should expect to have my eyes torn out by the young women of the first country town I passed through : for against such an enemy I could not surely hope for the protection of the gentlemen of our army." A Captain Saunders gave as his reason for voting against the Bill the case of sailors ; Avhich he illustrated by remarking that he had once given forty of his crew leave to go on shore, and the whole returned married ! And not sailors only, it was carefully pointed out, would be hindered in their endeavours to obtain the comforts of wedlock, but the whole tribe of sailors, soldiers, wag goners, stage-coachmen, pedlars, &c. &c. Mr, Robert Nugent, who spoke with great energy, humour, and some little indecency, observed, " It is certain that proclamation of banns and a public marriage is against the genius and nature 62 LONDON. of our people ;" and that " it-shocks the modesty of a young girl to have it pro claimed through the parish that she is going to be married ; and a young fellow does not like to be exposed so long beforehand to the jeers of all his com panions." Now there is so much force in this complaint, that the proposed Bill, by admitting of marriage by licence, to be obtained only at a consider able expense, did expose the poor, and the poor only, to whatever unpleasantness might be attached to banns : and Ave need not add that this inequality remains to the present day. One of the objections that the promoters of the Bill seem to have most dreaded was the prevalent belief in the sanctity of the marriage a'ow, no matter under what circumstances, legal or otherwise, it had been taken, and this plea was made some use of Another objection was, that the Bill would increase the facilities for seduction, by giving the seducer an ever-ready excuse of the danger that might accrue to him from an immediate marriage ; and cer tainly there is something in the objection. But the grand mischief that was pointed out was the aristocratic tendency of the whole measure. It Avas looked on by the opposition generally as initiated by and brought in for the especial benefit of the titled classes, enabling them to close their order, almost herme tically, against the approaches of any less privileged persons as wooers of their children — a kind of new game-laAv to prevent poaching on their preserves. " I may prophesy," says Mr. Nugent, "that if the Bill passes into a law, no com moner will ever marry a rich heiress unless his father be a minister of state, nor will a peer's eldest son marry the daughter of a commoner unless she be a rich heiress." And what Avas all this about? Simply because the law obliged both the rich heiress and the peer's son to wait till they Avere of age, Avhen they might, as before, marry whomsoever they pleased ! Upon the whole^ the discussions on the Marriage Bill seem to us one of the most striking cases on record of the blinding and mischievous effects of party spirit. Among the opponents in the House of Commons we must not forget to men tion the Right Hon. Henry Fox, a member of the Government, and the same gentleman we have before mentioned as availing himself of the Fleet accommo dations. His conduct on the present occasion made him so popular, that the mob took the horses from his carriage as he jjassed to and from the House, and drew it themselves. In the common sense of the term, it could hardly be said to have been party spirit that made him so inveterate ; but his speeches furnish the explana tion. In the debates he attacked the Chancellor personally, under a thin veil, with the greatest virulence. Some kind of intimation, it is probable, was given him from a very high quarter, that his remarics had given offence ; a circum stance that will explain his half apology on the third reading, and the other Avise mysterious allusions in the Chancellor's terrible retaliation, Walpole thus describes the third, reading : — " June 4th, The Marriage Bill was read for the last time. Mr. Charles Townshend again opposed it Avith as much argument as before with Avit. Mr. Fox, with still more wit, ridiculed it for an hour and a half. Notwithstanding the Chancellor's obstinacy in maintaining it, and the care he had bestowed upon it, it was still so incorrect and so rigorous that its very body-guards (the Solicitor and Attorney Generals) had been forced to make or to submit to many amendments: these were inserted in Mr. Fox's copy in red ink: the Solicitor- General, Avho sat near him as he was speaking, said, 'How FLEET MARRIAGES. 63 bloody it looks !' Fox took this with spirit, and said, ' Yes, but you cannot say I did it : look what a rent the learned Casca made (this alluded to the Attorney) ; 'through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed' — Mr. Pelham. However, he finished Avith earnest declarations ' of not having designed to abuse the Chancel lor,' and affirming that it was scandalous to pass the bill ; but it was passed by 125 votes to 56. On the 6th the bill returned to the Lords, where, after some ineffectual opposition, the Chancellor rose, and after referring to the proper character of the opposition in that House, said, what ' he had to complain of had passed Avithout those Avails, and in another pl'ace. That as to the young man (Charles ToAvnshend), youth and parts require beauty and riches, flesh and blood inspire such thoughts, and therefore he excused him ; but men of riper years and graver, had opposed ; that the first (the Speaker) was a good, well-meaning man, but had been abused by words; that another (Fox), dark, gloomy, insidi ous genius, who was an engine of personality and faction, had been making con nexions, and trying to form a party, but his designs had been seen through and defeated. That in this country you must govern by force or law ; it was easy to know that person's principles, which were, to govern by arbitrary force. That the King speaks through the Seals, and is represented by the Chancellor and the Judges in the courts, where the majesty of the King resides; that such attacks on the Chancellor and the law were flying in the face of the King ; that this be haviour was not liked ; that it had been taken up with dignity, and that the incendiary had been properly reproved ; that this was not the Avay to popularity or favour, and that he could take upon him to say that person knoAvs so by this time ; a beam of light had broken in upon him ; [In allusion to Fox's late dis claimer ;] but, concluded he, I despise his servility as much as his. adulation and retraction.' This philippic over, the bill passed." * Fox was in Vauxhall Gardens Avhen the particulars of the attack, and the half-hinted threat that he would be turned out of the ministry, reached him ; he regretted to those around him that, on account of the close of the Session on the morrow, he could not answer it in a fitting manner. Out of doors the merits or demerits of the bill had been no less hotly debated. It is tolerably evident the great majority were decidedly opposed to the measure ; -hey had, we presume, become so accustomed to the conveniences of the Fleet, as to have tacitly agreed to overlook its numerous evils. Hand-bills were distri buted about the streets both for and against it, and among the pamphleteers who took up the cudgels was Keith himself, who published ' Observations on the Act for preventing Clandestine Marriages,' with a portrait of " the Rev. Mr. Keith, D,D.," prefixed. The whole of his philosophy on the subject of Marriage is in admirable harmony with his life, and may be thus summed up in his own words — " Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing, is an old proverb and a very true one, but we shall have no occasion for it after the 25th day of March, when Ave are commanded to read it backwards ; and from that period ^fatal in deed to Old England 1) we must date the declension of the numbers of the inha bitants of England." As we have seen, hoAvever, not even Keith's eloquence prevailed ; and be was obliged to content himself Avith the consolations of his wit, and the independency Avhich he was accumulating during the interval. " I shall * Walpole. 64 LONDON only tell you a bon-mot of Keith's, the marriage-broker," says Walpole in a letter to George Montague, Esq., " and conclude. D the Bishops ! said he (I beg Miss Montague's pardon), so they will hinder my marrying. Well, let 'em, but I '11 be revenged : I '11 buy two or three acres of ground, and by G I '11 under- bury them all." With regard to the other matter, his independency, we find in the ' Gentleman's Magazine' for 1 753, the following paragraph :^" By letters from divers parts Ave have advice that the reading of the Marriage Act in churches has produced a wonderful effect in the minds of the fair sex. We have been furnished with a catalogue of marriages, of an almost incredible length, and it may not be improper to inform the public that Mr. Keith (against whom the bill was levelled for illegal marriages) is at length so far reconciled to this new law as to confess it a most happy event for supplying him with an independency in a few months; having, in one day, from eight in the morning till eight at night, married 173 couple." The last day of this pleasant state of things was the 24th of March, when nearly 1 00 couple were married by Keith ; and in one of the Fleet registers we find, under the same date, no less than 217 marriages: a fit ting conclusion of the Fleet Weddings. [KiKht Bon. Henry rox.J [Exterior View of the Abbey.] LXXX.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. I. — General History. Perhaps the highest development of art is that which, in its effect on the mind approaches the nearest to the sublimities of nature. The emotions, for instancei raised on seeing for the first time the sea, that broad expanse of waters which the skies, alone seem large enough to encompass, or in gazing once in a lifetime on the hills of the Alps, towering upwards till they are lost in the clouds, and connecting, to the eye of imagination, earth with heaven, are evidently kindred in their nature to the impressions produced on walking under similar novelty of circumstance through the long-drawn aisles of a great cathedral : we have the same sense of wonder, admiration, and awe ; the same elevation of spirit above the ordinary level; and the same consciousness how still inadequate are our powers to measure the spiritual heights and depths of the mysterious grandeur before us. And in whatever shape art delights to manifest itself, whether in the poem, the picture, or the oratorio, its loftiest creations may be always tested by the presence and intensity of this power ; but to architecture alone is it given to exercise it with almost universal sway. In poetry, painting, and not unfre quently in music, the perception of true sublimity is perhaps, to all but highly instructed minds, the last mental operation of the reader, spectator, or listener ; in architecture it is the first. It were absurd to place Prometheus or Lear — the Cartoons or the paintings of the Sistine Chapel — before an uneducated rustic, or, except in peculiar cases, to endeavour to make him appreciate suddenly the music of the Messiah ; but take the same man, with no other idea of an abbey than as a something vastly bigger than his own parish church, and place him in the edifice before us, dark indeed must be his soul if, as he looks around, a divine ray does not enter into it ; if he feels not, in however imperfect and transitory , a manner, the influence of the sublime, VOL, IV. F 66 LONDON. The early history of all these structures bears a strangely harmonious relation to their aspect. What Ave now look upon almost as miracles of human genius were in the days of their foundation really esteemed as Avorks in or connected with which a higher than human agency was visible ; and it is for that very reason perhaps that so little of their glory Avas attributed to the architects, and that the names of the latter have been alloAved — " Avillingly" for aught that ap pears — "to die." Their antiquity, again, is so great as to take us back into the period when the boundaries of history and fable were but as yet very imperfectly understood by our historians ; although the admitted facts of the former might well have been sufficient to save them from any such additions. The cathedrals of England are the great landmarks of the progress in this country of the grandest scheme of regeneration ever revealed to man; almost every step of which they illustrate. In Canterbury Cathedral you tread upon the foundations of what is maintained by some to be the first Christian church ever erected in this country, Avhilst the Cathedral itself dates from the time of Augustine, who may be said to have really established Christianity among us ; in Worcester you behold the memorial of the extension of the ncAv religion into another of the great kingdoms of the Heptarchy, Mercia, and its reception by the Kings ; Avhilst in Westminster you are reminded of the activity of Dunstan and the period when the different and contentious kingdoms had all been consolidated into one, acknoAvledging generally the Christian faith. From the tangled Aveb of fact and fiction which our records of the foiindation of Westminster Abbey present, it is hopeless to attempt to learn the simple truth. Sporley, a monk of the Abbey, who lived about 1450, describes it as erected at the period when King Lucius is said to have embraced Christianity, about the year 184. He adds that, in the persecution of the Christians in Britain during the reign of the Roman Emperor Dioclesian (about the beginning of the fourth century), the Church Avas converted into a Temple of Apollo. But John Flete, the monk of the same Abbey of a much earlier date, from Avhom Sporley is under stood to have derived his materials, seems, in the following passage, to refer the erection of the Temple of Apollo to a later era, to the fifth or, perhaps, the sixth century, Avhen the Saxons poured in their hordes upon the devoted islanders. He says, " The British religion and justice decaying sensibly, there landed in all parts of Britain a prodigious number of Pagan Saxons and Angles, who at length overspreading the Avhole island, and becoming masters of it, they, according to the custom of their country, erected to their idols fanes and altars in several parts of the land, and, overthrowing the Christian churches, drove them from their Avorship and spread their Pagan rites all around the country. Thus Avas restored the old abomination Avherever the Britons were expelled their place ; London worships Diana, and the suburbs cf Thorney offer incense to Apollo." Wren, during the rebuilding of St. Paul's, took great pains to investigate the truth of the story as respects that edifice, and ended in being very incredulous concerning both. And as to St, Paul's, his argument, no doubt, is sufficiently forcible, having "changed all the foundations" of the old church, and found no traces of any such temple, Avhilst satisfied that " the least fragment of cornice or capital wcJuld demonstrate their handiAvork."' But he had not the same opportunity of examining the foundations of Westminster Abbey, and most devoutly it is to be WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 67 hoped that no one ever Avill have, arising, as the opportunity must, from the destruction of the existing edifice. Under these circumstances Wren is hardly justified in taking it for granted that the story of Apollo and the Abbey Avas merely made up by the monks in rivalry to the traditions of Diana and St. Paul's. The matter is buried in obscurity, and, for any proof that appears, to this hour the foundations of the Pagan shrine may lie below those of the Christian. Flete adds to the statement given, that the temple Avas overthrown and the purer wor ship restored by Sebert, Avith Avhose name the more undoubted history may be said to commence. Yet even Sebert is so much a matter of question, that, Avhilst some old writers call him a citizen of London, others say — apparently Avith truth, from the care taken of his tomb through all tho rebuildings — 'it was Sebert, King of the East Saxons in the beginning of the seventh century, and nephew of Ethelbert. Mellitus Avas then Bishop of London, and encouraged, if he did not instigate, Sebert to the pious work ; Avhich, indeed, has been attributed wholly to him. The place — a " terrible" one, as an old writer calls it — was overrun with thorns, and surrounded by a small branch of the Thames ; hence the name Thorney Island. Malcolm, having one day mounted to the top of the northernmost of the two Avestern towers, professes to have been able to trace clearly the old boundaries of the island. Here the Church, ot Minster, was built. West of London, from which circumstance the Abbey and the district noAv derive their appellation. It Avas to be dedicated to St. Peter, and the prepara tions were already made for that august ceremony, Avhen, according to the relation of several writers, Avhose fidelity we leave our readers to judge of, the Apostle himself appeared on the opposite bank of the Thames, and requested a fisherman to take him over. There he was desired to Avait Avhile St. Peter, accompanied with aU' innumerable host from heaven singing choral hymns, performed the ceremony of dedication to himself; the Church, meanwhile, being lighted up by a super natural radiance. On the return of St. Peter to the astonished fisherman he quieted the latter's alarm, and announced himself in his proper character; bidding him, at the same time, go to Mellitus at daybreak to inform him of Avhat had passed, and to state that, in corroboration of his story, the Bishop Avould find marks of the consecration on the Avails of the edifice. To satisfy the fisherman he ordered him to cast his nets into the river, and present one of the fish he should take to Mellitus; he also told him that neither he nor his brethren should want fish so long as they presented a tenth to the Church just dedicated ; and then suddenly disappeared. The fisherman threw his nets, and, as might have been expected, found a miraculous draught, consisting of the finest salmon. When Mellitus, in pursuance of the Apostle's mandate, Avent to examine the Church, he found marks of the extinguished tapers and of the chrism. Mellitus in con sequence contented himself Avith the celebration of Mass. We may smile uoav at such a story ; but there is no doubt Avhatever that for ages it obtained general credibility. Six centuries after a dispute took place between the convent and the parson of Rotherhithe, the former claiming a tenth of all the salmon caught in the latter's parish, on the express ground that St, Peter had given it to them ; eventually a compromise was agreed to for a twentieth. Still later, or towards the close of the fourteenth century, it appears fishermen were accustomed to bring salmon to be offered on the high altar, the donor on such occasion having f2 68 LONDON. the privilege of sitting at the convent table to dinner, and demanding ale and bread from the cellarer. From the time of Sebert to that of the Confessor the history of the Abbey continues still uncertain. There are in existence certain charters which, could they be depended upon, would give us all the information we could reasonably desire. And, although the best authorities seem to think they are not to be so depended upon, yet their arguments apply rather to the property concerned than to any mere historical facts. For when these ingenious monks took the bold step of forging such important documents, supposing them to have done so, they would assuredly take care to be as precise as at was possible to the known inci dents connected with the history of their house, and of course they were in pos session of the best information. The first of the charters is one granted by King Edgar, 951, directing the reformation of the monastery by Dunstan, which had been previously destroyed or greatly injured by the Danes, and confirming privi leges said to have been granted by King Offa, who, after the decay of the church consequent on the death of Sebert, and the partial relapse of the people into heathenism under the rule of his sons, had, says Sulcardus, restored and enlarged the church, collected a parcel of monks, and, having a great reverence for St. Peter, honoured it by depositing there the coronation robes and regalia. Another charter by Edgar, one of the most splendid of supposed Saxon MSS., among a variety of other particulars agreeing with the account we have given, ascribes Sebert's foundation to the year 604. This, and a charter by Dunstan, are pre served among the archives of the Abbey. Dunstan's charter names Alfred among the benefactors to Westminster, According to William of Malmsbury and another writer, the church having at this period been restored, Dunstan brought hither twelve (Benedictine) monks, and made one of his favourites, Wulsinus, a man whom he is said to have shorn a monk with his own hands. Abbot, Still the Abbey-church and buildings Avere but small, and comparatively un worthy of the distinguished honour which St, Peter had so condescendingly con ferred; and the monks no doubt pondered over the means by which a more magnificent structure might be obtained. An opportunity at last offered in tlie reign of the Confessor, Whilst Edward was in exile during the Danish usurp ation, he vowed a pilgrimage to Rome, if God should please to restore hira to his crown. He was restored ; and then, mindful of his vow, assembled his prin cipal nobility soon after his coronation, and declared his purpose. By them he was persuaded, however, to send an embassy to Rome to procure absolution from the vow. The embassy was successful; and the Pope merely enjoined that the King should spend the sums intended for his journey in the foundation or repa ration of some religious house dedicated to St, Peter, It was precisely at the time these particulars got abroad that a monk of Westminster Abbey, named Wulsine, a man of great simplicity of manners and sanctity, had a remarkable dream. Whilst asleep one day, St. Peter appeared to him, to bid him acquaint the King that he should restore his (Wulsine's) church : and, with that notice able minuteness which characterises unfortunately only those stories of our early times which we are most disposed to doubt, we have the very words of the Apostle recorded : — " There is," said he, " a place of mine in the west part of WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 69 London, which I chose, and love, and which I formerly consecrated with my own hands, honoured with my presence, and made illustrious by my miracles. The name of the place is Thorney ; which, having, for the sins of the people, been given to the power of the barbarians, from rich is become poor, from stately low, and from honourable is made despicable. This let the King, by my command, restore and make a dwelling of monks, stately build, and amply endow : it shall be no less than the house of God and the gates of Heaven." * The dream was no doubt just the thing for the credulous monarch, who might have been other wise puzzled where to bestow his benefactions, and he immediately commenced his task in an earnest and magnificent spirit. Instead of confining himself to the expenditure enjoined, he ordered a tenth part of his property of every kind to be set apart for the new abbey ; he enlarged the number of monks ; a new and no doubt grander style of architecture was adopted — Matthew Paris says it was built novo compositionis genere ,• and, when the whole was finished, bestowed on it a set of relics which were alone sufficient in the eleventh century to make the fortune of any monastery, and which must have rendered Westminster the envy of most of the other religious houses of Britain. They comprised, says Dart, in his history of the Abbey, " part of the place and manger AX^here Christ was born, and also of the frankincense offered to him by the Eastern Magi ; of the table of our Lord ; of the bread which he blessed ; of the seat where he was presented in the Temple ; of the wilderness where he fasted ; of the gaol Avhere he was im prisoned ; of his undivided garment ; of the sponge, lance, and scourge with which he was tortured ; of the sepulchre, and cloth that bound his head;"t — and so on, through not only Christ's own history, but, in a lesser degree, through that of his mother, his apostles, and the most famous abbots and saints. Of the Con fessor's building Ave have fortunately an interesting and perfect remain in the Pix Office and the adjoining parts against the east cloister and the south tran sept. As we may here perceive, the architecture is grand in its chief features, but strikingly plain in details, with the exception of the capitals, which are handsomely sculptured. The original edifice was built in the form of a cross, with a high central tower. When the work was finished, Edward designed its consecration under circumstances of unusual splendour. He summoned all his chief nobility and clergy to be present: but, before the time appointed, he fell ill on the evening of Christmas-day. By this time his heart was greatly set upon putting the seal to his goodly work in the manner he had designed; so he hastened his preparations ; but on the day appointed, the Festival of the Inno cents, he Avas unable to leave his chamber, consequently Queen Editha presided at the ceremony. He died almost immediately after, and was buried in the church. From the death of the Confessor to the reign of Henry III. the history of the Abbey is chiefly confined to the lives and characters of its Abbots, of whom our space will allow us to mention only the most noticeable, and those briefly. Ger vase de Blois, a natural son of King Stephen, who had well-nigh ruined the Monastery by his mal-administration, was Abbot from 1140 to 1160, and was succeeded by Laurentius, who, to a great extent, repaired the mischiefs of De * Translation from Ailred of Riveaulx, in Neale's ' Westminster Abbey.' f Dart^s * Westmonasterium.' 70 CE'^*'*^5r%^ [Bemaias of the Coafessoi's Building — (I'ix Office).! Blois' abbacy, and Avho obtained the canonization of King Edward. He also obtained, Avhat seems to have been a great object of ambition with the Abbots of his period, permission from the Pope to Avear the mitre,* ring, and gloves, Avhich the bishops considered especially the insignia of their superior authority, but died before he could enjoy the coveted honour. His successor, Walter, ob tained the additional privilege of using the dalmatica, tunic, and sandals, and Avas about to exercise his privilege for the first time in a Synod, when the Pope's Nuncio, then in the Abbey, Avhere he thought he had not been received with sufficient respect, interdicted him. Walter's abbacy is remarkable for a curious and somcAvhat unseemly quarrel that took place in the Abbey, at the sitting of a Synod in 1176. Holinshed Avrites — "About Mid-Lent the King with his son and the Legate came to London, Avhere, at Westminster, a Convocation of the Clergy Avas called; but Avhen the Legate Avas set, and the Archbishop of Canter bury on his right hand as Primate of the realm, the Archbishop of York, coming in, and disdaining to sit on the left, Avhere he might seem to give pre-eminence unto the Archbishop of Canterbury (unmannerly enough, indeed), swasht him down, meaning to thrust himself in betAvixt the Legate and the Archbishop of Canterbury. And when belike the said Archbishop of Canterbury was loth to * Wliioh subsequently entitled the abbots to sit in parliament. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 71 remove, he set himself* just in his lap ; but he scarcely touched the Archbishop's skirt, when the Bishops and other Chaplains, with their servants, stept to him, pulled him aAvay, and threw him to the ground; and, beginning to lay on him with bats and fists, the Archbishop of Canterbury, yielding good for evil, sought to save him from their hands. Thus was verified in him that sage sentence, Nunquam periclam sine periculo vincifur. The Archbishop of York, with his rent rochet, got up, and aAvay he went to the King with a great complaint against the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Avhen, upon examination of the matter, the truth Avas known, he was Avell laughed at for his labour, and that was all the remedy he got. As he departed so bebuffeted forth of the Convocation-house toAvards the King, they cried upon him, ' Go, traitor ; thou diddest betray that holy man, Thomas : go, get thee hence ; thy hands yet stink of blood !' " To Avhat particular act of the Archbishop of York against his old enemy, Becket, the monks here allude, we know not ; but the malignity of his feelings toward him is evident from various circumstances — among the rest, his notice of the murder. When the news reached him, he ascended the pulpit and announced it to the congregation as an act of Divine vengeance, saying Becket had perished in his guilt and pride like Pharaoh. We noAV reach the reign of the King to whom we are indebted for the greater portion of the existing Cathedral, Henry III. From a boy he seems to have been interested in the place ; for Avhilst yet but thirteen years old Ave find him called the Founder of the Lady Chapel (on the site of the present Henry VII.'s Chapel), and the first stone of Avhich he laid on Whitsun Eve, 1221, in the abbacy of Humez. Twenty-five years afterAvards Henry commenced more ex tensive works ; he pulled down, according to Matthew Paris, the east end, the tower, and the transept, in order that they might be rebuilt in a more magnificent [One of the early Abbots ot Westminster, from the Cloistere'; "Ve have taken the liberty hsire to alter plain-spealsins Holinshcd's phrase. 72 LONDON. style. The ligntness, beauty, and variety, as well as the grandeur, of -pointed architecture, recently introduced, was now to be exchang'ed for the comparatively cumbrous and simple impressiveness of the Anglo-Norman edifice. Crokesley, at first an Archdeacon only, was made one of the Treasurers, and, probably from his zeal in the prosecution of the King's object. Abbot, on the death of Berking, in 1246. During his abbacy great progress was made. The King, among other benefactions, gave, in i'246, 259H. due from the widow of one David of Oxford, a Jew; and in 1254 the Barons of the Exchequer were directed to pay annu ally 3000 marks. Rich ornaments also Avere made by his own goldsmith for the use of the Church. In the twenty-eighth year of his reign he directed Fitz Odo to make a " dragon, in manner of a standard or ensign of red samit, to be embroidered with gold, and his tongue to appear as continually moving, and his eyes of sapphires, or other stones agreeable to him, to be placed in the Church against the King's coming thither." Two years later the Keeper of the Exche quer is ordered to " buy as precious a mitre as could be found in the City of London for the Abbot of Westminster's use ; and also one great croAvn of silver to set wax candles upon in the said Church,'' In addition to his own direct assistance, and the assistance of his nobles, impelled by his example, the King, no doubt at the suggestion of the Monastery, adopted a curious mode of stimu lating the popular excitement on the subject, and we should suppose with the most satisfactory results. In 1247, on St. Edward's Day, he set out with his nobles in splendid procession towards St. Paul's, where he received the precious relique which had been sent for him from Jerusalem by the Masters of the Temple and the Hospitallers, and which he munificently designed to deposit in the Abbey of Westminster : this was no less than a portion of the blood which issued from Christ's wounds at the Crucifixion. It was deposited in a crystal line lens, which Henry himself bore under a canopy, supported with four staves, through the streets of London, from St. Paul's to the Abbey. His arms were supported by two nobles all the way. Holinshed says, that to " describe the whole course and order of the procession and feast kept that day would require a special treatise ; but this is not to be forgotten, that the same day the Bishop of Norwich preached before the King in commendation of that relic, pronouncing six years and one hundred and sixteen days of pardon granted by the bishops there to all that came to reverence it." We need hardly add that those who did come were seldom empty-handed. To give still greater distinction to the ¦ ceremony, Henry, the same day, knighted his half-brother, William de Valence, and "divers other young bachelors." This was one mode, and, if he had faith in the essentials of the act performed, it was as cheap and efficacious as it was unobjectionable. But we cannot say so of his next act of beneficence to the Abbey. In 1248 he granted, evidently with the same object, a fair of a very extraordinary kind to the Abbot, to be held at Tut or Tot Hill, at St. Edward's tide, when all other fairs Avere ordered to be closed, and not only them but all the shops of London, during the several days of its continuance. The object was to draw the entire trade of London to the spot for the time; and although the citizens and merchants were much inconvenienced, the fair succeeded so well as to be repeated in 1252 ; " which thing, by reason of the foul weather chancing at that time, was very grievous unto them (the citizens) ; albeit there was such WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 73 repair of people thither, that London had not been fuller to the judgment of old ancient men never at any time in their days to their remembrance." By all these different methods, a sum of nearly 30,000Z. — an enormous sum, if reckoned its present value — was raised, and applied to the rebuilding of the Abbey, in about fifteen years : when it was still unfinished. The quarrels between Abbot Crokesley and the King during the latter part of the abbacy probably retarded the progress of the work. Crokesley appears to have first lost Henry's favour through a somewhat paltry act, tlje endeavouring to set aside an agreement made by the late Abbot to enlarge the allowance of the monks. In the course of the dispute Crokesley threatened to appeal to the Pope, whilst Henry, on his part, declared the goods of the convent to be separate from those of the Abbot, and actually caused proclamation to be made that no person should lend the Abbot money, nor take his note or seal for security. They gradually, however, became again friendly, and, in 1258, Crokesley set an example to the other religious houses of England, which, by the bye, they declined following, of assisting Henry in his struggles with De Montfort and the barons by entering into an obligation for 2500 marks, Crokesley died in 1258, and was succeeded by Philip de Lewesham, a man of such gross and corpulent body that he declined the abbacy rather than go to Rome, as usual, for confirmation, till the monks promised to send a deputation to get him excused. The deputation was sent, was successful, and returned to find the object of its labours dead. He was succeeded by Ware, who brought from Rome the materials of the beautiful mosaic pavement which lies before the altar in the choir of the Abbey, During his abbacy Henry was constrained to seek a peculiar kind of assistance from the edifice he had so enriched. Two years after the battle of Evesham, when the Earl of Gloucester seemed inclined to play by himself the game which he had helped to spoil in De Montfort's hands, the King borrowed the shrines and other jewels and relics of the Abbey, and pledged them to certain merchants. It was a dangerous act. But the King, who had so often broken faith in political mat ters, even when the Church had strengthened the engagement by the performance of the most solemn and awful rites, kept faith with the Church itself, and honestly redeemed and replaced the treasure. It may be useful to see with precision how far the Abbey had now advanced, which we may easily do by an examination of the building. It will then appear that Henry erected the chapel of the Confessor, which forms the rounded end of the choir, and is properly the apsis of the building, the four chapels iii the ambu latory which encompasses the latter, the choir to a spot near Newton's monument, the transepts, and probably the Chapter-house, In the reign of Edward I, a portion of the nave was completed Edward was too busy with his Welsh and Scottish wars, we suppose, to accomplish more, though he exhibited his favour to the Abbey in a marked manner by bringing hither the most precious spoils of his warfare. In 1285, during the abbacy of Wenlock, he gave a large piece of our Saviour's cross which he had met with in Wales ; and in 1296. or in 1297 as Stow has it, he offered at St, Edward's shrine the chair, containing the famous stone, sceptre, and crown of gold, of the Scottish sovereigns, which he had brought from the Abbeyof Scone, In this reign two events disturbed the even tenor of the monastic life : a fire, which destroyed some of the domestic buildings. 74 LONDON i ''r'l ill*' 11 I 4 ' II' I 4, 1 } 'l';l dl|l' Ik" - HlllU- I I jsr* IJ. I J [Front ol' the Northern Trandu^it. j in 1298, and the robbery of the King's treasure deposited in the cloisters in the care of the convent in 1303, Avhen the Abbot and forty-eight monks Avere sent to the ToAver, where some of them were kept 'for two years. In 1349 Simon Lang- ham was elected Abbot — a man who must not be passed Avithout brief mention. Raised by merit alone from a mean station, he enjoyed the highest honours of the State as well as of the Church ; in connection with the one having held the offices of Lord Treasurer and Lord Chancellor, and with the other those of Prior and Abbot of Westminster, Bishop of London, and laotly Archbishop of Canterbury. He it Avas Avho, Avhen Wickliff Avas made head of Canterbury Hall in Oxford, removed him, that the institution might be made a college of monks, and thus, it is supposed, gave the energy of personal feeling to the great Church Reformer's inquiries into religious abuses. Langham Avas an excellent Abbot, for he paid debts contracted by his predecessors to the amount of 2200 marks from his own purse, and in other Avays so contributed to the Avants and revenues of the convent, that the entire amount of his benefactions was estimated at 9,000/, or 10,000/, Part of this, we presume, Avas expended in carrying forAvard the building of the Abbey, Avhich, in the time of his successor Litlington, received large additions ; as the famous Jerusalem Chamber, the Hall of the Abbey (where now dine the boys of the Westminster School), and the Abbot's house ; whilst the south and WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 75 the west sides of the great cloister were finished. The riches of the interior were also increased by this Abbot, who added many ornaments of plate and furniture. Litlington's abbacy, however, is chiefly memorable for an incident that occurred in it of no ordinary interest connected with the privilege of sanctuary,* which is supposed to have been granted by Edward the Confessor, in one of whose dis puted charters the grant is found. The story is one of those romances of history Avhich fortunately has not yet been disputed, partly perhaps from the careless Avay in which later Avriters (Pennant for instance) have mentioned it, ottiitting the most interesting features. At the battle of Najara, during the campaign of the Black Prince in Spain, tAVO of Sir John Chandos's squires, Frank de Haule and John Schakell, had the good fortune to take prisoner a Spanish nobleman of distinction, the " Count of Denia," Avho, according to the custom of the time, was awarded to them as their rightful prize by Sir John Chandos and the Prince himself. They took the Count to England, who, Avhilst there, being greatly desirous to return to Spain in order to collect the ransom-money demanded, Avas allowed to do so on his placing his eldest son in their hands. Either the Count forgot his son or Avas unable to raise the money, for years passed without ncAvs of him, and then he was dead. About this period the Duke of Lancaster was promoting, by all the means in his poAver, his claim to the throne of Castile, and, knowing these two squires held prisoner the Count's son, now the Count, induced the King, Richard II. , and his council, to demand him from them; expecting, no doubt, to make important use of him in the advancement of his objects. The squires refused to give him up unless the ransom to which they were justly entitled was paid ; and, as the prisoner could not be found, Haule and Schakell were committed to the Tower, From thence they escaped and took sanctuary at Westminster, Determined not to be baffled, John of Gaunt ordered the Constable of the Tower, Sir Alan Boxhull, and one Sir Ralph Ferrers, to pursue them with a band of armed men even into the sacred enclosure. At first they endeavoured to get them into their power by fair promises, and, with regard to Schakell, " used the matter so with him that they drew him forth " and sent him once more to his prison, Haule, however, refused to listen, and would not alloAV them to come within reach. They then prepared for force, when the brave but devoted squire drew a short SAvord from his side and kept his enemies at bay, with great address and spirit, even Avhilst they drove him tAvice round the choir. At last they got round him, and one of the assailanj;s clove his head by a tremendous blow from behind, when the comple tion of the murder Avas easy. At the same time they slew one of the monks who interfered. All this took place in the midst of the performance of high mass. The prisoner, however, was still concealed in spite of all the efforts made to discover the place of his confinement ; and partly, perhaps, from that circumstance, and partly from the odium attached to the affair by the violation of sanctuary, the Court eventually agreed to pay Schakell, for his prisoner's ransom, 500 marks in ready money and 100 annually for his life. We give the conclusion in the words of Holinshed : " This is to be noted as very strange and Avonderful, that Avhen he should bring forth his prisoner, and deliver him to the King, it Avas knoAvn to be the very groom that had served him all the time of his trouble as an hired servant, * For an engraving of the Sanctuary Church, a separate building near the Abbey, sec vol. iii. p. 9 of tins work. 76 LONDON. in prison and out of prison, and in danger of life when his other master was mur dered. Whereas, if he would have uttered himself, he might have been enter tained in such honourable state as for a prisoner of his degree had been requisite ; so that the faithful love and assured constancy in this noble gentleman was highly commended and praised, and no less marvelled at of all men." The church was closed for four months in consequence of this profanation, and the subject brought by Litlington before Parliament, which granted a new confirmation of its privi lege. Boxhull and Ferrers had to pay each a fine. We have dwelt somewhat upon the early history of the Abbey, not only because it is the portion the most interesting, but more particularly on account of that harmonious connexion before alluded to which exists between it and the structure. Look at the cathedrals of England, and at the simplicity and comparative ineffi ciency of the mechanical aids at the disposal of their builders, and then, on the other hand, at our best modern churches, erected under circumstances admitting of every conceivable mechanical advantage ; what is the meaning of the melan choly contrast presented.? The answer will be found in our previous pages. It is not that we are poorer, or that we want apprehension of architectural grandeur, least of all that our faith is less pure than that of our forefathers; it is that we have less faith in our faith : we are, it must be confessed, more worldly. The miracles, and relics, and processions, and offerings, and privileges, that form so considerable a portion of the early recprds of Westminster Abbey, are no doubt absurd enough to the eye' ©f reason ; but it were still more foolish to think of them as evidences of, the credulity only of our ancestors. When the artisan came and offered his day's labour once or twice in every week without remune ration, and his wife parted gladly with her solitary trinket ; when the farmer gave his com and the merchant his rich stuffs ; when the noble felled his an cestral oaks, and the King decimated his possessions ; when, in short, persons of all classes aided, each in the, best way he could, the establishment of the new abbey or minster, and bishops might be seen in the position of the hewers of wood and drawers of Avater — circumstances all of more or less frequent occurrence in the history of such houses, — was it the mere vague sense of wonder ahd profit less admiration of miracles, relics, and processions, which moved the universal heart? — or was it not the fervour and entire devotion of men's spirits unto God, of which credulity was then but a natural, indeed inevitable, accompaniment ? — Religion in the middle ages was of" imagination all compact;" and, although such a state of things could not, ought not to be permanent, we are experiencing the truth of his remark who overthrew it. As Luther propped us on the one side, we have fallen on the other : when shall we obtain the true balance and ele vation ? We must now pursue more rapidly our narration. Litlington was succeeded by Colchester, during whose abbacy, which ex tended through the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V,, steady pro gress was kept up with the west end of the church, as also during the subsequent abbacies of HarAveden, Estney, in whose time the roof of the nave and the great west window were completed, and Islip, in whose abbacy the works stopped, on the completion of Henry VII.'s Chapel (the history of which will be noticed else where), although the main and west towers were still unbuilt. The latter Wren supplied in a manner that, to say the least of it, does not add to his reputation ; WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 77 [Abbot Colchester, fiom his Tomb in the Chapel of St, John the Baptist.] the former is wanting to this hour : its square base, just appearing above the body of the building at the intersection of the transepts, provoking an unsatisfac tory inquiry. Two highly-interesting incidents mark the history of the Abbey during the rule of Estney and his predecessor. Milling. On the reverse of Ed ward IV. in 1470, his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, took shelter in the Sanctuary, where, " in great penury, forsaken of all her friends," she gave birth to the un fortunate Edward V. Here, again, on her husband's final success, she received him in all the flush of victory, and presented the child for the first time to his father's arms ; and here, lastly, when Edward was dead, took place those melan choly scenes in which the Protector Gloucester endeavoured, and successfully at last, to induce her to give up her children to his care. On one of these occasions More describes her as sitting " alow on the rushes '" in her grief, to receive the embassy. The other incident to which we allude is the residence in some part of the Abbey — Stow says in the Chapel of St. Ann's, which was pulled down during the erectfon of Henry VII.'s building — of the great printer, Caxton, who esta blished here the first English printing-press during the time of Abbot Estney. In his ' Cronicles of England ' we read as the place of its production " th' Abbey of Westmynstre." He subsequently moved into the Almonry, that nest of vice, disease, and filth, still allowed to exist close to the chief place of national wor ship ; and an interesting advertisement of his for the sale of some type " good cheap" is still preserved, dated from the " reed pale" there, Bagford says he also had a place in King Street adjoining. At the Reformation Benson was Abbot, a man who will be remembered for his remark to Sir T. More, if for nothing else. The great Chancellor was placed, for a short time, in his custody, when Benson endeavoured to turn him from his rs LONDON. purpose of preserving a pure conscience, by showing that he must be in error, since the Council of the realm had so determined. This little revelation of the Abbot's mind may explain the favour shoAvn to the Abbey at the period so dangerous to all such institutions. The Abbey was changed into a Cathedral, with a Bishop, Dean, and tAvelve Prebendaries, and a revenue of at least 586/. 13*. 4d.,* the old revenues amounting to 3977/. 6*. 4^d. according to one authority, or 3471/. Os. 2id. according to another. Benson, the late Abbot, was made Dean, the Prior and five other monks prebendaries, four more brethren became minor canons, four King's students in the universities, and the remainder were dismissed with pen sions. Thirlby received the bishopric, which, however, he resigned in 1550, when it Avas suppressed, and the Cathedral, the following year, Avas included within the diocese of London. f We have not yet done Avith the settings-up and pullings-down of the old religion at Westminster. On Mary's accession the Abbey Avas restored, Avith Feckenham at its head, who set to work with great zeal in his ncAV vocation. He repaired the shrine of the Confessor, provided a paschal candle, weighing three hundred pounds, which was made with great solemnity in the presence of the master and warden of the Wax-chandlers' Com pany ; he asserted the right of sanctuary, and made the processions as magni ficent as ever. It was but for a brief period. Mary died, and Elizabeth restored in effect the Cathedral foundation of her father, with the exception of the bishopric. William Bill Avas the new Dean. Among his successors have been Lancelot Andrews ; Williams, who took so active, and to the court unpalatable, a part in the great Re\'olution, during which time the Abbey was several times attacked by the mob, and considerable injury done; Atterbury, the literary friend of Pope, and who was so deeply implicated in the conspiracies against George I., and in consequence deprived of his dignities and banished ; Pearce, Horsley, &c. Having devoted the present number of our publication to what we may call the General History of the Abbey, we propose to devote four others, immediately following, to the Coronations and the Burials of our Monarchs, and to the Tombs of our great men generally; in the course of which we shall have ample opportunities of noticing the chief internal features of the edifice, as well us the more remarkable events, not already mentioned, which have taken place within its walls, and which are more fitly deferred to such occasions. In the mean time let us take a short Avalk round the Abbey. As we approach from Parliament Street, the exquisitely beautiful -and most elaborately panelled and pinnacled architecture of the rounded end of Henry VII.'s Chapel meets the eye over the long line of St. Margaret's Church; into the burial-ground of Avhich we step, in order to pass along the northern side of the Abbey. About the centre we pause to gaze on the blackened exterior of the front of the north transept, J in Avhich, hoAvever, many of the most delicate beau ties of the sculpture, as Avell as all the bolder outlines of the tracery and the mouldings, arc distinctly and happily marked by the light colour of the project- * Widmore's ' History of the Abbey :' Strype says 804/. t In the arrangements that now ensued, some portion of the property of the Abbey (St. Peter's) nassed to Rt. Paul's : whence the popular remark — robbing Peter to pay l-'aij, X See page 74, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 79 ing edges, ^ime Avas Avhen this front had its " statues of the twelve Apostles at full length, with a vast number of other saints and martyrs, intermixed with intaglios, devices, and abundance of fretAvork," and Avhen it Avas called for its extreme beauty " Solomon's Porch ;" and now, even injured as it is, the Avhole forms a rich and beautiful facade. The rose AvindoAv, thirty-two feet in diameter, Avas rebuilt in 1722. Beyond the transept the ncAV appearance of a part of the exterior of the nave shows how extensive have been the reparations of recent years ; and we may add the remainder shows how necessary it is to go on. As we pass round the corner toAvards the west front, one can hardly resist the fancy that Wren, seeing hoAv badly the Abbey needed its deficient toAvers, had taken a couple from some of his City churches, and placed them here. And who could for a moment mistake the ornaments of the clock for a part of a genuine Gothic structure ? At the right-hand corner of the Avestern front, half concealing the beautiful decorations of its loAver part, is the plain-looking exterior of the Jeru salem Chamber, forming, Avith the Hall, Dean's house, &c„ a square, partly resting against the nave on the southern side of the Abbey, partly projecting beyond it. Passing along the exterior of these buildings a gateway leads into the Dean's Yard, a large quadrangle, where the modern houses contrast strangely Avith the ancient ones, lower portions Avith upper, large windows with green blinds and small rude ones scarce big enough to put one's head through, painted wooden doorways and arches so old and decayed one scarcely even ventures to guess how old they may be. From the Dean's Yard Ave can again approach the Abbev, the doorway in the corner at the end of the pavement on our left opening into a vaulted passage leading directly to the cloisters. From the grassy area of the latter you obtain a vicAV, and Ave believe the only one, of the south transept, or rather of its upper portion. Passing along the south cloister, Avhere the wall on your right is also the wall of the ancient refectory, to which the first doorway led, at the end you have on the right a Ioav vaulted passage, Avhich is considered a part of the Confessor's building, and Avhere, in a small square called the Little Cloisters, stood the Chapel of St. Katherine, in Avhich took place the scene between the Archbishops of York and Canterbury so dramatically described by Holinshed, and on the left the East Cloister, with the Ioav and well-barred door leading into the chamber of the Pix, and the exquisitely beautiful but much-injured entrance to the Chapter-house, To this building, now used for the custody of records, and-visited only by express permission from the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, we might devote more pages than we have words to spare : so sumptuous were its architecture and its decorations, and so interesting yet are the remains. The pavement, Avith its coloured tiles in heraldic and other devices, and the Avail almost covered apparently Avith paintings, deserve even closer investigation than they have yet received. It is also rich in its curiosities ; here is, perhaps, the most valuable ancient historical document possessed by any nation in the Avorld, the Domesday Book, in such exquisite preservation, and its calligraphy so per fect, that it scarcely appears as many years old as it is centuries. The large gold seal appended to the treaty betAveen Henry VIII. and Francis is not only in teresting for its associations, but for its intrinsic merit. The sculptor Avas no less than Cellini, Passing through the Chapter-house, and turning round to 80 LONDON. look at the exterior of the building we have quitted, the most melancholy-looking part of the Abbey is before us ; and it is that which is necessarily the most seen, standing as it does against the entrance to Poets' Corner, The magnificent windows bricked and plastered up, two or three smaller ones being formed in stead In the hideous walls which fill them, and the dilapidated, neglected aspect of the whole, are truly humiliating. And what a contrast to the visitor who has just passed Henry VII.'s Chapel ! It is fortunate we can so soon forget it, and all other jarring associations : a few steps — and we are in the Abbey, and — out of the Avorld. [Interior of the Abbey.] [The Coronation Chair.] LXXXI.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. II. — The Coronation Chair. In accompanying a group of visitors to the Abbey, along the usual route of inspection, one may easily see where lies the chief object of attraction. Not in Poets' Corner, — that they have had plenty of time to examine previously ; — not in the antique-looking chapels, with their interesting tombs, of the Ambulatory ; — not even in the "world's wonder," Henry VII.'s Chapel, for the very extent and multiplicity of its attractions render any attempt to investigate them during the brief period allowed ridiculous ; — no ; but as we are Avhirled along from object to object, the victims apparently of some resistless destiny, in the shape of a guide which allows us noAvhere to rest, and the mind, at first active, eager, and enthusiastic, endeavouring to understand and appreciate all, has at last ceased to trouble itself about any, and left the enjoyment, such' as it is, to the eye, we are suddenly roused by the sight of one object, the Coronation Chair ! We are at VOL. IV. G 82 LONDON. once rebellious to our guide, or Avould be, but that he, with true statesmanlike craft, knows where to yield as well as Avhere to resist : here he even submits to pause while questions are asked and answered, old memories revived, historical facts and fictions canvassed to and fro^ — till, in short, Ave achieve in this single instance the object we came for Avith respect to the entire Abbey, And the few and the many are alike interested : whilst the last have visions of the most gorge ous pomp and dazzling splendour rise before them in connexion with the corona tion ceremony, the first are insensibly led to reflect on the varied character and influences of the many different sovereigns who have, in this place, and seated in that chair, had the mighty English sceptre intrusted to their hands. The very contrasts between one occupant and the next, through the greater part of the his tory of our kings, taken in connexion with their effects on the national destinies, would furnish matter for a goodly kind of biographical history, a book that should be more interesting than ninety -nine out of every hundred works of fiction. Recall but a few of these contrasts : the great warrior and greater statesman, Edward I., and the contemptible, favourite-ridden Edward II, ; the conqueror of Cressy, with French and English sovereigns prisoners at his coiirt, and the conquered, without a battle, of Bolingbroke, acknowledging allegiance to his born subject ; the pitiful Henry VI. and the pitiless Richard III. ; the crafty, but not cruel, Henry VII., and the cruel but scarcely crafty Henry VIII. ; the gentle Edward and the bigoted Mary; the masculine-minded Elizabeth, and the effeminate- minded James ; the gay irreligious Charles, and his gloomily pious brother : one could really fancy, as we look over the list of sovereigns, that there has been but one principle upon which they have been agreed, and that is, that each of them would be as little as possible like his or her immediate predecessor. If the history of the chair extended no further back than to the first of these monarchs, Edward I., who placed it here, it would be difficult to find another object so utterly uninteresting in itself, which should be so interesting from its associations ; but in its history, or at least in that of the stone beneath its seat, Edward I. appears almost a modern. Without pinning our faith upon the traditions which our forefathers found it not at all difficult to believe in — traditions which make this stone the very one that Jacob laid his head upon the memorable night of his dream — or without absolutely admitting with one story, that this is " the fatal marble chair " which Gathelus, son to Cecrops, King of Athens, carried from Egypt into Spain, and which then found its way to Ireland during a Spanish invasion under Simon Brek, son of King Milo ; or with another, told by some of the Irish historians, that it was brought into Ireland by a colony of Scythians, and had the property of issuing sounds resembling thunder when ever any of the royal Scythian race seated themselves upon it for inauguration, and that he only was crowned king under whom the stone groaned and spake — without admitting these difficult matters, we may acknowledge the possibility of its having been brought from Ireland to Scotland by Fergus, the first king of the latter country, and his coronation upon it some 330 years before Christ, and the certainty that from a very early period it Avas used in the coronation of the Scottish kings at Dunstaffnage and Scone. It Avas carried to Scone by Kenneth II, when he united the territories of the Picts and the Scots in the ninth century, where it remained till the thirteenth. After the weak attempt by or for WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 83 Baliol to throw off the English yoke in 1296, Edward poured once more upon the devoted territories an irresistible arm^ of English soldiers, and so overawed the Scottish nobles by the decision and rapidity of his movements, that his progress became rather a triumph than a campaign ; the entire country submitting almost without a second blow after the sanguinary defeat by Earl Warenne, It was at this period Edward committed the worst outrage perhaps it was in his poAver to commit on the feelings and hopes of the people of the country in the removal of the famous stone, which was strongly connected by superstitious ties with the idea of national independence ; it then bore, according to Fordun, the Scottish chronicler, an inscription in Latin to the following effect : — Except old saws do fail, And Avizards' wits be blind. The Scots in place must reign Where they this stone shall find. In consequence of this belief the Scotch became apparently quite as anxious for the restoration of their stone as for that of their King ; indeed between the two, Baliol and the stone, we question whether they would not have willingly sacrificed the former to secure the latter. And when they were again ruled by a Scottish monarch, they did not relax in their exertions to obtain for him the true kingly seat. Special clauses Avere proposed in treaties, nay, a special conference was on one occasion held between the two Kings, Edward III. and David I., and ultimately mandates issued for its restoration. Some antiquarian misbelievers will have it that the stone was in consequence returned, and that the one before us is an imposture : a piece of gratuitous misgiving Avhich our readers need feel no anxiety about, implying, as it does, imposture without object on the part of the reigning monarch, against the dignity of his oavu successors ; and also that the Scots, when they got it back, were kind enough to destroy it, in order to keep up the respectability of our counterfeit. Failing to recover it, the people of the sister country appear to have very wisely changed or modified their views, and began to regard the prophecy as an earnest that their kings would reign over us : the accession of James I., though not exactly the kind of event anticipated by the national vanity, was still quite sufficient to establish for ever the prophetic repu tation of their favourite "stone of destiny," We need not describe the general features of the chair, as they are shoAvn in the engraving ; but we may observe that the wood is very hard and solid, that the back and sides were formerly painted in various colours, and gilt, and that the stone is a kind of rough-looking sandstone, measuring twenty-six inches in length, sixteen inches and three quarters in breadth, and ten and a-half in thickness. Our earliest records on the subject of coronations refer to the tenth century, when we find the Saxon Kings were generally crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames. Edgar was either crowned at Kingston or Bath ; whilst the Confessor was crowned at Winchester : from that time the Abbey at Westminster has been the established place for the performance of the ceremony. From Edward's third charter to the Abbey, dated 1066, it appears that the King had expressly applied to Pope Nicholas on the subject, Avhose ansAver is inserted in the form of a rescript, mak'ng' Westminster Abbey the future place of inauguration. Edward's successors. Harold and the conqueror of Harold, had strong motives to make them resnect a 2 84 LONDON. this arrangement, each claiming a right to the throne on the strength of a pro fessed declaration of Edward's in his favour, and which, in the Conqueror's case, Avas his only right. A curious picture of Harold's coronation is given in the Bayeux tapestry (here engraved), from which it appears that neither the story hIG R6 I \SDET:bARom Rex : AMI iS' GXO^TM — [Harold's Coronation, j of the King being crowned by Aldred, Archbishop of York, during the suspen sion of Stigand in consequence of a quarrel with the court of Rome, nor that of Harold having with his oAvn hands put on the " golden round " in the absence of Stigand, are true ; for there is Stigand duly labelled to prevent mistakes. Harold did not long enjoy his honours, and Stigand was again called upon to officiatp at the Norman's coronation, but, according to William of Newbury, man fully refused to crown one who was " covered with the blood of men, and the invader of others' rights." Aldred was accordingly nominated. What a day must that have been for our forefathers to behold, when foreign soldiers Avere seen lining every part of the metropolis with a double row of horse and foot, and a foreign prince rode through them, attended by bands of foreign nobles, to the new church erected by the Confessor ! Nor would their feelings be appeased by the consideration that there were men of their own blood ready to take part in the ceremony. On William's entering the church, with his train of warrior chieftains, 260 in number, a host of priests and monks, and a considerable body of recreant English, Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, asked the Normans if they were willing to have the Duke crowned as King of England, and Aldred put a similar question to the English ; of course the questions were answered by tumultuous acclamation. What follows shows the jealous, almost feverish anxiety of the Normans in the midst of the Saxon population. The Norman horsemen outside hearing the noise fancied It Avas the cry of alarm of their friends within, and in their agitation rushed to the neighbouring houses and set fire to WESTMINSTER ABBEY, ft5 them. Others ran into the church, where they created the alarm they fancied to exist; for those within then noticed the glare of the burning houses, and almost immediately the Abbey was emptied of its previously overflowing inhabitants, William alone, with a few priests, remained ; and, although it is said trembling violently, acted with calmness and determination, refusing to postpone the ceremony; and under such circumstances was the inauguration proceeded with. Something akin to a dread of driving the Saxons to utter despe ration may have been aroused by this incident, and may have induced Willian to add to the usual vow of the Saxon Kings the solemn promise that he would treat the English people as well as the best of their Kings had done. The coro nation over, William had leisure to examine into the nature of the broil which still continued — the English trying to extinguish the fires, and some at least of the Normans to plunder — and to give directions for putting an end to it. The coronation of William Rufus presents no features of interest ; but that of his successor and brother, Henry I., is noticeable for the solemn condemnation made during the ceremony of Rufus's reign ; the King, standing before the altar, promising to annul all the unrighteous acts therein committed. The coronations of Stephen, and of Henry II, and his Queen, may also be passed over, when we arrive at the first coronation of which any particulars have been recorded that can give us an idea of the pageant — the coronation of he of the lion-heart. On the 3rd of September, 1189, the archbishops of Canterbury, Rouen, Trier (in Germany y, and Dublin, arrayed in silken copes, and preceded by a body of the clergy bearing the Cross, holy water, censers, and tapers, met Richard at the door of his privy chamber in the adjoining palace, and proceeded with him to the Abbey. In the midst of a numerous body of bishops and other ecclesiastics went four barons, each with a golden candlestick and taper ; then in succession — Geoffrey de Lucy, with the royal cap ; John, the Marshal, with the royal spurs of gold ; and William, Earl of Striguil (and Pembroke), with the golden rod and dove. .Then came David, brother to the King of Scotland, here present as Earl of Huntingdon, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, supporting, as we should now say, John, the King's brother ; the three bearing upright swords in richly-gilded scabbards. Following them came six barons, bearing a chequered table, upon which were the King's robes and other regalia; and now was seen approaching the central object of the rich picture, Richard himself, under a gorgeous canopy stretched by four lances in the hands of as many nobles, having immediately before him the Earl of Albemarle. with the crown, and a prelate on each side. The ground on which he walked was spread with cloth of the Tyrian die. At the foot of the altar Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, administered the oath, by which Richard undertook to bear peace, honour, and reverence to God and holy Church, to exercise right, justice, and law, and to abrogate all wicked laws or perverse customs. He then put off all his garments from the middle upwards, with the exception of his shirt, which was open at the shoulder, and was anointed on the head, breast, and arms, which unctions, it appears, sig nified glory, fortitude, and wisdom. He then covered his head with a fine linen cloth, and set the cap thereon ; he put on the surcoat and the dalmatica ; he took the sword of the kingdom from the Archbishop to subdue the enemies of the Church ; lastly, he put on the golden sandals and the royal mantle splen- 86 LONDON. didly embroidered, and was led to the altar, where the Archbishop charged him or. God's behalf not to presume to take this dignity upon him unless he were resolved to keep inviolably the vows he had made ; to which the King replied that, by God's grace, he would faithfully perform them all. The crown Avas then handed to tlie Archbishop by Richard himself, in token that he held it only from God, when the Archbishop placed it on the King's head ; he also gave the sceptre into his right hand, and the rod-royal into his left. At the close of this part of the ceremony Richard was led back to his throne, and high mass per formed, during which he offered a mark of pure gold at the altar. And then, with another procession, the Avhole closed. Whilst such were the proceedings within, those without formed a frightful commentary. The day before, Richard, " being," says Holinshed, " of ^ zealous mind to Christ's religion," and there fore of necessity, according to the notions of the middle ages, abhorring that of the JcAvs, " and doubting some sorcery by them to be practised, issued a procla mation forbidding Jews and women to be present at Westminster, either within the church when he should receive the «rown, oT within the hall whilst he was at dinner," afterwards, Butsome of the proscribed people, venturing to think they had an " Open, Sesame," to the hearts of kings, came, and begged to be per mitted to lay rich presents at Richard's feet ; their prayer was heard, and all would have gone Avell, but for an unhappy accident. Some remarkably-zealous Christian raised an outcry against them as one of their number was trying to enter the gates of Westminster Hall among the crowd, and struck the pre sumptuous Israelite. The courtiers and other attendants of the King soon joined in the quarrel, and drove out the wealthy Jews who had so ingeniously purchased admission. By that time a report began to spread that the King had "Commanded their destruction, and the people drove them with " staves, bats, and stont;s to their houses and lodgings." Fresh bands of fanatics now poured forth, who scoured the streets, murdering every Jew they found, and assaulting the houses of those who fled to their homes for safety. And noAV London might have appeared almost in a state of siege. The Jews, who had a world of painful experience of the extremity to which bigotry will drive men, had many of them strongly-built houses ; these they now made still mor« defensible by barricades, against which the assaults of the rioters availed little. But the fanatics, growing more and more cruel and ferocious, noAv set fire to the houses, and burned men women, and children indiscriminately ; whilst in other cases, where perhaps it was not convenient or practicable to burn the houses, they broke into the Jews' apartments, and hurled them from the windows, without the slightest respect for age or sex, into the fires kindled in the area below. Oh ! the contrasts of the world ! — all this while Richard and his nobles were banqueting in Westminster Hall ; the rich wine flowing within as the warm blood was shed without ; the voice of the minstrel accompanying the groans and shrieks and cries of the murdered, the rapturous applause at the bardic song finding strange echo in the distant shouts of exultation of the murderers over their victims. But the disturbance growing formidable, it became necessary to inform the King, and there was a momentary interruption; but Ranulf de Glanvil, the Justiciary, would soon quell it : he leaves the hall, and once more rises the hum of social converse and enjoyment. But for once the Justiciary has overtasked his powers; WESTMINSTER ABBEY: 87 the fiends of bigotry are more easily raised than put down again ; the rioters turned upon the King's officers, and drove them back to the hall. There, pro bably, the Justiciary told the King with a kind of significant shrug that there was no help for it ; that, after all, it was only a few Jews ; perhaps Glanvil himself had creditors among them, whose prolonged absence would be a very convenient thing^-no doubt but the King was so situated: so the matter seems to have been left to its own course : the banquet went on, and so through all that night and part of the next day did the slaughter, the destruction, and the pillage. A day or two after, the King hanged three of the rioters, but that, as the sentence carefully pointed out, was for having burned the houses of Christians ; and as Richard now began to perceive that the property of the Jews was disappearing with the owners, he thought fit to issue a proclamation declaring the Jews under his own protection, and prohibiting any further injury. And thus ended the judicial interference in this atrocious case. What a commentary, we repeat, on the oath just taken ! There is one interesting feature of our early coronations — the elective cha racter given to the settlement of the Crown. There can be little doubt that from the very earliest periods the choice of a king partook more or less of this principle, although greatly modified by the custom of making that choice among the family of the deceased sovereign. At the coronation, again, of kings whose position was in strict accordance with hereditary right, the principle would be rather left in abeyance than brought prominently forward, Avhilst the reverse would be exhibited when the king had no such hereditary claim. Such was John's case ; at whose coronation the elective principle was thus broadly asserted by the Archbishop H ubert in a special address, recorded by Matthew Paris : — " Hear, all ye people : — it is Avell known that no one can have a right to the crown of this kingdom, unless for his excellent virtues he be elected to it If, indeed, of the family of the deceased monarch there be one thus super-emi- nently endoAved, he should have our preference." Accordingly, setting aside the son and daughter of the elder brother of the deceased king, John, a younger brother, was then declared elected. Whilst upon this subject, however, it must be observed that the illustrations, of the elective principle, though sufficient to show its bare existence, are of a very suspicious nature. It is true that when Henry I. died, Stephen, the nephew, succeeded instead of Matilda, the daughter ; that on Stephen's decease, his son was passed over for Matilda's son ; that John succeeded Richard I. instead of Arthur; and Bolingbroke Richard II. instead of the next lineal heir ; but in all these cases, which had the largest share— the independent working of the elective principle, or the address, ambition, and powers of the individuals Avho had these irregular successions most at heart ? It is highly probable that in some, though scarcely in all, of the cases men tioned, no attempt to disturb the regular course would have been made but for the existence of some such elective principle ; on the other hand, that principle alone, or Avith all the virtues of the respective monarchs to boot, would have done little for Stephen, or John, or Henry IV., if there had not been something much more tangible behind. Henry III. was twice crowned — at Gloucester in 1216, and in Westminster Abbey in 1220; the first having been precipitated in order to ensure the crown 88 LONDON, to him in a time of great danger, the French, under Lewis, being still in the land, and leagued with the more popular of the English barons. Henry, then but ten years old, was crowned with a plain circlet of gold, the proper crown having been lost by John, with the rest of the regalia, in the Wash between Lincolnshire and Norfolk. At the close of Henry's long reign his son Edward was in the Holy Land, from whence he sent orders for the coronation on his return, one passage of which conveys an almost ludicrous idea of the number and appetites of his coronation guests. There were to be provided 380 head of cattle, 430 sheep, 450 pigs, 18 Avild boars, 278 flitches of bacon, and nearly 20,000 capons and fowls. He was received on his return with great joy by the citizens of London, who hung their streets Avith the richest cloths of silk, arras, and tapestry, set the conduits running with white and red wines, whilst the aldermen and burgesses threw handfuls of gold and silver out of their windows among the crowds below — a fitting preliminary to the splendours of the coronation of himself and his queen, Eleanor. It was in this reign that the chair was placed, in the [Coronation of Edward I. From an Initial Letter in the Harleian MSS.] Abbey, and became the coronation chair of the future kings of England, as it had been previously of those of Scotland. But if Edward could have foreseen the de generacy of him who should be the first of those kings, we question whether he would not almost have rather left the Scots their treasure than have so disgraced it in the person of his son. The father's death-bed warning had been directed against his son's evil companions and parasites ; and more especially had he forbidden him, under the awful penalty of his curse, to recall the chief of them. Piers Ga- veston, to England. Yet, at the coronation of that son, next to the king himself, the most conspicuous person in the Abbey, not only for the unusually splendid garb in which he had arrayed himself, but for the position in Avhich he Avas placed, was the same Piers Gaveston. We may iinagine the sentiments of the WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 89 haughty English barons, who had before the coronation, according to Walsing ham, actually determined to stop the ceremony unless Gaveston was dismissed, but yielded on the King's promising to satisfy them in the next parliament. The coronations of the two succeeding monarchs have each some incidents of interest attached to them, though their general features present little noticeable matter. Prior to Edward the Third's coronation the youthful King was knighted by Henry Earl of Lancaster, his cousin, and then himself knighted other young aspirants. At this coronation commenced the practice of commemorating the event by the proclamation of a general pardon, Richard the Second's inaugura tion in 1377 was unusually magnificent, and, in consequence, slow and fatiguing to the principal actor, a boy only ; Avho, in consequence, at the conclusion of the ceremony, had to be carried in a litter to his apartment. The physical weakness was but a type — and to the superstitious a foreshowing — of the mental, Richard sank alike beneath the demands of the ceremony and the arduous office to which it inducted him, and had to give place to the bolder genius of Bolingbroke. Froissart has given us an account of this coronation, which took place on the 13th of October, 1399, the anniversary of the day on which Richard had sent him into exile. That picturesque historian of the most picturesque of periods says, the prelates and clergy having fetched the King from the palace, " went to the church in procession, and all the lords with him in their robes of scarlet furred [Portrait of Richard II. in the Jerusalem Chamber.) 90 LONDON. with minever, barred of (on) their shoulders, according to their degrees ; and over the King was borne a cloth of estate of blue, with four bells of gold, and it was borne by four burgesses of the port at Dover, and pther (of the Cinque Ports.) And on every (each) side of him he had a sword borne, the one the sword of the church, and the other the sword of justice. The sword of the church his son the Prince did bear, and the sword of justice the Earl of Northumber land;* and the Earl of Westmoreland bore the sceptre. Thus they entered into the church about nine of the clock, and in the midst of the church there was a high scaffold all covered with red, and in the midst thereof there was a chair- royal covered with cloth of gold. Then the King sat down in the chair, and so sate in estate royal, saving he had not on the croAvn, but sate bareheaded. Then at four corners of the scaffold the Archbishop of Canterbury showed unto the people how God had sent unto them a man to be their king, and demanded if they were content that he should be consecrated and crowned as their king ; and they all Avith one voice said Yea ! and held up their hands, promising faith and obedience. Then the King rose and went down to the high altar to be sacred (consecrated), at which consecration there were two archbishops and ten bishops; and before the altar there he was despoiled out of all vestures of estate, and there he was anointed in six places — on the head, the breast, and on the two shoulders behind, and on the hands. Then a bonnet was set on his head, and while he was anointing the clergy sang the litany, and such service as they sing at the hallowing of the font. Then the King was apparelled like a prelate of ¦the church, with a cope of red silk, and a pair of spurs with a point without a •rowel; then the sword of justice was drawn out of the sheath and hallowed, and ¦then it was taken to the King, Avho did put it again into the sheath ; then the Archbishop of Canterbury did gird the sword about him ; then St. Edward's crown was brought forth (which is close above) and blessed, and then the arch bishop did set it on the King's head. After mass the King departed out of the church in the same estate, and went to his palace ; and there was a fountain that ran by diverse branches white wine and red." From the Abbey the King passed through the Hall into the palace, and then back into the Hall to the sumptuous entertainment that there awaited him. "At the first table," continues Froissart, " sate the King, at the second the five peers of the realm, at the third the valiant men of London, at the fourth the new-made knights, at the fifth the knights and squires of honour ; and by the King stood the Prince, holding the sword of the church, and on the other side the constable with the sword of justice, and a little above, the marshal with the sceptre. And at the King's board sate two archbishops and seventeen bishops ; and in the midst of the dinner there came in a knight who was called Dymoke, all armed, upon a good horse, richly apparelled, and had a knight before him bearing his spear, and his sword by his side and his dagger. The knight took the King a label, the which was read ; therein was contained, that if there Avas either knight, squire, or any other gentleman that Avould say that King Henry was not rightful king, he Avas there ready to fight with him in that quarrel. That bill was cried by a herald in six places of the Hall, and in the town. There were none that would challenge him. When the • To whom Bolingbroke was «n ""..jij indebted for his success. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 91 King had dined he took wine and spices in the Hall, and then went into his chamber." And where was the unfortunate Richard during all these proceed ings ? Forgotten in his dungeon at the Tower, and drinking to the dregs the cup of his humiliation, as he felt how completely he had proved a mere mockery king of snow. Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke." The foregoing descriptions of the coronations of Richard I. and of Henry IV. will suffice to present the reader with a sufficient idea of the general arrange ments of the ceremony in ancient times, of which those observed to the present day are but an imitation, divested of the picturesque features attached to the old religion, and, we must now add, divested also of the accompanying banquet, with its armed and monnted representative of the family who, for so many cen turies, have been accustomed on these occasions to challenge the world in arms to gainsay the rights of their liege sovereigns.* We shall, therefore, in the remainder of our paper confine our notice to such coronations as were attended by some peculiar or interesting circumstances. In this class may be included the coronation of Richard III. Our antiquaries occasionally discover some curious matters in their gropings among our dusty records ; who, for instance, but for them, would have supposed Richard III. to have been a royal exquisite of the first order ? yet certainly the accounts preserved of his wardrobe do make him look marvellously like one. Among the Harleian MSS. is a mandate from Richard, then (1483) at York, to the keeper of his wardrobe in London, wherein he specifies with a minute exactness of detail, which implies a strong relish for the subject, the habits he desired to wear for the edification of the people of Yorkshire. If, on such an occasion, he took such a matter into his own hands, we may be pretty sure he had not left the choice of his coronation dress to others. It comprised two complete sets of robes, one of crimson velvet furred with minever, the other of purple velvet furred with ermine ; shoes of crimson tissue cloth of gold ; hose, shirt, coat, surcoat, mantle, and hood of crimson satin, &c. We have already noticed, in our account of the Tower, that Richard had appa rently intended his nephew, the rightful sovereign, to be present at the coronation of the usurper, but altered his determination after issuing the order for the prince's robes. But perhaps the most striking feature of the event is Richard's exhibition of humility — he actually walked bare-foot into the Abbey ! Altogether he hit the tast>e of the people in the matter so decidedly that his friends in Yorkshire could not be content without a repetition, so he and the queen, Anne, were crowned there too. Richard had well nigh given his subjects a third coronation, on the death of Anne, by his marriage Avith the daughter of EdAvard IV. and Queen Elizabeth WoodTille ; but his OAvn friends stopped the match on the ground, among others, that it would confirm suspicions of ill usage towards the deceased queen, and, therefore, injuxe his cause ; * The processions before the coronations have been already noticed (' Tower,' No. XXXIX.) ; the banquets giyen after may be most suitably described in connexion with the hall in which they took place. We have therefore, for the sake of completeness, given a short account of a single banquet (Henry IV.), and then only mcidentally mentioned the subject in other parte of our paper. AVe may here add that the ceremony of the championship fell into disuse after the exceedingly splendid coronation of George IV., whilst the banquet and the procession on foot were first omitted at thecoronation of her present Majesty. 92 LONDON. Richard adopted their advice, and, it is barely possible, thereby lost his crown. The match he declined Richmond was but too glad to accept, and the knowledge that such an arrangement had been made to connect the rival houses must have done much to create a public opinion here in Richmond's favour. His object attained, the instrument was cast aside with contempt, till the com plaints of his own subjects made him more prudent at least in his conduct ; he married the Princess Elizabeth, and then once more endeavoured to stop : giving her nothing of the Queen but the name. Louder murmurs were soon heard. Henry was too politic not to listen. The man who does not seem to have had nobleness enough in his nature ever to do a good act spontaneously, having no ' motive but the simple love of the thing, seems to have never left any duty un performed when — there Avere state reasons to impel him. So at last the- peo ple were gratified with the coronation of the famous heiress of the house of York, and a curious coronation, in one respect, it must have been. Bacon compares it to " an old christening that had stood long for godfathers ;" and he, who had so long delayed it, still was not ashamed to be in the Abbey when the ceremony did take place, peeping through the latticed screen of an enclosure erected between the pulpit and the high altar, and covered with rich cloth of arras. It appears to have been the custom from an early time to allow the crowd to cut and carry off the cloth along Avhich the sovereign had passed ; on the present occasion the crowd A^'as so gi'eat and eager that several persons were killed. [Henry VII. From the Tomb in his Chapel at WeBtn»nst#r,1 Passing over the inauguration of Henry VIII. and his Queen Catherine, which was as magnificent as taste and boundless expenditure could make it, and that of WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 93 Anne Bullen, wlio was crowned Avith " ays great pomp and solemnity as ever was Queen," and was the last of Henry's queens who received the honour, we reach the coronation of Edward VI., which Avas generally interesting, and in some respects novel. The proceedings were shortened, partly, according to the pro gramme of the proceedings, " for the tedious length of the same, which should weary and be hurtsome peradventure to the King's majesty (as in the similar case of Richard II. ), being yet of tender age, fully to endure and bide out; and also for that many points of the same were such as by the laws of the realm at this present were not allowed." The allusion in these last few words was, we presume, to the alteration in religious matters consequent upon the Reforma tion. But the most important alteration was that of reversing the usual order of first administering the coronation oath to the King, and then pre senting him to the people for acceptation. In other respects the ceremony presented many minute but interesting points of difference from the usual routine. The way from York Place to the Palace and thence into the choir of the Abbey was covered with blue cloth ; in the choir was erected a stage of un usual height, ascended by a flight oh one side of twenty-two steps, which with the floor at the top were covered with carpets and the sides hung with cloth of gold. Besides the general rich decorations of the altar, a splendid valance was noAV hung upon it enriched with precious gems, while the neighbouring tombs were covered with curtains of golden arras. On the stage stood a lofty throne ascended by seven steps. The procession commenced so early as nine in the morning ; when the choir of the Abbey in their copes, with crosses borne before and after them, the gentlemen and children of the chapel royal, with surplices and copes all in scarlet, ten mitred bishops in garb of the same colour, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, received the boy-king at the Palace, and conducted him to the stage in the choir. Here he was placed in a chair of crim son velvet, which two noblemen carried, whilst he was properly presented to the people. Then descending to the altar, he was censed and blessed. The anoint ment was not the least curious part of the ceremony. " Then anon," quotes Malcolm from an authority which he does not mention, " after a goodly care, cloth of red tinsel gold was holden over his head ; and my Lord of Canterbury, kneeling on his knees, his Grace lay prostrate before the altar, and anointed his back." The Archbishop then took the crown into his hands, and commenced ' Te Deum.' Whilst the choir sang, and trumpets sounded from above, the Lord Protector Somerset and the Archbishop placed the crown on the youthful head of the King ; and subsequently two other croAvns Avere also worn by him. After the enthronization he was re-conducted to the throne, Avhen " the lords in order kneeled down and kissed his Grace's right foot, and after held their hands between his Grace's hands and kissed his Grace's left cheek, and so did their homage a pretty time. Then after this began a goodly mass by my Lord of Canterbury, and goodly singing in the choir, with the organs going. At offering time his Grace offered to the altar a pound of gold, a loaf of bread, and a chalice of wine." The parties to whom the coronation arrangements were intrusted in the sixteenth century must have been sadly puzzled with the continual changes in religious matters, and have had a difficult task to please sovereigns of so many different faiths. As new rites were introduced for the Protestant Edward, so 94 LONDON, were the old ones restored for the Catholic Mary ; then again Elizabeth adopted neither course, but steered, as it were, betAveen them ; she allowed the usual arrangements to prevail at her coronation so far as the performance of mass, but forbade the elevation of the host, in consequence (most probably) of which, the entire body of Catholic bishops, with the exception of Oglethorp, Bishop of Carlisle, refused to officiate. Bacon tells an interesting story in connexion with this event, which illustrates the peculiar posture of affairs at the moment, when the Queen appeared to be pausing befiare she quite made up her mind to fulfil the fears of the Catholics, and the hopes of the Protestants, by a decided de monstration in favour of the latter. He says, " Queen Elizabeth, on the morrow of her coronation, it being the custom to release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince, went to the chapel, and in the great chamber, one of her courtiers who was well known to her, either out of his own notions or by the instigation of a wiser man, presented her with a petition, and before a great number of courtiers besought her with a loud voice that now, this good time, there might, be four or five more principal prisoners released; these were the four Evan gelists and the apostle St, Paul, who had been long shut up in an unknown tongue, as it were in prison ; so as they could not converse with the common people. The Queen answered very gravely, that it was best first to inquire of themselves whether they would be released or not." An answer that, under the circumstances. Prince Talleyrand himself might have envied, for its adroit ness and wit: it left the querist pleased, but unanswered.. And whether she would have answered it in the mode anticipated is uncertain if there had been more policy in the Catholic party, or less in the Protestant ; but when one professed so much devotion to her interests even whilst she appeared to lean to a con siderable degree towards their opponents, and the other returned the favour by declaring, through the mouth of the Pope himself, she was illegitimate, it was not very difficult to decide how the affair would end, Elizabeth soon struck into the path which had been first discovered to her father by the " Gospel light from BuUen's eyes." Of James I.'s coronation the most interesting account to our mind is that given in the amusing Dutch print of the period, here copied, which shows us the successive stages of the ceremony in an ingenious if not very artistical manner. The arrangements for this coronation and the preceding procession were intended to be of the most surpassingly splendid nature, but the plague was then raging, and in consequence the people were forbidden to come to Westminster to see the pageant. After this coronation political feelings and events began to mingle with the religious in affecting the successive ceremonies. Charles 1. was crowned on the 2nd of February, 1626. His queen, as a Catholic, was neither a sharer in the coronation nor a spectator ; and instead of accepting the place they offered to fit up for her in the Abbey, she preferred standing at a wihdoAv of the palace-gate to look on, whilst, as we have been carefully informed, her foreign attendants were frisking and dancing about the room. Laud was the archbishop, and Buckingham the Lord Constable, Avho, in ascending the steps of the throne, offered to take the king's right hand with his left, but Charles put it by, smiling, and helped up the duke, saying, "I have as much need to help you as you to WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 95 Coronation of James I.] assist me." When Laud presented the King to the people, he said in an audible voice, " My masters and friends, I am here come to present unto you your king. King Charles, to whom the crown of his ancestors and predecessors is now de volved by lineal right ; and therefore I desire you, by your general acclamation, to testify your consent and willingness thereunto." Strange and unaccountable as it seems, not a voice nor a cheer answered ; there was a silence as of the grave. If a kind of sudden revelation, but darkly, and as it were afar off, of the future events of the reign had been suddenly made, there could not have been a more portentous hush. At last the Lord Arundel, Earl Marshal, told the spec tators they should cry " God save King Charles !" and then they did so. The end of which this incident appears almost as a kind of beginning, is shown in the inauguration of Cromwell as Protector in the adjoining hall ; which was per formed Avith a simple dignity of ceremony more in accordance with Cromwell's tastes than the usual details of a coronation. Subsequent ceremonies present little worthy of remark, except in the instance of James II. and George III. James, seeing that his brother had restored the old monarchy, thought he Avould try his hand at a restoration of the old religion, and in the attempt lost both. His coronation presents a curious illustration of the difficulties in which he was placed in consequence of his views at the very commencement of his reign. How was he to take the coronation oath, binding him to the preservation of the An glican church ? The Pope was consulted, and a lucky quibble discovered, and 96 LONDON. the coronation of James and his queen went on. As the crown was placed on the King's head a circumstance occurred, which we look in vain to find recorded in the splendid and elaborate work published under authority by Sandford to commemorate the ceremony — the crown tottered, and had nearly fallen, and the King was noticed to be altogether ill at ease. The last incident of a coronation ceremony that we shall relate refers to the inauguration of George III. and his queen in 1761, which was at once magnificent and impressive. There was then present, unnoticed, a young man who must have gazed on the whole proceedings with feelings and memories of a strange kind. He was one to whom the silence which greeted Charles the First's presentation to the people, and the ominous tottering of James's crown, Avere more than mere matters of history. He was one who could say with some show of reason — and there were, doubtless, many present whose hearts would have responded to his Avords — " My place should have been by that chair ; my father should have been in it" — it was the Young Pretender, Charles Stuart. tOoioaatlon of George HI. — The Enthronization and doing Homr.ge.] [Confeaaor's Chapel, Screen, Sec., with the Choii- and Nave of the Abbey beyond.] LXXXIL— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. III. The Regal Mausoleums. It Avould be hardly possible to present a more impressive lesson on the muta^ bility of earthly glory than is afforded by the contrast between the two grand ceremonials which connect the history of our sovereigns for so many centuries with that of Westminster Abbey. The fcAv steps upwards unto the throne, and the few downwards into the grave; the airy sweep of the beautiful pointed arches, tier above tier, and the low and narrow vault ; the spirit-stirring splen dours of one pageant, and the sombre and dread magnificence of the other ; the new-born hopes which, binding king and people for the hour in a common sympathy, make the past appear as nothing, the future all, — and, alas! the melancholy comment provoked when all is over as to the necessity for the repetition of the process ; these are but the regular and almost unchanging phenomena of the momentous ebbing and floAving of regal life which meet us in the memories of the Abbey. It were a curious question to inquire whether those VOL. IV. H LONDON. who have been the chief actors in such different ceremonials have ever, during the one, thought of the other; whether, among all the monarchs who have passed along in their gorgeous robes, and beneath the silken canopies which the prpudest nobles have been most proud to bear, there has been one to whom the secret monitor has whispered, in the words of a writer * better known as the historian than as the poet of the Cathedral — " While thus in state on buried kings you tread. And swelling robes sweep spreading o'er the dead ; While like a god you cast your eyes around. Think then, Oh ! think, you walk on treacherous ground ; Though firm the checquer'd pavement seems to be, 'T will surely open and give way to thee." Arousing ourselves, though reluctantly, from the train of reflection inspired by the place, and the significant juxta-position of the coronation-chair f and the tombs of the chief of those kings who have occupied it, let us look around. We are in the innermost sanctuary of the temple, in a spot made holy by a thousand associations, but, above all, by the devout aspirations of the countless multitudes who have come from all parts, not only of our oavu but of distant lands, to bend before the shrine by our side, in which still repose the ashes of the canonized Confessor. Edward was at first buried before the high altar, and then removed [Funeral of the Confessor.] by Becket to a richer shrine in its neighbourhood, probably in consequence of his canonization by Pope Alexander III. about 1163; but after the rebuilding of the church by Henry III., that king had a shrine made to receive the trea sured remains, of so sumptuous a character, that the details almost stagger belief Among its ornaments were numerous golden statues, such as an image of St. Edmund, King, wearing a crown set with two large sapphires, a ruby, and other precious stones; an image of a king with a ruby on his breast, and two other small stones ; an image of the king, holding in the right hand a flower, with sapphires and emeralds in the middle of the crown, and a great garnet in the breast, and otherwise set Avith pearls and small stones; two other golden images of kings set with garnets, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires ; • Dart. t The Mcond chair (the one to the right) is supposed to have been first used at the coronation of William and Mary. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 99 five golden angels ; an image of the Virgin and Child, set with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and garnets; a golden image of a king holding a shrine in his hand, set with precious stones ; also, an image of a king holding in one hand a cameo with two heads, in the other a sceptre, set with rubles, onyx, and pearls ; and an image of St. Peter, holding in one hand a church, in the other the keys, and trampling upon Nero, with a large sapphire in his breast. The Patent Rolls mention also a " most fair sapphire," weighing fifty-two pennyweights ; one great cameo in a golden case, with a golden chain, valued alone at two hundred pounds of the money of the thirteenth century. There were, in all, fifty-five large cameos. Such parts of the shrine as were not covered with these precious ornaments were inlaid with the richest mosaic. This was the shrine which &^iSi^^^^^ [Shrine of the Confessor.] H 2 100 LONDON. Henry III. prepared for the Confessor's ashes ; and the ceremony of the removal was one of accordant splendour. The coffin was borne by himself, his brother the King of the Romans, and other persons of the highest rank. Nor, for the credulous, were miracles wanting to maintain the Confessor's ancient reputation ; an Irishman and an Englishman, according to Matthew Paris, being dispossessed of devils on the occasion. The shrine, we need hardly add, no longer exhibits the blaze of wealth which gladdened the eyes of our forefathers, as satisfying them their revered king was worthily lodged ; time, and more mischievous agencies than time, have left it but a wreck of what it was, although a sump tuous-looking piece of antiquity still. The upper portion is a mere wainscot addition, it is supposed, of the sixteenth century : why added, it is impossible to say. In connexion with this and preceding shrines of the Confessor are many interesting memories. When William the Conqueror Avas busy displacing the principal English ecclesiastics, in order to make room for his Norman followers, among the rest Wulstan Bishop of Worcester, an illiterate but pure and noble- minded man, was required by a synod sitting in the Abbey to deliver up his episcopal staff. Wulstan, in a few words addressed to the Archbishop Lanfranc, acknowledged his inability and unworthiness for the high duties of his vocation, and expressed his willingness to resign the pastoral staff; " Not, however, to you," he continued, " but to him by whose authority I received them." He then solemnly advanced to the shrine of the Confessor, and thus spake : " Master, thou knowest how reluctantly I assumed this charge, at thy instigation. It was thy command that, more than the wish of the people, the voice of the prelates, and the desire of the nobles, compelled me. Now we have a new king, a ncAV primate, and new enactments. Thee they accuse of error in having so com manded, and me of presumption because I obeyed. Formerly, indeed, thou mightest err, because thou wert mortal ; but now thou art with God, and canst err no longer. Not to them, therefore, who recall what they did not give, and who may deceive and be deceived, but to thee who gave them, and art now raised above all error, I resign my staff, and surrender my flock." At the breaking up of that synod Wulstan was still Bishop of Worcester, and the over joyed people were informed, to their very great edification, that, when Wulstan had placed his crozier on the tomb, it became so fixed as to be irremoveable. Here, too, at a much later period, Henry IV. " became so sick," says Fabian, " while he was making his prayers to take there his leave (of life), and so to speed him upon his journey, that such as were about him feared that he Avould have died right there." The attendants took him into the Jerusalem chamber, and " there upon a pallet laid him before the fire," when, inquiring the name of the place, and being told, he said, in the words of Shakspere — " It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but in Jerusalem, Which vainly I suppos'd the Holy Land :" &c.^ — and here he died. Turning from the shrine in the centre of the Chapel to tne screen which divides it from the Choir, we find this also has been dedicated to the memory of the Confessor. The very extraordinary and interesting frieze which decorates it contains no less than fourteen small but boldly sculptured groups or tableaux, representatives of the more remarkable events which sig- WESTMINSTER ABBEY. iOl nalized his reign. We can only mention a piece of sculpture near the centre, deeply hollowed out, representing a chamber with Edward in bed, and looking on a thief who is kneeling before a chest containing his treasure, and whom, ac cording to the story, he admonishes;* and two or three others, descriptive of one of the interesting tales in which the people of the middle ages so much delighted. Dart thus relates it, on the authority of an old manuscript : — " Upon a certain time, a beggar asking alms of this Prince, for sake of St. John the Evangelist, he gave him, out of his abundant charity, a ring. Some time after, two pilgrims. Englishmen, being at Jerusalem, met a third, who saluted them ; and, inquiring what countrymen, they told him. Whereupon he delivered them a ring, and bade them recommend him to their King (Edward), and tell him he was St. John the Evangelist, to whom he had aforetime at Westminster given a ring ; and bade them further tell him, from him, that he should in nine days' time die. The two pilgrims, .surprised at such a message, told him that to deliver it in time was impossible. He in answer bade them take no care of that, and took his leave. After they had walked some way, being Aveary, they fell asleep ; and, upon waking, observed a strange alteration of the place. Upon which, seeing some shepherds in a field, they inquired of them Avhere they were, who made answer they were in Kent. Whereat being rejoiced, they made the best of their way to King Edward, to a seat of his in Waltham Forest, then called the Bower, and since Havering in the BoAver, and delivered this message to the King, who accordingly died as was told him.'' How implicitly this story was believed we may see from the pains taken to commemorate it in so many places in and about the Abbey ; among the rest, over the old gate going into Dean's Yard, — in the stained glass of one of the eastern windows of the Abbey, — and in the screen before us. If there were a tomb in the world which one would have thought an anti quary would have looked on with awe — ashes which it were sacrilege almost to touch — we should have thought it was the tomb and ashes of the Confessor; around which hung all those associations, so solemnly and deeply interesting, however stripped of their superstitious alloy. Yet Keepe, one of the historians of the Abbey, could write, without a blush upon his cheek, that, when a hole had been broken in the lid of the coffin during the removal of the scaffolding of James II. 's coronation, " On putting my hand into the hole, and turning the bones which I felt there, I drew from underneath the shoulder-bones a crucifix, richly adorned and enamelled, and a gold chain twenty-four inches long;" both of which were presented to the King, who ordered in return new planks for the coffin, that " no abuse might be offered to the sacred ashes." From the time of the burial of the Confessor, in the ncAV Abbey he had built, to that of Henry IIL, in the structure which owns him for its founder, the Kings of England were mostly buried on the Continent ; none of them in the Abbey of Westminster. Henry's tomb, which stands on the left of the paltry entrance into the Chapel from the Ambulatory, bears a striking resemblance to the lower part of that he caused to be erected for the Confessor'; and, like that, was origlna'ly richly decorated. Two beautiful panels of porphyry still ornament the front and back, and the gilding is in parts also yet bright. The tomb was erected over the place Avhich had been the grave previously of EdAvard, and where Henry * Pennant calls it '• the story of his vinking at the thiff who was robbing his treasury.'' 102 LONDON, was now buried; and it was standing upon the edge of that grave that the barons of England, with the Earl of Gloucester at their head, placing their hands upon the royal corpse, swore fealty to EdAvard I., then in the Holy Land. Some years after the grave was opened, and the heart taken away, by the Abbot Wenlock, and delivered to the Abbess of Font-Evraud, in Normandy, to whom Henry had promised it during his lifetime. What a contrast to Henry's memorial is that of his son on the one side, or, to beth monuments, that ot his son's wife on the other. The tomb of Edward has an air of rude, almost savage dignity, which harmonises admirably Avith his character, and seems as though his executors had but fulfilled his own previously expressed wishes, or at least studied Avhat Avould have been his tastes, when they left the historian to remark that his " exequy was scantly fynysshed." But this applies only to the tomb ; the manner in which they decorated his body Avith false jewels was neither plain and simple, nor rich and befitting kingly dignity. The exhumation of the corpse of the English Justinian (when this circumstance was discovered) is so interesting that we should gladly-give a more detailed account than our space will admit. It was in 1 744 that certain antiquaries obtained permission of the Dean to examine the body, which was done in his presence. It Avas enclosed first within a large square mantle of linen cloth well waxed, with a face-cloth of crimson sarcenet : these being removed, the great King was before them in all the ensigns of royalty, with sceptres in each hand, a crown on his head, and arrayed in a red silk damask tunic, AAhite stole most elegantly ornamented, and a rich crimson mantle, the whole somewhat profusely decorated Avith false stones. The body beneath was covered with a fine linen cere-cloth, adhering closely to every part, including the fingers and face. The examination over, the coffin was most carefully closed again, but not before another of our antiquaries, according to Mr. D'Israeli, had exhibited the want of those sentiments which antiquarians above all others are so apt to pride themselves upon the possession of. Among the spectators " Gough was observed, as Steevens used to relate, in a wrapping great-coat of unusual dimensions ; that witty and malicious ' Puck,' so capable himself of inventing mischief, easily suspected others, and divided his glance as much upon the living piece of antiquity as on the elder. In the act of closing up the relics of royalty there was found wanting an entire fore-finger of Edward I., and as the body was perfect when opened, a murmur of dissatis faction was spreading, when ' Puck ' directed their attention to the great anti quary in the watchman's great-coat ; from whence, too surely, was extracted EdAvard I.'s fore-finger'' We must add to this notice of Edward's tomb, that Froissart relates that Edward, on his death-bed at Burgh-upon-Sands, near Car lisle, on his Avay toAvards Scotland, then again in arms against him, called his son, and made him swear, in the presence of his nobles, that after his death he would cause his body to be boiled till the flesh should be stripped from the bones, and that then he would preserve the latter to carry with him whenever he should have occasion to le,ad an army against the rebellious Scots. If such an oath was exacted, the son took no further notice of it, but buried his father where we now find his remains. Eleanor lies on the other side of Henry III., beneath a tomb of grey marble, on which is a gilded effigy, of a character that one hardly knows how to speak of with'sufficient admiration. A more exquisitely beautiful work WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 103 of its kind perhaps does not exist ; the indescribable loveliness of the face, the wonderful grace and elegance of the hands, and the general ease, dignity, and refinement of the figure, seem almost miraculous in connexion with the produc tions of what we are accustomed to call the dark ages. There it lies, not a fea ture of the face injured, not a finger broken off, perfect in its essentials as on the day it left the studio, whilst all around marks of injury and dilapidation meet you on every side : it is as though its own serene beauty had rendered violence impossible, had even touched the heart of the great destroyer Time himself. Only of late yoars has the name of the great — however unknown — artist of this work been made known ; it was one Master William Torel — English, it is sup posed, for Torelli, an Italian artist, to whom we are also indebted for the effigy on Henry III.'s tomb. Going regularly round the Chapel, from the screen on the west side to the three tombs just mentioned on the north, then to the east, which is occupied by the magnificent monument of Henry V., which we pass for the present, we have lastly, on the south side, Philippa, Queen of Edward III., endeared to all memories by the story of Calais ; next, her husband,* and lastly Richard II. and his Queen. Both Philippa's and Edward's monuments have suffered grievously : of the thirty statues and fret- work niches that formerly ornamented the first. [Tomb of Edward III.] * The second Edward was buried at Gloucester. 104 LONDON, there remains but a fragment of the niches. Edward's has been more fortunate, for the outer side, or that seen from the Ambulatory, has yet six small figures in good preservation. By this monument are two objects that almost divide atten tion with the coronation chair — the sword and shield which were carried before the King in his destructive French wars. EdAvard died in 1377 — some years too late for his fame. It must have been a melancholy spectacle to see such a monarch spending his latter hours with a mistress too worthless even to wait patiently for their close, or to see him who had held powerful and undisputed sway over one great kingdom, and shaken others to their very centre, too weak and friendless to prevent his own attendants from plundering him almost in his sight. The eye is attracted towards the tomb of Richard II. and his Queen by the rubbed surface of a portion of Richard's effigy, which shows the bright gilding that the dirt elsewhere conceals : this Avas erected by the King's own order in his lifetime. And here did the pious and generous care of Henry V., the son of his destroyer, soon after his accession, remove the murdered remains from Friars Langley, and place them by the side of the unhappy Richard's Queen. The whole subject of Richard's death has been as yet one of impenetrable mystery, and the examination of his corpse here, if it be his, has not enlightened us. Neither of the skulls within the tomb, on the closest examination, presented any marks of fracture or evidences of murderous violence. Above the effigies are paintings in oil, on the roof of the canopy. To Bolingbroke's (Henry IV.'s) death we have already incidentally referred — he was buried at Canterbury. His son's brief but brilliant reign ended in France, where he died in 1422. Seldom has monarch been more regretted than was Henry V. by his subjects. The body Avas carried in funereal state to Paris, thence through Rouen, Abbeville, and Boulogne to Calais, where a fleet waited to bear the remains across the Channel to Dover. As the long and melancholy procession approached the metropolis, a great number of bishops, mitred abbots, and the most eminent churchmen, attended by vast multitudes of people, went to meet and join it. Through the streets of London they moved Avith slow step, the clergy chanting the service for the dead, till they reached St. Paul's, where the solemn rites Avere performed in the presence of the Parliament of the nation. Then again the procession moved forward to the final resting-place, the Abbey. The Chantry, beneath Avhich he lies, and toAvards which we now turn, is, next to Henry VII.'s tomb, the most magnificent piece of mingled architecture and sculpture in the Abbey. In form it is not unlike a great H, the sides forming lofty octagonal toAvers, connected about the middle by a broad band, if we may so call it, which forms at once the roof of the arch between the turrets below and the floor of the Chantry above, where masses Avere formerly said three times a day for the soul of the deceased sovereign. The entire front is one mass of the richest and most florid architectural details, to which the large statues in their respective niches in the towers give breadth and grandeur. On high, at the back of the Chantry, is seen the helmet worn by Henry V., probably at Agincourt; two deep dents in it show at least that he has worn it in no trifling or ignoble contest. His shield and saddle are also preserved here. The headless effigy of Henry (the head Avas of silver, and therefore carried off by his namesake of church-stripping memory, and not, as the guides tell us, by Cromwell) lies WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 103 * J » ¦ .i.l*.f' RS [Funeral of Henry V.] Avithin the deep and solemn-looking arch beneath, where you look over the tomb, and through the arch over the Ambulatory, and on through the still darker porch of Henry VII.'s Chapel into that palace of art, whither we next direct our steps ; not forgetting to observe by the way that Henry's Queen, Katherine of France, Avas buried in the old Chapel of the Virgin Mary, and, in oonseqnence, had to be removed when that edifice was pulled down by her grandson, Henry VII. By some unaccountable and most disgraceful neglect, the bodyj which was in a peculiar but extraordinary state of preservation, was left so exposed for between two and three centuries, that any influential visitor who wished could see it. Of course the eternal sight-seer Pepys was attracted. " Here," he says, " we did see, by particular favour, the body of Queen Katherine of Valois, and I had the upper part of her body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my birthday, thirty-six years old, that I did kiss a Queen." In 1776 the body was buried in St. Nicholas's Chapel. The first entrance into Henry VII.'s Chapel is an event to be remembered for a lifetime : the sight of " such a thing of beauty" becomes, indeed, " a joy for ever.''' And with what consummate art has the architect enhanced even the effect of his own marvellous production, by the solemn gloom that pervades the porch through which we pass into the interior ! One moment we are in Avhat may be almost called darkness ; the next — ^having passed through the brazen open-worked gates — in a blaze of light and decoration. And, as we look around 106 LONDON. what imagination but must own that even its OAvn most brilliant and merely ideal creations are here surpassed in the expression stamped upon these solid stone walls, and Avindows, and roof. Did ever arches spring upward with such fairy like grace ? — or guide the entranced eye to a more surpassingly beautiful and almost miraculous roof? Avhere, in the words of Washington Irving, " stone seems, by the cunning labours of the chisel, to have been robbed of its Aveight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved Avith the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobAveb." Then, again, the sta tues; the innumerable statues of patriarchs, saints, martyrs, confessors, and angels ! There must have been, after all, something truly magnificent m the king who could determine on the erection of such a place, select the genius that could ei-ect it, and then give such unlimited scope to the development of its loftiest and most daring imaginings. And the artist, strange to say, is un known, or at least not known Avith any certainty. The feverish desire of fame, which is so proverbially a characteristic of high minds, seems to be little felt by the highest. In the breasts of the great men who have bequeathed to this country its most precious architectural wealth we find no traces Avhatever of its existence. A few words deeply cut on a stone would have made their names immortal, but none of them seem to have thought it worth the trouble, if they thought of the matter at all. So with regard to Henry Vll.'s Chapel': which has been at tributed to Bishop Fox, Bishop Alcock, Sir Reginald Bi-ay, and to the Prior of St. BartholomeAv's, Smithfield ; who, there is the greatest reason to believe, was the man. Henry, in his will, calls him the " master of the Avorks." But, beau tiful as the interior now appears, there was a time Avhen it must have appeared infinitely more so. In its original state the " Avails, doors, windows, arches, vaults, and images" were " painted, varnished, and adorned" with the king's arms, badges, cognizances, &c. ; the stained windows displayed similar orna ments, with the addition of greater works, such as " stories," all in the most bril liant and pristine colours ; numerous altars were scattered about, one of them with a large statue of the Virgin, and an immense golden cross, and the whole bearing tall Avax tapers, burning constantly ; whilst to and fro there Avas ge nerally to be seen moving some procession of the inhabitants of the Abbey ; the monks in their black garments, the incense-bearers in white, the officiating priests in their gemmed and embroidered vests, and the whole wearing the copes of cloth of gold tissue, embroidered with roses, given by Henry VII. to be used in the performance of the different ceremonials instituted by him for the due repose of his soul. And that soul seems to have been a difficult one to deal with ; for never, surely, did monarch impose more trouble upon certain por tions of his subjects for its due preservation. In this, perhaps, Henry, like many other men Avhose piety and policy have not exactly gone hand in hand, tried to " circumvent Heaven." Whilst he Avas arranging with Abbot Islip for the per formance of three daily masses for the welfare of his soul, to continue "while the world should last f for the additional ceremonies which were to take place on ho lidays and feasts ; for the annual procession of the monks, prior, abbot, with the Lord'Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, and other great officers of state, to the high altar by his tomb, where there Avas to be a hearse with a hundred great tapers burning, and twenty-four almsmen ranged round it with burning torches ; wliilst he Avas founding an almshouse within the Abbey, and providing gifts for a large WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 107 number of casual poor to be distributed at the altar ; — Avas it to be supposed that in doing all this for the future welfare of his soul he could be expected to take much present care of it ? Was he not to be allowed just to finish the policy he had steadily pursued through his reign, Avhen he Avas showing how heartily he was determined to repent — after he was dead ? But, fortunately for us, Henry's prospective piety took a more tangible shape than masses and requiems, and one that it is heartily to be hoped may endure as long as they were to have endured, even " while the Avorld shall last." — The chapel is but another evi dence of Henry's care for his soul. This was begun (the Chapel of the Kings, or the Confessor's, being full) on "the twenty-fourth day of January, a quarter after three of the clock," in the year 1503, as Holinshed carefully informs us; at which time the first stone was laid by Abbot Islip, in the presence of numerous distinguished persons. It was still unfinished when Henry died in 15D9, who, in his last hours, was very careful to provide funds for its continuance, and to give ample directions in his will on all important points. The entire expense of the work was about 14,000^. ; but as those figures give no idea to ns of the cost, we may offer, as an illustration merely, the fact that above 42,000/. has been expended in the present century in merely rebuilding the exterior ! And this immense sum it seems has furnished but an insufficient restoration, as, from some defect in the stone or the workmanship, decay is said to be already evident. Having safely se cured his soul, Henry made suitable provision for his body. He said little of his burial, further than to charge his executors to perform it with a " special respect and consideration to the laiid and praising of God, the wealth of our soul, and somewhat to our dignity royal, eviteing (or eschewing) always damnable pomp and outrageous superfluities ;" but then he proceeded to set the said executors a bad example as to the pomp and the superfluities, if at least these words are to mean anything more than mere flourishes, for he directed a tomb to be made in a style that shows that he intended it in richness of decoration to surpass every thing of the kind known in this country. And he Avas as fortunate in his exe cutors' selection of an artist for this, as he had been himself for the greater work. Pietro Torrigiano, a Florentine, Avas the object of their choice, a man as distinguished for the turbulence of his temper as for his genius. In early life he had been a fellow-student with Michael Angelo, and in quarrel broke the bridge of his nose, and thus deformed for life the features of his great rival. He came to England with a high reputation — the tomb before us tells how deserved. Bacon calls it one of the " stateliest and daintiest in Europe." It consists of a pe destal or table oi touch, a basaltic stone not unlike black marble, on which repose the effigies of Henry and his Queen, sculptured in a style of great simplicity and adherence to nature; the whole adorned with pilasters, relievos, rose-branches (referring to the junction of the rival Houses), and "images," or graven "tabgr- nacles," as Henry calls them in the directions in his will, of the king's Avouries, or patron saints; viz. the Virgin and Saviour and St. Michael, St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, St. George and St. Anthony, all on the south side, and St. Mary Magdalen and St. Barbara, St. Christopher and St. Anne, EdAvard the Confessor and John, and, lastly, St. Vincent, on the north. These are all of copper, gilt. On the angles of the tomb are seated angels. Torrigiano was six years engaged in the work, and received for it the immense sum of 1500/. The brass screen, it is pleasant to have to remember, is the product of English art. It Avas 108 LONDON, formerly adorned with no less than thirty-six statues, of Avhich only six remain. We can only add to this general notice of the Chapel, as a parting illustration of its artistical Avealth, that it is said to have possessed, within and without, about three thousand statues ; and that the very seats (now only used, we believe, at the installation of the Knights of the Bath, whose banners hang overhead) display on their lower side, as we turn them back on their hinges, an infinite variety of the most exquisite carvings of flowers, fruit, foliage, grotesque animals, groups of Bacchanals, and still more important pictorial subjects, which are frequently of an amusing, sometimes of a licentious, character. One of the seats has for its subject the Evil One carrying off a friar in the central compart ment, while a woman wrings her hands at his loss on one side, and an attendant imp expresses his feelings by beating a tattoo on the other; such were the monkish satires upon the lives of their wandering brethren. From the time of the burial of Henry VII. to that of George II. most of our sovereigns have been interred in this Chapel ; with the latter reign the custom was discontinued-^George HI. erecting a vault for himself and successors at Windsor. The youthful and accomplished Edward VI., it appears, was buried near the high altar before mentioned ; no tomb nor inscription_marks the spot. As we Avalk up the northern aisle of the Chapel, we are directed to the last home of his two sisters and successors, Mary and Elizabeth (who lie in the same tomb), by the immense monument erected to the latter by James I, ; and which so much [Monument ol Queen Elizabeth.] WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 109 resembles the monument erected by the same king to his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, in the opposite aisle, that one would suppose he wished to keep before the world, in as forcible a manner as possible, the remembrance of events in which his conduct, during the period the scaffold was preparing for the unfor tunate Mary, is perhaps the only point on which there cannot be a difference of opinion. Elizabeth's memorial is by Maximilian Coulte ; Mary's by Cornelius Cure. At the end of the same aisle, near the sarcophagus of white marble containing the supposed remains of the murdered Edward V. and his brother (the finding of Avhich in the Tower has' already been mentioned),* is a vault in which lie in strange companionship the oppressor and the oppressed, James I. and Arabella Stuart, as well as James's Qiieen, Anne — and son. Prince Henry. The Lady Arabella, it will be remembered, died in a state of insanity in the Tower, brought on by the infamoua persecutions to which she was subjected on account of her rin.^ ., IS: r in ¦ '\'<' I' I James I. lying iu State. — The hearse and decorations designed by lliigo Jones.] royal descent, and more particularly after the discovery of her marriage Avith William Seymour. Leaving this melancholy spot, we look in vain for any me morial of James's successor, whose headless corpse was buried at Windsor ; or of the Protector, Avho was interred here, and with more than the usual regal pomp. He died on the anniversary of his great victories of Dunbar and Worcester, the 3rd of September, 1658, and was buried on the 22nd of November; when Henry VII.'s Chapel was hung both within and Avithout with hundreds of * No. XXXIX., vcl. ii., p. 225. 110 LONDON. escutcheons, and the framcAvork or enclosure of the hearse exhibited an immense number of embossed shields of different sizes, with croAvns, badges, and scrolls the latter bearing appropriate mottoes. Suspended from the hearse all around Avere waving pennons, and upon it lay a carved effigy of the Protector, " made to the life, according to the best skill of the artist in that employed, viz. Mr. Synaon," the same party, we presume, to whom we are indebted for one of the finest of English coins, CromAvell's crown-piece. The effigy was magnificently arrayed in a laced hoUand shirt, silk stockings, Spanish leather shoes tied with gold lace, doublet of uncut grey velvet with gold buttons, purple velvet surcoat- laced with gold, and over all a royal robe of purple velvet, embossed with gold, and lined with ermine. Beneath the effigy was a bed, consisting first of a quilt, then a cloth of estate, next a hoUand sheet, and lastly a velvet pall. The head rested on a cushion. On the sides of the figure were disposed the head-piece and plume, the breastplate, and greaves of the deceased warrior ; whilst at his feet were his coat, mantle, helmet and crest, sword, target, spurs, and gauntlets. Among the other ornaments were the standards of England and Scotland. The proces sion was equally splendid, and included some of the most distinguished persons of the realm. Little more than two years afterAvards, on the anniversary of the day of Charles's execution, there came a band of men, armed Avith all due powers from the King, Avho broke open the grave that had been so solemnly closed, dragged forth the mouldering remains, and placed them, with those of Ireton, CromAVelfs son-in-law, and Bradshaw, the President of the Court that had con demned the King, on hurdles, and dragged them to Tyburn. There the bodies were hung at the three several angles of a triangular gallows till sunset, then cut down, beheaded, and thrown into a pit beneath, while the heads were taken back to Westminster, and placed on the top of the Hall. WhatcArer their political opinions, one would have hardly supposed that the authorities of the Abbey could have exactly approved of this pitiful war with the dead ; so far, however, was that from lieing the case, that the Dean and Chapter, in the exuber ance of their loyalty, obtained a warrant for the further exhumation of the corpses of Cromwell's mother and daughter, women of the most blameless purity of lives ; of Pym, Cromwell's early coadjutor, who had actually died whilst the struggle between the people and their sovereign was as yet a bloodless one ; and of Blake, the great naval hero, whose only crime must have been the fighting too well for his country abroad, without troubling himself as to who was in power at home. It is strange that neither the King nor his advisers in these pro ceedings should have perceived that their indiscriminate character prevented even the semblance of justice from appertaining to them, and that they therefore could not fail to react to the injury of the doers. Of course no memorial marks the place from whence the bodies were taken. Crossing to the south aisle, -we stand by the vault in Avhich lies the restored King, Charles II. , of whose burial and reign the royalist Evelyn gives this brief but significant comment :— " 14 Feb. (1685). The King was this night buried very obscurely in a vault under Henry Vll.'s Chapel, at Westminster, without any manner of pomp, and soon forgotten." There were circumstances, hoAvever, attending the death that must have excited much speculation among the spec tators of the funeral ceremonies. It was whispered abroad that Charles had WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 1 1 1 l«en poisoned by his brother James, the new King ; a charge which, though it ultimately found distinct expression from the Duke of Monmouth in his revolu tionary attempt, seems to have been without foundation. There Avas another rumour, which, taken in connexion with the supposed religious views of James, must have deeply interested the nation at large. It was, that Charles, the Pro testant Defender of the Faith as by law established, had actually died a Catholic, and that Catholic rites had been secretly performed whilst the chief ecclesiastics of the Church were in the palace. And the fact was afterwards decisively esta blished. Barillon, the French ambassador, says, the Duchess of Portsmouth came to him a little before the King's death, and observed, " Monsieur l' Ambassador, I am going to tell you the greatest secret in the world, and my head would be in- danger were it known here. The King, in the bottom of his heart, is a Ca- tholk." She then entreated him to commiinicate with the Duke of York on the subject ; Barillon did so, and the Duke promised to hazard all rather than not do his duty. James immediately went to his brother, and found he had refused to take the Sacrament from the Bishops, who, as if suspicious, hardly left his bed-side for a moment. The same subject was at the hearts of both the brothers, but neither of them, even at that dread hour, had sufficient manliness to avow honestly their sentiments, and take the consequences ; at last the Duke, finding no better expedient, stooped down and whispered to the King — what could not be heard ; — but Charles replied more than once, and in a loud voice, " With all my heart." The Duke then hurried to Barillon, to desire him to find a priest instantly ; and, after some search, there was discovered among the Queen's attendants one Huddlestone, who, having saved the life of Charles at Worcester, had been exempted from all the penal laws relating to the Catholics. Huddlestone was taken to the door of a backroom adjoining the royal chamber, when, all being prepared, the Duke entered and exclaimed, " The King wills that everybody should retire except the Earls of Bath and Feversham." The disguised priest, with the host, was then brought in, James introducing him to his brother, with the remark, " Sire, here is a man who once saved your life, and who is now come to save your soul." The ceremony proceeded, and the Duke subsequently told Barillon that Charles had formally engaged to declare him self a Catholic if he recovered. Whether he spake in full sincerity was not to be shown : he died the next morning, the 6th of February, 1 685. We need not look in Henry Vll.'s Chapel for any memorial of his successor, whose career Is summed up in a few words : he manfully declared his views, and the nation as manfully theirs ; and they were the strongest. James died a Catholic, but no King. In the regal mausoleums he has no place. The vault where he should have been interred, the vacant space by his brother's remains he should have occupied, belong to his successful opponent — William III., Avho lies here Avith his lamented Queen. Anne and Prince George complete the list of inhabitants of the vault of the southern aisle. Lastly, in the centre of the Chapel repose, in a vault beneath the chequered pavement, George II. and his Queen, with the hero or butcher of Culloden — posterity does not seem to have quite determined whether the English or the Scotch appellation is the most suitable — the Duke of Cumberland. Among the other tombs scattered about the Chapel are some to the memory 112 LONDON. of persons of royal blood, which demand here a word of notice. Such is thst to Lord Darnley's mother, a lady who, according to the inscription, " had to her great-grandfather King Edward IV. ; to her grandfather King Henry VII. ; to her uncle King Henry VIII. ; to her cousin-german King EdAvard VI. ; to her brother King James V. of Scotland ; to her son (Darnley, husband of Mary) King Henry I. (of Scotland) ; and to her grandchild King James VI. of Scot land" and I. of England. And such is the tomb of Margaret Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., whose effigy of brass is another piece of masterly workmanship from the hands of Torrigiano. This is the lady of whom Camden reports she Avould often say, " On the condition that princes of Christen dom would combine themselves and march against the common enemy, the Turk, she would most willingly attend them, and be their laundress in the camp :" the true spirit of a chivalrous lady of earlier ages, but one little suited for the period of her son, when men did more by craft than the sword, and when the head alike of the church and the state Avas, as we have seen, too busy in taking care of his OAATi soul to think of the souls of unknown multitudes of Mohammedans. And who that looks round upon this most beautiful of structures but sincerely rejoices in his determination ? ¦> . "¦ ""V. t^tft, "'41 4 »*¦' ' I ' (Henry Vll.'s Chapel and Tomb.] [Poets' Conier.j LXXXIIL— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. IV. — Poets' Corner. " Poets' Corner !" — We could wish, most heartily, we knew the name of him Avho first gave this appellation to the south transept of the Abbey, and thus helped, most probably, to make it what it is, the richest little spot the earth possesses in its connexion Avith the princes of song : such a man ought himself to have a monument among them. And, though he may have never written a line, we could almost venture to assert he must have been a kindred spirit, "so exquisitely applicable is his phrase ; — so felicitously illustrative of the poet, who, Avith all his exhaustion of old worlds and creation of new, is generally most deeply attached to some one of the smallest corners of that on which he moves ; — so characteristic is it of the personal relation in which we, his readers, stand toward him : not in the pulpit, the senate, or the academy, does he teach us, bnt in the quiet corner by the Avinter fire-side, or in the green nook of the summer woods. In a word, Ave might have sought in vain for any other appellation that would have expressed, VOL. IV. I 114 LONDON. Avith equal force, the /lome-feeling with which we desire, however unconsciously, to invest this sumptuous abode of our dead poets, or that Avould have harmonised so finely with our mingled sentiments of affection and reverence for their memory. But, though we do not knoAV who gave the name, we are at no loss with regard to those whose burial here first suggested it. If, immediately Ave enter, we turn to the right, and gaze on the monuments on the Avail by our side, we perceive one standing out from the rest in hoar antiquity, a fine old Gothic piece of sculpture, that, though in reality .not three centuries old, seems at the first glance to be co eval Avith the building itself ; that is the tomb of Chaucer, the first poet buried in the Abbey, and the first true poet England produced. It is, in other respects, one of the most interesting memorials of the place. Caxton, who, among his numerous claims to our gratitude, adds that of having sought out and made per manent by printing the manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (one of the editions of which he published under circumstances peculiarly honourable to himself), placed the original inscription here, which he obtained from a learned Milanese. This remained till Brigham, a student in the university of Oxford, took upon him, as a labour of love, the erection of a monument to the illustrious poet's memory. The present tomb was accordingly placed here in 1555. As we pause to gaze on its decayed and blackened front, and to examine, with an interest that finds little to repay it, the remains of the poet's effigy, a kind of melancholy similarity between the fate of Chaucer's reputation and that of his memorial suggests itself: Avhat Spenser calls " black oblivion's rust " has been almost as injurious to the first as to the last, and has caused one of the greatest, and, as far as qualifi cations are concerned, most popular of poets, to be the most neglected or unknoAvn by the large majority of his countrymen. There is a rust upon his verses, it is true, that mars, upon the Avhole, their original music (such as Ave find it breaking out at intervals Avhere time has not played his fantastic tricks with the spelling and pronunciation), and which, for the first few hours of perusal, somewhat dims also the brilliancy of the thoughts, — but that is all ; he Avho devotes one day to studying Chaucer will be delighted the next, and on the third will look back with amazement on his ignorance of the writer who, all circum stances of time and position considered, can scarcely be said to have had yet a superior, unless it be Shakspere. And even he has not equalled, in some respects, the man who at once made England a poetical country ; there is nothing in the whole range of literature that can be compared, for instance, to the pathos of the story of Griselde. Looked at, again, as a painter of manners, using the Avord in its largest sense, Froissart, Chaucer's contemporary, appears by his side . a man of but one idea. Chaucer, like Shakspere, seems to have combined in himself all the qualities which are generally found to belong to different indi viduals. As the characters of the wonderful prologue to the Canterbury Tales throng upon the memory, one is lost in wonder at the extent and variety of the powers that could have created such a diversified assemblage. The gentle veteran knight, the young flute-playing poetical squire, the dainty prioress, the luxurious and respectable monk side by side with the licentious and vagabond friar, the merry and wanton wife of Bath, the poure parson, that sublimest of characters in WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 115 the homeliest of shapes, the braAvny bagpipe-playing miller, &c., &c. — A restora tion of the monument, it appears, is meditated ; Avhat a subject for bas-relie'fs were these characters of the Canterbury Tales! Chaucer died in 1400, a fact Ave learn only from the monument; and, like the fabled swan, he maybe said to have literally died singing. Among his Avorks Ave find ' A ballad made by Geoffrey Chaucer upon his death-bed, lying in his great anguish;' a touching and me morable passage to be prefixed to a poem, and one is naturally anxious to learn the nature of the sentiments that flowed into verse under such circumstances. They are alike worthy of the poet and the occasion, and afford another instance of Chaucer's versatility : the recurrence of the same line at the end of each verse is peculiarly musical and effective, and is interesting as showing how early this favourite trick (if we may be allowed to use that word in a somewhat higher sense than is n6w common) of modern song-Avriters Avas known and practised. The line in question, " And Truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread," shoAvs the spirit of the poem. Such Avas the first poet buried in the Corner. The next Avas a worthy successor, Spenser, the author of the 'Fairy Queen.' If poets, in the words of Shelley, are " cradled into Avrong," or begin the world with suffering — so, alas ! too often do they end it. England's second great poet is sg,id to have died of starvation in the neighbouring King Street, Westminster. Ben Jonson thus briefly records, in his conversations Avith Drummond of Haw- thoimden, the frightful circumstances that attended the last days of the poet : — " The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods, and burnt his house and a little child ncAV born, he and his Avife escaped ; and, after, he died for lake of bread in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, adding, ' he was sorry he had no time to spend them.' " This story sounds altogether terribly like truth ; yet, as doubts have been thrown upon it, Ave are glad to think it possible that there may be some mistake, or at least exaggeration. This great poet had great patrons : first. Sir Philip Sidney, then Raleigh, and, lastly, Essex. By Raleigh Spenser Avas introduced to Elizabeth ; Avhich circumstance, according to an old story, led to the Queen's rebuking Lord Burleigh for his par simony, and desiring that the poet should have reason for his rhyme. In Hen- slowe the player's Diary, the story is thus corroborated : — " May 4, 1602. When her Majesty had given order that Mr. Spenser should have a reward for his poems, but Spenser could have nothing, he presented her Avith these verses : — ' It pleased your grace upon a time To grant me reason for my rhyme ; But from that time, until this season, I heard of neither rhyme nor reason.' " The answer appears to have been a grant of 501. per annum, Avhich Malone dis covered among the records in the Rolls Chapel : so Ave may hope that the poet Avho had enriched his country's literature Avith that divinest shape of human beauty — ¦ " Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb" — was not haunted in his last hours by the presence of a fiend more horrible than his OAvn creations — infernal Pain and tumultuous Strife, Avho I ? 116 LONDON. " The one in hand an iron whip did strain. The other brandished a bloody knife. And both did gnash their teeth, and both did threaten life :" — Hunger, we may hope, Avas not by the poet's death-bed. Spenser was buried where he had desired to be, near his great predecessor, Chaucer (but on the other side of the entrance), in 1598-9, at the expense of the Earl of Essex. It has been recorded that several of his poetical brethren attended, who threw epitaphs, and elegies, and panegyrics on his Avorks, into his grave, " Avith the pens that Avrote them." " Gentle Willy " (Spenser's oavu designation of Shakspere) Ave may be tolerably sure was among these mourners. The present monument is an exact transcript of an older one set up by the Countess of Dorset in 1620, for Avhich that lady paid Nicholas Stone 40^. Mason, the poet, was the chief agent of the restoration, Avhich became necessary, in 1 778, through the softness of the original stone. We must not pass on without transcribing the short but beautiful inscription: — " Here lies, expecting the second coming of our Saviour Christ Jesus, the body of Edmund Spenser, the Prince of Poets in his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works Avhich he left behind him.'' This was the second inhabitant of Poets' Corner. The third was Beaumont : hoAV Avas it that we cannot add — Avith Avhom rests Fletcher ? So thoroughly have their lives become incorporated in the incorpora tion of their writings and fame, that one feels as though Beaumont himself were not all here, entombed thus alone. Most touching and beautiful of friendships ! In all the Avorks of these great Avriters ther'e is no incident half so romantic as their own undivided lives ; for, as Aubrey has shown us in his recorded gossip, their literary connexion Avas but the natural manifestation not merely of kindred tastes and talents, but of an ardent affection for each other, that Avas as plainly seen in the house Avhere they lived together, and had the same clothes, and most probably a common purse, as in the theatre, where their separate writings Avere undistinguishable, and where, if one were really greater than the other, they kept the secret to themselves so effectually, that to this hour the best critics have been baffled in their. attempts to assign to each his due merit. Hoav great that merit is, may be judged by those not familiar with their Avorks from Schlegel's remark upon them. He says^— " They hardly Avanted anything but a more pro found seriousness of mind, and that sagacity in art which observes a due measure in everything, to deserve a place beside the greatest dramatic poets of all nations." Beaumont Avas buried before the entrance into the first of the chapels here (St. Benedict's), immediately beyond Chaucer's monument, Avhere he lies Avithout memorial or inscription. Drayton followed Beaumont, whose monument, close to the entrance on the right side, has an inscription too faded to be read, but too beautiful to be lost. The same lady Avho erected Spenser's monument (Clifford, Countess of Dorset) erected this also ; and Aubrey, who mentions that fact, says that Marshall, the stone-cutter, informed him the inscription Avas by Quarles, but in Bei\ Jonson's Avorks it has been printed by his editors as his. It runs thus : — " Do, pious marble, let thy readers knoAV What they and Avhat their children owe WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 117 To Drayton's name ; whose sacred dust We recommend unto thy trust. Protect his memory and preserve his story. Remain a lasting monument of his glory. And when thy ruins shall disclaim To be the treasury of his name. His name, that cannot fade, shall be An everlasting monument to thee." Beautiful, hoAvever, as is the concluding thought, Ave fear the inscription " doth protest too much.'' To cease to be read is the same thing to an author as to cease to be remembered ; and how fcAV readers arc there now of the Poly-olbion ! Drayton's involved style and love of mere topography have spoilt, it is to be feared, for ever, Avhat might have been a fine poem, and is unquestionably full of fine poetry. Drayton died in 1637, and was followed six years after by his great contemporary, and — if he were the author of the foregoing inscription — pane gyrist, Ben Jonson. Near Spenser's memorial these few Avords strike every visitor to Poets' Corner—" O rare Ben Jonson !" — inscribed beneath a tablet Avith a head in relief of the poet. His remains do not, however, rest in this _part of the Abbey, but in the north aisle of the nave, near KilligrcAv's monument, where the quaint epitaph Avas first " done," says Aubrey, " at the charge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted), who, walking here when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen pence to cut it." The stone very unnecessa rily was taken away at the late relaying of the pavement. A story is told in the Abbey with regard to the grave, that seems about as deserving of credit as the marvellous relations of cathedral-guides generally. It states that the Dean of Westminster one day rallied Jonson about his burial in the Abbey vaults. " I am too poor for that," was, it is said, the poet's reply ; " and no one Avill lay out funeral charges upon me. No, sir, six feet long by two wide is too much for me : two feet by two Avill do for all I Avant." " You shall have it," said the Dean. On the poet's death the riddle was explained by a demand for the space agreed ; when a hole eight feet deep was dug, and the coffin set upright in it. The tablet in Poets' Corner is from a design by Gibbs, the architect. Under the date of 1607, Evelyn writes, "Went to Mr. Cowley's funeral, whose corpse lay at Wallingford House, and was thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses, and all funeral decency, near a hundred coaches of noblemen and persons of quality following; among these all the wits of the town, diverse bishops and clergymen. He was interred next Geoffrey Chaucer, and near Spenser. A goodly monument since erected to his memory." This is an urn wreathed Avith laurel, and emitting fire, as typical, we presume, of the inspiration that animated Cowley's poetry. The Latin inscription declares CoAvley the Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England. The monument Avas raised by George, Duke of Buckingham, the literary opponent of the great poet next buried here, and whose monument Ave find adjoining CoAvley's, with a noble bust and the simplest of inscriptions, to "J. Dryden." This was not placed here till tAventy years after the poet's death ; Avhen his friend and patron, Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, reminded, by Pope's intended epitaph on RoAve, of the " name less stone" that covered the remains, caused it to be erected with the admirable 118 LONDON. bust by Scheemakers. If one could desirfe change in an inscription Avhich is so perfectly refreshing for its simplicity and freedom from panegyric, it Avould be in order to introduce Pope's couplet : — " This SheiEeld raised : the sacred dust beloAV Was Dryden once ; the rest who does not know ?" But, after all, the truest taste in such matters Avould be, we think, to banish every thing but the plain name, where that name Avas such as Dryden's : the longer inscription might then be left for the use of those Avho feared that the virtues or genius of their deceased friends would not be sufficiently known without. Re flecting on the neglect before alluded to of the Duke towards Dryden's me mory, a painful story of a similar nature (indeed, the poet's life Avas altogether but too full of such neglects and delays) recurs in connexion Avith his burial; He died in 1700 ; and then the Avorld remembered, as it usually does, what a very great man it had lost, and talked of what very great things ought to be accom plished in honour of his remains. What followed may be best narrated in the AVords of the Avriter of a biographical account of Congreve's life, as transcribed by Johnson in his ' Lives of the Poets.' The passage is long, but interesting ; and as there seems really no doubt of its general truth, we cannot persuade ourselves to mutilate it : — " Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning. Dr. Thomas Sprat, then Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, sent the next day to the Lady Elizabeth HoAvard, Mr. Dryden's widoAv, that he would make a present of the ground, Avhich was forty pounds, with all the other Abbey fees. The Lord Halifax likcAvise sent to the Lady Elizabeth, and Mr. Charles Dryden, her WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 119 son, that if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would inter him Avith a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five hundred pounds on a monument in the Abbey ; which, as they had no reason to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday folloAving the company came ; the corpse Avas put into a velvet hearse ; and eighteen mourning-coaches, filled with company, attended. When they Avere just ready to move, the Lord Jefferies, son of the Lord Chancellor Jefferies, Avith some of his rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was : and being told Mr. Dryden's, he said, ' What 1 shall Dryden, the greatest honour and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner ? No, gentlemen ! Let all that loved Mr. Dryden^ and honour his memory, alight and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour of his interment, which shall be after another manner than this ; and I Avill bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the Abbey for him I' The gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the Bishop of Rochester's favour, nor of the Lord Halifax's generous design (they both having, out of respect to the family, enjoined the Lady Elizabeth and her son to keep their favours concealed to the Avorld, and let it pass for their OAvn expense), readily came out of their coaches, and attended Lord Jefferies up to the lady's bedside, who was then sick. He repeated the purport of what he had before said ; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his knees, vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The rest of the company by his desire kneeled also ; and the lady, being under a sudden surprise, fainted away. As soon as she recovered her speech, she cried, ' No, no !' ' Enough, gentlemen,' replied he : ' my lady is very good ; she says, ' Go, go !' She repeated her former words with all her strength, but in vain, for her feeble voice Avas lost in their acclamations of joy ; and the Lord Jefferies ordered the hearsemen to carry the corpse to Mr. Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside, and leave it there till he should send orders for the embalment, Avhich, he added, should be after the royal manner. His directions Avere obeyed, the company dispersed, and Lady Elizabeth and her son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles Dryden waited on the Lord Halifax and the Bishop, to excuse his mother and himself, by relating the real truth; but neither his Lordship nor the Bishop would admit of any plea ; especially the latter, Avho had the Abbey lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an anthem ready set, and himself Avaiting for some time without any corpse to bury. The undertaker, after three days' expectance of orders for embalment, without re ceiving any. Availed on the Lord Jefferies, Avho, pretending ignorance of the matter, turned it off with an ill-natured jest, saying that those who observed the orders of a drunken frolic deserved no better ; that he remembered nothing at all of it ; and that he might do what he pleased with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited upon the Lady Elizabeth and her son, and threatened to bring, the corpse home and set it before the door. They desired a day's respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles Dryden Avrote a handsome letter to the Lord Jefferies, who returned it Avith this cool answer — ' That he knew nothing of the matter, and would be troubled no more about it.' He then addressed the Lord Halifax and the Bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do anything in it. In this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians, 120 LONDON. and proposed a funeral by subscription, to Avhich himself set a most noble ex ample. At last a day, about- three Aveeks after Mr. Dryden's decease, was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin oration at the College over the corpse, which was attended to the Abbey by a numerous train of coaches." Of the truth of this story Dr. Johnson could find no other con firmation than a letter of Farquhar's, stating the funeral was " tumultuary and confused ;" a somewhat strong one, Ave should consider, seeing that the ordinary accounts of the funeral, Avhich do not allude to the story, are equally silent as to any such general features as Farquhar mentions. There is to be added also that, though there are discrepancies in the dates, it is certain that a very unusual delay took place between the death and the burial, and that the procession set out from the College after the delivery of an oration, as described by the Avriter, instead of from the poet's own house : a circumstance utterly unexplainable, it appears to us, except from the occurrence of some unusual event. The funeral Avas sufficiently splendid Avhen it did take place. After the oration at the College, the ode of Horace, Exegi monumentum cere perennius, set to "mournful music," was sung, Avith an accompaniment of trumpets, hautboys, and other instruments. The pro cession then set out, consisting first of several mourners on horseback, then the band, " Avho made a very harmonious noise," preceding the corpse, Avhich, lastly, Avas followed by no less than tAventy mourning-coaches, drawn each by six horses, and a multitude of other equipages. Among the remaining poets buried in the Corner there are three whose me morials attract the attention of the ordinary visitor — those of Rowe, Prior, and Gay. The first and the last are side by side in the corner behind the screen which faces the doorway, Avhilst Prior's stares you in the face from the screen, as you enter, as if eager to thrust itself upon your notice before your attention is occupied by the greater memorials of the place. Rowe's monument is by Rysbrach, and is chiefly noticeable for a beautiful inscription by Pope, concluding with the following allusion to his widow : — ¦ " To these so mourn'd in death, so lov'd in life. The childless parent and the widow'd wife With tears inscribes this monumental stone. That holds their ashes, and expects her own.'' To tlie poet's excessive annoyance, it is said, the widow sympathised so little with the expectations of the monument, that she married again, and thus destroyed at once half the beauty of the thought. RoAve died in 1718. Three years after Prior Avas buried in "that last piece of human vanity" Avhich Avas erected at his own desire, and for Avhich he left a bequest of 500?. This certainly was a sum mary way of deciding the amount of his own reputation ; but posterity likes tc have its own opinion on these matters, and that opinion, Ave fear, in spite of the shoAvy monument, is not very favourable to MatthcAv Prior. The memorial, in the shape of a Avinged boy holding a medallion portrait, of him who, in the Avords of Pope's inscription, was " Of manners gentle, of affections mild. In wit a man, simplicity a child," suggests more interesting recollections. The author of the most popular of WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 121 English musical pieces, the ' Beggar's Opera,' and of one of the best of English ballads, ' Black-eyed Susan,' the favourite correspondent of Pope and Swift (how touching are the laments of the latter over his death !), and the almost idolised inmate of the eccentric but benevolent Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, rises always to the memory as one of those poets for Avhom, if Ave have not any un comfortable amount of awe and veneration, we have a great deal of genuine love. The Avorthless couplet — " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it" — the mere expression of a mood of the poet's mind, should never have been placed on the monument, and it Avere but an act of kindness to Gay's memory to erase it. There remains to fill up the list of the strictly- poetical inhabitants of the Abbey only Denham, the author of ' Cooper's Hill,' Avho lies buried beneath the pavement in front of Dryden's monument ; and Macpherson, the author — as there is now little doubt but he was — of the poems ushered into the Avorld under such peculiar circumstances as the productions of Ossian, Avhose resting-place is marked by a plain blue stone and brief inscription, near the centre of the transept. As to the memorial to Milton, remarkable for a piece of vile taste, perpetrated by him Avho erected it, and who in consequence has been pilloried in the ' Dunciad,' " On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ ;" — Shakspere's, to which Milton's lines may be applied with peculiar force, even by those who do not quite agree Avith the poet in holding any monument un necessary, " Dear Son of Memory, great heir of fame. What need'st thou such weak Avitness of thy name ?" — Phillips's, Avith its profile effigy, and wreath of apple and laurel leaves, in illustra tion of his poem on Cyder, and Avhich Avas rejected by Dr. Sprat on account of its allusion to Phillips's uncle, Milton, a name, in the bishop's opinion (himself a small poet), too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion ; — Butler's bust; — Gray's, Avith its f^ure in relief of the Lyric Muse holding a medallion of the poet, by Bacon ; — Thomson's, Mason's, and Goldsmith's ; — they are all but so many instances of the poets' monuments which have no poets re posing beneath them, that Addison alludes to in one of his papers in the ' Spec tator,' and Avhich should be carefully dissociated from those that have. This is so little attended to in the Abbey, that a visitor finds it impossible to determine from the mere sight of the tombs or inscriptions, except in one or two cases, which of the great poets were really buried here. Although but a mere honorary memo rial, the one we last mentioned. Goldsmith's, is interesting from the associations connected with it. This great poet, essayist, and novelist, who Avas in himself sufficient to prove Johnson's theory, that genius is but a mind of large general poAvers accidentally determined in some particular direction — for, Avhilst Gold smith's poAvers were directed in numerous directions, he excelled in all, — this ad mirable writer, who Avanted but one of the commonest of qualities, prudence, to have been also one of the most admirable of men, was intended to have been 122 LONDON. buried in the Abbey, Avith a magnificent ceremonial, until the knowledge of his . numerous unpaid debts caused the AvithdraAval of the scheme ; Avhen the body was interred in the Temple churchyard. A tablet, however, it was decided should be raised to his memory in the Abbey ; Reynolds chose the place, immediately over the doorway of the chapel of St. Blaize (adjoining Gay's memorial), and Johnson undertock to prepare the inscription. What followed lives, no doubt, in the me mory of most of our readers. Johnson wrote the inscription in Latin, and presented it for the approval of his companions, when they one and all disapproved of it, and subsequently prepared a round robin of names, begging him to Celebrate the fame of an English author in the language in Avhich he wrote. Johnson flatly refused, saying he would never consent to disgrace the Avails of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription : and so Ave have before us the Latin inscrip tion ; unintelligible perhaps to ninety-nine out of every hundred visitors of the Abbey Avho have enjoyed ' The Deserted Village ' and ' The Vicar of Wakefield,' and who are naturally interested in knowing what his friend Johnson would say about him. The Poets' Corner is not, however, solely confined to poets; divines, phi losophers, actors, musicians, dramatists, architects, and critics have found place among them. Barrow, whose life almost justifies the inscription which speaks of " a man almost divine, and truly great, if greatness be comprised in piety, probity, and faith, the deepest learning, equal modesty, and morals in every respect sanctified and sweet," — Barrow, whom Charles II. used to call an " un fair preacher," inasmuch as that he left nothing for others to say after him on the WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 123 topics he handled, — Barrow lies here, with a tablet and bust over his remains : the latter has the appearance of being a faithful likeness. In another part, beneath the pavement before St. Blaize's Chapel, lie the remains of Johnson, with those of his friend and early associate, Avhen the Avorld was all be fore them both, and the paths were yet to choose — Garrick, on the one side, and those of Sheridan on the other. Why the monument raised to Johnson's memory should have been placed in St. Paul's, instead of over or near his remains in the Abbey, is one of those mysteries that Ave may expect to solve when we have learnt why Nelson — whose memorable words at the battle of the Nile, " Victory or West minster Abbey !" so peculiarly marked out the proper place of his destination — was interred at St. Paul's. With regard to Johnson's monument, however, Ave arc too glad at not seeing in the Abbey the classical monstrosity AvhicH is absurdly said to commemorate him, to care very much about the cause. Garrick's monument, erected at some distance from bis remains, on the opposite Avail of the transept, is to us chiefly remarkable from the circumstance that it betrayed one of the most tolerant of spirits into something very like intolerance. When Charles Lamb says he would " not go so far, with some good Catholics abroad, as to shut players out of consecrated ground," he does go far enough to afford fresh fuel to the unjust opinion of the actor's art that has so long prevailed in the countries where Shakspere and Moli^re each trod the stage — an opinion as mischievous too as unjust ; for, by deprecating the profession, it has in a thousand Avays helped to lower the characters of the professors : thus making the evil, of Avhich it can with the greatest show of reason afterwards complain. Again, he speaks of the " theatrical -airs and gestures " of the monument, not simply from any deficiency of the sculptor's skill to make them natural, but as objecting evidently to any thing that could remind us of the theatre. There is a short way to test the truth of all this. At the left-hand corner of the same Avail on Avhich is Garrick's monument is that to Handel, in Avhich the musician is represented surrounded by the materials and accessories of his art — the organ in the background, a harp in the hands of an angel above, and an effigy of himself in the act of composition, and as if suddenly inspired, in front. No one speaks of theatrical or orchestral gestures in connexion Avith this great work. If, then, Charles Lamb did not overlook the immense difference that there must be between the productions of H. Webber, the artist of the one, and those of Roublliac, the artist of the other, his animadversions will be found strictly to mean that the theatre is, in the ab stract, so much less exalted an instrument of enjoyment and instruction than the orchestra, as to make the memory of the one painful to us in the presence of the dead, when the other rouses no such sensations : a conclusion to which Ave respect fully demur, remembering, what the truest lovers of Shakspere seem often to forget, hoAv grand a mission has been given to the stage : — " To hold, as 'tAvere, the mirror up to nature, to shoAv virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." If it does not do this, it ought ; and may be made — when those who have influence over it raise their own minds to its natural level. Above the monument just referred to, Handel's, is a tablet which reminds us of an interesting event in the history of the musical art in this country, the 124 LONDON. commemorations, which took place within the Abbey walls on several dif ferent occasions during the last century, and once during the present. The idea was first suggested in a conversation between some enthusiastic admirers of the great musician in 1783, Avho, seeing that, in the following year, a century would have elapsed since his birth, and a quarter of a century since his death, resolved to attempt the getting up of a performance, on the most magnificent scale, of Handel's works, by way of commemoration. The directors of the Con certs of Ancient Music not only highly approved of the scheme, but voluntarily undertook the arduous and responsible duty of arranging the performances. The King, George III., also gave his fullest sanction. On the 26th of May the per formances began, during the Avhole of which the Abbey presented a magnificent and unique spectacle. At one end of the nave Avas seen a kind of throne, with an enclosure fitted up for royalty, and most regally decorated, in the centre, and two other enclosures, one on each side, for the bishops and for the Dean and Chapter. At the other end rose the vast orchestra, Avith upwards of five hundred performers, and the organ, in a Gothic frame, at the summit. The choral bands were on steps at the sides, rising stage upon stage till they seemed lost to the eyes of the spectators, in their extremest elevation. Lastly, in the area and galleries, in every nook and corner into Avhich it seemed possible for human beings to intro duce themselves, were the spectators, three or four thousand in number. The triumph of the architect to whom the arrangements for the fitting up of the Abbey had been confided, Mr. Wyatt, Avas seen in the harmonious aspect which, Ave are told, the Avhole presented ; all " so AvonderfuUy corresponded with the style of architecture of this venerable and beautiful structure, that there was nothing visible, either for use or ornament, Avhich did not harmonize Avith the principal tone of the building." The performances lasted five days, and on the Avhole produced a deep and most beneficial effect on the permanent interests of the art. For some years the commemorations Avere repeated annually — at that in 1787 the receipts Avere 14,042/., a sum considerably exceeding the receipts of the first in 1784 — but gradually they Avere given at longer and longer intervals till 1791, Avhen, although the performers had been increased to the number of 1667 persons, the receipts exhibited a serious decrease, and in consequence the commemorations for the time ceased. Haydn Avas present during the last-men tioned performances ; and, as he Avas ever ready to acknowledge, derived from them his deep veneration of the mighty genius of Handel. The last commemora tion Avas that of 1834. The chief remaining memorials of Poets' Corner may, perhaps, be best noticed in the order in Avhich they meet the eye from the entrance door. By the side of Prior's monument is a tablet, by Chantrey, to the great friend of the negroes, Granville Sharp ; Avho Avas led to make the first attempt tOAvards their eman cipation by a little personal incident worth remembering, Avere it only for the mighty contrast betAveen the end achieved and the beginning. Walking one day through the streets of London, he beheld a poor negro shivering with cold, hunger, and sickness. He Avas a slave from Virginia, abandoned by his master in this country on account of illness brought on by the change of climate. Sharp caused him to be conveyed to St. BartholomeAv's Hospital, Avhere he WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 125 recovered, amd went to a situation provided for him by his benefactor. Imme diately these circumstances reached the master's ears, he had the hardihood to throAV poor Somerset, his late slave, into prison as a runaAvay. The matter was then brought before the chief magistrate of the city of London, who declared the man free. The master, however, violently seized him, and endeavoured to get him on board his ship, Avhich Avas about to sail. There Avas no time to be lost. Somerset was brought by habeas corpus before the tAvelve judges, who, after several hearings, declared unanimously, in words for ever memorable, " that as soon as any slave sets his foot upon British ground, he is free." It is only necessary to add, in order to show hoAv deep a debt of gratitude we OAve to Granville Sharp, that he nearly exhausted his fortune in carrying this case to its important issue ; and that he had the gratification of living to see the good work he had commenced progress to the point of the formal abolition by the legislature of the slave-trade in 1807. Near Sharp's memorial is the bust of St. Evremond, the French Avit, and that of ShadAvell,- the hero of Dryden's tre mendous satire — MacFlecknoe, and who had his revenge in seeing the great poet turned out of the laureateship on the accession of William and Mary, and himself put in his place. On the column at the end of the screen, a tablet records the memory of the Avitty author of the ' Ncav Bath Guide,' Christopher Anstey. At the back of the screen, near Shakspere's monument, is Mrs. Pritchard's, an actress of Avhom Churchill says, comically enough, considering it forms part of a panegyric on a really great artist, that " her voice" Avas " as free from blemish as her fame." On the other side of Bishop Blaize's Chapel, the sumptuous monument of the great Duke of Argyll, as he is generally called, strikes the eye alike by its size and beauty. It is as allegorical, and therefore almost as unmeaning as usual, in the chief thought ; the Duke is dying at the base of a pyramid, with sorroAving figures of History, Minerva, and Eloquence around him. But the execution is most masterly. Canova is said to have remarked of the figure of Eloquence, " That is one of the noblest statues I have seen in England." On the floor be tween the monuments of Handel and BarroAv is the full-length statue (on a cir cular pedestal) of one whose writings give a peculiar interest to his burial in the Abbey. The visits of the Spectator are ever things to be remembered, and here, as he has himself told us, he Avas frequently to be found. " When I am in a serious humour," says he, in the first of his papers on the subject, " I very often Avalk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people Avho lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable." In another passage he says, " When I see kings lying by those Avho deposed them, — when I consider rival wits placed side by side, — or the holy men that divided the world Avith their contests and disputes, — I reflect Avith sorroAv and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." Did Addison, Ave Avon der, think how applicable these remarks might be, but a few years later, to his own case ? One feature of his death-bed is Avell known — his sending for the 126 ' LONDON. young Earl of Warwick to see how a Christian could die ; but another, and to our minds more touching incident, was his conduct to Gay, at the same period. He sent for the poet to his bed-side, and begged his forgiveness for an injury Avhich he had done him (what Gay knew not, but supposed Addison referred to some obstruction he had throAvn secretly in his path, whilst endeavouring to obtain court favour), and promised him, if he lived, to make amends. Ho did not live, but Gay, we are sure, Avith all his heart forgave him ; and we can look on the memorials of the " rival Avits," here buried beneath the same roof, and reflect with satisfaction that these at least did not Avait for the grave to point its usual moral. Addison, we must remark, is not interred beneath Westma cott's statue, but in the north aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel. His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, Avas buried at night, as Tickell, his friend, thus shows in his elegy : — " Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave ! How silent did his old companions tread. By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead ; Through breathing statues, then unheeded things ; Through rows of warriors, and through Avalks of kings," &c. Beneath the pavement, near Addison's statue, the remains of Cumberland, the dramatist, essayist, and excellent classical scholar, are interred; and near him those of Henderson, an actor, Avho, equally great in 'Falstaff' and 'Hamlet,' might, in Garrick's absence, have reached almost Garrick's reputation. As it was, he Avas overshadowed by the mightier genius, and consequently fcAv now remem ber the excellence of John Henderson. Passing on, our eyes again directed upAvards, Ave perceive the memorials of the learned Casaubon, a black and Avhite marble monument erected by Stone, and of Camden, which exhibits a half- length figure, book in hand, of the great antiquary. Camden Avas master of Westminster School; and looks in his effigy, Avhich has something of a prim, pedagoguish look about it, as though he is still thinking of the school, and Avondering whether he has got any of his pupils around him in his new abode. Yes, there is one, and the one Avho, if tradition be true, it must best please the antiquary's shade to see in such a place — Ben Jonson, the boy whose talents he had so early noticed, and Avhom he subsequently relieved from the degrading position of a bricklayer's labourer by obtaining for him the office of tutor to Raleigh's son. Crossing now to the wall or screen of the choir we have to the right of the entrance the beautifully sculptured monument of Dr. Busby, master of Westminster School, and its rigid ungraceful-looking rival (both hav ing similar recumbent figures), that of the eminent divine. Dr. South, by its side. In the papers before referred to we find Addison and Sir Roger standing before Busby's memorial ; when the knight exclaims, " Dr. Busby ! a great man : he whipped my grandfather ; — a very great man ! I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a blockhead ; — a very great man !" The poet Congreve, we may here add, is buried in another part of the Abbey : why, it would be difficult to say. Lastly, interred below the pavement, are — the critic of the ' Quarterly,' Avhose nod Avas so long fate in the literary world ; Chambers, the WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 127 architect of Somerset House ; Adam, the builder of the Adelphi, " O rare Sir William Davenant !" Old Parr, half an immortal himself, and therefore, we sup pose, among the poets ; and Sheridan, whose death and funeral show, even more brilliantly than usual, that kind of antithesis which the world has so long been accustomed to look on but as a necessary part of the history of men of genius, and which if it missed for any length of time, would, we verily believe, make it begin to look about, and button up its pockets carefully, suspicious that all was not as it should be. Sheridan, no doubt, owed his misfortunes, as much as it was Avell possible for a man to do, to his own conduct ; biit when in the close of his life he was left to the most terrible destitution by his courtly friends and quondam admirers, it is melancholy to reflect, that of all the countless thousands his fine powers had delighted, there should be none Avho, having ample means, were just enough to see that his punishment had been at least as great as his offences, and grateful enough to do something for him who had done so much for all. Whilst the theatre was ringing with the sounds of enjoyment accompanying scene after scene of the ' School for Scandal,' the author was lying delirious at home ; escaped awhile from the world by that happy provision for unendurable mental anguish. It had been almost better for him if he had never again awakened to consciousness, for among the earliest sounds that met his ear were the threats of an attorney (who held him under arrest), that he Avould remove him, dying as he was, to a gaol. Well, there Avas one consolation : the world was, no doubt, pre paring a splendid funeral ; he had only to die to bring back lost friends, make mean patrons generous, change neglect and desolation into universal care and attendance, to become as splendid, and honoured, and be as much cherished as ever. Who could resist such temptations ? Sheridan died. And now the charm was broken ; the body must be immediately removed ; the dead poet cannot be treated as the living might; he is exposed in state at the house of a member of the senate, of Avhich he had been so distinguished an ornament, and here his admirers came in crowds day by day to visit him. — Injurious thought, to suppose they had forgotten him ! He is borne to the Abbey ; men of royal blood leading the way as mourners, the chief ministers of state following, then the nobles of the land ; lastly, an almost interminable line of persons, comprising, we are told, almost all the rank or ability in London. As we turn our eyes away from the inscription on the plain blue stone at our feet, which has suggested these melancholy but unavoidable reflections, they fall upon Dryden's stately stone instead of bread ; then again upon the memorials of the Prince of Poets, Avith the horrible doubt that belongs to it ; on Goldsmith's, Avho, after all that has been said of his extravagance, perhaps scarcely received for the whole of his Avorks the amount of three years' salary of a minister of state ; on Johnson's, Avhose early struggles in London must be in every one's memory : in short, turn where Ave will, bounding our vision to the Avails of the Abbey, or looking beyond them, Ave see still the same unnatural disparity betAveen the instruction and enjoyment given, and the reward received ; too often little more than "Poets' Corner." Having now gone through those important portions of the Abbey history which 128 LONDON. seemed to require separate notices, our next and concluding paper wifl be de voted to such a general vicAV of the interior, or rather of its contents, as a visitor, starting from Poets' Corner, and desiring only to have the most essential objects pointed out, may require. In the mean time, it may be useful to present the folloAving PLAN OF THE ABBEY. I I I I ri Dea«'H Yard. 1. General Entrance. ii. Poets' Comer. 3. St. Blaize's Chapel. ¦4. South Aisle of Choir. 5. South Aisle of Nave. 6. North ditto. Ii. New Screen. 8. North Aisle of Choir. I. AViAt Aiale of North Transept. EXPLANATION. 10. East Aisle of North Transept. 11. Islip's Cliapel. 12. St. John the Baptist's. 13. St. PauVs. 14. Abhot Ware's Mosaic Pavement. 15. Edward the Confessor's Chapel and Shrine. 16. Poreh to Henry VII.'s Chapel. 17. Henry VII.'s Tomb. 18. North Aisle of Henry VII.'s Cliapel. 19. South ditto. 20. St. Nicholas's Chapel. 21. St. Edmund's. £2. St. Benedict's. Z'i. Jerusalem Chamber. 24. College (formerly Abbey) Dining Hall. [Brass Plate on Sir Thomas Vaughan's Tomb.] LXXXIV.— WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. V. A Walk through the Edifice T HE author of the ' Sketch-Book,' after a visit to the Abbey, remarks, " I en deavoured to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects I had been contemplating, but found they Avere already falling into indistinctness and con fusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded in my recol lection, though I had scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold." This passage describes but too truly the general effect, even on the most intelligent minds, of a first or occasional visit to the Abbey memorials. And the causes, no doubt, are to be found partly in the very multiplicity of the objects that meet the eye, but much more in the entire absence of any systematic arrangement. Indeed, whilst there are two features in particular which invest Westminster Abbey with an interest and a value that belong to no other English structure, the one of universal character, — the burial in it of so many of our great men ; the other limited to the lovers of art,— the knowledge that it presents an unbroken series of examples of the history of sculpture for five or six centuries; — these are precisely the features which are the least attended to in the Abbey, and which therefore appear with the least possible effect. The Englishman, proud of his country, comes here to gaze upon the last resting-place of the men whose achievements have given him cause for his pride ; but finds not only that re markable men of every degree of intellectual power, of every variety of occupa tion and period, are confusedly mingled together, with the addition of a sprink ling of those remarkable only from the circumstance that their remains should be here at all, but that in reality he cannot discover, with anything approaching VOL. IV. K 130 LONDON. to general accuracy, the great men who were really buried in the Abbey from those who have merely had honorary memorials erected to them. The student's case is still more hopeless : what instruction can he possibly derive from the visible history of art, however rich, where the facts or monuments of which it is composed are dispersed throughout a vast building, in such order that, if their respective positions had been decided by lot, they could hardly have presented a greater chaos : — here the colossal statue of Watt, in the beautiful little chapel of St. Paul's, and by the side of the Gothic tomb of Henry V.'s standard-bearer; — there the effigies of some of the ancient abbots, on their altar-tombs, overshadowed by the gigantic pile of masonry erected to an able seaman of the last century, who, we suspect, would have been in no slight degree astonished if he could have foreseen that he would be stuck up here in effigy in the garb of a Roman soldier. The Abbey, too, suffers sadly from these circumstances. We may enjoy the grandeur of its architecture, may gaze, and gaze till we resign ourselves to that feeling which Coleridge so finely describes — unconsciousness of the actualities around, and expansion of the whole being into the infinite, — may listen whilst " every stone is kiss'd By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife ; Heart-thrilling strains that cast before the eye Of the devout a veil of ecstasy ;" — . may, in short, leave the heart and soul to wander where and how they please, whilst we notice nothing individually : but the moment we attempt to luxuriate in the details of the building, which are only less wonderful than the whole, the " actualities " of the Abbey become too much for us. What senses of subUmity and devotion can withstand the sudden appearance of some preposterous effigy, connected generally with some still more preposterous pile, such as you are liable to meet with in almost every part of the Abbey — transepts, ambulatory, chapels, and nave — everywhere but in the choir, and in the chapel of the kings ? But it is not such monuments only thait injure the grand harmony of the structure ; with the exception of Westmacott's Duke de Montpensier, in Henry VII.'s Chapel. we do not remember a single monument placed in the Abbey, for a century or two past, that would not be again removed from it, if the purity of architectural taste which existed when the Abbey was built should be ever thoroughly revived. And the chief cause of such wholesale exclusion may be found, we think in the very circumstance that sculptors have most congratulated themselves upon the raising the effigies of the dead from their former recumbent position. But in this, as in many other cases in which we have departed from the practices of our ancestors, we live to find, after a long period of complacent indulgence, that we did so through ignorance of the principles upon which they worked. Let any one walk through the chapel of the kings, or along the ambulatory, and he cannot but notice how the tombs, even the stateliest and most gorgeous, harmonise with, nay enhance, the effect of the Abbey ; let him then look upon later monuments, and his most favourable judgment will be that, where they have not an abso lutely injurious effect, they have at least a negative one. Is there any secret in this most important difference ? Surely not. In the one class you are seldom reminded of anything but the life, or the mere circumstances of its close; in the other you can never forget that the end of all has come, and that king, prelate. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 131 warrior, statesman, and courtier have alike forgotten the vanities of the world, in this kind of beautiful and touching communion with their Maker, Avhich they are contented to share in common with their lowliest fellow-creatures. Their deeds may be recorded on their monuments by grateful hands for us to read and think of, but even then we see thatthey think only of God. This it is that makes the old monuments of the Abbey essentially a part of the Abbey : they exhibit the same magnificence, the same repose; they inculcate the same impressive lesson. Would we then banish from churches all monuments that have not re cumbent effigies ? — That were to be guided by the letter rather than the spirit. We should certainly be glad to see the rule systematically enforced that only monuments of an unmingled and unmistakeable devotional character should be received into the Abbey ; and if that result can be obtained in better or in more various Avays than of old, it is very desirable such modes should be adopted. The sculptors are even more interested than the public in this matter. Their skill in monuments of a different class is in a great measure wasted here, Avanting the charm of fitness : the Abbey is as unsuitable for them as they for the Abbey. Lord Mansfield's monument in the chief court of English judicature. Canning's in the halls of parliament, and Watt's in the meeting-place of the [Statue of lames Walt.] merchant-princes of England, would be so impressive as to raise the art itself at once to a higher level ! we should begin as a people to feel, what for centuries as a people'we have not felt, the importance of the sculptors mission. As to th« memorials for which no particular public situations are marked out by the cha racters of the men they commemorate, they might be erected with the happiest k2 132 LONDON. effect (as has recently been observed) in the localities made memorable by their lives ; and then what is to prevent us from having^^our Walhalla, as the Germans call their new building, instead of our present imperfect and unsystematic method of honouring the illustrious dead, and in buildings so unsuitable as St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey ? Under the circumstances we have indicated, the best mode, perhaps, of exa mining the Abbey memorials is to steadily adhere, except in peculiar cases, to the principle which guided us in the previous paper — that is, to fix our attention chiefly upon those which relate to the illustrious dead Avho have been interred here. And for that purpose we shall follow the route marked by the sequence of the figures in the plan (Avhich is, with slight exceptions, the exact reverse of that pursued by the guides in the Abbey), in order that we may, as far as the circumstances permit, pass over the great mass of the modern monuments at the commencement of our Avalk through the Abbey, and end with the more ancient ones. Pausing a moment in Poets' Corner to gaze upon what may be called the finest interior view of the Abbey, including as it does the tAvo transepts, with the rich painted rose window in the one opposite to us, the choir, and a por tion of the nave ; and taking also a brief glance at the interesting paintings in the Chapel of St. Blaize, we move along the southern aisle of the choir towards the nave, observing as Ave pass Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument, the constant butt of our wits, and the pious and learned Dr. Isaac Watts's, whom Johnson calls " the first of the Dissenters who courted attention by the graces of language," on the left; and Behnes' bust of Dr. Bell, the founder of the Madras system of education, and Thynne's monument, with its bas-relief representing the assassin ation of that gentleman in Pall Mall, on the right. Among the earliest memo rials that attract us in the nave is that to the unfortunate, but certainly not innocent. Major Andre, svhose remains were interred here many years after his death on the scaffold. An interesting bas-relief, showing Andre as a prisoner in the tent of Washington, with the bearer of a flag of truce come to solicit his pardon, has been the mark of much and very pertinacious ill usage, such as the knocking off the heads of the principal figures : new ones consequently have been several times put on. Charles Lamb could not resist the opportunity that it occurred to him this afforded of a hit at his friend Southey's change of poli tical opinions. Having called the mutilation " the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired, perhaps, with raw notions of transatlantic freedom," he adds, most innocently, " the mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you knoAv anything about the unfortunate relic ?" It is said the cir cumstance caused a temporary severance of their intimacy. Beyond Andre's monument, and filling up the breadth of the spaces between three successive Avin- doAvs, are the monuments, by Roublliac, of Lieut.- General Hargrave, where Time has overthrown Death and broken his dart, and the dead is rising in resurrection ; of Major-General Fleming, where the wisdom, prudence, and valour of the dead Avarrior are represented by the emblems of those virtues which Minerva and Her cules are binding together ; and of the well-known Marshal Wade, who signalised himself in the rebeUion of 1745, and which, like all Roubiliac's works, shows how that great artist was accustomed to think for himself within the bounds which WESTMINSTER ABBEY. ^ 133 the taste of the period marked out, if he did not go to any remarkable degree beyond it. In Wade's monument, Time endeavours to overthrow the soldier's memory, typified by a pillar decorated with trophies of warfare, but is success fully opposed by Fame,who drives him back. In this part of the nave a door opens into the cloisters where lie four of the early Abbots, — Vitalis, Crispinus, De Blois, and Laurentius, — with some distinguished men of a more recent era. Here, for instance, repose Barry, the famous actor ; Sir John Hawkins, the historian of music; the lady dramatist of Charles 1 I.'s time, AphraBehn, whose numerous comedies show the truth of Pope's line — " The stage how loosely does Astrea tread ;" Mrs. Bracegirdle, Congreve's friend and favourite actress ; Lawes, the original writer of the music of ' Comus,' and Milton's friend ; with a host more of actors and actresses, as Betterton, of whose interment so interesting an account is given in the 'Tatler;' Foote, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Yates, &c. &c. To the Cloisters also was brought the body of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, after its strange discovery on Primrose Hill, and consequent public exposure in the city. The funeral was re markable. Seventy-two clergymen marched in the front of the procession, whilst above a thousand persons of rank or distinction followed it. At the service two strong able-bodied divines stood in the pulpit, on the believed, or pretended, necessity of guarding him from the violence of the Papists, who, it was presumed, had committed the murder. Here, lastly, rests " the genius of the graphic art," to use the words of the poetical inscription, Vertue, the Engraver ; and near that monument Avith the musical score of the "Canon by two-fold augmentation," Benjamin Cooke, its author, deputy-organist of the Abbey at the age of tAvelve years, subsequently organist, and one of the true masters in that school of music about which the people of this -country almost seem to know the least — the English. Returning into the nave, we perceive, extending over Dean Wilcock's monument, Avith its view of the Abbey, Dean Sprat's, the poet, and friend of Cowley and Buckingham (the last he is said to have assisted in the famous 'Rehearsal'), arid Sir L. Robinson's, a work by Roubiliac's pupil. Read, which, perhaps, excites more notice than any of the master's OAvn ; not, however, for the same cause. Let those who have not seen it imagine an immense mass of sea, with rocks of coral, where a vessel lies jammed for the base; then above, a figure of the Admiral (Tyrrell) ascending towards a great number of white- looking patches, or pancakes, as they have been not inaptly called, which we are to sup pose clouds, plastered thickly about the sides and back of the upper surface of the structure, which are blue, we are to presume as representing Heaven. Cherubs, harps, branches of palm, Hope Avriting on a rock, and other figures equally profitably engaged, complete this work, which is unexampled in the ex tent of its absurdity, though belonging to a class which makes much of the history of the sculpture of the last century a burlesque upon that which should be its living principle — the ideal. Turn we now to a memorial of a different kind — that to the dramatic writer Congreve, with his bust in high relief, wearing the full- bottomed wig of his time, which here, as in the portraits of CongrcA^e, sits not ungracefully. No doubt, the author of the wittiest comedies in the language achieved thi? much dearer object of his ambition, and was the fine eentleman he 134 LONDON. desired to be thought. The inscription on the tomb records that he lies near the place, and that it was set up by Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, as " a mark hoAv dearly she remembers the happiness she enjoyed in the sincere friend ship of so worthy and honest a man," &c. Congreve may be said to have paid ten thousand pounds for this inscription (for he left the Duchess, who did not Avant his property, the whole, and his ancient and embarrassed family nothing), and no doubt thought it cheap at the money. Voltaire, forsooth ! Who would care for the opinions of him, or fifty such mere literati, when a duchess could be found to write thus on one's tomb ? Congreve died in 1728. His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, Avas removed with great pomp into the Abbey, noblemen bearing the pall. Among the noticeable personages buried in this part of the nave, without any memorials, are Dean Atterbury — the place was his own previous choice, as being " as far from kings and Caesars as the space will admit of," as he tells Pope, in one of his letters in 1722 — and Mrs. Oldfield, the actress, Avho was buried in a very fine Brussels-lace head, a Hqlland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, a pair of ncAV kid gloves; &c. ; circumstances which Pope has made the most of in his lines — " Odious ! in woollen ! 't would a saint provoke I (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.) No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face ; One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead ! And — Betty — give this cheek a little red — " This was, perhaps, a fair mark ; but, generally speaking, we could imagine no more startling commentary than might be made on the works of most satirists by a mere statement of the exact facts they have referred to, whether in praise or condemnation. At the end of the wall of this aisle, for example, is the statue of James Craggs, with an inscription by the author just mentioned. Pope, who speaks of his deceased friend as a statesman " Who broke no promise, served no private end" — the said James Craggs being the Secretary of State whose name was down on one of the swindling subscription-lists of the South Sea Scheme for the fictitious sum of 659,000/., as we have already had occasion to observe in a previous num ber, and Avho died, it Avas said, from the small-pox, but really, it was thought, from mental anguish, during the parliamentary examination into the affair. As Ave now stand by the door of the great western entrance to the Abbey, we per ceive that the injury done to the latter by the memorials placed in it has not been confined to the mere incongruities before pointed out. Two beautiful screens stood here, against the base of the Avest towers ; that on the south till 1 750, and that on the north down to the present century, when they were pulled down, to make room for the immense military memorials which now occupy their places, recording exploits utterly forgotten, and names that fail to rouse a single in teresting association. Half hidden among memorials of this kind that occupy the Avestern end of the northern aisle, to which we now cross, are those to the eminent critical geographer. Major Rennell, who lies buried here; to Tierney, the well-known orator ; and to the great painter, greater wit and most sublime coxcomb. Sir Godfrey Kneller, which has an inscription by Pope, showing that WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 135 Nature must have been in a very critical position altogether with regard to him, for — " Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie Her works ; and dying, fears herself to die." One would think the poet had determined to beat the painter even in his own rich vein of extravagance. Kneller lies at Twickenham with Pope, having objected to be buried in the Abbey, because " they do bury fools there." Passing along the wall of the aisle eastwards, which, like the one we have just quitted, is covered from end to end with memorials, we need only pause lo notice the monument to Mrs. Jane Hill, the one antique work among a wil derness of modern ones ; the monument, nearly above, to Spencer Perceval, Avith an alto-relievo representing the circumstances of his assassination by Bellingham ; and the scroll, held in the outstretched hands of Time, on which is written a very beautiful Latin inscription by Dr. Friend to a youth, Philip Carteret : the Doctor, we may observe, has, with each of his friends and rivals. Woodward and Mead, an honorary memorial in the nave. Before entering the north aisle of the choir, we must pause a moment to examine the beautiful screen which has been erected here by Mr. Blore. It is in the same " decorated " style as the archi tecture immediately around it, which forms the continuation of Henry III.'s build ing by his son Edward. On each side of the screen are large monuments, of which the principal is that to Sir Isaac Newton. If this were a much greater work than it is, it Avould suffer from our remembrance of Roubiliac's noble statue of the philosopher at Cambridge, where the loftiest speculations are suggested by the simplest and purest means ; but when we add that this, although cut by Rysbrach, is Kent's design, we need hardly say more. Here, too, we may fitly pause an instant to gaze on the stained glass windoAvs of the western front, with its rows of Jewish .patriarchs, glorious in their brilliant dyes of amber and purple, the work of comparatively recent times, and the smaller windows in the towers at the sides, which are ancient, and seem to have lost something of their original splendour. We have said little in the present or in the preceding papers in the way of description of the architecture of the Abbey, for we believe such descrip tions are very useless in works of a general character ; the worst engraving or the briefest visit will give a more accurate idea of a building than many pages of letterpress. We therefore leave the architectural wonders of the nave, as of the other parts of the Abbey, undescribed (seeing, too, that previous engravings will have made our readers tolerably familiar with all), merely remarking that it is the loftiest in England, measuring 102 feet,* and at the same time one of the most graceful. Without entering into tho vexed question of the origin of pointed architecture, or overlooking the difficulties that attach to the hypothesis of find ing in nature the type of what is but the last of a series of architectural changes and improvements, rather than the first, which no doubt all the chief styles are, it is still, it seems to us, impossible to pace along this centre aisle of the nave, * The dimensions of the Abbey, generally, are as follows : Extreme length, including Henry VII.'s Chapel — exterior 530 feet, interior 511; extreme breadth (across the transepts), interior, 203 ; height of the western towers, 225. Of the chief parts of the structure we may observe that the extreme breadth of the nave and aisles is 71 feet, the choir 38, the transepts aud aisles 84, the extreme length of the nave 166, of the choir 155, of each transept 8'i. Henry VIl.'i' '^'lapel measures i'.i length (H'e nave) 103 feet, iu breadth with aisles 70, in length 60. 136 LONDON. and look up, without being reminded of the extraordinary similarity of its ex pression to that of an over-arching avenue of trees. We have an avenue now m our memory formed of very tall and stately, but not aged trees, where the trunks ascend as regularly and gracefully upwards as these pillars, and where, as their tops meet over the middle space, you can detect the branches running across and interweaving, in a thousand capricious, but all beautiful forms, which the grmned roof appears but tamely to imitate. All this may be, as architectural writers tell us, accidental ; but certainly the accident is harder to believe than the improba bilities of the opposite opinion. The north aisle of the choir, or the space extending from the north aisle of the nave to the north transept, contains several matters worthy of notice ; some for their amusing character,— as Dame Carteret's, where a dancing figure is, we are told, a Resurrection ; and some for their deeper interest, as Wilberforce's memo rial by Joseph, which is original enough at all events, and Sir Stamford Raffles's by Chantrey ; but this part should be sacred to all lovers of music, as a kind of musicians' corner, for here lies Purcell, with one of the most striking epitaphs ever penned, and which is said to have been by Dryden. It runs thus : " Here lies Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded." He was interred in November, 1695, and, according to the picturesque old custom, at night, with a magnificence suit able to the burial of the greatest English musician ; and, as was most fitting, in the Abbey Avhere he had been appointed organist at the age of eighteen, and where his sublime anthems had been so often heard. His memorial is against one side of a pillar on the right of the aisle ; on the other side of the same pillar is the memorial to Samuel Arnold, another organist of the Abbey in Avhich he Is interred, and a worthy successor to Purcell. Opposite to these, on the left wall of the aisle, is the memorial of Blow, who, according to the inscription, was the "" master of the famous Mr. Henry Purcell," although it is now established that Purcell owed much more to another musician. Captain Cook, than to Blow : the latter, however, had claims of his own to entitle him to respect and commemora tion. Beneath Blow's memorial is his pupil's. Dr. Burney, Hawkins's rival his torian, with an inscription that does little credit to the taste of his daughter, the authoress of ' Evelina ;' whilst, lastly, close by their side is the bust, in all the majesty of full-bottomed Aviggism, of Dr. Croft, who in ecclesiastical music is said to have had nq superior. He also held the situation of organist to the Abbey ; and his death Avas brought on here (during, Ave presume, the performance of his duties) at the coronation of George II. He now lies near the most illustrious of his predecessors. The north transept is rich in great names of another kind, chiefly of those connected with the business or offices of the state. Occupying the entire space betAveen tAvo of the pillars dividing the Avestern aisle of the transept from the centre, is Flaxman's noble monument of Mansfield ; taken altogether perhaps the noblest of modern sculpture. The illustrious judge is seen in the judgment- seat elevated to a considerable height, Avith figures of Wisdom and Justice attending, whilst behind, on the base of the monument, immediately beloAv the circular chair, is the beautifully-sculptured figure of a youth : Avhat he is in tended to represent seems to be a matter of some doubt, for Mr. Brayley WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 137 [MansHeld's MoQumeot.] says it " is a personification of Death, Avhich is represented, agreeably to the idea of the ancients, by the figure of a youth, partly prostrate, and leaning upon an extinguished torch ;" whilst Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his excellent little ' Hand- Book,' describes it as a "recumbent youth, a criminal, by Wisdom delivered up to Justice." Lord Mansfield is buried beneath his memorial. In the central portion of tho transept repose Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Castlereagh, Canning, Wil berforce, and Grattan — a rich and wonderful neighbourhood, to which Byron's lines may apply with a wider application than to the mere graves of Pitt and Fox:— " a few feet Of sullen earth divide each Avinding-sheet. How peaceful and how powerful is the grave That hushes all !" Of their memorials we need only observe that Chatham's lofty pile, by Bacon, representing the statesman at the top in the act of speaking, is against the end of the left-hand wall; Canning's statue, by Chantrey, nearly opposite ; Fox's me morial, by Westmacott, shoAving the orator dying in the arms of Liberty, attended by Peace and a kneeling negro, against the wall of the choir looking towards the transept ; and Pitt's over the great western door of the nave ; where a work, costing 6300/. of the public money, is entirely beyond the reach of public ap preciation : it is by Westmacott. Turning from the military and naval memorials. 138 LONDON. which here too, as in the nave, thrust themselves forward on all sides (Rou biliac's to Sir Peter Warren and Banks's to Sir Eyre Coote are, hoAvever, deserving of the attention they demand), we are attracted by an exquisite piece of sculpture in the western aisle, near Kemble's statue, dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Warren and child : this is also by Westmacott, and perhaps the artist's most beautiful work. Two monuments, differing much in character, but agree ing in having each a beautiful inscription, are also deserving of notice — the one is the sumptuous tomb of the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, on which the Duchess thus beautifully speaks of her family : — " Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester: a noble family, for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous;" and the other a plain tablet, close by, to Grace Scot, who died in 1645, Avhich says — " He that will give my Grace but what is hers Must say her death hath not Made only her dear Scot, But Vittue, worth, and sweetness, widowers." Was this " dear Scot" the Colonel Scot who was executed on the Restoration for his share in the king's death, and who died so bravely under the revolting atrocities to which he and his companions Avere exposed during execution? If it was, Grace Scot died not too soon. The eastern aisle of the transept is shut out from the principal space by the monuments which have closed up the inter-columnlations ; it was formerly also subdivided into three chapels by screens of a very rich character. Here we find two of the most remarkable works in the Abbey ; the first, on the floor, to the right as we enter, consisting of a low basement on which lies Sir Francis Vere's effigy, with four kneeling knights at the four corners supporting a plain canopy or table over the dead warrior, on which are his helmet, breastplate, and other martial accoutrements. Roublliac, whilst engaged in the erection of the work of which we are about presently to speak, was seen one day, by Gayfere, the Abbey mason, standing with his arms folded, and gazing intently on one ot these knights. " Hush ! " said he, pointing to the figure as Gayfere approached, " He will speak soon." This is the true spirit of genius; and that Roublliac Avas a man of high genius this famous Nightingale monument before us proves. In one respect it may be said to be unique. Roam through the Abbey often as you will, examine every one of the immense variety of Avorks by distinguished men that line its walls, and still there shall be the same sudden startling, as it were, of the heart, when you reach this ; the same equally novel and refreshing emotion experienced. It is not the grim monster starting from the depths beloAV, and just about to launch the fatal dart, that affects us, terrible as is the truth of the representation ; it is the agonized figure of the husband, clasping his dying wife with the one hand, and endeavouring with the other to ward off the irresisti ble attack, that at once appeals, as sculpture seldom can appeal, to the feelings of the spectator. The wife, too, so touchingly, droopingly beautiful, is an exquisite performance: "Life," as Allan Cunningham observes, "seems slowly receding from her tapering fingers and her quivering wrist." This was Roubiliac's last work. He died the year after its erection, 1762. In the same aisle is Rally's colossal statue of Telford, the famous engineer, Avho was buried here • and nu- WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 139 merous other interesting works wbich our space compels us to pass over. Be tween the end of this aisle and the dark but beautiful little chapel known as Islip's, and Avhich has quaint rebuses of his name carved over it (a man slipping from a tree — I-slip, &c.), is the immense monument, by Wilton, to General Wolfe, with a spirited bas-relief on its base of the landing at Quebec. We noAv reach the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, Avhere, in a corner, lies a tomb with a design on a brass plate to Sir Thomas Vaughan, shown in our first page. Here, too, is the monument to Lord Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth's Chamberlain, which, as it forms but one of a numerous class spread through the other chapels of the Abbey, we may as well describe, so far at least as a few words Avill enable us to do so. It consists of a pile built up story upon story, so as almost to reach the ceiling of the chapel (which is of great height), and consists chiefly of recesses, pillars with gilded Corinthian capitals, sculptured obelisks, &c., whilst the lower part is filled by an enormous sarcophagus ; the whole of marble, and profusely decorated. With but comparatively unimportant alterations this brief account would apply to a dozen other works of the greatest pretension in the Abbey, and which we may therefore p^ss over through the remainder of our walk. The ponderous tomb of the Earl of Exeter, in the same chapel, obtains more attention than it deserves, from the story connected with it. By the earl's effigy lies that of his first wife, on one side, whilst the other was left vacant for his second, who, it is said, left ex press directions in her Avill that her effigy should not be placed there : the noble blood of Chandos could not brook the left-hand position under any circumstances. Here, too, is the figure of a lady clasping her hands, apparently in great anguish, which has an inscription attached to it that seems to have been undeservedly overlooked. The lady in question is thus described by one whose desire to be buried in the same tomb shows that there was something deeper in the writer's heart than the wish to imitate ordinary panegyric : — " She had great virtues, and as great a desire of concealing them ; Avas of a severe life, but of an easy conA-ersa- tion ; courteous to all, yet strictly sincere ; humble Avithout meanness, beneficent without ostentation, devout without superstition." The golden mean, it seems, for once was discovered. Casting a last glance around, the eye falls on Colonel Popham's alabaster monument, which was saved at the Restoration only through influential intercessors, and on the condition of erasing the inscription, with its unpleasant reminiscences of the Commonwealth. Between this chapel and the ambulatory — their canopies forming the original screen — are the tombs of Abbots Colchester and Fascet, with Millyng's stone coffin on the latter, brought from some other part. Between these abbots' memorials is a similar one to Bishop Ruthall, whose end is attributed to one of the oddest of circumstances. He had drawn up a book on state affairs, to be laid before Henjy VIII., but unfortunately sent instead an inventory of his treasure. What a delicious joke must this have appeared to Bluff Hal and his court ! With what zest must they have turned over those precious pages ! Their sport, however, was death to the unhappy bishop. Shakspere, it Avill be remembered, has used this incident in connexion with Wolsey's fall. It is in the chapel of St. Paul that we meet with the contrast before men tioned — Watt's colossal statue, big enough to lift the roof off, if it should by 140 LONDON. any accident stand up ; the very incarnation of that principle of active, busy, worldly occupation, to which its owner has given such gigantic impulses ; and, half-concealed behind it, the beautiful Gothic monument of Lord Bourchier, Henry V.'s standard-bearer at Agincourt, with its low broad arch opening into the ambulatory; Avhilst the view of the sumptuous chantry of Lord Bourchier's" lord, beyond, is still more completely intercepted. The noble inscription to the philosopher of the steam-engine is by Lord Brougham. , Among the other mo numents — some of them very large and stately- — Sir Giles and Lady Daubeny 's, in the centre, should be mentioned for the peculiar decorations of their recumbent effigies, in accordance with the style of the beginning of the sixteenth century ; and Sir John and Lady Fullerton's, for the punning inscription : — He died "fuller of faith than of fear, fuller of resolution than of pains, fuller of honour than of 'lays.'' Hearing mass in this chapel at one time conferred an indulgence for tAVO years and twenty days ; and the cloth which held the patron saint's head — • that of St. Paul-Rafter his decapitation by Nero, was among the relicts pres,ented to the Abbey by the Confessor, and most probably deposited on an altar in the chapel, as an additional attraction. We have incidentally, in an early part of this paper, mentioned Westmacott's statue of the Duke de Montpensier, brother of the present King of France : if, on entering Henry VII.'s Chapel, to see who have been admitted here into dead companionship with our kings, we pass directly fbrward to the centre window, with its rich storied panes, we perceive in the chapel there beneath, a recumbent coro- r.eted figure on a Ioav couch, the face turned toAvard us : that is the one monument of modern times which we have said assimilates with the structure. The old and touching gesture, it is true, is wanting here, but there is a something so serenely beautiful in the expression of both face and form, such a consciousness, one might fancy, of the " watch and Avard '' those angels Avhich extend above him all round the chapel keep throughout the beautiful and holy place, that it would be difficult to say there is not a very high devotional feeling exhibited in it. What a contrast is this Avork, in its simplicity, grace, and elevation, to that gigantic medley of great black obelisks, heathen deities, and strapping virtues which sur round the effigies of James's Steenie, the Duke of Buckingham, and his duchess, in the chapel on the one side ; or to that quadrangular structure, on the other, where Fame is mounted aloft on an open-AVorked canopy, Avhich Faith, Hope, Charity, and Prudence are supporting, while it sounds the merits of the deceased Duke and Duchess of Richmond below ; or, lastly, to the ducal poet's monument in a third chapel. Sheffield's (Dryden's patron), with its Roman duke, and English duchess doAvn to her sandals, Avhere she too becomes Roman. The monuments in the aisles are some of them of a higher character, though the one mentioned in a former paper, that of Henry VII.'s mother, which is in the south aisle, is worth all the rest, mere altar-tomb though it be. The finest of the others un doubtedly is the one erected by James I. to his unhappy mother, a truly sump tuous specimen of the "cinque cento" style. In the same aisle lie the remains of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, Avho was buried here, Charles himself personally attending the funeral, which was one of extraordinary magnificence. Walpole says, referring to the body's lying in state, that " forty gentlemen of good families submitted to Avalt as mutes, Avith their backs against the Avail of the chamber WESTMIISSTER ABBEY. 141 [Mary Queen of Scots' Monument.] where the body lay in state, for three weeks, waiting alternately twenty each day.'' His monument, by Kent, represents Monk standing by some preposterous- looking emblematical pillar — difficult, but fortunately not at all necessary, to be understood. There is a tall but graceful figure in memory of Horace Walpole's mother, in the same chapel, brought by Horace from Rome. The most interest ing memorial in the northern aisle, where Addison lies buried, is the great pyramidal monument of Addison's friend and patron, the Earl of Halifax, and one of the poets of Johnson's ' Lives.' Before leaving Henry VII.'s Chapel, the sight of the banners and arms of the Kiilghts of the Bath, hung on high, reminds us that we must notice the splendid ceremony which occasionally takes place here, — the installation of the members of that famous order. The institution is sup posed to have been first called into existence to grace the coronation of Henry IV. ; and, in consequence, from that period the creation of a number of Knights of the Bath became a usual preliminary of such ceremonies. After Charles II. 's coro nation, the order was discontinued for some time ; and then subsequently revived by George I., when full directions with regard to badges, decorations, dress, attendants, &c„ were issued. By George IV., whilst Prince Regent, the order was remodelled ; when three classes of members were constituted, — Knights Grand Crosses, Knights Companions, and Knights, — instead of the one general class of Knights Companions previously existing. The ceremony of installation is pic- 142 LONDON. turesque and interesting. When George I. revived the order, he revived also the bath and the vigil ; and the precautions he caused to be taken for the health of his infant grandson, on knighting him, are amusing. The bathing-tub was covered with tapestry,' and before it Avas a warm mat, on which to place the tiny Chevalier whilst he was dried and clothed " very warm, in consideration he was to watch that whole night." Returning into the ambulatory, let us stand awhile in front of the archway beneath Henry V.'s chantry, and gaze upon its decorations. Though unnoticed by a large proportion of the visitors to the Abbey, the sculpture of this arch is among the most precious of our artistical remains. It is " adorned," says Flax man, Avith upwards of fifty statues ; on the north face is the coronation of Henry V., Avith his nobles attending, represented in lines of figures on each side. On the south face of the arch the central object is the king on horseback, armed cap-a-pie, riding at full speed, attended by the companions of his expedition. The sculpture is bold and characteristic ; the equestrian group is furious and warlike; the standing figures have a natural sentiment in their actions, and simple grandeur in their draperies, such as we admire in the paintings of Ra phael and Masaccio." It would be hardly possible to bestow higher praise than this. The tomb was no doubt by the same artist. [Tomb of Henry V., with the head restored.] Three othet chapels yet remain : those of St. Nicholas, with its large, open stone screen ; St. Edmund's, with its wooden one ; and St. Benedict's, behind Dfydett** monument in Poets' Corner. The most painful object in the Abbey is that which first greets you on entering the chapel of St. Nicholas— a very beau tiful Gothic recess facing you — where has once been the brass effigies of Dudley, Bishop of Durham, who died in 1483, but which is now occupied by the effigy of a lady in that most hideous of costumes, the long, tapering waist, and extra vagantly broad hips, which is stuck up on one side against the wall at the back. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 143 in so ludicrous a position, that, if some wit had been desirous to play off a prac tical satire on the general arrangement of the Abbey memorials, he could not have made a better hit. The fine effigies of the father and mother of James's favourite, Buckingham, on a lofty table-monument in the centre — the admir ably-preserved effigies in brass, on the floor, of Sir Humphrey Stanley — and the old freestone tomb and effigy of Philippa Duchess of York, wife of Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III., — are the least showy, but most in teresting, of the remaining monuments in this chapel. In the next we have on the right, immediately we enter, the tomb of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and half-brother to Henry IIL, with an oaken effigy on an oaken chest, the former covered with thin plates of copper, and the latter originally decorated Avith thirty small statues in niches. This must have been a work of great beauty. On the pillow and round the belt there yet remain portions of the ornamental surface, arranged in small delicate patterns, the colours brilliant to this day. On the other side of the entrance lies John of Eltham., son of Edward II., with an alabaster effigy, supported at the head by guardian angels,, and having numerous statues, or the ruins of them, around his tomb. To judge of the workmanship of these statues, one should stoop down in the corner at the end of the monument, where there are one or two nearly perfect, and exhibiting considerable refinement of expression in the face. Equally excellent, in another material, is the brass effigy of -Eleanor de Bohun, wife of Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III. That king has still nearer connexions lying in the Chapel of St. Edward. On a little tomb are the curious alabaster effigies of two of his children, measuring only about twenty inches long. With a glance at Stone's figure of Frances Holies, which Walpole admired for its antique simplicity and beauty, and at the Chapel of St. Benedict, where repose the remains of the famous Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury, among other personages of less importance, we now, finally, direct our steps towards the Choir. Here is an object of attraction, which we wonder does not form part of the show in the Abbey, Abbot Ware's mosaic pavement, with its ingeniously enigmatical design, as ingeniously executed in tesserae of all kinds of shapes, and all sorts of materials, as coloured marbles, porphyry, jasper, alabaster, &c. The colours at present appear somewhat dim, but may, no doubt, be revived; and we understand the attempt is to be made. This pavement lies between the altar and the public portion of the Choir. As we step into the enclosure of the altar, we seem once more surrounded by all the feelings and influences that belong to the Cathedral, as one sees it fresh from the recollections of its early history. The mo numents of recent centuries, nay, the centuries themselves, are forgotten here, where all things wear the aspect of solemn, unchanging beauty. The glo rious roof still spans in airy grandeur the temple where our forefathers have so long worshipped ; the breathing sculpture beneath these lofty canopies, coeval almost with the edifice, still lift their hands in eloquent supplication ; the ashes of the founder are yet by our side : through all changes, through all lapses of time, Sebert still guards the place. In conclusion, we would desire the reader to look back for a few moments over the engravings of the preceding pages. He will perceive that, with the exception of Sir Thomas Vaughan's memorial in the first page, which belongs to a position 144 LONDON. betAveen the tombs of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry V., the whole of the designs are arranged in a reversed chronological order. By the scanty materials thus borrowed from the Abbey, perhaps some faint notion may be obtained of the visible history of art to which we alluded, and of which the entire Abbey memo rials might form but one grand exposition. [Moaujneat of A.ymer de Valence, in the Choir, k325.J [MuU'd Sack.] LXXXV.— OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. It is profoundly interesting, philosophically as Avell as philanthropically, to think of the quantity of sheer simplicity, of the beautiful innocence and ignorance of infancy, that still survives in this six thousand years old Avorld. Above all, the unsophisticated condition, as to many matters, of rustic England, in this noon, almost, of the nineteenth century, is enough to fill Avith veneration Avhosoever Avill consider the evidences of it which are daily presented in that most instructive department of the public journals, the London Police Intelligence. A police reporter, indeed (or penny-a-liner, as he is sometimes, Avith too much levity, styled), is the truest historian of his age. And, as no other histories are half so true, so fcAV are nearly so entertaining, or so useful either, as those which he in dites : there only we have the manners of the time caught " living as they rise" — served up, as it Avere, piping hot — and human nature naturally delineated; everyAvhere else it is dressed up, varnished over, idealized, perhaps, or otherAvise so metamorphosed or mystified, as hardly to be recognised for the same thing that one is accustomed to see and to have to do Avith in its original condition of flesh and blood. Nay, your penny-a-liner is not the greatest of historians merely, but the most penetrating of philosophers, going to the root of the matter, and the most instructive of poets and dramatists, not only " high actions and high passions best describing," but Ioav ones quite as well. All this he is by reason of the matter-of-fact spirit in Avhich he Avorks. For this is his dis tinction, that (to the shame of literature it must be confessed) he is the only description of man of letters Avho is not in some sort, as such, a systematic liar. All other writers set themselves to embellish, elevate, refine truth and nature — some have gone the length of maintaining that this falsification, this lying, is the very soul and indispensable essence of the poetical, in all its forms ; he alone takes down and communicates whii he hears and sees simply as he hears anc^ VOL. IV. !< 146 LONDON. sees it — " among the faithless, faithful only he." Soriietimes, indeed, the penny- a-liner has not a proper understanding or feeling of this his high function ; with a Avholly vain and mistaken ambition he toils and tortures himself and his readers in attempting to give his police intelligence a poetical air ; and then there ensues the wildest Avork. One of the fraternity unhappily labouring under this distem per some short time ago had got on one of the morning papers — or possibly it Avas an old hand whom the lunacy had suddenly seized ; and if one of the most interesting columns in the sheet had been every day printed from pie, as it is called, that is to say from the types thrown by some accident into complete dis order and confusion, it would not have been worse. There, Avhere one looked, and where alone one could look, for the plain, unperverted truth of things, lay spread out and sprawling the most misbegotten mixture of jest and earnest, neither fish nor flesh, neither fact nor fiction, neither one thing nor another. It was as absurd a proceeding as if the Avriter had sought to impart pungency to his re ports by shaking a little cayenne pepper over each of them after he had written it out. Happily, the stock he had laid in of wit or slang, of second-hand similes, immemorial puns, proverbs, quotations, and other such stray intellectual trea sure, did not last long ; and the police intelligence recovered its old trustworthy sobriety, greatly to the relief of all students of that most important as well as attractive department of modern literature. It is really not a field for the antics of ultra-vivacity. If a man be a genius, or think himself such, rather let him be set to report the debates in Parliament, where frequently a little additional ani mation would not do much harm. ' But we were remarking that there is nothing of Avhich this London Police In telligence conveys a stronger impression than it does of the primitive simplicity and guilelessness, or gullibility, that still lingers, and indeed seems to be general, in the country parts of this kingdom, not excepting even those nearest to the metropolis. It appears, too, to be utterly unteachable. Pockets are carefully buttoned up, and the finest practitioner could scarcely hope to rival MuU'd Sack, the bold and handsome chimney-sweep, Avho contrived to rob Lady Fairfax, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II. ; but week after week comes the same un varying history of some great gaping innocent of a farmer from Kent or Surrey accosted on the streets of the roaring Babel by another rustic, looking as honest and as stupid as himself, Avho perhaps persuades him that he belongs to the same parish, or is one of his nearest relations (though he never heard of him before), and, at any rate, by this br some equally ingenious representation, easilj' seduces him into the next public-house. He may noAV consider himself as enact ing before heaven and earth the interesting part of the mouse fairly within the trap, and enjoying the toasted cheese. As the two sit over their tankard, a third, to all appearance equally a stranger to both, in the most natural Avay in the world drops in and joins them, and soon, in the fulness of his heart, unbosoming him self to his two ncAv friends, informs them what a happy fellow he is in having just come into possession of a handsome little independence — his only uneasiness at the moment being occasioned by not knowing where to find a proper channel by which he may convey a small donation to the poor out of his ncAv-found wealth, by way of shoAving his gratitude to Providence. What better can he do than entrust his charity to this honest farmer for the behoof of the parish to OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 147 which he belongs ? The other man from the country strongly, and quite disin terestedly, recommends this arrangement ; the farmer himself, stirred by bene volence, vanity, and beer, modestly puts in his word in favour of it ; it appears to be clearly a very advisable way of accomplishing the desired object. All that is necessary is that the farmer, to prove his respectability, should exhibit pro perty of his own to the amount of the sum the generous stranger is about to con fide to his care: straightway the ten, or fifteen, or tAventy pounds is put down on the table by each party, by the one in Bank of England notes or sovereigns, by the other probably in the equally avcU engraved notes of the Bank of Elegance. Nothing, of course, could be more satisfactory ; but let the good farmer learn to secure his cash more artificially against the dangers of the town ; his two friends Avill wrap up the whole for him in the way the thing should be done, and assist him to place it in his fob : does he not feel that, Avith it so folded and rammed down, he may laugh at all the pickpockets in London ? And so he may, in good sooth, and sing too, upon Juvenal's principle — " Cantahit vacuus coram latrone viator" — for his pocket is no longer worth picking — it has been picked already — he is noAV Avhat this old Latin poet facetiously calls a vacant wayfarer — and vacant enough he looks on making that discovery ; but, unfortunately, he is not coram latrone, or in the presence of the thieves, for in no long time after the solemnity of replacing the money they both (having done their work) took themselves off — first the one disappearing, and then the other going to see what was be come of him — and left the self-satisfied benefactor of his parish " alone Avith his glory." In this, or some such way as this, the process is now commonly managed : the thing aimed at is to get into actual contact with the man's cash ; to induce him to unbutton his pocket, and make visible and palpable manifestation of its con tents ; which object achieved, there is no further difficulty; he is as certainly plucked as ever Avas Mrs. Glass's goose after due performance of the initiatory measure of the catching. Sometimes a very simple expedient is successfully em ployed. On merely being taunted with not being rich enough to produce a cer tain sum, the unsuspecting subject of the experiment triumphantly draws forth his hidden wealth, and has it of course extracted from his fingers in a moment by the gentlest of operations. This seems to be the very height and perfection of an ingenuous nature, and to be paralleled by nothing except the conduct of the fascinated bird in flying into the invitingly open mouth of the rattle snake, if even that can match it. Yet, as Ave have said, instances of full- groAvn men being deluded in some such manner as this are of every-day occur rence. And here Old Experience has been able to do nothing, any more than if he had undertaken the instruction of any of the inferior generations Avhich, the philosophers tell us, are distinguished from the human animal chiefly by the Avant of the progressive tendency ; he might as Avell have kept a school for birds or Bourbons (the only humanities that are made an exception to this rule of the philosophers). The process of deplumation avc have been describing has been a standing London trick for some hundreds of years ; and, if anything, it seems to be usually performed noAV-a-days less artistically and with more facility than m former times as if the rustic visitors of the metropolis, of the class suited foi ]48 LONDON. being thus practised upon, by a singular privilege grew more and more innocent the farther the rest of the Avorld shot a-head of the manners of the age of gold. The original slang name of this stratagem Avas Coney-catching. The readers of Shakspere will recollect Slender's angry complaint to Falstaff in the beginning of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor:' "Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you, and against your coney-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern, and made me drunk, and afterAvards picked my pocket." These last words, found in the quarto edition of the play, though omit ted in the subsequent folio, exactly describe the particular mode of victimizing to Avhich this term was appropriated. But both the name and the thing itself Avere at this time of very recent introduction, if Ave may trust what is both the most complete and the earliest information we have on the subject, that given by Robert Greene, the famous dramatist, poet, and miscellaneous pamphleteer, in his 'Notable Discovery of Cozenage,' published in 1.^91. In the Preface to this tract (the first of three which he wrote on the same subject, and the fore runner of many more by other popular pens of the day), Greene speaks of coney-catching as a new art, "never heard of in any age before." His descrip tion has all the elaboration and formality of a scientific treatise. " There be re quisite," he begins, " effectually to act the art of coney-catching, three several parties ; the Setter, the Verser, and the Barnacle. The nature of the Setter is to draAV any person familiarily to drink Avith him, Avhich person they call the Coney ; and their method is according to the man they aim at The poor country farmer, or yeoman, is the mark they most of all shoot at, Avho they knoAV comes not empty to the town The coney-catchers, apparelled like honest civil gentlemen, or good felloAvs, Avith a smooth face, as if butter would not melt in their mouths, after dinner, Avhen the clients are come from Westminster Hall, and are at leisure to Avalk up and doAvn Paul's, Fleet-street, Holborn, the Strond, and such common haunted places, where these cozening companions attend only to spy out a prey ; who, as soon as they see a plain country-felloAV Avell and cleanly apparelled, either in a coat of homespun russet, or of frieze, as the time requires, and a side pouch at his side, ' There is a Coney,' saith one." The Setter then makes up to the man, and, entering into conversa tion with him, easily contrives to learn the part of the country he comes from, his name, and other particulars. This information, if he cannot himself prevail upon the countryman to go to drink Avith him, the Setter carries to his confeder ate, the Verser; Avho thereupon going off, crosses the Coney at some turning, and, meeting him full in the face, salutes him by his name, and inquires for all friends in the country. He is the near kinsman of some neighbour of the far mer's, in whose house he has been several times, though the amazed Coney, whose memory is surely none of the best, has entirely forgotten having ever before set eye upon him. But, at any rate, he is very Avell acquainted Avith his good neigh bour, the cousin or uncle of the stranger. For his sake, the latter proposes that they should drink before they part. " Haply," continues the account, " the man thanks him, and to the wine or ale they go.. Then, ere they part, they make him a Coney, and so ferret-claw him at cards, that they leave him as bare of money as an ape of a tail." For at this time, it seems, coney-catching Avas universally managed by the assistance of a pack, or, as the phrase was, a pair of cards. OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 149 Greene defines it, in his Preface, to be " a deceit at cards ;" seizing the occasion to run off into a strange disquisition about the invention of cards and dice by the people of Thebes, once upon a time when they Avere beleaguered and shut up in their toAvn by the Lacedaemonians. But sometimes it will happen that the at tempts of both Setter and Verser fail ; that " the poor countryman will not stoop unto either of their lures. In that case, continues . our author, " one, either the Verser or the Setter, or some of their crcAV, for there is a general fraternity be twixt them, steppeth before the Coney as he goeth, and letteth drop twelvepence in the highway, that of force the Coney must see it. The countryman, spying the shilling, maketh not dainty, but stoopeth very mannerly, and taketh it up ; then one of the coney-catchers behind crieth, ' Half part,' and so challengeth half of his finding. The countryman, content, offereth to change the money. ' Nay, faith, friend,' saith the Verser, ' 'tis ill luck to keep found money ; Ave'll go spend it in a pottle of Avine, or in a breakfast, dinner, or supper,' as the time of day requires." Other stratagems are still in reserve if this should fail ; but for these Ave must refer the reader to our author's own pages. In one Avay or another the countryman can hardly escape falling into the snare. In no long time after the tAVO have got him into the tavern cards are called for, or produced by one of them, and he soon begins to take an interest in certain tricks in which he is initiated, especially in a ncAV game called Mum-chance, at which, by his con nivance (secured Avhile they were left alone together for a few minutes), the one sharper cheats and plunders the other (who is, of course, as much a stranger to him as to the farmer) in most triumphant style. Then, " as thus they sit tip pling, comes the Barnacle, and thrusts open the door, looking into the room Avhere they are, and, as one bashful, steppeth back again, and saith, ' I cry you mercy, gentlemen, I thought a friend of mine had been here ; pardon my boldness.' " Invited by the Verser to come"in and drink a cup of wine, he proposes to play a game at cards till his friend arrives. " Why, sir," saith the Verser, " if you Avill sit down you shall be taken up for a quart of wine." "With all my heart," saith the Barnacle. " What avIU you play at? At primero, prime visto, sant, one-and- thirty, ncAv cut, or Avhat shall be the game ? " The Verser's proposal of mum- chance is readily assented to ; as before, the countryman lends his assistance to trick and fleece the ncAV-comer ; the play runs higher and higher; "this flesheth the coney, the sweetness of gain maketh him frolic ;" he is easily induced to ex change his subordinate and auxiliary part for that of a principal in the game. The natural result soon follows ; he first loses all his money, then he paAvns " his rings (if he have any), his sword, his cloak, or Avhat else he hath about him ;" and, in the end, he finds himself stripped of everything, except, perhaps, the indispensable habiliments that cover him. " This enormity," says Greene, " is not only in London, but noAv generally dispersed through all England, in every shire, city, and town of any receipt." As " a cloak for .the rain," or " a shadow for their villany," it seems, the prac titioners of this species of knavery Avere accustomed to speak of it by the name of the coney- catching art, or the coney-catching law : the latter mode of ex pression in particular appears to have carried a high relish with it to these scorners of the laAv which other people Avere fools enough to be frightened at and to obey, but which they only laughed at Avhile they rendered it a mock reverence. 150 LONDON. and professed not to transgress its requirements. They had also, Greene tells us, other laws ; as, for instance, high law, Avhich meant highAvay robbery ; cheating law, Avhich meant playing with false dice ; versing law, which was the passing of false gold ; figging law, or the cutting of purses and picking of pockets ; Bar nard's law, which he defines " a drunken cozenage by cards." This last, in truth, seems to have been only a species of coney-catching ; and from Greene's own account of the matter it may be doubted if the novelty Avhich he claims for the latter art, the principal subject of his pamphlet, is not, after all, a mere trick of book-making — a pretension put forth to excite the more curiosity and interest in his readers, and to enhance in their estimation the importance of his expo sures. In his Preface he makes the following statement : — " There Avas before this, many years ago, a practice put in use by such shifting companions, which was called Barnard's laAV, wherein, as in the art of coney-catching, four persons Avere required to perform their cozening commodity : the Taker-up, the Verser, the Barnard, and the Rutter ; and the manner of it, indeed, Avas thus : — The Taker- up seemetb a skilful man in all things, Avho hath by long travel learned Avithout book a thousand policies to insinuate himself into a man's acquaintance. Talk of matters of laAV, he hath plenty of cases at his fingers' ends, and he hath seen, and tried, and ruled in the King's courts ; speak of grazing and husbandry, no man knoAveth more shires than he, nor better Avhich Avay to raise a gainful com modity, and hoAV the abuses and overture of prices can be redressed. Finally, enter into Avhat discourse they list, were it into a broreman's faculty, he knoweth Avhat gains they have for old boots and shoes ; yea, and it shall escape him hardly, but that, e're your talk break off, he Avill be your countryman at least, and peradventure either of kin, ally, or some stale rib to you, if your reach far surmount not his. In case he bring to pass that you be glad of his acquaintance, then doth he carry you to the tavern ; and Avith him goes the Verser, a man of more Avorship than the Taker-up, and he hath the countenance of a landed man. As they are set, comes in the Barnard, stumbling into your company, like some aged farmer of the country, a stranger unto you all, that had been at some market-toAvn thereabout, buying and selling, and there tippled so much malmesey that he hath never a ready Avord in his mouth, and is so careless of his money that out he throweth some forty angels on the board's end, and, standing some Avhat aloof, calleth for a pint of Avine, and sayeth, ' Masters, I am somcAvhat bold Avith you ; I pray you be not grieved if I drink my Avine by you ;' and thus mi nisters such idle drunken talk that the Verser, who counterfeited the landed man, comes and draAvs more near to the plain honest-dealing man, and prayeth him to call the Barnard more near to laugh at his folly. Between them tAVO the matter shall be so workmanly conveyed, and finely argued, that out cometh an old pair of cards, Avhereat the Barnard teacheth the Verser a new game, that, he says, cost him for the learning tAvo pots of ale not tAvo hours ago : the first Avager is drink ; the next, tAvopence, or a groat ; and lastly, to be brief, they use the matter so, that he that Avere an hundred years old, and never played in his life for a penny, cannot refuse to be the Verser's half ; and consequently at one game of cards he loseth all they play for, be it a hundred pounds. And if, perhaps . when the money is lost (to use their Avord of art), the poor counti'yman begins to smoke them, and swears the drunken knave shall not get his money so, then OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 151 standeth the Rutter at the door, and draAveth his sword, and picketh a quarrel at his oAvn shadow, if he lack an hostler or a tapster, or some other to brabble Avith, that, Avhile the street and company gather to the fray, as the manner is, the Barnard steels away with all the "oin, and gets him- to one blind tavern or other, where these cozeners had appointed to meet." This, whatever distinctive name it might be called by, evidently was a mere variety of coney-catching, even if, with Greene, Ave take the employment of cards to be a part of the definition of that art. The Avhole mystery of this sort of roguery probably assumed a more scientific shape and aspect in the hands of this pamphleteer, and its other ex pounders Avhom his example called forth, than naturally or really belonged to it. The writer of a tract entitled ' Greene's Ghost haunting Coney-catchers,' Avhich appeared in 1602, ten years after Greene's death, seems to insinuate that the names at least given to the different performers by the original unfolder of the art of coney-catching were, to a great extent, of his oAvn invention. This writer, however, who calls himself S. R., and Avas probably Samuel RoAvlands, the author of a profusion of more prose and verse, has an object to serve in casting a slight upon the authority of his predecessor ; for he has many hitherto unheard of curiosities of art of his own collecting to set before his readers. His neAv nomenclature of coney-catching Avill be most distinctly given in his own Avords. " Marry," he says, " in effect there is the like underhand traffic daily used and experienced among some few start-up gallants dispersed about the suburbs of London ; who term him that draAvs the fish to the bait the Beater, and not the Setter ; the tavern Avhere they go, the Bush ; and the foAvl so caught, the Bird. As for coney-catching, they cleap [call] it Bat-foAvling ; the Avine, the strap ; and the cards, the limetwigs ; and he whom he [Greene] makes Verser, the Retriver, and the Barnacle, the Pothunter." This difference betAveen them as to names, he admits at the same time " breaks no squares," seeing that they concur as to things. But Greene, he thinks, might have improved his book by expatiating on various cheats Avhich he has not noticed ; for instance, the brcAvers' putting in Avillow leaves and broAvn buds into their Avort instead of hops (the primitive or ruder form of the quassia and cocculus indicus adulteration) — or " Mother Bunch mixing lime with her ale to make it mighty" — which is perhaps Avhat Steevens Avas thinking of Avhen he asserted that our ancestors made their sack sparkle by putting lime in the glass, in his note on the controverted passage in the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' Avhere " mine host of the Garter" says to Bar dolph, according to one reading, " Let me see thee froth and live ;" but, accord ing to another, " Let me see thee froth and lime." We do not knoAv whether the authority of this old pamphlet may be accepted as lending some support to the latter reading. "There might have also been compiled a delectable and pleasant treatise," continues our author, "of the abuse committed by such as sell bottle-ale, Avho, to make it fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put gun- poAvder into the bottles Avhile the ale is neAv ; then, by stopping it close, make the people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being truly sifted, it is nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder that Avorketh the effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties that drink the same." This truly strange and marvel lous artifice must, Ave apprehend, be reckoned among the lost inventions. We wonder if these cunning retailers of the olden time ever mixed shot as Aveil aa 152 LONDON. poAvder with their bottled ale — Avhich doubtless Avould have greatly increased the effect. The coney-catchers, this Avriter says, " having lost a collop of their living " by Greene's exposures, had invented a number of new tricks since his time. Some did " nothing but walk up and down Paul's, or come to shops to buy wares Avith budgets of writings under their arms," offering to recover bad debts. "Not unlike to these," the enumeration proceeds, "are they that, coming to ordinaries about the Exchange, where merchants do table for the most part [a phrase sound ing like an echo of Shylock's — " Even there Avhere merchants most do congregate," — as if Shakspere's line, then ncAV, had impressed its cadence on the public ear], Avill say they have tAvo or three ships of coals late come from NeAvcastle, and Avish they could light on a good chapman that Avould deal for them altogether " — on Avhich, tempted by a Ioav price, some one present Avill at last put perhaps forty shillings into the hand of the pretended merchant to secure the bargain. And then there follow many other rogueries, upon which Ave cannot attempt to enter — including "a sly trick of cozenage lately done in Cheapside," in the matter of a chopchain — a story of " how a man Avas cozened in the evening by buying a gilt spoon" in Silver Street — "the art of carrying stones," which is interpreted to mean "leaving an alcAvife in the lurch" — a relation hoAV " a country gentleman of some credit, walking in Paul's, as termers are wont that Avait on their laAvyers, had his purse cut by a new kind of conveyance " — " a notable exploit performed by a lift " (that is, a thief) — the frauds of apprentices, &c., &c. There is some rare reading in this tract by Master RoAvlands (if it be really of his penning) — though he has not Greene's dramatic talent, or sharp, graphic style, but is in truth rather a heavy, lumbering Avriter, and, to speak it reverently, not a little of a blockhead. We may here stop for a moment to notice the subject of the cant language in Avhich the laAvless population of those days conversed among themselves, as their successors still do. The names, as above given, for the different members of the cozening or SAvindling fraternity, and a fcAv other terms that have been quoted, may be considered as belonging to this peculiar speech. Its origin, however, avc believe, is not generally known. The earliest account we have found of it is in the very curious treatise entitled ' A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabonds, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esq'"'-,' Avhich Avas first printed in 1566. Harman, whose book is dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess of ShreAvsbury, was a country gentleman of Kent — a poor gentleman, as he describes himself, who had kept house for tAventy years before he drcAV up and published this treatise " for the utility and profit of his native country ;" and, although not uninfected by the pedantry of his time, of AvhIch his preference of the ncAV and learned AVord Cursetors or Cursitors to the vulgar vagabonds is a small specimen, he is a person of much penetration and sound sense, and he had taken great pains to collect his facts, as well as enjoyed very favourable opportunities of acquiring information not easily to be come at. It Avill be found that his treatise, which Avas reprinted at least three times Avithin seven years after its first appearance, continued to supply the greater and most valuable portion of their materials to most of the pamphleteers Avho wrote on the same subject for half a century after, some of whom pilfer not merely his facts and the substance of his statements, but his language itself,, Avithout the least acknoAvledgment. As the OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 153 ' Caveat' is not known to have been reprinted after 1573, till the modern impres sion (consisting only of a hundred copies) was brought out in 1814, it is probable that it had come to be generally forgotten in the next generation. Harman dis tinctly asserts that the cant language of the thieves and beggars was the deli berate invention of an individual in the early part of the sixteenth century. "As far," he says, "as I can learn or understand by the examination of a num ber of them, their language, Avhich they term Pedlers' French, or canting, began but within these thirty years, or little above, and that the first inventor thereof Avas hanged all save the head " (the meaning of these last Avords we do not profess to understand). In another place he states that they had "begun of late to devise some new terms for certain things ;" and he observes that no doubt they Avould in time change the words they then used for others ; yet we believe nearly all the Avords of more frequent employment that composed the speech on its first introduction will be found still to belong to it after the wear and tear of more than three hundred years. This may be ascertained by comparing the old voca bularies with those appended to several modern publications, such as the ' Life of Bamfylde Moore CarcAv,' the autobiographical 'Memoirs of David Haggart,' Ssc. The earliest, probably, is that given by Harman at the end of his treatise, which he heads — " Here followeth their pelting speech ; here I set before thee, good reader, the lend, lousy language of those leutering lusks and lazy losels," &c. Harman's vocabulary, Avith indeed nearly all the rest of his book, and Avith scarcely any ncAV matter, is reprinted in a peculiarly impudent piece of plagiarism entitled 'The GroundAVork of Coney-catching,' Avhich appeared in 159'2, intro duced by an address to the reader, declaring that the things there set down never yet Avere disclosed in any book on the same subject. This fraud is noticed in another pamphlet, entitled 'Martin Mark- All, Beadle of Bridewell, his Defence and Answer to the Bell-man of London; discovering the long-concealed originate and regiment of Rogues,' Sec, which Avas published in 1610, and Avas doubtless the production of RoAvlands, Avhose initials, S. R., are prefixed to it. "They "(the rogues), says this Avriter, "have a language among themselves, composed of omnium gatherum ; a glimmering Avhereof one of late days hath endeavoured to manifest, as far as his author is pleased to be an intelligencer ; the substance Avhereof he leaveth for those that Avill debate thereof; enough for him to have the praise, other the pains ; notAvithstanding Harman's ghost continually clog ging bis conscience Avith sic vos non vobis." Rowlands (or S. R.) gives us a voca bulary, or dictionary, of cant Avords of his oavu, Avhich he describes as enlarged from that of Harman. It has the addition of some curious cant rhymes. In his account of the origin of the thieves' language, RoAvlands agrees Avith Harman, but is somcAvhat more specific, as if he had obtained his information in part from independent sources. He -distinctly describes it as an artificial invention, and states that it Avas introduced in the time of a certain head or king of the beggars called Cock Lorrell, Avhose rule terminated in the year 1533. The Avords, he observes, are chiefly of Latin, English, and Dutch derivation, mixed Avith a few drawn from the French and Spanish. Martin Mark- All's Defence is an ansAver to a production by a much more famous Avriter, Thomas Decker, poet, dramatist, and miscellaneous pamphleteer, entitled ' The Bellman of London, bringing to light the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the kingdom,' &c., Avhich 154 LONDON. Avas first published in 1608, and long continued a popular favourite, as may appear from the circumstance of a neAV edition of it, described as " the fifth impression," having been brought out so late as in 1640. It is, hoAvever, in great part borroAved without acknowledgment from Harman's ' Caveat,' and from Greene's ' Notable Discovery of Cozenage.' At the end is what is called ' A Short Discourse of Canting,' Avhich contains nothing ucav; nor is there much more than Avhat had long ago been stated by Harman, in a chapter headed " Of Canting — how long it hath been a language — hoAV it is derived," &c., Avith Avhich Decker commences another pamphlet, published in 161"2, under the title of ' Lanthorne and Candle-Light, or the Bellman's Second Night's Walk ; in which he brings to light a brood of more strange villanies than ever.Avere till this year discovered.' NotAvithstanding this profession, many things in this second pamphlet also are stolen from Harman, though it also contains much curious matter Avhich appears to be ncAV. In treating of the cant language Decker says, " Within less than fourscore years noAV past not a word of this language was knoAvn," thus fixing its introduction to the same date assigned by Harman, the rest of Avhose account, indeed, he straightway goes on to abstract, with some altera tions, for the most part merely colourable to disguise the theft. It is a common misconception to confound this cant phraseology of our otdi- nary thieves and beggars, consisting of a fcAV peculiar terms and modes of expression mixed Avith and engrafted upon the language of the country, to the grammatical forms of Avhich it is entirely accommodated, with the wholly distinct and foreign speech of the Gypsy people. The latter is another language altogether, having as little connexion Avith the English as the Hindostanee has, to Avhich indeed, or to its fountain-head, the Sanscrit, the Gypsy tongue appears to be nearly allied. The notion of the identity of the Gypsy and the cant tongues has been fostered not only by such works as the ' Life of Bamfylde Moore CarcAV,' where the list of cant Avords at the end is designated a ' Gypsy Dictionary,' but by the higher authority of Avriters like Walter Scott, Avho, in his Guy Mannering,' has throughout represented ' Meg Merrilies ' and his other Gypsy characters as conversing among themselves in the cant language, Avhich he calls the language of their tribe. It is remarkable, by the bye, that Harman speaks of the Gypsies as utterly extirpated in England in his day. " I hope," he Avrites, " their sin (that is, the sin of his native English cursitors) is now at the highest, and that as short and as speedy redress Avill be for these as hath been of late years for the Avretched, wily, Avandering, vagabonds calling and naming themselves Egyptians, deeply dissembling and long hiding and covering their deep, deceitful practices, feeding the rude common people wholly addicted and given to novelties, toys, and ncAV inventions, delighting them Avith the strangeness of the attire of their heads, and practising palmistry to such as Avould know their fortunes," &c. "And noAV," he adds, " thanks be to God, through Avholesome laws and the due execution thereof, all be dispersed, ba nished, and the memory of them clean extinguished, and, Avhen they be once named hereafter, our children avIU much marvel Avhat kind of people they were." This, as Ave have seen, Avas in 1566. About half a century afterAvards, however, Rowlands (or whoever Avas the author of ' Martin Mark- All '), in stealing Har- mans description of the Gypsies in England, omits all that his predecessor says 01 D LONDON ROGUERIES. 155 about their disappearance, and indeed expressly speaks of them as still existing in the country. He says they came in in the time of the same King Cock Lorrell, in whose days the cant speech was invented. Other accounts concur in making the Gypsies to have made their first appearance in England in the early part of the sixteenth century. Harman's cursitors, or vagabonds, are mostly haunters of the villages, farms, and country parts ; though often having intimate connexions, too, Avith London, and in some cases, as it Avould appear, their head-quarters there. He is very full and luminous on the Ruffler (or sturdy beggar), the Upright Man (a sort of chief or ruler in the begging and thieving community), the Prigger of Prances (horse stealer), the Abraham Man (who pretended to have been insane, and to have suffered confinement in Bedlam, or some other house for lunatics), the Fresh- Avater Mariner, or Whipjack (pretending to be a shipwrecked sailor), the Dum- merer (feigner of dumbness), and many other varieties of the genus, old and young, male and female. But the Counterfeit Crank, or counterfeiter of the epilepsy, or falling evil, is almost the only one of his characters whom he brings forward upon the metropolitan scene. To this personage his eleventh chapter is devoted, and it contains, among other things, a long and amusing story of a Counterfeit Crank, Avho, early in the morning of All-Hallow-Day, 1566, Avhile the first edition of the book was still in the press, and Avas not yet half printed, made his appearance under our author's " lodging at the White Friars, Avithin the Cloysters, in a little yard or court, Avhereabouts lay tAvo or three great ladies, being within the liberties of London, whereby he hoped for the greater gain." Harman, watching his proceedings, soon became convinced that he was an im postor, and, indeed, after some questioning, reduced him almost to confession; but, having taken to his heels, it was not Avithout great difficulty and a long pur suit that he Avas at last overtaken, and fairly pinned in the house of an honest Kent yeoman, a good many miles from toAvn. And, after all, though he Avas stripped to the skin, and merely an old cloak thrown over him, he quickly found an opportunity of again making his escape, and, naked as he Avas, scampered across the fields, and got snug into cover somewhere in the vast impenetrable jungle of London. Nothing Avas heard of him for about a couple of months, but then, Avith matchless impudence, trusting to a ncAv disguise, on the morning of NcAv Year's Day, he presented himself a second time in White Friars. But Har man's practised eye was too sharp for him ; it was soon made apparent that he . was the same rogue who had but so lately got out of the clutches of justice; on which he bolted off again at Ludgate ; but this time he ran no farther than Fleet Bridge before he was caught. Being now sent to Bridewell, he was put in the pillory at Cheapside, "and after that," concludes the narration, "Avent in the mill Avhile his ugly picture Avas a-diaAving, and then Avas Avhipt at a cart's- tail through London, and his displayed banner carried before him unto his oAvn door (in Maister Hill's Rents), and so back to Bridewell again, and there remained for a time, and at length let at liberty on that condition he would prove an honest man, and labour truly to get his living. And his picture remaineth in BrideAvell for a moniment." An engraving of this picture, Avhich, Ave presume, Avas the " displayed banner" that Avas carried before its original in his procession at the cart's-tail, is given by Harman, as an embellishment to this history of the 1.% LONDON. Counterfeit Crank, whose name, it seems, was Nicholas Genings ; and it is ac companied by another of Nicholas Blunt, an Upright Man, Avhose trim and com fortable attire and bold bearing present a striking contrast to the rags, and dirt, and feigned decrepitude of his companion. We insert copies of both. [Genings and Blunt.] The chief lodging-houses resorted to by the thieves and Avandering beggars of the London district in Harman's day are stated to have been " Saint Quinten's, Three Cranes in the Vintry, Saint Tybbe's, and Knapsberg." "These four," he adds, " be AvithIn one mile compass near unto London. Then have you four more in Middlesex : DraAV the Pudding out of the Fire, in Harrow-on-the-Hill parish ; the Cross Keys, in Crayford parish ; St. Julien's, in Thistleworth ( Isle- Avorth) parish ; the House of Pity, in North-hall parish. These are their chief houses near above London, where commonly they resort unto for lodging, and may repair thither freely at all times .... The Upright Men have given all these nicknames to the places above-said. Yet have Ave tAVO notable places in Kent, not far from London ; the one is between Deptford and Bothered (Rother hithe), called the King's Barn, standing alone, that they have commonly ; the other is Kesbrook, standing by Blackheath, half a mile from any house.'' Har man has even preserved, in a long list, the names of the principal Upright Men, and other descriptions of rogues, Avho then haunted the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Sussex, Surrey, and Kent. Among the common beggars of this district Avere, he tells us, about a hundred Irish men and women, who had come over within the preceding tAvo years. " They say," he adds, "they have been burned and spoiled by the Earl of Desmond, and report Avell of the Earl of Ormond." Many of these Irish, it is mentioned in another place, Avent about with counter feited or forged begging-licences. Of the common beggars, called Paliards, or Clapperdoggers, and also of the Dummerers, many, too, it seems from other passages, were Welsh. Southwark, Kent-street, and Barmesey (Bermondsey) OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 157 street, are mentioned as the chief places of residence of the London tinkers, and the quarters in Avhich property stolen by the vagrants who strolled the neigh bouring country districts Avas most likely to be found. The old adage, that there is nothing new under the sun, would probably receive as ample illustration from the history of the rogueries of London, if we had the means of fully tracing it, as from any other region of human experience. It is wonderful how little inventive genius appears to have been called into action, as far as records go, in the contrivance of new tricks or Avays of cheating during some hundreds of years. But, on the other hand, it must be confessed that very little has been required ; no matter hoAV long or hoAv often any parti cular decoy or bait may have been used, it continues to catch the gudgeons as Avell as at first : — " Haec placuit semel : lisec decies repetita placehit." Doubtless, if not exactly the pleasure, at least the disposition or capacity " is as great Of being cheated as to cheat." The two tendencies are evidently made for each other. It is a mistake to regard them as naturally hostile. They are Avhat the logicians call antagonistic, or opposite but not contrary — that is to say, they press indeed in opposite directions, but it is so as to support each other, like the two sets of rafters that form the roof of a house. We do not absolutely affirm that the coney-catcher is as indispensable to the coney as 'the coney is to the coney-catcher ; but still Ave cannot help thinking that either would feel somewhat at a loss without the other — or, at any rate, that the beautiful balance and harmony of parts in the moral system would be consi derably impaired by such an abstraction. It is difficult to conceive for Avhat use or end the cheatable portion of the species could have been created if there were none to cheat them. Would they not be superfluities — incumbrances — violating and outraging by their very existence the first and most beautiful principle of all cosmogonical philosophy, that . nature does nothing in vain ? But, besides, these cheats are, after all, perhaps, not of so opposite a disposition or character, in any sense, to the rogues as is commonly taken for granted. The difference between the two is one of circumstances and position, or, at most, of mere ability and opportunity, rather than of anything more essential. A fool and a knave are not so unlike one another. On the one hand, your knave is, on a large or high vicAV, always a fool ; on the other, your great fool Avould often be a great knave, if he only had the wit. Observe how the fool is for the most part cozened and cheated — not through his folly alone, but through that and his dishonesty together — not through his stupidity so much as his cupidity : — it is the latter commonly that bites at the hook which the cheat cunningly baits for him. If he Avere merely a fool, he would be comparatively difficult to catch — fools, it is truly said, are taken care of by heaven — pure folly and simplicity is armed and pro tected by its very want of any obtruding faculty or passion on which designing villany can take hold ; it is a smooth-skinned eel Avhich slips out of the hand that tries to grasp it. But such guilelessness is rare. Hoav is the countryman en trapped in Greene's illustrations of coney-cathing ? Not, assuredly, by any aversion or scruple he has to join in cheating another person, however indisposed 158 LONDON. to have that operation performed on himself, and however he may, as he ima gines, have all his senses and faculties aAvake and on the stretch for his own pro tection. If he had thought only of taking care of himself, bumpkin as he is, he might have been safe — he had capacity, or instinct, enough for self-preservation, if he had confined his ambition to that ; what suspended his vigilance, and be trayed him, Avas his eagerness to draAV another into the snare from Avhich he thought he had himself escaped, and to share the dishonest gains of the coney- catcher in addition to getting scatheless out of his hands. And in all cases this is the propensity in his victim upon which the cheat counts most ; it is the fool's own incUnation to knavery, the Avish Avithout the wit, that principally makes him the knave's victim. Take another common London trick — that of money-dropping or ring-dropping. We have seen that Greene mentions this as one of the lures employed by the Setter or the Verser to seduce the countryman into the public- house, in his ' Notable Discovery of Cozenage,' written in 1 591 . The author of a little volume, entitled ' The Country Gentleman's Vade Mecum, or his Com panion for the Town,' in a series of letters, published in 1699, is, therefore, in error in telling us (in his 14th Letter) that guinea -dropping, as he calls it, or sAveetening, was a paltry little cheat that Avas recommended to the world about thirty years before by a memorable gentleman that had since had the misfortune to be taken off, that is to say, hanged, for a misdemeanor on the highway. At this date the trick, it Avould appear, Avas commonly practised on country gentle men, as it noAV is on servant girls from the country. Some half a century, per haps, later, as avc may gather from ' The Countryman's Guide to London, or Villany detected,' which has no date, but in which many things are copied from the preceding authority with certain alterations in accommodation to the change of times, we find the country gentleman transformed into a plain countryman or farmer. And here is the description of the trick given by the famous blind ma gistrate. Sir John Fielding, in a little tract entitled ' Some proper Cautions to the [Sir John Fielding.J Merchants, Tradesmen-, and Shop-keepers, Journeymen, Apprentices, Porters, Errand-boys, Book-keepers, and Innkeepers ; also very necessary for any person going to London, either on business or pleasure,' which is found at the end of ' A Brief Description of the Cities of London and Westminster,' printed in OLD LONDON ROGUERIES. 159 1776 : — " The next class (of gamblers or cheats) are those who find a paper full of gold rings, Avhich they take care to pick up in the sight of a proper object, Avhose opinion they ask. This set appear very mean, Avhich gives them an op portunity of saying they had rather have found a good piece of bread and cheese, for that he had not broken his fast for a whole day ; then wishes the gentleman would give him something for them, that he might buy himself a pair of shoes, a coat, &c. The cull immediately bites, and, thinking to make a cheap purchase of an ignorant fellow, gives hiha twenty shillings for four or five brass rings washed over. Or, what is more frequent, and yet more successful, is the picking up a shilling or a half-croAvn before the face of a countryman, whose opinion of it is immediately asked whether it be silver or not, and he is invited to share the finder's good luck in a glass of Avine or pot of ale. The harmless countryman, pleased at such an invitation in a strange place, is carried to an alehouse, Avhere the sharper's friends are waiting for him, and where cutting or playing at cards is soon proposed, and the countryman most certainly tricked out of all his money, watch, and everything valuable he has about him." Thus, Ave see, if harmless countrymen, and other honest and respectable persons, Avere someAvhat less keen in catching at advantages to which they are not entitled, less fond of a good bargain (to the extent of occasionally appropriating Avhat does not belong to them), less disposed to indulge in pots of wine or ale at the expense of other people, a little more solicitous than they commonly are to restore any article of value or apparent value they may pick up to its proper OAvner, they Avould fall into fewer scrapes and mischances. They would seldomer burn their fingers if they did not so often thrust them into the fire — more especially to snatch their neighbours' chestnuts. This consideration, along Avith others, has sometimes inclined us to think that, after all, the best and most effective Avay of legislating against SAvindling and thieving might be to punish the party who has lost his property, and not him who has abstracted it — the man who has been foolish, and careless enough to allow himself to be plundered or over reached, rather than the ingenious and dexterous practitioner Avho has contrived to throAV him off his guard. This is no more than the principle upon which the wise Spartans of old proceeded. " Lycurgus," remarks Montaigne, " considered in theft the vivacity, diligence, boldness, and dexterity of purloining anything from our neighbours, and the utility that redounded to the public, that every one might look more narrowly to the conservation of Avhat Avas Ms own, and believed that from his double institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was to be made for military discipline (which was the principal science and virtue to Avhich he would inure that nation) of greater consideration than the disorder and injustice of taking another man's goods." If the protection of property be the object, it may be reasonably doubted Avhether it Avould not be attained under this system, at least quite as successfully as under that now in use. And even on grounds of natural propriety and justice, considered liberally and without prejudice, Avould there be anything so very objectionable in thus rewarding ingenuity and leaving negligence and thoughtlessness to their natural punishment ? Is not clever knavery entitled to this much of protection and encouragement according to all the fundamental principles of the Rights of Man ? To whom does anything whatever rightfully belong, if not to him Avhom superior art, courage, or perse- 160 LONDON. verance has put in possession of it, and enabled to snatch it from another less highly endowed with these qualities ? Which of the tAvo is likely either to pre serve it most carefully, or to make the best use of it — ^he who could not keep it Avhen he had it, or he Avho, Avithout the original advantage Avhich actual pos session gives, yet succeeded in Avinning it ? Which may be supposed to feel the greatest regard and attachment to it, and to be, in so far as that goes, the most Avorthy of holding and enjoying it ? But, independently of these transcendental speculations, there is, as avc have said, the more homely consideration that the person Avho is swindled or plundered is often at heart very nearly as great a rascal as the abler rogue who cheats him, and has, in the transaction between them, been only a loser instead of a Avinner at the same game, which he has played indeed less openly and boldly, and altogether in a more pitiful and sneaking style, as well as less skilfully and successfully, than the other. No, the cheat in these cases is not the only public nuisance, the only offender that the state ought to endeavour to put doAvn or extirpate ; the cheatee, his natural prey and victim, is also a description of person of the most detrimental character in any Avell-governed commonwealth ; if the latter could be got rid of, the former too Avould soon die out ; and sound legislation therefore avIU direct its attention as sedulously to the one object as to the other. LaAvs against thieves and SAvindlers must be combined Avith the enlightenment and general moral elevation of the class of the people on Avhose imperfect knoAvledge, or imperfect honesty (oftentimes the consequence of imperfect knowledge), these depredators trade and live. And herein the press too may lend a useful helping hand, even by such details and exposures as Ave have just been giving. [Man and woman la stocks,] '* A stockes to btaye sure and safely delayne Lazy, lewd leuterers that lawes do oifend." Haitnan's ' Caveat,* t/t. [Cemetery, Keusal Green.] LXXXVL— LONDON BURIALS. Whatever the evils that have gradually grown up around the burial customs we have inherited from our forefathers, let it not be forgotten that the essential principle remains to this hour peculiarly appropriate, beautiful, and elevating. In burying our friends and relatives in the precincts of their accustomed church, we seem but — in death — to set the seal to that spiritual union which in life they have there so often and so reverently sought; whilst, at the same time, they are placed where Ave, the objects of their love, and the sharers in their faith, may be the most frequently and regularly reminded of them ; — not to add to the anguish of the loss, but, on the contrary, to confirm and to stimulate the hope of the recovery. There is another point of view from which our church burial-grounds present an aspect of impressive interest. We hear complaints sometimes made of the indiscriminate character of the burials in them ; we hear regrets expressed that men of erring, or violent, or criminal lives, should at their last need enjoy the shelter, the neighbourhood, the communion they have done so little previously to deserve. Are we wrong in thinking this very circumstance one of their most touching features ? Such places are to the heart and mind what the old sanctuaries were to the body, only divested of all their evils, and a VOL. IV. M 162 LONDON. thousand times more numerous : they are places of refuge for the " heavily laden," whose very flight hither should satisfy us at least of their right to " rest." With these views, the imperative divorce of our places of Avorship and of burial from each other, that seems likely to take place at a very early period in our great cities, can only appear justifiable on grounds of the strongest necessity : that there are such grounds it is our painful but necessary duty to show in the present paper on London Burials. The custom of burying in and around churches arose gradually, and from a peculiar concurrence of causes. The early Christians had before them the example of the Jews, Avho were accustomed to build synagogues for prayer and Avorship near the remains of those who had been eminently distinguished for their goodness and piety ; of the Greeks, who offered sacrifices near their sepulchres ; and of the Romans, Avho had their chapels and altars erected over their deceased relatives, to propitiate their manes. But it Avas the persecutions to Avhich the Christians were exposed that appear to have first determined their funeral customs. Not only the living but the dead were subjected to the insults of the Pagan population around ; and, in consequence, a secure place of deposit for the dead became highly desirable. Those extensive subterranean excavations, without the walls of Rome, known as the Catacombs, seemed to be such a spdt. The entrance into the Catacombs is on the Via Appia, only a short distance from the city ; but the place itself is so extensive, that travellers have estimated their entire length, including all the ramifications, at not less than six miles, Avhilst the guides say twenty. The long winding galleries of Avhich they are chiefly composed are, in general, about eight feet high and five wide ; along the sides are ranged the cells or graves, in tiers, generally three in number ; at in tervals large vaulted chambers are found, of a very church-like aspect ; in differ ent parts altars, paintings, and inscriptions, of Christian origin, meet the eye. It is in these catacombs, thus full of interesting memorials, that Ave believe Ave must look for the true commencement of our present burial system. When the Christians, under circumstances of the greatest secrecy, had brought their dead hither, among which, of course, would be some of their most distinguished martyrs, they would not only desire to pray near to them, in accordance Avith all previous feelings or customs, but the privacy of the place would appear no less favourable to their own meetings for mutual advice, comfort, and for the perform ance of their religious rites. Hence the erection of the altars and the formation of the churches in the catacombs. After the complete establishment of the Christian religion, by the conversion of Constantine, and the consequent removal of the difficulties which had attended the burial and worship of the disciples of the faith, we learn from St. Jerome in what affectionate reverence the place was still held, in spite of its natural horrors. He tells us that he visited them every Sun day ; and observes, " When I found myself in that profound obscurity, I thought the expression of the Psalmist verified, ' Descendit in infernum vivens.' " "The churches being thus at first erected over the place of the dead, the next step was to reverse the process, and to bury the dead where convenience and growing pros perity caused the erection of the churches. Constantine's burial seems to have oeen an innovation of this kind. He was interred in the vestibule of the Temple LONDON BURIALS. 163 of the Holy Apostles (which he had built), at Constantinople, as the highest mark of gratitude the church could bestow. From this time progress in the same path Avas easy. Princes who, like Constantine, had peculiarly distinguished themselves as patrons of Christianity, great benefactors, men illustrious for their piety among the bishops, began to obtain similar privileges. In England St. Austin (or Augustine), Bede tells us, was thus buried under the portico of Can terbury Cathedral, and the history of the same edifice shows us the farther ad vance of the dead into the church itself. The succeeding prelates to Augustine were all buried in the same spot (the north porch) till the space Avas occupied, when they Avere removed into the interior. Such practices once commenced in the cases of the few, were sure to extend to the burials of the many ; to all those at least Avhose Avealth or rank, or intellectual, moral, or religious qualifications, Avould enable them to exercise influence for such objects. For even when the superstitious belief held by the early Christians, that the emanations from the bodies of saints exercised a peculiar virtue upon all those who lay near them, had died away, there still remained the more permanent influences that we have alluded to in the commencement of these remarks, and Avhich, there is no doubt, have per petuated the existence of the custom down to the present time, in spite of the heaviest and most manifold disadvantages. It was on the 8th of March, 1842, that the Committee of the House of Com mons Avas appointed, to which Ave are indebted for the discovery of a state of things in London Avhich is truly described by one Avitness as "sickening" and " horrible," and Avhich exhibits England, through its capital (in the words of the Committee's Report), as an " instance of the most Avealthy, moral, and civilised community in the Avorld, tolerating a practice and an abuse Avhich has been cor rected for years by nearly all other civilised nations in every part of the globe." And, casting our eyes casually over the large amount of evidence collected, Ave cannot but be convinced that these words convey an unexaggerated statement. We read of one burial-ground in the Dover Road, still used for numerous inter ments, although, nineteen years ago, a Avitness (a clergyman) thought it scan dalous to go on burying there ; of another (St. Margaret's, Westminster), which Avas reported, by the Commissioners for the improvement of Westminster, to Parliament, in 1814, as unfit to be used much longer, but which is still in active operation; and of a third (Spa Fields), that there is " no more space, but that you can always get a grave there," — nay, graves for not less than thirty or forty persons Aveekly, that being frequently the number of interments. The age of miracles seems to have revived Avith regard to many of these burial-grounds. Martin's, in the Borough, measuring about 295 feet by 379, is supposed to have received within ten years 14,000 bodies; in St. Mary's, Vinegar Yard, belong ing to the parish of St. Mary-le-Strand, " better than half an acre " in size, 20,000 bodies are computed to have been interred within the last half-century; Avhilst in a vault below a Methodist chapel, built as a speculation by Messrs. Hoole and Martin, in the New Kent Road, from 1600 to 2000 bodies are to be found, not buried, but heaped up in coffins, nearly all of wood, in a space 40 yards long, 25 wide, and 20 high. But all the marvels of the churchyard must give place to those performed in connexion with Enon Chapel. This building m2 164 LOl^DON. is in Clement's Lane, in the Strand, and Avas built by the minister himself (a Dissenter) as a speculation. The upper part, opened for public Avorship in 1823, is separated from the lower by a boarded floor merely; and in this space (about 60 feet by 29, and 6 deep) 12,000 bodies are estimated to have been interred! The expanding pavilion of the Fairy Tales was nothing to this ; and it must be admitted that such a chapel formed a very necessary pro vision for a neighbourhood where a witness has no doubt that three times as many persons die immediately around the building in question as in any other part of the parish. But the means ! — One naturally feels anxious to knoAv hoAv these things were accomplished, seeing that the simplest process of reckoning shoAvs them, to ordinary senses of apprehension, as impossible. We must pre mise, then, that there is no doubt that the late minister Avas one of Avhom it might be said, as it was of the illustrious sexton of St. Anne's, Soho, Fox, by one of his satellite gravediggers, in words that show how the admiration of the dar ing genius of the master overpoAvered, for the moment, all other consider ations : — " the man that is dead has done most wonderful things in the vaults ! " As Avith many other of Nature's greatest marvels, however, these " Avonderful things" are apt to lose something of their romance and grandeur in the light of common day. It appears, then, that up to a certain period a dram ran obliquely across the place, and that the Commissioners of Sewers suddenly took it into their heads to compel the minister to arch it over. This Avas no doubt aAvlcAvard; but, adapting himself admirably to circumstances, the opportunity was taken of conveying away some sixty loads of mingled earth aud human remains, which were shot the other side of Waterloo Bridge, where a pathAvay Avas then forming. It may suffice to illustrate the nature of the soil removed, to observe that a fcAv baskets-full having been thoughtlessly given aAvay by the men employed to some labourers executing a slight street repair, a croAvd Avere presently found round a human hand. After the stoppage of the conveniences already indicated, a ncAV method Avould be required at Enon Chapel. There is little or no doubt as to Avhat that Avas. Many inquiries Avere made of the Avitnesses who appeared before the Committee, as to Avhat Avould be the feelings of the people regarding the use of quick-lime. The minister of Enon Chapel managed matters very differently. " I know," says Mr. Walker, speak ing of this place, " that lime has been inserted in enormous quantities, and that the bodies have been consumed in less than a twelvemonth:" but then the minister made no fuss about it. But what Avas done with the coffins ? — the economy of such systems could not certainly afford to wait till good sound elm should decay. Here is the explanation : " I understood it Avas a regular thing for them to burn them in their OAvn house, which was adjoining the chapel."* And, although this witness speaks from hearsay, Ave find sufficient corroborative testi mony. Mr. Whittaker, an undertaker, speaking of Spa Fields, says, " They have got a small bricked place, I observed the last time I Avas there, in the ground, similar to a Avashhouse or an outhouse of that description, and I saw a fire and smoke coming out of it. I cannot tell what Avas burning." Being asked Pitt's Evidence, Question 165. LONDON BURIALS. 165 if he suspects it )vas coffins, he replies, " I cannot say, because the Avindow wa blocked up and the door fastened, and I could not see." If there still be any doubt, Thomas Munn's evidence will remove it. He, a resident in Drury Lane, opposite the burial-ground there, states expressly, " I have seen the man and his Avife burn them ; it is quite a common thing." The removal of decayed bodies seems to be a generally recognised mode of making room, even in what one would suppose Avere the most respectable London burial-places. Thus during the repair of St. Martin's, Ludgate, Mr. Anderton, member of the Common Council of the City, saw numerous cart-loads of matter, consisting of decayed coffins, bones, and ashes, taken aAvay, the labourers mixing the whole up with rubbish to prevent the passengers from perceiving their occu pation. In St. Anne's, Soho, St. Clement's, Portugal Street, St. Martin's in the Fields, &c., &c., similar removals have taken place. Lastly, Ave may add to this general explanation of the remarkable capacity of our metropolitan burial-grounds, the facts, — that the greater part of them are materially elevated above their original level; thus St. AndrcAv's Undershaft is two feet higher, St. Mary-le- Strand four feet, and the ground belonging to St. Martin's in the Fields, in Drury Lane, no less than five feet ; — and, that in numerous cases they bury to Avithin a foot or tAvo of the surface. With regard to the last-mentioned custom, it seems sextons are particularly jealous of any interference, for, when a Avitness Avho appeared before the Committee took the trouble one day to probe the ground in Portugal Street, the sexton told his assistant, if he ever came into the ground again, to "run the man through Avith the searcher." But we must now look a little closer into the details of the " wonderful " pro ceedings of the guardians of our grave-yards ; even though, in so doing, Ave meet with much that is disgusting, much truly appalling, for, alas ! all is but too true ; and too important in its truth, to the health, morals, and character of our countrymen, to be passed lightly over, Avhilst we can say such things still are. Foremost in horror are the proceedings thus described in the evidence of W. Chamberlain, who says, " In the year 1831 I was first employed by Mr. Watkins, the head gravedigger of St. Clement's churchyard ; from that time till the year 1838 I never opened a grave Avithout coming into other coffins of children, groAvn persons, and Avhat we term odd sizes, Avhich Ave have been obliged to cut away, the ground being so excessively full that Ave could not make a grave without doing it. It Avas done by the order of Mr. Watkins and Mr. Fitch, the sexton of the parish, that these coffins should be chopped up, and the wood placed against the Avails and the palings of the ground. We have come to bodies quite perfect, and Ave have cut part aAvay Avith choppers and pickaxes. We have opened the lids of the coffins, and the bodies have been so perfect that we could distinguish males from females ; and all those have been chopped and cut up. . . During the time I Avas at this work the flesh has been cut up in pieces and thrown up behind the boards which are placed to keep the ground up where the mourners are standing, and Avhen the mourners are gone this flesh has been throAvn in and jammed down, and the coffins have been taken aAvay and burnt." Further questions elicit further explanation as to the mode of cutting up such bodies, but the details ase too horrible for us to recapitulate. We must. 166 LONDON. however, add the background to the picture here shown. Chamberlain con- tinues — " The sound of cutting away the wood Avas so terrible that mobs used to be round the railings and looking ; Ave could not throAV a piece of AVood or'a piece of a body up Avithout being seen ; the people actually cried 'shame' out of the Avindows at the backs of the houses on account of it.'' The men Avho give this evidence state over and over again that they Avere reluctant to do such things, but that the sextons have made them by threats of depriving them of their employ ment if t'tiey did not. One of these men, whilst engaged one day with others, saAv his companions chopping off the head of a coffin, and ha.ppening to look at it, saw that it was his own father's ! " I told them to stop, and they laughed," he says. HoAvever, as he was firm, they yielded to Avhat no doubt they thought his absurd scruples. These almost incredible practices, it appears, have taken place at Enon Chapel, the Globe Fields, St. AndreAv's Undershaft, St. Anne's, Soho (where the Avonderful man Fox did not mind cutting through a body buried but three weeks), St. Clement's churchyard, St. Clement Danes, St. Martin's in the Fields (Drury Lane), St. Mary's, Vinegar Yard — in short, at so many places that it is far from improbable that the greater part of London grave-yards have Avitnessed similar scenes. Among the minor practices of the grave-yard gentry, may be mentioned the interring bodies at insufficient depth Avhen they happened to be in an idle mood, and then, Avhen it became necessary to turn the spot to the best advantage, of digging the coffins up, and re-burying them at the suitable depth. From a similar motive, Avhen a deep grave has been dug, it appears that it is some times allowed to remain open till it is filled, boards and earth being merely placed over the top. At the grave-yard in Drury Lane they gradually Avaxed so con fident in this habit, that even Avhen the unhappy relatives said they did not like to go aAvay Avithout seeing the grave filled up, they pertinaciously refused. Men who could do the things Ave have described, Avere scarcely likely to leave undone any petty crime that lay in their path. Fox stripped the lead off the coffins in the vaults of St. Anne's, Soho, also the handles and nails of the com moner coffins in the burial-ground, and sold them, — and his is evidently by no means a solitary case. Apart from that fearful kind of interest we naturally feel in such an occupa tion as grave- digging, — that ransacking among the aAvful secrets of the grave, from Avhich humanity generally so instinctively shrinks, — the audacity of the me tropolitan portion of the fraternity, and the circumstances under which they carry on their calling, give ncAV and startling features to their lives. Their cli mate, sports, the incidents that disturb the even tenor of their Avay, their drunkenness, dangers, and premature deaths, are all in keeping, are all peculi arly their OAvn. Our summer, it seems, is often their Avinter ; our Avinter, their summer. " The deeper I go, it gets so warm that it is enough to melt one ; it is just the same as if you Avere in a fire Avlien you go doAvn so far ; in the coldest day it Avill be Avarmer there than on a fine summer's day ; even if you go doAVn to the Avater, the Avater Avill be as warm as possible in cold Aveather, and in warm Aveather it will be quite as cold ; in a frosty morning you can see the steam come up, just as you Avould out of a dung-hole."* Then for their sports. Is the grave- ? B. Lyons' Examination, Question 1130. LONDON BURIALS. 167 digger inclined to unbend among his assistants and be merry ? — the materials of sport are always at hand ; a few tall bones are collected and set up, these are their skittles ; a round goodly-looking skull forms the ball, and, noAv all prepared, they begin, and merrily goes the game. There Avants but a Mephistophiles to make the sexton's reality rival the poet's wildest fictions. As to the incidents Avhich occasionally add a ncAV horror even to those who have supped full of horrors their lives through, we need but one example. Lyons says, " I Avas try ing the length of a grave to see if it Avas long enough and wide enough, so that I should not have to go down again; and while I Avas there the ground gave Avay, and a body turned right over, and the two arms came and clasped me round the neck." The drunkenness, dangers, and premature deaths to Avhich these men are exposed, belong to another department of our subject — the consequences to the living of the state of things described, in connexion with the dead. To thjis we noAV address ourselves. Passing over rapidly the less important phenomena of their calling, the smell, frequently " dreadful beyond all smells" — to which that of a cesspool, it seems, is as rosewater in comparison, and Avhich leaves in the mouth a coppery taste as if you had been " chewing a penny-piece " — let us pause for a moment upon the narration of Valentine Haycock, which has a certain simple ps^thos in it, that should find the way to all hearts, and strengthen the determination of those who have influence, to get rid of such unnatural as well as intolerable sufferings. He is asked, " When you have been digging yourself, have you felt yourself affected immediately ? — ^Yes ; I have been obliged to get up in the best way I could, and I have been in such a tremble that I did not know whether I was going to die myself or not ; I have gone in-doors, and have sat a little time to recover myself; I have had something from the doctor to bring me round again." Again : — " With regard to the sensations you have experienced when you were opening a grave, did you feel a taste in your mouth or a sensation in your throat ? — In my throat ; it was completely dried up with the stench, it is so sharp upon you; so that I have got up and heaved, and actually brought blood up." We need not wonder that he adds, " I have been obliged to go in-doors and get a little brandy," or that he should have to acknoAvledge that gravediggers are not generally a sober set of men : Ave should wonder if they were. As another of the class expresses it, they are made drunkards "by force." It will be hardly neces sary to say that these sensations cannot be often felt without incurring serious dangers; but as dangers they are among the slightest of the vocation. One poor fellow happened to cut his finger one morning at breakfast, but so superficially that he did not think it worth Avhile to bind up the wound. He had a child's grave to dig that day in St. George's, Southwark. During his work some of the soil got to the cut, presently the finger swelled, his arm began to ache, he Avent home, never again to quit it alive. Another, Chamberlain, not only lost the use of his limbs, but his wife caught the infection, and was similarly diseased. That this man's statement to the Committee was true enough, we may judge from the corroborative testimony of Dr. Copland, who mentions the cases of a gentleman and his wife ; the first died of a malignant fever through inhaling the vapours of a vault, and the second from the infection. Chamberlain's case is but a fair com- 168 LONDON. mentary on the lives of the Avhole fraternity. It is certain that the gravediggers of London are generally unhealthy, and that their lives are prematurely shortened. But it Avould be some relief to them if they could be sure that even this doom were the worst; but, by a kind of retributive vengeance, from the very graves they so unnaturally disturb. Death Avill sometimes suddenly appear, and re-asscrt, with his own terrible power, the sanctity of his violated domains. A step down into a ncAvly- opened vault, a single blow of a pickaxe into an uncovered coffin, and the intruder has fallen, as if shot, beneath the breath of the dread king of terrors. The cases of the tAvo men at Aldgate in 1838, -and of the one at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1840 (the last marked by the additional feature that the surgeon who attended him, and the surgeon's domestic servant, both died of infection), are here in point. An incident of a similar nature, but less known, is mentioned in Mr. Walker's book.'* At a burial in the church of Notre Dame, at Montpelier, in France, Peter Balsalgette, a street porter, was em ployed as gravedigger. He had scarcely descended into the grave Avhen he became convulsed, and fell. Joseph Sarrau immediately stepped forth, and descended, holding a rope, to save him. Just as he reached the bottom he became insensible, and was drawn up half dead. But there were noble hearts congregated round that grave. John Molinier next descended, but feeling himself suffocating, could do no more than give the signal to be drawn up again ; when his brother, Robert Molinier, a strong and robust man, took his place, and fell dead at the bottom. Lastly, the brother of the first victim, Charles Balsalgette, ventured into the fatal pit, succeeded in partially arranging the body of Robert Molinier, before he was forced to get out ; then a second time descended Avith a handkerchief dipped in Hungary Avater between his teeth, but finding himself unable to stay, was about to ascend, Avhen he too dropped back lifeless, and thus terminated the tragical scene. Of the five men, John Molinier and Sarrau only recovered; and the latter Avas for a long time afterAvards so pale and emaciated as to give peculiar significance to the appella tion he received, the Resuscitated. We cannot but append to this melancholy and interesting case Mr. Walker's note, with its ingenious hypothesis. " In the effect of these exhalations," he sayis, " Ave may obtain an explanation of certain phenomena Avhich some authors have considered as miraculous. Gregory of Tours relates that a robber, having dared to enter the tomb of St. Helius, this prelate retained him and prevented him from getting out. The same author informs us that a poor man, not having a stone to cover the place in Avhich one of his children had been buried, took aAvay one Avhich closed the opening of an old tomb, in which rested without doubt, says Gregory of Tours, the remains of some holy personage. The unhappy father Avas immediately and simultaneously struck dumb, blind, and deaf. These facts may be attributed to mephitic vapours." f We now reach the last and most important department of our subject — the effects of our metropolitan system of burial on the public health. Of the sul phuretted hydrogen gas, which Sir Benjamin Brodie says is evolved from bodies * ' Gatherings from Grave- Yards ;' a work to whicb the public are directly and indirectly much indebted for the present state of opinion on the subject it disousses. t Page 95. LONDON BURIALS. 169 in a state of decomposition, it appears that- a single part to five hundred of atmo spheric air is fatal. Yet that such gases are constantly issuing from the crowded burial-grounds of London we have an overAvhelming amount of evidence to prove, derived both from the unerring Avarnings of the senses, and the illnesses and deaths which folloAV Avhere such warnings are unheeded. Persons attending divine service have been taken ill, no doubt frequently Avithout knowing the cause, for of course matters do not generally proceed to such a very decisive point as in Enon Chapel, where, we learn, members of the congregation Avere taken out faint ing nearly every Sunday. Relatives folloAving the dead to the grave have been smitten by the insidious poison, leaving the undertaker to record the brief history, " Dear me, the poor creature followed a friend here last Sunday, and I am come to bury him this." Clergymen have resigned their office, as at St. Andrew's Undershaft, in order to take a much less valuable living in the country, where they could at least breathe the pure air of heaven ; Avhilst others have been obliged to stay a certain distance from the grave in open grounds, or to stand at the top of the stairs of a vault to read the burial service, as at St. George's Church, Southwark ; where for many years the clergyman dared not venture into the vault, and Avhere the undertakers were compelled to use the most indecent haste in taking the mourners doAvn and bringing them up again to prevent danger. Medical men have found it necessary to advise patients to remove from the neighbourhood of such places, who were rich enough to be able to do so, or have had the pain of seeing them sink gradually when they were too poor ; cholera and fever have been found most violent, as at Leeds, in the attacks on the living, Avhere the congregation of the dead has been the most dense. To what extent the effluvia ascending from so many graves into the air may injure the general health of London, is not easy to determine. That it must be very serious is evident from all the foregoing evidence. Sir Benjamin Brodie says he has ahvays considered this one cause of fever and disease in the metropolis ; and Dr. Copland, the censor of the College of Physicians, states his belief that of the four or five particular circumstances which influence the health of large towns, " the first, and probably the most important, is the burial of the dead. We have to consider not only the exhalations of the gases and the emanations of the dead into the air, but the effect that it has on the subsoil or the water drunk by the inhabitants." We may form some notion of the latter effect from a single but most significant fact ; they had some years ago to shut up a pump close to St. Clement's churchyard, the Avater being found unfit for use. With an interesting story, illustrating in a forcible manner the evils attending the gratification of the desire to which Ave alluded in the commencement of our paper, we pass on to the more agreeable subject of the remedies. At a certain place in Germany a very corpulent lady died during the last century, and Avas buried according to her desire in the parochial church. " The Aveather at the time was very hot, and a great drought prevailed. The succeeding Sunday, a week after the body had been buried, the Protestant clergyman had a very full congre gation, upwards of nine hundred persons attending, that being the day for administering the Holy Sacrament. It is the custom in Germany that when people wish to receive the Sacrament, they neither eat nor drink until the cere- 170 LONDON. mony is over. The clergyman consecrates the bread and wine, which is un covered during the ceremony. There Avere about one hundred and eighty com municants. A quarter of an hour after the ceremony, before they had quitted the church, more than sixty of the communicants Avere taken ill : several died in the most violent agonies, others of a more vigorous constitution survived by the help of medical assistance ; a most violent consternation prevailed among the whole congregation, and throughout the town, and it Avas concluded that the wine had been poisoned. The Sacristan, and several others belonging to the vestry, Avere put in irons. The persons arrested underAvent very great hardships : during the space of a Aveek they Avere confined in a dungeon, and some of them were put to the torture ; but they persisted in their innocence. On the Sunday following the magistrate ordered that a chalice of Avine, uncovered, should be placed for the space of an hour upon the altar : the hour had scarcely elapsed when they beheld the wine filled with myriads of insects. By tracing whence they came, it Avas perceived by the rays of the sun that they issued from the grave of the lady Avho had been buried the preceding fortnight. The people not belonging to the vestry Avere dismissed, and four men Avere employed to open the vault and the coffin; in doing this two of them dropped down and expired on the spot, the other tAVO Avere only saved by the utmost exertions of medical talent." * We have before quoted the words of the Report, in which our practice with regard to burials is contrasted Avith that of " nearly all other civilized nations ;" and remarked, that however startling the statement, it is perfectly true. Seek the abodes of the dead in France, Spain, Germany, or in the principal States of America, and in place of the hideous burial-grounds described in these pages, we find open and airy places, ahvays decent, frequently beautiful. Instead of sending away in disgust the few Avhom sad necessity has made their visitors, they often form the favourite places of resort to the neighbouring population. France has nonourably distinguished herself in this matter. Not content with stopping the pld custom, and prescribing the strictest sanitory laAvs for the future, she purified ner metropolis of the evils already in existence, by the Herculean task of removing the enormous masses of human remains which had been congregated there : hence the famous Catacombs, where noAV lie the bones of at least three millions of people. But our practices have been put to shame even by our oAvn provincial towns ; Liverpool and Manchester have had their cemeteries years before London seems to have paid the slightest attention to them. In the ' Penny Magazine ' we find the credit of originating the first movement here, attributed to Mr. G. F. Carden, who, it appears, unceasingly agitated the question for several years. In 1832 his exertions Avere croAvned with success, by the passing of the act for the formation of the cemetery since known as that of Kensal Green, Though less picturesquely situated than some of the other and more recent cemeteries, it has a peculiar interest, from being the first. Let us, therefore, take a short walk through it," if it be only to enjoy the contrast Avith the burial- grounds we have left behind in the city. After a pleasant walk of between two and three miles along the Harrow road, * 'New ¦york Gazette of Health,' a» transcribed by Mr. Walker. LONDON BURIALS. 171 the handsome, substantial-looking Doric gateway meets the eye on the left, standing a little back ; we pass through, and the grounds of Kensal Green Ceme tery are before us. These are extensive, comprising about forty-six acres, and are surrounded with a lofty Avail on either side of the gateAvay,"noAV almost covered by a rich belt of young forest-trees, evergreens, and shrubs ; whilst the opposite boundary is left partially open to the eye, so as to admit of fine prospects, from different parts, over the country round Shepherd's Bush, Hammersmith, Notting Hill, and Bayswater. In the interior the grounds are divided by broad winding and straight walks, the rest being laid out in grassy lawns, relieved by par terres of flowers, clumps of trees and shrubs, and, above all, by the glitteringly white monuments of every possible outline, style, and size, from the simple flat stone, up to places large enough for their owners to reside in Avhilst living. The chief buildings are the two chapels and the colonnade. The chapel for the Dissenters on the left, in the unconsecrated ground (divided from the con secrated by a clearly marked boundary), is, with the exception of its front, Avhere the Doric pillars give something like dignity of expression, markedly plain ; the chapel for the use of members of the Church of England, on the right, is, on the contrary, both noble and handsome, and the interior, Avith its solemn gloom, and single painted-glass window, rich though simple. The only furniture of the place are the seats at the sides for the mourners, and that dark- looking table in the centre Avhere lies the being mourned. This, by means of machinery, at the proper period descends down to the very floor of the catacombs below ; which consist of a main passage extending in the direction of the length of the chapel, and crossed by five others. The walls of the latter are formed into a series of deep and broad arches, each of them divided off so as to suit the convenience of purchasers. There is in these vaults alone room for five thousand persons. We need hardly add that all bodies received in the catacombs must be placed in lead. The memorials of those buried here are placed in the colonnade above ; which, with the chapel, forms three sides of a square. A monument by Sievier in one of the corners deserves notice. A female figure reclines on the base, or table, entirely covered Avith a shroud, Avhilst above are tAvo other figures representing an angel bearing off the soul of the deceased. There is something peculiarly beautiful, it seems to us, in the novel part of this idea, the shroud. Not only is the awkwardness of the old arrangement thus got rid of, Avhere, instead of understanding the sculptor's re finements of the one figure representing the body, and the other the soul, you only Avondered how the deceased managed to be in effigy in two places at once ; but the idea itself noAv becomes fine. You not only see from Avhence the joyful spirit has departed, but are impressed with a keener sense of the glorious im mortality it has put on, from the apprehension of the veiled mortality it has put off. Before quitting the chapel and the catacombs, Ave must not omit to notice that a true benefactor of his kind rests here. Dr. Birkbeck. The colonnade shown in a previous page is distinct from the chapel colonnade ; like that, it is erected over catacombs, and has its walls pretty well covered with the memorials of those who have been interred in them. Sir William Knighton's is distinguished by its admirable bust in relief. A scroll, with several names inscribed on the unrolled part, whilst in the rolled remainder you see how much room yet remains, is some- 172 LONDON. thing more than a pleasant conceit ; for it accomplishes, though in a quaint way, what should be the end and aim of all funeral sculpture — it suggests what Ave often manage to forget, even in cemeteries, that we too are mortal. Memorials like this and the one before mentioned, with some others scattered about the grounds, make us hope that such burial-places will do with us what they are said to haA^e done in foreign countries, — improve the public taste. " The funeral mo numents," says Dr. BoAvring, in his evidence before the Committee, "Avhich have been erected in many parts of Europe, and Avhich are very superior in character to those Avhich had existed before the present generation, are evidence of this." But then, both the sculptors and their patrons must get rid of the ideas Avhich have placed so many melancholy mistakes in these same grounds. They must not think that largeness of structure is synonymous with grandeur, or that a style of architecture unlike anything the Avorld ever saAV, necessarily meets our vieAvs of originality, or that a really good idea cannot be sufficiently appreciated Avithout endless repetitions of it. The stately Corinthian column, broken midAvay in its height, is a noble type of man cut doAvii in his prime ; but, what if, in stead of imitating the work, the artists of the cemetery would imitate him Avho designed it, that is, think for themselves ? The tombs of the greatest pretension at Kensal Green are mostly ranged at the sides of the central walk leading to and from the chapel. Here are. Dr. Valpy's, in the form of a Roman temple ; the Rashleigh family's, of Menda- billy, consisting merely of flat and head stones, but of such gigantic size and rude structure, that one involuntarily thinks of primeval ages, and men like gods ; Avhilst, opposite each other, at the junction of four principal Avalks, the most con spicuous objects in the most conspicuous part of the cemetery, stand St. John Long's, Avith a figure of the goddess of health raised on high within an open Grecian temple, and the prince of horsemen's, DucroAv's, in the shape of a large Egyptian building, with bronze sphynxes each side of the door, and surrounded by a garden Avith floAvering evergreens, standard roses, and sweet-smelling stocks, Avith gravelled Avalks and bronze railings. Scattered about in other parts are many objects of interest or curiosity. Among the former may be included the memorials of the daughter of Sir Walter Scott ; of Boaden, " a gentleman dis tinguished for his literary attainments ;" and of the late Editor of the ' Times :' among the latter those of Julia S. Lamb, Avhich has a lamb lying bound and helpless on the top (Avhere the pun by no means enhances the pathos) ; and the gigantic monument of the Hygeist, as he delighted to be called, Morison, the alchemist of the pill-box, who found there what the elder simpletons looked for in the crucible ; but, strange to say, did not find, Avhat might have been more reasonably looked for from him ; alas ! for posterity, the Hygeist does not live for ever. There are some touching inscriptions and incidents, if we may so call them, to be found here. The Avords " I shall go to her, but she shall not return unto me," inscribed on the upper part of a stone, and, in more recent cha racters, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," on the lower, describe a common but moving history better than more laboured attempts; and the inscription on an infant, who died at the age of eight months, commences with a fine line — " 'Twixt two inviting Avorlds he stood" — LONDON BURIALS. 173 The best of the incidents to Avhich Ave alluded is the care exhibited in the monu ment of Elizabeth FilipoAvitz, the celebrated violinist, and certain children of Polish refugees, where the fresh wreaths of everlasting flowers shoAV the dead are not forgotten. Our space will only allow us to mention one other memorial, the lofty and elegant sarcophagus in the Gothic style, on the left of the Avalk leading to the Dissenters' Chapel, Avhich is built in memory of a sculptor, and is as truly beautiful as artist's monument should be. Altogether the effect of the grounds is highly pleasing and satisfactory ; one feels that they form Avhat the Avord ceme tery in the Greek implies — a place otrest or sleep. Upwards of six thousand persons have been interred here since the opening — a circumstance that in itself shoAvs how great was the want of such a place. Not one of its least advantages is, that every private grave is secured from disturbance, forming indeed a freehold Avhich may be bequeathed by its owner. The system of mapping out the ground is Ingenious and satisfactory. The Avhole is divided into squares of 150 feet by 100, for each of which a leaf of a very large massive- looking and iron-bound volume is set apart ; here every grave in the square is numbered, and the occupied ones marked. This book, and printed plans of the squares, are ahvays accessible to the parties concerned, so that mistakes and decep tions are alike guarded against. There are some points in which improvement may be made. When the cemetery companies obtained their respective acts of par liament, the dangers of burying near the surface, and of burying several bodies in the same grave, one abo\'e another, Avere not so well knoAvn as they have been since the publication of the Report of the Committee. Now, hoAvever, it appears many of the best informed men consider there should be no grave Avithin five feet of the surface, whilst at Kensal Green, and no doubt at the other cemeteries, the: bury Avithin four feet. Since the formation of Kensal Green, other cemeteries have rapidly folloAved ; [Norwood Cemetery.] 174 LONDON. until they are to be found in pretty nearly all directions. Thus Ave have one at NorAVOod, another near Peckham Rye, a third at Brompton, a fourth at Stoke Newington, a fifth at Highgate, and a sixth at Mile End, each having its own peculiar advantages and claims to public support. Among these, Highgate is peculiarly fortunate in its position — the slope of a picturesque hill, with the beautiful parish church just above, appearing to form a part of it, and be low, at a little distance, the mighty metropolis outspread. The cemetery at Stoke Newington, knoAvn as Abney Park, has some peculiarities which demand a brief notice. It is (using the AVords of the proprietors) " a General Cemetery for the City of London, and its eastern and north-eastern suburbs, which shall be open to all classes of the community, and to all denominations of Christians, Avithout restraint in forms." There is no separating line, in this cemetery, between the parts appropriated to members of the Church of England and to Dissenters. Abney Park is associated Avith the memory of Dr. Watts. Here he lived many years in the mansion of his friend Sir Thomas Abney ; and here he died. There is a tradition that the remains of Oliver Cromwell are buried in this spot ; that he was not interred in Westminster Abbey, nor torn from his royal resting-place by impotent revenge ; that Fleetwood, who lived here, secretly gave the body of the mighty man a resting-place in his OAvn grounds. As a cemetery, this place has some natural features of great beauty and interest. It is remarkable for its fine old trees, amongst which there is a splendid cedar of Lebanon, of two centuries' growth. It has also a beautiful Arboretum, formed Avith great taste. The buildings are bold and effective, though of limited extent ; and Avhat is wanting in costliness has been more than compensated by the skiH of the architect, Mr. W. Hosking, who has here shown how much may be effected by " that true simplicity Avhich results from a few carefully-studied and Avell- finished features." Since, then, all these places have sprung up at the bidding of private enterprise and intelligence, Avhence the necessity for the sitting of the Committee or the anti cipated interference of the Legislature ? Who, it may be asked, will much longer continue to bury in such places as Enon Chapel, or the grounds of Portugal Street or Drury Lane ? The answer must be — the poor. Not that their sensi bilities are more blunted than those of any other class, but that they are unable to do justice to them. Whilst the bad places are cheap and the good dear, it is idle to expect them to change. Even at present, it is painful in one sense, but most gratifying in another, to read of the difficulties and the anxieties they are constantly subjected' to in their desire to commit their kindred decently to the earth. What, then, must be the case if the expenses were doubled or trebled, as they Avould be by burial in the present cemeteries ? At Enon Chapel, for instance, from 12*. to 15*. included every expense, whilst at Kensal Green the cheapest grave costs (with use of chapel) 30*. ;* and then there is the additional expense attending the distance, which is alone calculated at 20s. * This is not the case at all the cemeteries now established. AVe learn that the charge for a common inter ment at Abney Park (Stoke Newington) and at Mile End cemeteries is but ten shillings, including every expense ; and it may be remarked that a commodious one-liorse carriage adapted as a hearse and mourning-coach is coming into use, induced probably by the suburban cemeteries. LONDON BURIALS. 175 Hence a sufficient necessity for public cemeteries, were there no other. The rich may defend themselves from monopolies ; the poor cannot. The mere promulga tion of an abstractedly just and necessary law, prohibiting burials within our great towns, will not suffice. Better than that were it to adopt the Neapolitan system, and have a vault for each day in the year, to be opened in regular rotation for the bodies presented for burial, and consumed by the use of quicklime before the revolving year brings the same vault again into use. This method would at least secure the public health ; and although somewhat revolting to our English notions, could hardly be more so than the appeal to the parish, which the other would too often' necessitate. But it is pleasant to see what care has been taken of this in the Act at present before Parliament. We may not have much of that sentiment among us Avhich gives rise to the touching and beautiful customs of Tuscany, where there are fraternities, numbering among their members people of the highest rank, who make it their express business to bury the poor, and Avhere the Grand Duke himself has been known to attend in the usual garb, Avhich entirely conceals the features of the wearer, — we may not, we repeat, have much of this sentiment, but it Avill be at least something to show that now the wealthier classes have escaped from the disgusting scenes of our London burial-grounds, they are anxious to enable the poor to do the same. The Act brought in by Mr. Mackinnon last session, and which now stands over to the next for consideration, provides that, after a period to be fixed, no future inter ments shall take place in churches, or within cities of a certain size. Committees of health are to be appointed in every parish, or by a union of parishes, Avho are to purchase land and build cemeteries, properly enclosed. Part only of each cemetery is to be consecrated, and the remainder carefully marked by boundary lines : in both divisions chapels are to be erected. With regard to the pauper poor, a portion of the ground is to be set apart, and for all other persons a table of fees is to be formed, in Avhich, of course, the class we have especially spoken of (the independent poor) will be cared for by the most moderate possible charges. With regard to the other regulations, a valuable provision is em bodied, to prevent the dead being kept too long unburied, and it is enjoined that graves are not to be opened twice within four years. The question of com pensation seems to be skilfully got rid of, or made trifling ; chiefly by the proviso that the rectors or incumbents, with the clerks and sextons, of parishes may elect to perform the duties of the cemetery in connexion with them, and receive the same fees as before, or such loAver ones as they may find it advisable to fix. Lastly, we may notice a very agreeable portion of the Act, which promises in time to make the old burial-grounds as great an ornament, and of as great value to the metropolis, as they are at present the reverse. The churchwardens of the different parishes are empowered, after a certain time, to plant them with shrubs and trees, or to turn them to such other purpose as they may determine, pro viding the ground be not disturbed above a foot in depth for twenty years. Let us hope the builders are not then to come in. The places where so many genera tions of our forefathers have been buried ought not to be disturbed on any pretence short of the most absolute necessity, whilst here the necessities are all on the oppo site side. We want more open spaces — let us not lose the few we have. And Avhat ir6 T.ONDON. men are there lying in some of these grave-yards? Who would lightly break up such places as St. Saviour's, where Massinger lies buried, or Bunhill Fields, with its John Bunyan ? Let us rather, as regards their aspect, transform those places too into cemeteries. Let green leaves and sweet-smelling floAvers, fresh and beautiful as their own imaginations, wave around them ; let us feel how sweetly they must "sleep," how serenely "rest!" (Uljhgkta Cmwlfiy,] ..fxMn ^/¦¦'^^. " ,• "^ /r iSr-- /¦ // ' N A '- [First Firc-cnffhie. LXXXVII.— LONDON FIRES. Op all the rallying words whereby multitudes are gathered together, and their energies impelled forcibly to one point, that of "Fire!" is, perhaps, the most startling and the most irresistible. It levels all distinctions; it sets at nought sleep, and meals, and occupations, and amusements ; it turns night into day, and Sunday into a "working-day;" it gives double strength to those who are blessed with any energy, and paralyses those who have none; it brings into prominent notice, and converts into objects of sympathy, those who were before little thought of, or who were perhaps despised; it gives to the dwellers in a whole huge neighbourhood the unity of one family. There are probably but few inhabitants of London who have not, at some time or other, witnessed a "fire," or experienced the awful emotions attendant on it. The wild cry which breaks the stillness of sleep, and arouses young and old in the dead of the night, is perhaps as terrible as the scene which the eye is afterwards called upon to witness ; the uncertainty as to the locality of the catastrophe, and the probable suffering of those who are near and dear to us, gives to the first waking moment an undefined, but intense, terror. When we VOL. TV. N 178 LONDON. gain the spot, perhaps only a few houses removed from us, we may see the glimmerings of light in an upper window, and perhaps a poor startled inmate entreating for succour. A crowd gradually collects, night-patroles or policemen assume the guidance below, and everybody calls out to everybody else to go somewhere, or do something, for the release of the sufferers. In a short time we hear an engine dashing through the neighbouring streets : perhaps it is a " half-pint" parish engine, eagerly urged on as a means of gaining the proffered reward for first arrival ; but more probably it is one of the Fire-Brigade engines. The turncock is aroused, the hose of the engine applied to the plug, and men and boys (of whom there are always plenty at a fire) are hired at sixpence an hour to work the engine. Then does the bold fireman force an entry into the hapless house, and combat his fiery foe at close quarters — a notable improvement, by the bye, introduced by Mr. Braidwood ; more hazardous, but more effectual, than the old method of pouring a stream from without through a window to fall whither it may. Then may we mark how the firemen, neglecting the mere furniture of the house, look first to the safety of the inmates, and then to the extinguishment of the fire itself; and we may contrast with this the senseless terror which prompts the in-dwellers, before the arrival of firemen, to turn every thing literally " out of window ;" to hurl looking-glasses, tables, chairs, to the ground, where they are of course dashed to pieces, Avithout service being ren dered to any one — unless, indeed, it may be of that kind which is called '' spiting an enemy," the fire being considered as such. The fire increases in intensity ; the roused inmates find an asylum in the house of a neighbour; and a flood of water is poured on the burning materials. At one moment, when a portion falls in, the glare is deadened ; at the next, the flame bursts forth with redoubled energy. More and more engines tear along to the lurid spot ; more and more spectators assemble ; every one asks, and no one can answer, how the fire arose ? Are they all saved ? Are they insured ? As time progresses, so do the terrible apprehensions of the neighbours, each adjoining house becoming in turn the object of solicitude. As the bulk of ignited material increases, so does the distance at which the conflagration is visible, and so also the field of terror and solicitude. There is a singular difference in the manner in which fires are regarded by the populace in different countries. Without alluding to the fatalism of the Turks, which lamentably damps their energies at such a time, Ave may notice a difference in this matter between the Londoners and the Parisians. Some few years ago the London correspondent of the French newspaper ' Le Temps' gave the following paragraph : — " There is something imposing in the spectacle of a fire in this metropolis. The English people, commonly so phlegmatic, so slow, so morbid, seem, in the twinkling of an eye, wholly to change character. What self-possession, Avhat order, under circumstances so painful and difficult ! Accus tomed as I have been to similar scenes in Paris, I could previously form no idea of the astonishing promptitude with which assistance the most efficacious was at once organized. I compared our wretched little engines, dragged with difficulty over the pavement of Paris by our brave pompiers, already half dead with that fatigue before the real occasion for their exertion begins— I compared those with the powerful pump-engines brought to the sjrot by four powerful horses at LONDON FIRES. 179 full gallop, and the firemen sitting at their ease on the engines. I thought of the wild confusion of our chains — of the cries of all the workmen — of our leathern buckets brought empty to the engine, — while I saw before me the water pouring, the streets inundated, and the pipes, like brilliant^efs d'eau, lit up by countless torches, and rising above the crowd as a symbol of safety to man in the midst of dangers from fire. With us every passer-by is stopped to work the engine ; here, the difficulty is to prevent the people from so doing." Improve ments have been made in the fire establishment at Paris since the above remarks were written. The statistics of London fires are by no means devoid of interest, and the time may come when they will form an index to the social advancement of the people ; for in proportion as houses are built more and more fire-proof, and habits of carefulness become more and more diffused, the number of destructive fires will assuredly lessen. That improved modes of building and regulating chimneys will lessen the liability to fires may be shown from the fact that in many recent years one-sixth of all the destructive fires have had their source in chimneys and flues ; while the startling number of fires occasioned by the heedless use of a candle near bed-curtains show how much evil results from sheer negligence. From a few details with Avhich we have been kindly furnished by Mr. Braidwood, the Superintendent of the London Fire Establishment, it appears that in the nine 3'ears from 1833 to 1841, both inclusive, there were 6587 fires and " alarms" of fire in the metropolis, for which the engines had to be called out ; of these, nearly 1600 were chimney fires and " false alarms," and 5000 were real fires, yielding an average of 556 per annum, or about three in tAvo days ; out of every three, about two are entered as productive of " slight damage," leaving an average of one serious fire in every two days. It is only on an average of several years that a just estimate can be taken ; for at particular times the devastation has been unusually great. Thus, in ' The Times ' of Aug. 21, 1835, there occurs the following paragraph :: — " On a careful review made yesterday of the returns made from the twelve metropolitan stations to the head office since the 31st of July, a period of twenty days, they exhibit an astounding list, after omitting mere fires in chimneys and such minor accidents, of no less than 108 distinct houses or warehouses in London or its immediate environs that have been on fire, in the full sense of the word, within this brief period. Of these, no less than 39 were destroyed ; 26 greatly damaged, many of these requiring large outlay before they can be made again habitable ; and 43 that have been slightly damaged. The value of the property sacrificed must be immense ; perhaps a quarter of a million sterling would be a moderate estimate." It has been found, from an average of years, that, besides private houses, the number of conflagrations in buildings Occupied by licensed victuallers, salesmen, bakers, and carpenters, has been greater than among any other classes. How far different months of the year, days of the week, or hours of the day, may be associated with the occurrence of fires, is an inquiry which may one day throw some light on the economical arrangements of the inhabitants of a great city ; at present it has been ascertained, by comparing a few years together, that more fires have occurred in December, and fewer in April, than in the other months ; more have occurred on Friday, and fewer on Saturday, than on the other days of 80 LONDON. the week ; more have broken out at about ten in the evening, and fewer at about seven in the morning, than at any other hour of the day. The number of years from which these averages have been struck is too small to justify any immediate deductions therefrom ; but the very minute details now collected and recorded every year by the London Fire Establishment will by degrees increase the value of such averages. It is a subject for melancholy reflection that many lives are yearly lost at these fires ; and every one must be aware how great have been the efforts lately made to lessen the number, by providing " escapes " for the inhabitants of a burning house. If we take the five years ending with 1837, during which there were fifty-seven persons burned to death in London, as a fair average, we obtain about eleven per annum as the number for whom provision has to be made. The fire-escapes constructed within the last few years, and submitted to public inspection, are almost innumerable ; some being calculated to be used by the individual himself in escaping, and others by the assistance of persons from without. Many pieces of apparatus have been contrived in which the unfor tunate person is expected to buckle and strap himself to complicated appendages, at a moment when he is ill fitted, by agitation and fear, for the observance of rules of conduct. The Society of Arts has given numerous premiums to inge nious persons for the construction of machines having the desired object in view. Sometimes the machine consisted of a series of ladders, sliding — telescope fashion — into one another, and supported by a platform beneath ; sometimes a car, in which the person was to take his seat, and was to be lowered down a ladder by means of pulleys ; sometimes a chair or settee was so constructed that, when a person got into it from a window, the chair would gently descend to the ground. In one case a premium was paid for a kind of rope-ladder, of which the rounds were so made as to be fitted to each other longitudinally, and elevated from the street in the form of a long straight rod, but without being detached from the ropes forming the two sides of the ladder ; two hooks at the top of the apparatus were to be fastened to the window-sill ; Avhile a jerk at the bottom unfixed all the rounds from their vertical position, and allowed them to fall into their proper places. But it is surprising — or rather perhaps it is not surprising — ^how few lives have been saved by any of these contrivances. The truth is, that most such require too much adjustment at the critical moment when their services are required; either they are in the hands and under the management of those who are too much agitated to do them justice, or they have to be brought from a distance, and to undergo a long process of adjustment. Many benevolent persons have formed themselves into a society for the preservation of life from fire, by provid ing, at different parts of London, machines intended to act as fire-escapes. Many may have seen, in front of the Foundling Hospital, and in other convenient localities, machines of rather a ponderous construction, destined to act as fire- escapes in time of peril ; and the governing authorities in many of the parishes haAre provided machines for a similar object. Another kind of "escape," one of which is carried by most of the fire-engines, consists of ladders six or seven feet long, all of which are made exactly alike, the upper end being smaller than the loAver : each end is furnished with a pair of iron loops or sheaths so contrived that LONDON FIRES. 181 the top of each ladder can be inserted into the loops at the bottom of another, and thus several can be joined end to end. A lengthened apparatus can be thus put together in a very short time, and hoisted to the window of a burning house. Mr. Leigh Hunt, in one of the papers in his ' Companion,' strongly urges the propriety of every one — who has aught to care for but himself alone — to provide some simple contrivance in a house, whereby its inmates might be lowered from a window in case of peril. He says, " a basket and a double rope are sufficient; or two or three would be better. It is the sudden sense of the height at which people sleep, and the despair of escape which consequently seizes them, for Avant of some such provision, that disables them from thinking of any other resource. Houses, it is true, generally have trap-doors to the roof, but these are not kept in readiness for use ; a ladder is wanting, or the door is hard to be got up ; the passage to it is difficult, or involved in the fire; and the roof may not be a safe one to walk on ; children cannot act for themselves ; terror affects the older people ; and therefore, on all these accounts, nothing is more desirable than that the means of escape should be at hand, should be facile, and capable of being used in concert with the multitude below. People out of doors are ever ready and anxious to assist." True, but would the inmate always have nerve enough to manage the rope safely during the descent of the basket ? The arrangements for extinguishing a fire are much more extensive, and have been more successful, than those relating to the safety of the inmates : the house cannot help itself — the inmates may. In looking back at some of the devastating fires which have visited London in past ages, we must not fail to remember that the employment of bulky masses of timber in the construction of houses must inevitably have engendered a greater risk of conflagration than now exists. Every iron beam or bar, used as a substitute for one of wood, must lessen liability to destruction ; and hence we may easily account for one cause of extensive fires in times when iron was rarely employed in house-building. How our ancestors endeavoured to extinguish fires we can only guess from the nature of things. Buckets of water would be brought and thrown upon the flaming materials by the bystanders, or the thatch of a cottage would be pulled down, or one group of houses would be allowed to burn itself out, and others would be tended for. After a time, when the ingenuity of machinists enabled men to use some more effective means than mere buckets of water, a kind of syringe or squirt was employed, which seems to have been the first rudiment of a fire-engine known in England. Numbers of these were kept by the parochial authorities, as the small fire-engines now are. Their construction was very simple. Each squirt was about three feet in length, with an aperture at the loAver end about half an inch in diameter, and a capacity of about half a gallon. It had a handle on each side, and was worked by three men, thus : — two men held the squirt by the handles and the nozzle, while a third worked a piston, within it in the manner of a syringe ; the aperture was held downwards in a vessel of water while the squirt Avas being filled ; and when filled the nozzle was directed up wards, and the stream of water directed on the burning materials by the working of the piston. Whoever has seen a common schoolboy's " squirt" will easily understand the nature of the apparatus. 182 LONDON. There is an allusion in Dryden's ' Annus Mirabilis' which might at first sight seem to apply to a common fire-engine ; but it may, perhaps, considering the date of the ' Annus' (1666), relate to these large syringes, which, Ave are elsewhere told, were greatly increased in number after the Great Fire, but were shortly after wards superseded by fire-engines. Dryden's stanza, descriptive of the customary usages at a fire in his day, runs thus : — " Now streets grow throng'd, and busy as by day : Some run for buckets to the hallow'd quir«; Some cut the pipes, aud some the engines play. And some, more bold, mount ladders to the fire." It is to Germany that we owe the construction of the fire-engine, popularly so called. One Hautsch, a Nuremberger, constructed, in 1657, a machine, con sisting of a water- cistern seven or eight feet long, drawn on a kind of sledge. It had arms or levers Avorked by twenty or thirty men, whose exertions propelled from the machine a stream of Avater an inch in diameter, and, as it is said, to a height of eighty feet. Hautsch distributed engravings of his new machine in different parts of Germany, and offered to make such engines for sale. By the year 1672 the engines had received considerable improvements, chiefly through the ingenuity of two brothers. Van der Heyden. These persons, as Beckmann'* informs us, Avere inspectors of apparatus for extinguishing fires at Amsterdam, and invented the flexible hose or pipes, which have ever since formed part of the fittings of a fire-engine. These flexible pipes enabled the stream of water to be carried in various directions, and thus brought to bear on parts of the burning mass which could not otherwise be reached. The inventors obtained an exclusive privilege for making and using these machines for twenty- five years ; and they also published a work descriptive of their new engine, in which seven plates represent fires at Amsterdam at which the old engines (of Hautsch, probably) .were employed, and twelve at which Van der Heydens' new engines were used. When, or how, or by Avhom the fire-engines were introduced into England has not been clearly traced; but it seems probable that we may date the introduction shortly before the conclusion of the seventeenth century. In France, too, the same date may perhaps be assumed; for we find that, in the year 1699, Louis XIV. gave an exclusive right to Dumourier Duperrier to construct certain machines called pompes portatives, and he was engaged, at a fixed salary, to keep in repair seventeen of them, purchased for the city of Paris, and to procure and to pay the necessary workmen. In the year 1722 the number of these engines Avas in creased to thirty, which were distributed in different quarters of the city ; and at that time the contractors received annually twenty thousand livres. By what steps the fire-engines of the seventeenth century assumed the form presented by those of the nineteenth, and on what principles of science their action depends, are matters which must here be passed over very briefly. It was some time ere the engines possessed Avhat is termed an "air-chamber," that is, a space containing a certain quantity of air, which became compressed into a smaller space when water was contained in the engine : this compression in creased the elasticity of the air, and this elasticity was, in its turn, made to * ' History of Inventions.' LONDON FIRES. 183 contribute to the forcible ejection of the water through the nose or pipe of the engine. The men who with such alacrity lend their services at a fire, and work two long arms or levers, are doing neither more nor less than working a pump, the valves of which are so arranged as to draw water into the engine from the reservoir, pool, or plug, thence into the air-chamber, and thence force it with considerable velocity towards the burning materials. But it may now be asked, to whom have these engines belonged, and on what system has the fire-engine establishment been regulated? That the whole are now in the hands of Insurance Companies (with the exception of the small parish engines, and those possessed by private persons) is pretty well knoAvn ; but we must look back to the period immediately subsequent to the Great Fire for the origin of the system. In an order of the Corporation of London,* the City was divided into four quarters, in respect of the suppression of fires ; and the regu lations enacted throw considerable light on the fire-police system of the times. " Item. That every of the said quarters shall be furnished and provided, at or before the feast of our Lord God next ensuing, of eight hundred leathern buckets, fifty ladders, viz. ten forty-two foot long, ten thirty foot long, ten twenty foot long, ten sixteen foot long, and ten twelve foot long ; as also of so many hand-squirts of brass as Avill furnish two for every parish, four-and-twenty pick axe sledges, and forty shod-shovels. " Item, That every one of the twelve companies provide and keep in readiness thirty buckets, one engine, six pickaxe-sledges, three ladders, and two hand- squirts of brass. " Item, That all the other inferior companies provide and keep in readiness buckets and engines proportionable to their abilities, pf which those least able, to provide portable engines to carry up-stairs into any rooms or tops of houses ; tho number of which buckets and engines to be from time to time prescribed and allotted by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen's direction. " Item, That every alderman who hath passed the office of shrievalty provide four-and-twenty buckets and one hand-squirt of brass ; and all those who have not been sheriffs, twelve buckets and one hand-squirt of brass, to be kept at their respective dwellings ; and all other principal citizens and inhabitants, and every other person being a subsidy-man, or of the degree of a subsidy-man, shall pro vide and keep in their houses a certain number of buckets, according to their quality." It will thus be seen that the provisions here made were, so far as extent is con cerned, by no means trifling. The buckets and the ladders are most plentifully patronized, while some kind of " engine" seems to have been employed, but whether analogous to the modern fire-engine we have no means of knowing. Besides all this, however, the corporation made an extraordinary series of regula tions — so extraordinary, indeed, that we may readily doubt whether they were ever acted on. For instance, it was ordered that every householder, upon cry of " Fire," was to place a " sufficient man" at his door, well armed, and hang out a light at his door ; that every householder was to have a vessel of water at his door, in case of fire ; that the several companies of carpenters, brick layers, plasterers, painters, masons, smiths, plumbers, and paviours. should each • ' An Act for preventing and suppressing of Fires within the city of London, and liberties thereof.' 1668. 184 LONDoi; provide thirty persons to attend on the Lord Mayor whenever a fire might occur ; that all the porters and meters within the City should similarly attend ; that all persons, during a fire, should keep within their OAvn houses, unless expressly sent for by the Lord Mayor ; that aU the brokers on the Exchange should attend, to guard the goods and merchandise ; together with other and more prac tical arrangements, such as the ringing of a bell at the occurrence of a fire, the patrolling of the streets by night, injunctions to the inhabitants to observe care in the management of combustible ingredients, &c. As time wore on, and the recollection of the great devastation of 1666 became deadened, it is probable that many of these arrangements fell into disuse, and that the principal ones really maintained were those relating to the provision of fire-engines in every parish, and in the halls of the companies. When, however, the insurance companies (respecting Avhich we shall say a few Avords in a future page) came into prominent notice, they wrought great improvements in fire- extinguishing machinery. In a parish such matters were, to use a common phrase, " everybody's business, and therefore nobody's business ; " but the pe euuiary success of the insurance companies Avas directly involved in the speedy extinction of fires, since the farther the fires spread the greater Avas the liability of the companies. The various insurance companies had their own fire-engines, and maintained an establishment of firemen, independent of each other, until within the last few years. From a paper by Mr. Rawson,* we learn that so far back as the year 1808 Sir Frederick Morton Eden, the Chairman of the Globe Insurance Office impressed with the inefficiency and expensive character of the separate engine establishments, entered into communication with the several offices for the pur pose of inducing them to co-operate in the formation of a general fire-engine establishment. His proposition was, that each office joining the association should depute one or tAvo members to form an engine committee, who should have con trol over the direction and expenditure of the establishment, but that no engine- houses or stables should be purchased or built without the concurrence of all the offices interested. Each office was, at the outset, to furnish a gang of tAventy firemen, of whom ten were to be first-class men, who should receive allowances for all fires they attended ; and ten second-class men, Avho Avere to be paid only when specially authorised to attend. Each office was to pay an equal contribu tion towards the expenses of the establishment. Only one office, however, en tered into the views of Sir F. Eden, and the plan accordingly fell to the ground. Seventeen years afterwards three of the offices, viz. the Sun, the Union, and the Royal Exchange, united their fire-engine establishments ; the whole of their engines and men being placed under the charge of a superintendent. The Atlas and the Phoenix Companies subsequently joined this body. At length, in the year 1833, most of the insurance companies, seeing the benefit of mutual co-operation, and the effectual working of a system which had been put in force in Edinburgh, joined in the formation of the present " London Fire-Engine Establishment." The companies were ten in number, viz. the Alliance, Atlas, Globe, Imperial, London Assurance, Protector, Royal Ex change, Sun, Union, and Westminster. Subsequently five others, the British, * ' Journal of the Statistical Society of London,' vol. i., p. 283. LONDON FIRES. 185 Guardian, Hand-in-Hand, Norwich Union, and Phoenix, joined the establish ment ; as did also two or three recently-formed companies ; and there are now only two fire-offices in London not belonging to it. The affairs of the new Association were placed under the management of a committee, consisting of a Director from each of the associated insurance compa nies, which subscribe towards its support in certain agreed proportions. London was divided into five districts, which may be briefly indicated thus : — 1st. East ward of Aldersgate Street and St. Paul's; 2nd. Thence westAvard to Tottenham Court Road and St. Martin's Lane ; 3rd. All westward of the 2nd ; 4th. South of the river, and east of Southwark Bridge ; 5th. South of the river, and west of SouthAvark Bridge. In these five districts were established engine-stations, averaging about three to each district ; at each of which was one, two, or three engines, according to the importance of the station. Such were the general arrangements as to distribution. Since the year 1833 various minor changes have been made, according as ex perience pointed out the necessity for them ; and at the present time (Novem ber, 1842) the arrangements are nearly as follow : The establishment belongs to eighteen fire-insurance companies. There are fourteen stations, of which the most eastern is at Ratcliff, and the most western near Portman Square. At these stations are kept thirty-five engines, for whose management about ninety men are employed. The men are clothed in a uniform, and are selected with especial reference to their expertness and courage at fires ; they are collectively known as the " Fire Brigade," and are all under the orders and direction of Mr. Braidwood, the superintendent of the establishment. A certain number of these men are ready at all hours of the day and night, and the engines are also always ready to depart at a minute's warning in case of fire. As a rule for general guidance, it is arranged that, when a fire occurs in any district, all the men and engines in that district shall repair to the spot, together with two-thirds of the men and engines from each of the two districts next adjoining to it, and one-third from each of those most removed from it ; but this arrangement is liable to mo dification, according to the extent of a fire, or the number which may be burning at one time. The general economy of the establishment, and the fearlessness of the brigade- men, have won a large measure of praise from nearly all classes in the metro polis. If self-interest were the chief motive which led the insurance companies to the establishment of a system likely to reduce their own losses, there is any ¦ thing but selfishness in the risks which the men encounter in saving lives and property, the poor as well as the rich, the uninsured as well as the insured. It has been often supposed that there are observatories on the roofs of the insurance offices or engine-houses, where Avatchmen are posted at all hours of the night to detect the appearance of fire, and to give notice to those below. This, if ever acted on, is not observed by the Fire-engine Establishment. There is an arrangement made by the Police commissioners, that a policeman, on observing a fire, communicates instantly to the nearest engine-station ; and for so doing the Association gives him a gratuity of ten shillings. This, and a smaller gratuity to other persons who "call an engine," is found sufficient to command prompt in formation on the occurrence of a fire. It is true that the lovers of mischief so 186 LONDON. far show their silliness as to give " false alarms," to an average extent of some sixty or seventy per annum; and that the brigade-men are sometimes tantalized by atmospherical phenomena. It has often happened, in reference to the latter point, that an aurora borealis has so deceived the beholders as to lead to the im pression that a great conflagration has broken out ; in such case the engines are sent for precipitately, and all is , in commotion. Two remarkable instances of this occurred about six years ago. On the first of these, twelve engines and seventy- four brigade-men were kept in constant motion from eleven in the evening till six the next morning, in endeavouring to search out what appeared to be a large conflagration; some of the engines reached Hampstead, and others Kilburn^ before it was found that the glare was the effect of the " northern lights." On the other occasion, a crimson glare of light arose at the north-east part of the horizon, at about eight o'clock in the evening, seemingly caused by a fierce con flagration ; and the resemblance was increased by what appeared to be clouds of smoke rising up after the glare, and breaking and rolling aAvay beneath it. Thir- teen engines and a large body of men went in search of the supposed fire, and did not detect their error till they had proceeded far to the north-east. Subse quent accounts showed that the military and fire-patroles at Dublin, Leyden, Utrecht, Strasburg, Troyes, Rennes, and Nantes, had been similarly deceived by the atmospherical phenomena on the same night. When, however, it is really a conflagration to which the attention of the brigade is called, there is an admirable coolness and system displayed in the whole pro ceedings. The water companies, by clauses in the Acts of Parliament regulating their foundation, are bound to furnish water freely in case of fire : and the hose or suction-pipe of every engine is speedily placed in connexion with the tempo rary pool of water derived from the street-plug. Then is observable a singular instance of the confidence which the firemen have that they shall obtain the aid of bystanders, for the firemen belonging to each engine are AvhoUy insufficient to Avork it. The director or captain of each engine is empowered by the companies to pay — we believe at the rate of one shilling for the first hour, and sixpence per hour afterAvards, together with a supply of " creature-comforts " — for the services of as many strangers as he may need. It requires from twenty to thirty men to work each engine ; and so extensive is the service thus rendered, that, at one of the large fires a few years ago, more than five hundred temporary servants were thus engaged. While the supernumeraries are thus engaged with the engines, the brigade- men are directing the stream of water on t7 e destructive element which they have to combat. Clothed in a neat and compact dress, with a stout leathern helmet to protect the head, they face the fiercest heat, alternately drenched with water from the pipes of the various engines, and half scorched by the flaming materials. Over and under, through and around the burning house, they direct their energies, braving alike the fire itself and the dangers attendant on fallino- ruins. It is lamentable to think that men, while thus engaged in a work of humanity, should lose their own lives; but such is the case, although, on account of the judicious arrangements of the corps, not very frequently. Many of the most serious dangers attendant on a fire arise from the suffocating influence of the vast body of smoke which iiBually accompanies it. It has been LONDON FIRES. 187 [Smoke-proof Dress.] [Dress of the Fire Brigade.] tl" ought, by those well qualified to form an opinion, that the calamity of being " burnt to death " rarely, if ever, occurs, in the strict sense of the expression that the real cause of death is suffocation from smoke, the burning and charring of the corpse being an after effect. To rescue individuals enveloped in smoke is thus a matter of anxious solicitude, and, to facilitate the exertions of the fire men to this end, they are provided with a very ingeniously-constructed smoke- proof dress. This dress is nearly analogous in principle to that of Mr. Deane, the diver. It consists of a leathern jacket and head-covering, fastened at the waist and wrists, whereby the interior is made tolerably smoke-proof. Two glass windows serve for the eyes to look through ; and a pipe attached to the girdle allows fresh air to be pumped into the interior of the jacket, to support the respiration of the wearer. Thus equipped, the fireman may dare the densest smoke, although the dress is not so formed as to resist flame. It may not be a worthless remark here, that, in an apartment filled with smoke, respiration is less impeded near the ground than near the ceiling, on account of the ascensive tend ency of the smoke. Mr. Braidwood, in a small work which he published while superintendent of the Edinburgh fire establishment, states, — " A stratum of fresh air is almost always to be depended upon from six to twelve inches from the floor, so that, if the air be not respirable to a person standing upright he should instantly lie down. I have often observed this fact, which is, indeed, well known ; but I once saw an example of it which appeared to me to be so striking, that I shall here relate it. A fire had broken out in the third floor of a house, and, when I reached the top of the stairs, the smoke was rolling in thick heavy masses, which prevented me from seeing six inches before me. I imme diately got down on the floor, above which, for the space of about eight inches, the air seemed to be remarkably clear and bright. I could distinctly see the feet of the tables and other furniture in the apartment ; the flames in this space burn- 188 lomdun. ing as vivid and distinct as the flame of a candle, while all above the smoke was so thick that the eye could not penetrate it."'* Besides the thirty or forty engines thus managed by the Fire-Brigade , the small engines kept in repair (or out of repair, as the case may be) by the several parishes, and those owned by private individuals, there are two powerful engines always floating on the Thames, and belonging to the London Fire Establishment. These are stationed near Rotherhithe and near Southwark Bridge respectively. They are so large as to require more than a hundred men each foi working, and, when in full energy, pour forth a volume of two tuns of water per minute. They were intended for use in water-side fires, and have often rendered essential services. The steam fire-engines, of which one or two attracted public notice a few years ago, have not been retained in this country ; they were purchased by the Prussian government. In order not to break the continuity of the details, we have left untouched till now the subject ot fire insurance, and the main object for which fire-offices were established. The great principle in all insurance is, the diffusion of a loss among a large number of persons, whereby the liability of each shall be trifling. The system of life insurance consists in the subscription of a large fund or stock, out of which advances are made, or lives insured, or annuities granted, based on the supposition that the favourable ventures may at least equal the unfavourable. So in marine insurance, the insurer or " underwriter," estimating from past experience the probable average number of wrecks among a given number of ships, ventures to insure any ship at a certain per centage. So like^ Avise in fire insurance a company agrees to bear the burden of all losses by fire, o the payment of a certain premium, relying on the hope that the sum which will have to be paid to a few parties will be less than that received from the [Floating Fire-Engine on the Thames.] ' On Fire-Engines and Apparatus,' p. 82. Ediri. 18.30. LONDON FIRES. 189 many. In such a case the real operation is this, that all persons who are insured, but whose houses are not burned, pay for the rebuilding of those few which are; the company being merely the agents through whom the affair is managed, and who receive a remuneration for the agency. This species of insurance has been practised in Great Britain more or less for a century and a half, and is now, notwithstanding the heavy duty imposed upon it, of very general use in our cities and large towns. In no other country of Europe is fire insurance so extensively practised as in England; indeed, not only are almost all descriptions of property at home and in the colonies insured, but foreign fire insurance has become a most important item in the transactions of some of the principal London establishments, a very considerable portion of their premiums being derived from insurances effected in foreign countries. Witness the late notable conflagrations at Hamburgh, and the enormous liabi lities which accrued thereon in respect of two or three London companies. The curious subject of Probabilities is involved, to a certain extent, in all the three kinds of insurance ; that is, if we know no reason why events should not continue to occur as they have hitherto occurred, we form an estimate of the future by measuring the past, and we speak of the greater or less " probability" of an event according to its frequency of occurrence under similar circumstances in past times. It is thus, perhaps, that fire and life insurance became under taken by the same offices. Mr. M'Culloch states, — "Insurance against fire and upon lives is of much later origin than insurance against the perils of the sea. The former, however, has been known and carried on, to some extent at least, for nearly a century and a half. The Amicable Society, for insurance upon lives, was established by charter of Queen Anne, in 1706 ; the Royal Exchange and London Assurance Companies began to make insurances upon lives in the reign of George I. ; and the Equitable Society was established in 1762." Most of the fire-offices were also life-offices, and vice versa, and so they continued till a few years ago, when many of them, including the Hope, the Eagle, the Albion, the Beacon, the British Commercial, and the Palladium Companies, relinquished the fire-insurance, and confined their transactions to insurances on lives. The principal fire-offices now in London are the Sun, Phoenix, Protector, Royal Ex change, British, County, Atlas, Alliance, Globe, Guardian, Hand in Hand, Im perial, Union, Westminster, and London ; and those persons who are familiar with the busy thoroughfares of London will not fail to have remarked the mag nificent structures which form the offices of many of these companies. Among the metropolitan fire-offices some insure at their OAvn risk and for their own profit, while there are others, called "Contribution Societies," in which every person insured becomes a member or proprietor, and participates in the profit or loss of the concern. The principles on which the ratio of premiums paid for insurance is determined are simply those which experience shows to be most equitable, according to the number of fires and the amount of property consumed on the average of a great number of years. If the premium is felt to be too high, the competition between different companies will generally bring it doAvn to a proper level. The offices are accustomed to divide insurances into "common," "hazardous," and " doubly hazardous," according to the presumed 190 LONDON. liability of fires in the buildings insured, and the rate of payment varies accord ingly. The extent to which the system of insurance is carried is quite astonishing, and may be illustrated thus : — A duty of 3*. per cent, has been payable on all the property insured, which, in 1832, produced a revenue of more than 800,000?. sterling, thus indicating that the property insured is valued at more than 500,000,000?. sterling ! One office alone, viz. the Sun, has frequently paid to Government more than 120,000/. per annum. Yet, notwithstanding this immense amount, Mr. M'Culloch thinks that almost as great a revenue would accrue from a Is. duty as from one of 3s., by a vast increase in the number and value of insurances. From a calculation made by Mr. Rawson it appears that, in the fires which occurred in London in 1836 and 1837, insurances had been effected on 1 1 per cent, of the houses, on 32 per cent, of the houses with the con tained goods, on 1 7 per cent, in respect of the goods only, while 40 per cent, of the houses, amounting to two-fifths of the whole, were entirely uninsured. It needs scarcely a word to show why the insurance companies keep up an engine-establishment. The smaller the number of serious fires, the smaller the sum draAvn from the funds of the company ; hence, as a mere pecuniary question, a considerable outlay for engines, firemen, &c., will effect a great saving in the end. As improved social habits, by lengthening the average duration of human life, would gradually effect changes in the tables, the premiums, and the general cal culations of life-insurance ; so Avould improvements in the mode of constructing houses, fireplaces, chimneys, gas-apparatus, as well as improved habits of care fulness on the part of the people, work similar revolutions in fire-insurance. Hence those matters which bear on this subject form a notable feature in the subject of London Fires. If we look back to early times, before fire-engines or insurance were known, we find that the curfew was deemed the most important preventive measure against fire. This curfew was the general name for a law made by William the Conqueror, and enforced by severe penalties, that at the ringing of a bell at eight o'clock in the evening, all persons should put out their lights, cover or rake up their fires, and go to bed. The name probably arose from the French " couvre-feu" — cover-fire, or fire-cover. Many writers have chosen to accept this as a symbol of the tyranny of William ; among others Thomson, who says — *' The shiv'ring wretches, at the curfew sound. Dejected sank into their sordid beds, And, through the mournful gloom of ancient times, Mus'd sad or dreamt of better." But others have taken a different view of the matter, and have argued, like Vol taire, that " the law, far from being tyrannical, was only an ancient police, established in almost all the' towns of the north, and Avhich had been long pre served in the convents." Voltaire assigns this reason for the law — " that the houses were all built of wood, and the fear of fire was one of the most important measures of police." The term "curfew," like many others, has had several significations given to it. Thus, as above noticed, the law enacted by William has been termed the curfew. LONDON FIRES. 191 Then, again, the instrument by which the fires were extinguished has been simi larly named ; and it happens that there are the means in existence to ascertain the precise nature of this contrivance. Mr. Grose some years ago communicated to the ' Antiquarian Repertory ' a drawing and description of an ancient curfew, or couvre-feu, in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Gosling. It was shaped some thing like a Dutch oven, being formed of pieces of copper riveted together. The dimensions were ten inches high, sixteen wide, and nine deep. Let the reader imagine the use of fire-hearths, before stoves and grates were known, and the raking together of the embers of a fire into a small group ; let this curfew be laid on such a group, and it is not difficult to conceive that the fire would be soon extinguished. There is yet another application of the term curfew, illustrated by the line — " The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." When the custom of ringing the curfew-bell at a certain hour in the evening ceased, many towns and large buildings were provided with a fire-bell, or curfcAV- bell, or curfew (for it was known by all these names) ; that is, a bell which, being rung only on the occurrence of a fire, constituted a signal unfailingly attended to by all within hearing. Vestiges of this custom still exist, as in the Fire-bell Gate at Barking, in Essex. A curfew-bell was, not many years ago, in existence at Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire ; but its use had degenerated to that of a signal- bell on the morning of " pancake-day." Many persons may still remember that, in the volunteering days of the last generation, the volunteers were wont to be roused up by beat of drum, on the occurrence of a large fire, in order that they might guard the scene of conflagra tion from tumult and depredation. Now, both curfew and volunteers are gone, and Ave safely depend, with more confidence than ever our ancestors could have done, on the vigilant police of our large towns. Still, however, this relates only to the detection of a fire when actually existing, and leaves untouched the means of prevention. These means have been proposed in great number within the last half-century, and consist chiefly in the use of materials less combustible than wood in the building of houses, or in the interposition of incombustible materials where practicable. For instance, seventy or eighty years ago a Mr. Hartley proposed to nail thin iron plates in many parts of the joisting and flooring of a house, as a check to the communication of flame. The Earl Stanhope of that period also proposed a method ; but this consisted in coating various parts of a house with a thick layer of a peculiar cement, impervious to flame. The present century has witnessed similar plans in abundance, of which we may allude to one proposed by Mr. Loudon, in his ' Encyclopsedia of Cottage Architecture :' — " In rendering houses fire-proof, the next important object to using fire-proof materials is that of having all the walls and partitions, and even the steps of wooden staircases, filled in with such materials as will render them in effect solid. On examining into the causes of the rapidity of the spread of the flames in London houses when on fire, it will almost invariably be found that, whatever may have occasioned the fire to break out, the rapidity of its progress has been in proportion to the greater or less extent of the lath and plaster parti- 192 LONDON. tions, the hollow wooden floors, and the wooden staircases." His proposition is to fill up all the vacuities behind such places with powdered earth or sand. The recent legislative enactments respecting the construction of buildings and chimneys may be one step towards the diminution of destructive fires, and humanity may, perchance, be less and less frequently shocked with such scenes as Dryden thus depicts : — " Those who have homes, when home they do repair To a last lodging call their wandering friends ; Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care. To look hovp near their OAvn destruction tends * Those who have none, sit round Avhere once it was. And with full eyes each wonted room require ; Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place. As murder'd men walk where they did expire. " The most in fields like herded beasts lie down, To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor ; And while their babes in sleep their sorrow droAvn, Sad parents watch the remnants of their store." [Couvre-feo,} 1 -JC > I [Billingsgate MarKet.j LXXXVIII.— BILLINGSGATE. The passenger, as he crosses London Bridge, if he looks eastward, on the northern bank of the river, will notice a little copse of masts at the Avest-end of the Custom House. They indicate the situation of Billingsgate, the only whole sale market in the metropolis for the supply of fish. Billingsgate has been one of the " Avater-gates " or ports of the City from time immemorial. Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history of the spot acquaints us that " Belin, a king of the Britons, about four hundred years before Christ's nativity, built this gate, and named it Belin's gate, after his own calling ; and that, when he was dead, his body being burnt, the ashes, in a vessel of brass, were set on a high pinnacle of stone over the same gate." StoAV very sensibly suggests that the name was derived from, some later owner, " happily named Beling or Biling, as Somar's Keyi Smart's Wharf, and others thereby took their names of their owners." When he was engaged in collecting materials for his ' Survey,' Billingsgate was " a large water-gate, port, or harborough for ships and boats commonly arriving there Avith fish, both fresh and salt, shell-fishes, salt, oranges, onions, and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grain of divers sorts, for service of the City and the parts of this realm adjoining." Queenhithe, anciently the more importan* landing-place, had yielded its pretensions to its rival. Each gives its name to one of the City wards. We must here briefly notice Queenhithe, for the water- gate at which fish was landed had considerable influence in determining the VOL. IV. o 194 LONDON. localities in which the fishmongers anciently carried on their trade. Between Billingsgate and Queenhithe the bridge intervened. This circumstance was, no doubt, greatly in favour of the former place. But in 1225, when the customs of Queenhithe were a perquisite of the Queen, Henry III. commanded the con stables of the Tower to compel the ships of the Cinque Ports to bring their corn to Queenhithe only. Two years afterwards he ordered that all fish sold else where than at the same place should be seized. With a view of rendering the receipt of customs as large as possible, an inquisition Avas held during the reign of Henry III. touching the ancient payments and customs of Queenhithe. Some time afterwards the bailiff of the Hithe complained that fourteen foreign vessels laden with fish had come to Billingsgate instead of to the Queenhithe. The penalty for this offence was in future to be forty shillings; but Stow says that the ships of the citizens of London were to arrive where the owners would appoint them. In 1464 the Queenhithe was still a favoured landing-place, though its ancient supremacy Avas affected by a regulation under which Billingsgate was entitled to enjoy some of the advantages of the rival key. It was ordered that, if only one vessel came at a time with herrings, sprats, eels, whiting, plaice, cod, mackerel, &c., then it should discharge at Queenhithe, and the cargo there to be sold by retail. If two vessels arrived, then one was permitted to discharge at Billingsgate; if three, two were to come to Queenhithe and one to Billingsgate, but always the larger number to Queenhithe. In one period, therefore, we have Queenhithe the great landing-place for fish ; next. Billingsgate participates in this advantage, and afterwards Queenhithe decays, and Billingsgate attains the pre-eminence. One of the peculiarities of old London, of which Stow gives many illustrations, consisted in different trades having their distinct localities, as we may see noAv in many large country markets. Keeping the market would better express the ancient practice of the old traders and craftsmeii than the modern one of keeping shop. Partly, then, as a consequence of Queenhithe being the landing-place for fish, the fishmongers congregated in the streets leading from it, and Avere found in Old Fish Street and Old Fish Street Hill. StoAv tells us that in this Old Fish Street is one row of small houses placed along in the midst of Knightriders Street or Old Fish Street, as he indifferently calls the place. " These houses," he says, " now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls, set out on market-days, to strew their fish there to be sold ; but, pro curing licence to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses, of three or four stories In height, and now are called Fish Street. Walter Tuck, fishmonger. Mayor 1349, had two shops in Old Fish Street, over against St. Nicholas Church ; the one rented five shillings the year, the other four shillings." On the northern side of this church there Avas of late built, says Stow, " a convenient cistern of stone and lead, for receipt of Thames water, conveyed in pipes of lead to that place, for the ease and commodity of the fish mongers and other inhabitants in and about Old Fish Street." Friday Street, adjacent, Avas so called, according to Stow, from fishmongers dwelling there, and serving Friday's market. Mr. Herbert, in his ' History of the TavcIvc Great Livery Companies,' says that " the old fish-market occupied a plot of ground extending lengthwise, or east and west, along Old Fish Street from Bread Street BILLINGSGATE. 195 to the church of St. Mary Magdalen at the Old Change ; and breadthwise, north and south, from the ends of these tAvo streets to the opposite south side of Old Fish Street, on which we still observe the street to have a much greater width than at any other part. Jurors return it to have been ' a void space' in 1413, as it was when the centre only Avas filled up with fish-stalls. In this state there would have been an open communication with Queenhithe, from Avhieh the fish could be brought up the hill to the middle of the market, next St. Nicholas Cold Abbey, where is now the narrow way of Old Fish Street Hill ; whilst the north side of the market, connecting itself with the bakers of Bread Street, the fishmongers of Friday Street, and the king-minters in Shere Moniers Lane, or the Old Change ; and then these again reaching to the goldsmiths, mercers, and other tradesmen of West Cheap, must have made the Avhole nearly one large open market.. When tall houses began to supersede the original stalls in all these spots, the district became narrowed into streets, like other open parts of the city." In 1426 an inquisition was held to inquire upon oath, of free men, " where fish was sold of old time," and they return that from [in] ancient times it had been sold in the way of Old Fish Street, and not in other places adjoining or in the neighbourhood ; but they found that the ancient place for the sale of shell-fish, and where alone it ought to be sold, was from the way of London Bridge towards the west, as far as the Church of St. Magdalen. The period here alluded to was probably earlier than the fourteenth century, for the Stocks Market,, on the site now occupied by the Mansion House, was ap pointed a fish as well as a flesh-market about 1282, by Henry Wales, mayor, who built several houses on a vacant piece of ground there, where a pair of stocks had long previously been fixed. In 1322 this market produced a rental of 461. In 1543 twenty-five fishmongers, Avho had boards or stalls in the market, paid 341. rent, and eighteen butchers 41?.; but over the shops of the latter were chambers, which, altogether, Avere let for nearly 6?. In the reign of EdAvard II. (1307-27) some of the principal fishmongers appear to have established themselves in Bridge Street, which ran northward from the bridge. Fish Street Hill, a continuation of it, leading into Grass Church Market, so called from the herb market held there. Bridge Street is generally spoken of as New Fish Street. Stow says, " In New Fish Street be fishmongers, and fair taverns on Fish Street Hill, and Grass Street, men of divers trades, grocers, and haberdashers." The fishmongers in this quarter chiefly frequented Billingsgate, which was the nearest market for them. The rental paid by two of the New Fish Street dealers, in the reign of Edward II., is stated in one case to have been 14.^'., and in another 12s. per annum. In 1399 we ascertain the situation in AvhIch the stock-fishmongers carried on their busi ness. They had shops or stalls in a part of Thames Street, afterwards called Stock-Fishmongers' Row, which was halfway between the foot of the bridge west ward and a water-gate called Ebgate formerly, and in Stow's time Eb Lane, now the spot known as the Old Swan Stairs- Some of the regulations concerning the " mystery" of the fishmongers in old times are sufficiently interesting for a brief notice. In the reign of Edward I. the prices of fish were fixed — for the best soles 3d. per dozen; the best turbot 6a;. each; the best mackerel Id. each; the best pickled herrings Id. the score; fresh oysters 2d. the gallon ; the best eels 2d. per quarter of a hundred. In a o 2 196 LONDON. statute of Edward I. it was forbidden to offer for sale any fish except salt fish after the second day. By the City assize of fish the profit of the London fishmongers was fixed at one penny in twelve. They were not to seil their fish secretly within doors, but " in plain market-place." Fish were not to be watered oftener than twice a-day, or to be sold when in an improper state for food ; and for the third breach of any of these regulations the fishmonger was to be "jugyd to a payr of stockys openlie in the market-place." In 1320 a combination was formed against the fishmongers of Fish Wharf, to prevent them selling by retail, but Edward II. ordered the mayor and sheriffs to interfere, and the opposition was unsuccess ful. The mayor issued his orders to these fishmongers of Bridge Street and of Old Fish Street to permit their brethren in the trade " to stand at stall, to mer chandise with them, and freely obtain their shares of merchandise, as Avas fit and just, and as the freedom of the City required." In 1363 some of the fishmongers again endeavoured to effect a monopoly, but it was ordered that the " billestres," or poor persons Avho cried and sold fish in the streets, provided they buy of firee fishmongers, and do not keep a stall or make a stay in the streets, shall not be hindered ; and also that persons and women coming from the uplands with fish caught by them or their servants in the water of Thames or other neighbouring streams Avere to be allowed to frequent the markets. With these exceptions, none but members of the Fishmongers' Company were allowed to sell fish in the City, lest the commodity might be made dear by persons dealing in it who were un skilful in the mystery. Buyers for the King and the Lords (a polite name for purveyors) were to be served at first price, and no fish was to be sold until they had made their choice. In the fourteenth century the Fishmongers' Company was one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the City companies. It ranked next after the Goldsmiths', Grocers', and Drapers' ; and, in some instances, surpassed them in wealth and liberality. In 1341 a great affray took place between the Fishmongers and Skinners in Cheapside for precedency, and several of the ringleaders were after wards executed. Disputes of this nature were settled by the Court of Aldermen. Stow censures the Fishmongers' Company of his day as " men ignorant of their antiquities, not able to show a reason why or when they were joined in amity with the Goldsmiths." He does not explain the circumstance himself, but Mr. Her bert, in his ' History of the Livery Companies,' shows that it was in consequence of one of these decisions of the Aldermen, who, for the purpose of reconciling the two Companies, directed them to take precedence alternately, and dine together, &c. In 1509 the precedency of the Stock Fishmongers was settled by ordering that, in processions, they should go before the Dyers and after the Vintners ; and that their places in St. Paul's should be next to the Grocers, " toAvard the image of our Lady of Grace." Mr. Herbert tells us that the Goldsmiths and Fish mongers of the present day do not commemorate their ancient amity, but the Skinners and Fishmongers, forgetful of former feuds, pledge each other at their respective halls when members of the other company are present. The Fish mongers were formed into a guild at a very early period. In 1290 the guild was fined five hundred marks for forestalling the markets. In 1298 Stow says that the Fishmongers, hearing of the victory of Edward L over the Scots, " made a triumphant and solemn show through the city, with divers pa- BILLINGSGATE. 197 geants,.and more than one thousand horsemen," &c. Their earliest charter of incorporation extant is of the date of 1364. It confirms a privilege, of which they are said to have been immemorially possessed, of choosing certain persons amongst themselves to govern their mystery. From 1350 to 1374 civic honours were thickly showered upon members of the Company. Stow speaks of " these Fishmongers having been jolly citizens." Six of them filled the office of Mayor in the above twenty-four years, one of whom, William Walworth (Mayor in 1370), has become historically famous, and is styled by StoAV " the glory of their Com pany." There is a statue of him on the staircase of Fishmongers' Hall, in which he is represented in the act of striking Wat Tyler with the dagger ; and on the pedestal is the following inscription . — Brave Walworth, knight. Lord Maior, y' slew Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes. The king therefore did give in Heu The dagger to the Citye's arms. In the fourth year of Richard II. , Anno Domini 1381. On this point Stow had another fling at the " ignorance of antiquity " which the worshipful Company displayed. He disproved the common notion that the dagger was added to the City arms in consequence of Walworth's affair with Tyler. They also represented Walworth as having slain Jack Straw, and it ap pears that on Walworth's monument in St. Michael's Church, in Crooked Lane, the error was perpetuated. In 1382 the privileges of the Company were attacked, and, through the In terference of John Northampton, draper, who was mayor at the time, it was ordained that no fishmonger should be admitted Mayor of London. Stow says that the fishmongers " were greatly troubled, hindered of their liberties, and almost destroyed by congregations made against them.'' The case came before the Parliament, and Nicholas Exton, speaker for the fishmongers, prayed the King " to receive him, and his Company, into his protection, for fear of corporal hurt ; whereupon it was commanded either part to keep the peace on pain of losing all they had." One of the fishnjongers then rose and explained that the proceedings against them were in consequence of their having caused some of the exhibitors of the petition to be imprisoned for their misdemeanors in the previous reign, when the fishmongers filled some of the principal City offices. The ^conduct of John Northampton was investigated by the nobles assembled at Reading, and, being convicted of " seditious stirs,'' he was committed to perpetual imprison ment, and his goods were seized. Several others were condemned to the same penalty, " for certain congregations by them made against the fishmongers ;" but they were afterwards pardoned. The fishmongers were restored to their full privileges. In 1433 they received a new charter, in which, for general purposes, the stock fishmongers and other branches of the trade were united into one body. In 1506 the stock fishmongers were dissociated from the general body, but in 1536 they were finally reunited. The two Companies had one hall each in Old Fish Street, New Fish Street, and in Thames Street. The old churches of London in the immediate vicinity of the fish markets contained numerous monuments to fishmongers. This Avas the case with St. Nicholas Cold Abbey, in Old Fish Street ; St. Nicholas Olave, Bread Street 198 LONDON. Hill ; St. Mary Mounthaw, on Old Fish Street Hill ; St. Magnus, near the Bridge ; St. Botolph, Billingsgate^ St. Mary-at-HIU, on the hill leading from Billingsgate ; St. George, Botolph Lane ; St. Michael, Crooked Lane ; and St. Peter, Cornhill. St. Michael's was the favourite burial-place of the stock fish mongers, and St. Peter's, Cornhill, for the "Avet" fishmongers, as Stow calls the others by way of contradistinction. Lovekin and Wahvorth were both interred at St. Michael's. Lovekin was four times mayor, and rebuilt the church ; while Walworth, who had once been his servant, enlarged it by a new choir and side chapel, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Sebastian. Lovekin also founded an hos pital at Kingston-on-Thames. The fishmongers anciently maintained three , priests, one more than the other companies, to officiate at the funeral ceremonies of members of their craft, and to pray for their souk on their obit days. The Company have at present a rich funeral pall, worked not long before the old religious ceremonies were disused. It is in good preservation, and a very inte resting relic. That the stock fishmongers, or dealers in dried or salted fish, should havo formed so important a portion of the trade is deserving of notice as a pecu liarity of the times. Lovekin and Walworth, who both acquired wealth, were stock fishmongers. The nature of the commodity was such as to render the dealers in it a superior class to the other fishmongers. A great store might be accumulated, and more capital was required than by the other fishmongers, who only purchased from hand to mouth. The fairs of Stourbridge, St. Ives, and Ely, described in a statute of 1533 as " the most notable fairs within this realm for provision of fish," were busy scenes of traffic in this article. The town of Lynn, in Norfolk, endeavoured to obtain a share of the advantages Avhich these fairs conferred; and in 1537 letters patent were obtained for establishing a fair there, but the privilege was Avithdrawn in 1541, as a punishment for some irre gular practices Avhich were regarded, according to the prevailing notions of the day, as an unfair use of their new rights. In a statute of the above year they are accused of buying up " salt-fish, as ling, loob, cod, salt salmon, stock fish, and herring, to the great loss and hindrance of many Of the king's subjects that yearly have repaired and come to Stourbridge fair, Ely fair, and other markets and fairs in the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon, and other shires, for the provision of salt-fish and herring for their households, and for the provision of divers other shires." The provisioning of a household with a store of salt-fish was an important object in these times. The alternative of diet Avas not from salt-fish to fresh meat, for in winter the latter was not commonly to be obtained, but meat, if eaten at all, Avas consumed in a salted state. Tusser, who, however, lived in the eastern counties, suggests a. more thrifty practice than that of resorting to the flsh-fairs. His recommendation to the husbandman is — ¦" When August is ended, take shipping or ride. Ling, salt-fish, or herring, for Lent to provide ; To buy it at first, as it cometh to road, Shall pay for thy charges, as thou spendest abroad. Choose skilfully salt-fish, not burnt at the stone. But such as be food, or else let it alone. Get home that is bought, and go stack it up dry, With pease-straw between it the safer to lie." BILLINGSGATE. 199 Tlie use of fish was also an obligation sanctioned by the Church, as well as a necessary part of the domestic economy of the times. In 'February's Hus bandry' Tusser says, " Now timely for Lent stuff thy money disburse, The longer ye tarry for profit the worse ; If one penny vantage be therein to save. Of coastman or Fleming be suer to have." The management of the store required some housewifely thrift, and he gives the following directions : — " Spend herring first, save salt-fish last, For salt-fish is good when Lent is past." It cannot be doubted therefore that the London dealers in this article of neces sary provision had reasonable chances of acquiring wealth. In 1314 from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, the consumption in the household of Thomas Earl of Lancaster was 6800 stock-fish, consisting of ling, haberdine, &c., besides six barrels of sturgeon, the whole costing 607. The case was greatly altered after the Reformation, and several statutes were soon afterwards passed in order to keep up the con-sumption of fish and encourage the fisheries as a nursery for seamen. In 1 548 Ave have " The Act for the Abstinence of Flesh," which im posed penalties on persons who ate flesh on fish- days. In an "Act for the Maintenance of the Navy," passed in 1562, the penalties were greatly increased. In 1593 John ErsAvick published 'A Brief Note of the Benefits that grow to this Realm by the Observance of Fish-Days.' At this period fish, in a great mea sure, had ceased to be one of the staple articles in the daily diet of the people. Erswick attributed the diminished consumption to "the contempt Avhich in eating of fish is conceived." Leaving these times, we come to the more modern history of Billingsgate, which we may date from 1699, when an act passed for making it " a free market for the sale of fish," although the very commencement of the preamble alludes to Billingsgate having been " time out of mind a free market for all manner of floating and salt fish, as also for all manner of floating and shell-fish." The necessity of a ncAv act had arisen, as the preamble continues, from various abuses, one of which was, that the fishmongers would not permit the street-hawkers ot fish to buy of the fishermen, by which means, as it is alleged, the fishmongers buy at their OAvn prices. Another practice of the fishmongers of that day is speci fically pointed out. They are charged with " employing one or two persons at the most to buy up all or the greatest part of the fish brought to the said market, and afterwards dividing the same amongst themselves by lots;" a practice which also unfairly oppressed the fishermen Avho supplied the market. Fish, one or two sorts excepted, caught by foreigners, was prohibited, except. Indeed, it had been caught by " Protestant strangers." The extraordinary dream of making the country wealthy, and draining the ocean of its riches, by means of fisheries, had for above a century been one of the fondest illusions of the English people ; and about the time when the above act was passed, " ways to consume more fish " were once more attracting the popular attention. Houghton, a FelloAv of the Royal Society, in a periodical work which he published in 1703, suggested a plan for supplying fish to inland towns. " This," he observes, " may be done Avith 200 LONDOi>. salt fish at any time, and with fresh fish to most parts of England, if a gang of horses were appointed at divers fisher-ports to carry those fish, as soon as landed, to their several markets, as is done from Hythe, Hastings, Chichester, and other places to London." Mr. Houghton thought that the London fishmongers might at least supply all the considerable towns within twenty miles of the metropolis; but if they were not disposed to do so, the inhabitants of Hertford and St. Albans, and other places of similar size within about the same distance from London, might form associations for introducing a supply of fish ; and the carriages might perhaps be employed in carrying various commodities on their return to London, as a means of lessening the expense. Then he had another project, for pre serving fish without salting them. " In this manner," he says, " we may serve the inland counties with small flat-fish, and, for aught I know, with halibut and turbot." In 1749 an act was passed for making a free market for the sale offish in Westminster : we shall have to report further concerning it. Mr. Houghton's plans were never carried into effect, but that did not prevent others of a similar character from being brought forward ; and about sixty years afterwards we have ' A Plan for the better supplying this Metropolis with plenty of Fish from dis tant Seaports and Rivers by Land-carriage.' The price of fish at the time was said to be beyond the reach of the poor, and even of the middling classes; and for many days together the quantity received at Billingsgate was very inconsi derable. To remedy these evils, carriages were to be constructed to be draAvn by two post-horses, and capable of containing from eight to ten cwt. of fish, which it was intended to bring from all the coasts of England, with the exception of that part between Harwich and the South Foreland, with Avhich the patriotic pro jectors would not interfere. The fish-carriages were to travel at the rate of sixty or seventy miles in ten or twelve hours ; and it was calculated that fish might be brought this distance at a cost of less than one penny per lb. ; twice that distance for less than twopence ; and even a distance of two hundred and sixteen miles in thirfy-six hours at less than threepence per lb. The stables, warehouses, and yards which had belonged to a large inn between London and Westminster bridges, were taken as a depot for sorting the fish before sending it into the market, which would never be done before nine o'clock in the morning, and the ' prices would always be placed over the stalls. The Society of Arts either advanced or promised a sum of 2000?. in furtherance of the above objects. But some thirty years ago we find the old complaints again current ; and in 1813 a meeting of noblemen and gentlemen was held at the Thatched House Tavern, St. James's, at Avhich one of the royal family presided, when a Fish Asso ciation was formed, the object of which was to ensure a better supply of fish to the metropolis. They commenced operations here under the belief that the increased use of fiish in London would be a good example to other places. The association strongly denounced Billingsgate, on account of its small size and inconvenient situation. The object of the act establishing a fish-market at Westminster had never been accomplished. The impediments to the greater consumption of fish are attributed partly to the difficulty of circulating the com modity when it is plentiful, which rendered the fishermen cautious and checked the supply. The Association proposed " to assure to the fishermen certainty of sale, to a limited amount, and at a low price, of certain kinds of fish consumed by BILLINGSGATE. ' 201 the working classes, and which may be preserved by salt or vinegar ;" and when the supply was large, it was recommended that notice should be given to the different parts of the town. This was the last of a long series of projects of the kind, and it is easy to perceive that it was unlikely ever to be long in operation. In 1830 the attempt to establish a wholesale fish-market for Westminster was made at Hungerford Market, but it has totally failed, partly because the dues were very heavy, and partly because, when the dealers once get into their carts, they may as easily go to the best market as to one less amply supplied. If the business at Billingsgate should increase, the market may then require enlarge ment, but under the present regulations it is sufficiently large for every purpose. There is much truth in the reason advanced in 1360 against the increase of places for the sale of fish : " Forasmuch as great abundance of fish might be seen, to the" end that better market in it might be." Not many years ago Billingsgate Market commenced at three o'clock in sum mer and five in winter, but the time is now five o'clock throughout the year. No great exertion is necessary in order to reach the spot before the market opens, at any rate in summer. The novelty of the quiet streets, and the bracing fresh ness of the morning air, soon dispel sleepiness from the eyelids, even if the earliness of the hour be so unusual to some. We feel, on reaching some favour able point for obtaining a view of the city, how accurately Wordsworth has described the appearance of London in the early summer morning : — " Earth has not anything to show more fair : Dull At'ould he be of soul who could pass by A sight BO touching in its majesty : This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning : silent, bare. Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky, All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill ; Ne'er saAv 1, never felt, a calm so deep ! The river glideth at its own sweet will : Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep, And all that mighty heart is lying still !" If the stranger visits Billingsgate in summer, many objects will engage his attention, but in a winter's morning the market alone. How solitary are the streets! and yet London is never entirely buried in sleep. At the most un timely hours the avocations of some classes of its busy population call upon them to be astir. The pause seems deepest from two to three o'clock. Riot, Profligacy, Want, and Misery have retired, and Labour is scarcely risen. As we approach Billingsgate the profound silence of the night is now and then broken by the wheels of the fishmonger's light-cart, who is proceeding to the same destination. The whole area of the market, brilliantly lighted with stream ing flames of gas, comes into view. One might fancy that the place Avas arranged for a feast of rude plenty. The tables of the salesmen, which are ranged from one side of the covered area to the other, afford ample space for clustering throngs of buyers around each. Each range appears to form one table, but the portion assigned to each salesman is nine feet by six. Each salesman sits with his back 202 LONDON. to another, and between them is a wooden board, so that they are apparently enclosed in a recess; but by this arrangement their pockets escape the pick pocket, which Avas not the case when they were not separated from the crowd. There are about sixty fish-salesmen in London, and probably fifty have stalls in this market, for which they pay a comparatively trifling rent. Proceeding to the bottom of the market, we perceive the masts of the fishing-boats rising out of the fog which casts its gloom upon the river. The boats lie considerably below the level of the market, and the descent is by several ladders to a floating wharf, which rises and falls Avith the tide, and is therefore always on the same level as the boats. About tAventy are moored alongside each other. The oyster- boats are berthed by themselves. The buyer goes on board the latter to make his purchase, as oysters are not sold in the ordinary market-place. The fishermen and porters are busily engaged in arranging their cargoes for quick delivery as soon as the market commences. Two or three minutes before five the salesmen take their seats in their enclosed recesses. At the lower end of the market, nearest the boats, porters stand with baskets of fish on their heads. Not one of them is allowed to have the advantage over his fellows by an unfair start, or to overstep a line marked out by the clerk of the market. The instant the clock strikes the race commences, and each .porter rushes at his utmost speed to the respective salesman to Avhom his burthen is consigned. The largest cod are brought in baskets which contain four ; those somewhat smaller are brought in sixes ; and smaller sizes in dozens, and in still larger numbers, but always in baskets. All ¦fish are sold by the tale except salmon, which is sold by weight, and oysters and shell-fish by measure. The baskets are instantly emptied on the tables, and the porters hasten for a fresh supply. It is the fisherman's interest to bring his whole cargo into the market as soon as possible, for, if the quantity brought to ¦market be large, prices avIU fall the more quickly, and, if they are high, buyers purchase less freely, and he may miss the sale. The following case has often been -quoted: — In May, 1807, the first Brighton boat-load of mackerel sold at Billingsgate for forty guineas per hundred — seven shillings each, reckoning six score to a hundred; while the next boat-load produced but thirteen guineas per hundred. Another reason for despatch is that supplies- conveyed inland often arrive after the opening of the market, and, for some kinds of fish especially, a sudden fluctuation in price may be occasioned by a van from Hastings or Dover, or some other part of the coast. So the porters keep up an incessant run between the boats and the salesmen's stalls until they have brought forth their whole stock. Some of the heaps of fish would enchant a Dutch painter. The soles, just taken from the well-boat, gasp in their last agony on the stall, and the next moment are purchased and hurried off to the dealer's cart. The rich turbot, with its blushing fins, which in a few hours Avill be the cause of a thousand amenities, is treated with no more ceremony or respect than a maid or a plaice. It is chiefly the west-end fishmongers who buy up turbot, but in this market any person who chooses may buy just in the same Avay as the dealers themselves. All the sales are by Dutch auction, a mode which alloAvs little time for either flourishing or disparaging phrases. The seller, according to this plan, puts up the commodity at his own price, choosing, one may be sure, a sum sufficiently high to begin with, and if he does not sell he soon mentions alower sum. The buyer also BILLINGSGATE. 203 offers his price, and if a bargain be closed, it is usually by meeting each other, i.e. the buyer advancing and the seller coming down in price. Other purchasers surround the stall — perhaps they think they may do better else where, and move off to some other salesman, and by making the round of the market the range of prices is soon tolerably well ascertained. The buyers are as good judges as the salesmen. Price alone engrosses attention. "This system ought to give those who witness its daily operation a good lesson or two in political economy. Here, in the open market, competition places the buyer and seller on equal terms. No combination exists to obstruct these advantages. Such an artificial basis would speedily be demolished in the bustl^ and animation which characterize the proceedings. The buyers shift rapidly from one salesman to another, demandin-g only one thing — price ; and this running about the market is striking to the eye, and interesting from its object, which is sure of being obtained. The money in the outstretched hand of one dealer, with a dozen other dealers around, quickly indicates to the salesman the price at which sales can be effected, and that it would be useless to stickle for higher ones. If the buyers were to give too high a price one day, their sales would fall off, they Avould buy less the next, and prices would fall. Simple as is the mode of sale, it does not follow that judgment and skill, and a ready wit, are not needed. The salesman who possesses these qualities in the highest degr^ee will clear his stalls much more rapidly, and at the same time more advantage ously, t|ian one Avho possesses a smaller share of these gifts. There is not one of the markets of London which is so little exposed to the chances of collu sion or any underhand conduct as that of Billingsgate. The proceedings of the retail dealers in their respective localities, where they are removed from the in fluences of the open market; may have nothing whatever to do with the principle on which it is certain the wholesale part of the trade is regulated. In one district the retail dealer gives long credit, often incurs losses, and he must therefore charge a high price. In another there may happen to be little competition, or, what is usually the same thing, a small demand, and price will here again be high, that is, comparing it with that which prevails at Billingsgate. It was recently the practice of a fishmonger in Lombard Street not only to advertise the prices of fish daily in the papers, and exhibit them in his shop, but also to em ploy men to carry placards with this information. It is the revival of a practice tAVO thousand years old. The fishmongers of Athens were compelled to affix the prices in their shops. The uncertainty of the price is probably one very powerful reason why fish is purchased so seldom by many housekeepers. They cannot tell the price beforehand, as for beef and mutton. But in these discussions we are forgetting our real object, which is to attempt to give the reader some idea of the market. Does the visitor expect to witness scenes of coarseness and brutality ? Nothing of the kind will meet his eyes. Why should they ? When the market opens, the majority of the persons present are either the dealers them selves or their trustworthy servants. Soon after six there is a greater mixture of classes. The hawkers come to make their purchases, and Billingsgate has something of the appearance which it bad previously assumed in our imagi nation, but there is nothing to disgust either in language or behaviour. The manners of Billingsgate have improved, and yet the standard phrase for abuse 204 LONDON. either of the tongue or pen will probably never be altered, so that after-genera tions may forget that here once flourished that racy eloquence which was cha racterised by its warmth of style, its rude force, and coarse but telling points. Ned Ward, in his ' London Spy,' published at the close of the seventeenth cen tury, describes the vulgar humours of Billingsgate, and it is only necessary to read them to feel convinced how much the place is improved. Ward mentions a place called the Dark House (not a house for insane persons), the frequenters of which seem to have combined the peculiarities of Wapping and Billingsgate. The site on which it stood is now called Dark House Lane. One feature of Bil lingsgate has been destroyed by the introduction of steam-boats. Before they existed, passengers embarked here for Gravesend and other places on the river, and there was a greater mixture of sailors with the dealers in fish, perhaps not much to the improvement of manners. The boats sailed only when the tide served, and the necessity of being ready at the most untimely hours rendered many taverns necessary for the accommodation of passengers. The opening of the market formerly at so early an hour as three o'clock was demoralizing and exhausting. Two hours are now gained, and the hours of rest are not unnatur ally broken in upon. The refreshment now chiefly taken by persons who attend the market is coffee instead of spirits, and this circumstance alone has had a most favourable influence. The wholesale market is over about nine o'clock, and the only dealers who remain after that hour are a few retailers who have stalls, who are called in the market " bomarees," a word whose etymology we do not profess to have discovered. Stow tells us that before 1569 the City ditch without the wall of the City, which then lay open, " contained great store of very good fish, of divers sorts, as many yet living, Avho have taken and tasted them, can well witness, but now (he says) no such matter." Sir John Hawkins, in his edition of Walton's ' Angler,' published in 1 760, mentions that, about thirty years before, the City anglers were accustomed to enjoy their sport by the starlings of Old London Bridge. " In the memory of a person not long since living, a Avaterman that plied at Essex Stairs, his name John Reeves, got a comfortable living by attending anglers with his boat : his method was to watch when the shoals of roach came down from the country, and, when he had found them, to go round to his customers and give them notice. Sometimes they (the fish) settled opposite the Temple ; at others at Blackfriars or Queenhithe ; but most frequently about the chalk-hills [the deposits of chalk rubble] near London Bridge. His hire was tAVO shillings a tide. A certain number of persons who were accustomed thus to employ him raised a sum sufficient to buy him a Avaterman's coat and silver badge, the impress whereof was ' Himself, with an angler in his boat,' and he had annually a new coat to the time of his death, which might be about the year 1730." Mr. Goldham, the clerk of Billingsgate Market, stated before a Par liamentary Committee that thirty years ago, four hundred fishermen, each of whom was the owner of a boat, and employed a boy, obtained a good liveli hood by the exercise of their craft between Deptford and London, taking roach, plaice, smelts, flounders, salmon, shad, eels, gudgeon, dace, dabs, &c. Mr. Gold- ham said that about 1810 he had known instances of as many as ten salmon and three thousand smelts being taken at one haul up the river towards Wandsworth, BILLINGSGATE. 205 and fifty thousand smelts Avere brought daily to Billingsgate, and not fewer than three thousand Thames salmon in the season. Some of the boats earned 6?. a week, and salmon was sold at 3*. and 4.?. the pound. The fishery was nearly destroyed at the time when this evidence was given, in 1828. The masters of the Dutch eel-ships stated before the same Committee that a few years before they could bring their live-eels in " wells " as far as Gallions' Reach, below Woolwich; but now (1828) they were obliged to stop at Erith, and they had sustained serious losses from the deleterious quality of the water, which killed the fish. The increase of gas-works and of manufactories of various kinds, and of filth disgorged by the sewers, will sufficiently account for this circum stance. The number of Dutch eel-vessels which bring supplies to Billingsgate varies from sixty to eighty annually. They bring about fifteen cwt. offish each, and pay a duty of 13?. A recent Parliamentary paper gives the number of sailing vessels registered at the different ports in England of above fifty and under fifty tons, and the greater proportion of the latter indicates those ports where fishing is extensively pursued. Thus at Faversham there are 218 sailing vessels registered under fifty tons, and only 42 above that burthen. The former average about 21 tons each. At the following ports, from which the chief supply of fish for the London market is furnished, the number of vessels under fifty tons is 1686, and, including 590 for London, there are 2276. At Yarmouth the number registered under fifty tons is 321; Faversham, 218; Southampton, 131 ; Maldon, 105; Rochester, 256; Colchester, 203 ; Dover, 91 ; Rye, .W ; Ramsgate, 80; Dartmouth, 256. The operations of these fishing-boats, and of the fishermen and their families on shore, are very interesting to the visitor on the coast. When brought ashore the fish are laid in heaps and sold by Dutch auction. Such a scene is well described in the following extract : — " In the offing are some eight or nine good, stout, round- made fishing-boats — ' hog-boats,' as they are called — which have been trawling during the night, and have now brought their catches to shore; between Avhich and them ply a dozen or more boats, which receive the cargo from the vessels and bring it to the beach. It is a pretty sight enough, after a good catch, to see these boats hurrying to and fro. Directly they touch the beach they are surrounded by an eager crowd, who explore the contents and help to arrange it in heaps ready for sale on the beach. There cannot be less than foui hundred or five hundred persons — men, women, and children — principally of the fishing class, and bearing on their arms the baskets with which they Avill soon set out to drive bargains with thrifty housewives all over the town. Up to six o'clock the work of landing, and arranging, and inspecting goes busily on. Fish of every description are thrown about as if they were worth nothing; but at last they are disposed into some order — some in heaps on the beach, others in baskets, and others upon tables. There is now a pause for a moment or two, for it is upon the strike of six. The salesmen look at the different lots around them, and the women with their baskets croAvd around them. Jokes pass, and compliments are exchanged. Ten to one there is some wit of established repute, whose bon mot is sure to pass current, and the victim of whose satire must put up with the ridicule of his companions as he best may. The sale begins. Then ensues, perhaps, what is popularly called ' chaffing ' between the sue- 206 LONDON cessful salesman and some less lucky neighbour — perhaps a fisherman sell ing on his own account, who has been slowly and reluctantly dropping his prices, as if every shilling was a drop of blood from his heart. ' Holloa, Bill! can't you sell 'em ?' Bill gives a surly .negative, and goes on with his bidding—' 25s. for this lot— 24*. for this lot— 23v. for this lot.' ' Why, Bill, they won't have 'em at no price. Why don't you give 'em to 'em ?' ' Leave Bill alone,' says some compassionate damsel, who has a design upon the fish of the unfortunate salesman^ 'leave Bill alone; he'll sell by and by.' '22s. for this lot ;' and, no customer responding. Bill vents his impatience in a quiet, fish like oath. 'Don't be in a hurry. Bill,' cries his tormentor ; 'don't you see that- everybody else has only just finished? When they're all gone, you'll sell 'em fast enough.' A loud roar of laughter rewards the wit of the speaker, and adds to Bill's discomfiture, who, however, proceeds with his unvaried cry — ' 20s. for this lot — 19s. for this lot,' casting about him at every reduced price most de spairing looks. At last he has got low enough, and finds a purchaser in the compassionate young woman who took his part against the facetious salesman, and now takes possession of her bargain with a glee that discloses to the seller the extent of the loss he has suffered. Dozens of these scenes are passing around, and others of a more amusing nature, and most characteristic of the class assembled on the spot ; and all in the midst of a tremendous bustle — new boats, perhaps, arriving, heaps of baskets packing up for the London market, purchasers making off Avith their loaded baskets, and others engaged in sorting and dividing their lots, which are spread in every direction 'over the beach, and Avhich one expects to see at every moment trodden under foot by the .numbers who are moving about. Men in huge boots, the crews of the mackerel-boats, ffom. Hastings perhaps, stand about in their not unpicturesque dress that re minds one of the smugglers of olden days."* What the exertions of patriotic persons failed in accomplishing, seems not unlikely to be effected by the railways. Fish is now received at Billingsgate from Liverpool, Bristol, Hartlepool, in Durham, and from other quarters, which were precluded from profitable communication- Avith it when the means of transit were not sufficiently rapid for so perishable an article. The railways from London to the southern coast, especially, will increase the facility of supply, though some time may elapse before they are rendered fully available, as, when we visited Billingsgate on Saturday morning the 19th of November, 184"2, two coaches arrived soon after the market opened, one from Dover and the other from Hastings. On the other hand, if a larger supply be received, the quantity taken off" by the railways will be quite as great. The circle from which the dealers attend with their carts comprises Windsor, St. Albans, Hertford, Romford, and other places within a distance of twenty-five miles ; but even now Billingsgate may be regarded as the best market for the supply of a much wider district. The very extraordinary change which has taken place in the supply of salmon for Billingsgate market since it has been brought by steam-vessels from Scotland in forty- eight hours may to some extent indicate the effect which the railways Avill have in extending the consumption of fish of all kinds in those parts of the coun try where hitherto it has been scarce and dear. Perhaps as many as ten salmon * Brighton Herald, August 27, 1843. BILLINGSGATE. 207 are now taken in a year in the Thames ; and Sir Humphry Davy, in his ' Sal- monia,' says that a skilful angler may take about one in a week at Christchurch. If the supply from Scotland were stopped, salmon, instead of being three or four shillings the pound, as they were when three thousand were taken in a year in. the Thames, would be as dear as turtle.. A commission agent for the sale of salmon at Billingsgate, who was examined before a Parliamentary Committee in 1800, and who had been in the trade ever since 1750, said " There have been several changes in the mode of doing business in my time. We brought salmon on horseback about thirty years ago ; since that, in light cartfr and other car riages ; and now, by water, packed in ice." Previous to the last change the supply -was inconsiderable, and a large proportion of it was- derived from the rivers in England. The fish were then packed in straw. Pennant, in his ' British Zoology,' written seventy -five years ago, gives the following account of the salmon-trade at Berwick : " Most of the salmon taken before April, or to the setting in of the warm weather, is sent fresh to London in baskets, unless now and then the vessel is disappointed by contrary winds of sailing immediately. In that case the fish is brought ashore again to the cooper's offices, and boiled,. pickled, and kitted, and sent to the London markets by the same ship, and fresh salmon put in the baskets in lieu of the stale ones. At the beginning of the season, when a ship is on the point of sailing, a fresh clean salmon will sell from l,y. to 1*. 6d. per lb. ; and most of the time that this peirt of the trade is carried on, the prices are from 5s. to 9s, per stone of 18 lbs., the value rising and falling according to the plenty of fish, or the prospect of a fair or foul wind. The price of fresh fish in the month of July, when they are most plentiful, has been known to be as low as-8d per stone; but last year (1768) never less than Is. 4d.., and. from that to 2s.. 6c?." The trade in fresh salmon ceased by the end of April, as the increasing temperature of the season rendered it impossible to bring the fish to market in a proper state. In case the voyage from Berwick to London proved longer than usual, the vessel was run into the nearest port, and the cargo, which Avould have been spoiled had it been brought to London, was disposed of. The trade had nearly ceased at the time when it is now the most active, as the heat of the Avater spoiled the fish during a long voyage. In the Correspondence of the late Sir George Sinclair there is a letter from Mr. George Dempster, which relates the following history of the present mode of packing salmon in ice : — " One day, about the year 1784 or 1785, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, a faithful servant to the East India Company, and I were shown into one of the waiting-rooms of the East India House. During our stay there, among other interesting matters respecting his voyages, Mr. Dalrymple told me the coasts of China abounded Avith snow-houses ; that the fishers of China carried snow in their boats, and, by means thereof, were able in the heat of summer to convey fresh fish into the very interior parts of China. I took pen and ink, and on the spot wrote an account of this conversation to Mr. Richardson, who, as well as others, has been in the practice of conveying salmon in ice from the river Tay to London, and from Aberdeen, Montrose, and Inverness, places of five, six, and seven hundred miles. In Mr. Richardson I found a very grateful correspondent, for soon afterwards I received, on a New Year's Day, a letter from him, containing a draft on his banker for 200/. to purchase a piece of plate for Mrs. Dempster." Packed in boxes as soon as caught, and covered with pounded ice which froze into 208 LONDON. a solid mass, salmon could be preserved in excellent state for six days, and the smacks were exclusively freighted with them. There Avere previously two branches of salmon traders in London, one depending upon land-carriage, and the other on the supplies by sea ; but the former soon found their occupation gone after this discovery. Steam navigation has rendered the improvement perfect. The arrivals of salmon at Billingsgate average about 30 boxes per day in February and March, each box weighing about 1 cwt. ; 50 boxes in April ; from 80 to 100 in May ; beginning of June from 200 to 300, and at the latter end of the month 500 boxes per day; which number gradually increases until it amounts during the end of July and the early part of August to 1000 boxes, and fre quently more. The average price for the season is about lOd., and is occa sionally as low as 5c?. and 6d. : it is loAvest when the fish is in the greatest perfection. The quantity brought to Billingsgate in the season of 1842 was probably not less than 2500 tons. It is sent on commission to agents, who charge 5 per cent, and take the risk of bad debts. This business is in few hands, and those engaged in it are the most wealthy of all the dealers in fish. A considerable period will elapse before the use of fish becomes general in those parts of the country to which the facility of conveyance has only recently introduced it. There are thousands of families Avho never tasted any fish except a red herring. The number of persons employed as fish-dealers show that in many parts of England fish constitutes a very unimportant article of diet. In the metropolis, Avhere the means of obtaining it are nearly perfect, there is one fish-dealer to four butchers, while in WarAvickshire the proportion is as 1 to 27 ; in Staffordshire as 1 to 44 ; and taking even a large town, Wolverhampton, the proportion in l'<31 was 1 in 46, for there was only one dealer in the place. In West Bromwich, with 36 butchers, there was not one fish-dealer, while in the borough of Southwark there were 2 fish-dealers to 7 butchers, or 1 to each 1500 persons. In the counties on the coast the proportion is about 1 fish-dealer to 10 butchers. It ihay be that in some of the inland counties there is not so great a paucity of fishmongers as the returns under the census imply, as with many persons it only makes a part, and that the least important, of their calling, the other being of so irregular a nature. Great facilities for obtaining food will not long exist Avithout being made available, and producing dealers. Fish from Liverpool can not long pass through WarAvickshire and Staffordshire to London without the discovery being made that there are intermediate places which it may be profit able to supply. In Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, during the summer ot 1 842, the supplies of fish, chiefly by the railways, Avere occasionally immense. [Tower of St. Michael's, Cornhill.] LXXXlX.— SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON CHURCHES AT THE CLOSE. OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. Any one who repairs on a clear day to Waterloo Bridge, and turns his eye- towards the City, will be struck with the close juxtaposition into which the church spires are huddled together in that direction. If, after taking this view, he turn his steps to the east, and begin to thread the narrow and tortuous thorough fares within the circle on which the walls of London once stood, he will be reminded that the existing churches are only a portion of those which existed before the Great Fire. The numerous little grave-yards, with their couples of trees, feeble attempts at green-sward, and a few old dusky monuments which meet him at every corner, are "roses in the wilderness" of trafficking London, " left on their stalks to mark where once churches have been." The train of thought thus suggested may move our imaginary rambler, if he be one who loves at times to saunter on without any more definite aim than to see what food for thought or fancy he may stumble upon, to allow his imaginings VOL. IV. r 210 LONDON. to pierce below the soil, and there detect buried churches of a yet older time. "The remains of the parochial church of St. Michael," says Maitland, "are still to be seen under the house inhabited by Mr. Gilpin, an eminent chemist, at the south-east corner of Leadenhall Street, and measure thirty-six feet from north to south, and sixteen feet from east to Avest, with a Gothic arched roof sup ported by two handsome pillars, and built with square bricks, chalk, and stone, in the manner of the ruins of Rochester Castle." And Ave further learn, from the same author, that "under the corner house of Leadenhall and Bishopsgate Streets, and tAVO houses on the east, and one on the north side thereof, was situate a very ancient church of Gothic construction, the principal part of which is still remaining under the said corner-house and the tAVO adjoining in Leadenhall Street; but part of the north aisle, beneath the house contiguous in Bishopsgate Street, Avas lately obliged to make Avay to enlarge the cellar. . . . The roof of this ancient structure, which is a flattish Gothic arch, is at present only ten feet nine inches above the present floor ; Avherefore I am of opinion that this church originally Avas not above the height of seventeen feet within, which, together with three feet, the thickness of the arch, as lately discovered by a perforation, shows that the ground is very much raised in this neighbourhood. The walls of this church being so much decayed and patched with brickAvork, I could discover neither door nor windoAV therein ; however, the entrance to the chief part thereof (a.d. 1738) is at Mr. Jones's, a distiller, opposite Leadenhall Gate. At the distance of tAvelve feet from this church northwards, is to be seen, under the house late Mr. Macadam's, a peruke-maker, in Bishopsgate Street, a stone building. .... It is covered with a semicircular arch, built with small pieces of chalk in the form of bricks, and ribbed Avith stones, resembling those of the arches of a bridge. What this edifice at first Avas appropriated to Avas very uncertain, though by the manner of its construction it seems to have been a chapel." The City is noAV a place of mercantile business. The heads that conduct, the fingers that Avrite, the brawny backs and arms that guide waggons, work cranes, and perform the toilsome tasks of porterage, seem to have it all to themselves. The genius of trade reigns paramount, and occupies the Avhole minds of men so long as they are within the walls. In former days AVealthy merchants and shop keepers, to say nothing of those they employed, had their dwellings in the City : but noAV the very Bank clerks have their residences in the suburbs ; the wag goners and porters inhabit the precincts of the ToAver, and the monotonous level of close-packed small houses betAveen the Minories and the East India Docks, through Avhich the line of the BlackAvall Railway has been excavated, giving rich men an opportunity (Avhich they rarely use) of seeing how poor men live. Human beings still toil in the City, but they scarcely have the appearance of living in the City. There is nothing there but shops and counting-houses. The airy courts and stately structures of City magnates of the days of Queen Anne are inhabited, not by men, but by firms — "Goosequill, Ledger, & Co." That unsubstantial abstrac tion '' Co." possesses it entirely. At night the specious vacuum Avould tenant the City alone, but for the Avatchmen Avho patrol the streets ; and during the day his human serfs Avho repair to the tenements he occupies are inspired by him alcme — their thoughts are exclusively of pounds, shillings, pence, dry goods, bonds, debentures, and stocks. CHURCHES -OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 21] One is almost tempted to ask the frequent churches Avhat they do there. They are said to be opened on Sundays and sometimes during the Avpek, yet there is a thick coating of dust upon them which almost appears to belie the report. They are scarcely more life-like than the vacant grave-yards, Avhich, to the mind's eye, are filled by the ghosts of old churches, as Banquo's chair was by his unreal spectre, or than the old church of St. Michael's, or the nameless church and chapel of Leadenhall Street, buried themselves, instead of marking a spot where the more frail and transitory frames of men are buried. To one under the influ ence of such fancies existing churches appear as unreal as those which have passed aAvay, and those Avhich have been destroyed as real as those which survive. All London's churches, past and present, are visible to the imagination, and the city of traders and brokers is transmuted into the city of churches. There is a strange jostling among these architectural spectres, as they rise one after another on " the mind's eye :" it looks like a hubbub, though all is silent. Not only churches rise where churches no longer stand, but old St. Paul's occupies the same place as new St. Paul's, and sometimes two churches of the olden time plant their corners on part of the area occupied by one of our OAvn day. There must be a good and efficient police in the world of dreams : you could scarcely at any great spectacle — the Lord Mayor's proces sion, or the execution of a Fauntleroy, or the liberation of an Alice Lowe — per suade any tAvo people of flesh and bones to occupy the same space, though thereby double the number could be comfortably accommodated, and yet these unin telligent works of man's head or hands do it at once without a murmur. When the churches of eight or nine centuries are thus assembled together, it is clear that, like human beings, they stand in the relationship of ancestors and descendants to each other. The present St. Paul's is the laAvful son and heir of Bishop Maurice's St. Paul's. Some families of churches (like that Ave have just named) have come in course of time to own and occupy broader lands than their forefathers did, exactly as the case is with human mortals. Other families, again, die out (as has been the lot of St. Paul's old neighbour, St. Gregory), and their property falls into the hands of strangers. These stone walls have their genea logical trees as well as the creatures who build them ; some bourgeoning gaily, and Avith many branches groAving broader as they rise (large parishes subdivided, and the portions settled as doAvries upon filial churches and ci-devant chapels of ease) ; some going off in a leafless point, like a Scotch fir killed by a blight, or choked by the overshadoAving of a lustier tree (as in the case of the aforesaid St. Gregory and the churches not rebuilt after the fire). Great though the shoAv made by the churches Avithin the City wall be at pre sent, it is nevertheless evident, from the remarks already made, that their num bers have fallen off from what they once Avere. The Great Fire thinned their ranks : many a stately spire toppled down in the midst of it, never to be rebuilt. And more than a century before that event the Reformation had wrought sad havoc in their ranks, If we were called upon to fix the time when churches most did flourish in the City — Avhen the greatest num.ber of contemporary churches Avere to be found within its wall — the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century is the period we should select. The church-building Church had then reached the highest development and culture it was destined to attain p 2 2] 2 LONDOBi. in this country. It had raised the population from a state of savage life to a high degree of culture, spiritual and intellectual : like the soul of man, it had over-informed and worn-out its tenement, and had nothing for it but to die. It is wonderful how every form which social civilisation, civil or ecclesiastical, assumes, is created and destroyed by the same elements. The same disregard of the vulgar gauds of this world, and yearning after a higher and more spiritual existence, Avhich animated the first monks of the Benedictine and Augustine orders, the first friars of the brotherhoods of St. Francis and St. Dominic, who built up the Romish Church as it existed at the close of the fourteenth century, animated the Wickliffes, Jeromes of Prague and Johns of Huss, Luthers, Cal- vins, and Knoxes, to whom it was given to destroy it, and rear their respective modifications of Protestantism on its ruins. Brother Jack hiinself (to borrow the phraseology of the ' Tale of a Tub ') did not tear the tags, tassels, and embroidery from his coat with more reckless disregard of the rents he made in the texture of the good cloth upon which they had been sowed, than did his precursors the founders of the mendicant orders. And Hildebrand himself did not set his feet upon the neck of the civil power with a prouder or firmer tread than did at a later period, and within a narrower circle. Pope Calvin of Geneva. The forms and ceremonies of the Romish Church — the studies to which those ambitious of occupying the high places in her hierarchy were prompted — the morals and faith they taught the members of their congregations from the high-altar, the pulpit, or by the side of the sick bed, created a new soul in men's bosoms ; and that soul, when created, necessarily burst from within the scaffolding which had been employed in raising it, shatter ing mere forms in its onward and spiritual flight. It was hot because they were bad that the forms of the old faith were trampled down, but because they had made men independent of themselves : the crutch of the invalid was an incum brance to the healthy man. It Avas not because the ministers of the old faith had become less pure than their predecessors that a new race of teachers superseded them, but because, like Captain Bobadil, they had made every one of their pupils as good or nearly as good as themselves in spiritual fence, and more advanced teachers were required. About the close of the fourteenth century (at least in England) the Romish Church was in the full flush of its power and usefulness. It had, aided by co operating influences to which it is not at present necessary to advert, raised and improved men from what they had been, but not so far as to enable them to dispense with its services. It was incorporated with the domestic as well as with the public life of society ; its influence was seen and felt everywhere. Its bodily presence was seen in church, chapel, and altarage, abbey, convent, and hospital : its spiritual presence was felt in the numerous links of guilds and confessorships, which bound every individual to his church and its ministers, making the na tional religion a part of his daily occupations. The market was held before the church-door, and the public fountains were placed near the church, that the water might be blessed. St. Giles Cripplegate had its "boss of clere water;" and St. Michael le Quern, at the west end of Cheapside, its conduit. Chaucer has put into the mouth of his Wife of Bath a playful picture of the omnipresence of the Church : it may have been meant as a sarcasm (for Chaucer lies under the sus picion of LoUardism), yet is it conceived in no harsh spirit, and is exactly the CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 213 ^^^ .43l1?'-'1 1 [St. Michael le Quern.] ludicrous manner in which a bold, spirited person would express her sense of a power which she could not help reverencing, though she did not feel herself much bettered by it : — " In old xlays of the King Artour, Of which that Britons speaken great honour, All was this land full filled of faerie : The Elf-queen, with her jolly company, Danced full oft in many a green mead. This was the old opinion as I read ; T speak of many hundred years a§o ; But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the great charity and prayers Of limitours and othfrr holy fr6res, That searchen every land and every stream, As thick as inottes in the sunny beam. Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, and boivers. Cities and boroughs, castles high and towers, Thorps and barns, sheepcotes and dairies. This maketh that there be no faeries ; For there where wont to walken was an elf, There walketh now the Limitour himself. In the afternoons and in the morwenings. And saith his matins and his holy things. As he goeth in his limitation. Women may now go safely up and down. In every bush and under every tree, There is no other incrubus but he. And he will do them no dishonour." 214 LONDON. The good lady appears to regret that the father confessors have superseded the fairies, just as some sentimental souls regret that rectors have superseded the priests ; and yet she Avould have been as loth to have the incubi brought back as her modern types would be to see " black popery " restored. It is curiosity that recommends the past, but present use that endears the good we really have. It may be necessary to explain the office and dignity of the " limitour," to whom the Wife of Bath attributes such power and universality. Chaucer shall do it for us. The poet's enumeration of the pilgrims in his com pany is constructed on the principle of placing the highest in rank foremost. The knight, the prioress, and the monk come first; after them, and before the merchant, the clerk of Oxford, the serjeant at laAv, and the franklin, comes the friar, Avho Avas a " limitour." This, we learn from the account given of him, Avas a friar Avho collected the alms by which his house Avas supported Avithin a certain district — " He was the best beggar in all his house ; And gave a certain farm for the grant. None of his brethren came within his haunt." He Avas a licentiate of his order, had " much of dalliance and fair language," went well dressed, " SoraeAvhat he lisped for his wantonness, To make his English sweet upon his tongue ;" had taste and talent for music, Avas familiar with franklins all over the country, and had influence over the wives of the better class of citizens. He could unbend in jolly company — " In his harping, when that he had sung. His eyen twinkled in his head aright As do the starres in a frosty night ;" and yet he never in his merriment compromised his dignity ; for mine host of the ' Tabard,' who suited his address to every man's bearing, speaks to him Avith respect — " mine OAvn master dear." This is a sarcastic, but scarcely unfair, pic ture of a choice spirit of the four powerful orders of mendicant friars. At the close of the fourteenth century London was tolerably Avell stored with this class of ministers of religion. There were the Black Friars in the south-west angle of the city, Avhose church, built in 1 726, by Robert Kilmarley, archbishop of Canterbury, occupied the area of the Castle of Mountfichet and two lanes adjoining. Where Christchurch Hospital now stands was the pleasant site of the Grey Friars. From John lAvyn, citizen of London, they had all his lands and houses in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles ; the Mayor and commonalty gave them more ; in 1225 the Avealthy citizens clubbed to build them a house and church; in 1308 the consort of EdAvard I. began a stately and spacious church for them, Avhich Avas tAventy-one years a-building ; and in 1421 Sir Richard Whittington built them a library, and laid out four hundred pounds in furnishing it Avith books. Not far from Blackfriars, although outside of the City walls, between the Temple and Salisbury Court, Avere the White Friars, who in the fifteenth century held a reputation for learning above any of the mendicant orders in England. At the south-east corner of Hart Street, in Aldgate Ward, Avas the house of the Crutched or Crossed Friars. The Friars Eremites of the order of St. Augustine, also mendicants, had a house, the site of Avhich is still CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 215 kept in remembrance by Austin Friars in Broad Street. The poor brethren of St. Augustine Papey, at the north end of St. Mary Axe Street, the brother hood of the threescore priests skilled in singing dirges, and others who attended solemn funerals, may fairly be classed with the mendicants. All England was their diocese, but doubtless so rich a field of it as London Avould not be left untilled — at all events it was the hive to Avhich these busy bees duly brought home their gathered honey at certain seasons. The monks, it would appear from Chaucer, Avere a more aristocratical race. The company which trudged to Canterbury, " the holy blissful martyr for to seek," was composed of the middle classes: but then, as noAV, these middle classes died, by insensible degrees, into the nobles at one end, and into the labourers at another. Chaucer's knight Avas a Avarrior to stand at a king's right hand ; and Chaucer's monk Avas a fair companion for the knight. The limitour was good company for the jolly franklin ; but the monk and knight, though it was no derogation to them to associate Avith him, belonged to a higher circle. A noble fellow was that monk. A scholar he was, after the fashion of his day, though his taste lay towards the belles-lettres, not to crabbed science. When his turn comes to tell a tale, he begins, like James or Bulwer in our day, with a preface intended to shoAV his learning. He astonishes his hearers by telling how many books he has in his cell, and condescendingly explains that " tragedies " — " ben versified communely Of six feet which men clepeth hexamitron." And then he launches into a high-flown moral illustration, in which Lucifer, Sampson, Holofernes, Nero, Count Ugolino, and Julius Caesar figure — so sub lime, and long-winded, and " allicoly," that Harry Bailey is obliged to stop him. Somewhat worldly-minded, our monk is as rich and dignified clergymen are apt to become ; the gauds and vanities of time have more hold on his affections than is beseeming in a man whose business it is to point the way to eternity. But he is at bottom of good principles, a sound counsellor at need, and decorous in his conduct. He is painted by Chaucer with the rich power of a Titian or a Rubens : — ' " I saw his sleeves purfiled at the hand With gris, and that the finest of the land ; And for to fasten his hood under his chin, He had of gold ywrought a curious pin : A love-knot in the greater end there was : His head Avas bald, and shone as any glass ; And eke his face as it had been anoint. He was a lord full fat and in good point. His eyen steep and rolling in his head. That steamed as the furnace of a lade." And then the state in Avhich this jolly churchman rides ! — ¦ " When he rode, men might his bridle hear, Gingling in a whistling wind as clear, And eke as loud, as doth the chapel bell There where this lord was keeper of the cell. There is a dash of the voluptuous in the characters both of the friar and th monk ; and yet hoAv marked is the difference between them ! There is a dignity 216 LONDON. and retenu about the " steep eyen " of the " fair prelate," forming as strong a contrast to the eyes of the limitour, twinkUng like stars in a frosty night, as could be wished, to distinguish the rich priest, who had " greyhounds as swift as fowl in flight," and who set his heart upon " pricking and hunting for the hare," from the plausible gentleman beggar, whose " Tippet was aye farsed full of knives . And pins to give to fayre wives." London was quite as well supplied with these stately pillars of the monastic order as with their more popular brethren. The priory of St. Bartholomew, next door to the Grey Friars, was founded by Rahere, " a witty gentleman, be longing to Henry I., about the year 1 102," who was himself the first prior, and the establishment retained its courtly character to the last. What is now Sion College was a college of regular canons of the order of St. Augustln. East of East Smithfield was a Cistercian abbey, founded by Edward III., called the Abbey of the Graces, subject to the monastery of Beaulieu. The hermitage at the corner of Monkwell Street, called St. James's 'Chapel, or the Hermitage in the Wall, belonged to the Cistercian convent of Gerendon, in Leicestershire, who kept tAVO of their monks stationed there ; and many of the principal monas teries in England had similar permanent agencies in the capital. The Carthu sian Monastery in Smithfield was founded in 1371. The power and pride of the Knights Hospitallers rendering them especially obnoxious to the populace, their magnificent house of St. John of Jerusalem was burned by the insurgents of Kent and Essex in 1381, but speedily rebuilt more splendid than before. But of all these monastic princes none, in point of local dignity and import ance, came near the Prior of the Holy Trinity at Aldgate. The -origin of Port soken (or the franchise at the gate) is lost in the meagre traditions of Saxon antiquity. A l^end there is of its being won, by some stout Saxon warriors in the days Of King Edgar by knightly service in fenced lists, during a long sum mer day. The tale has a strong family resemblance to many other legends of chi valry, and has just as much or as little title to be believed as most of them. William the Con-queror and Henry I. are said to have confirmed the liberties of the heirs of these knights by special charters. Matilda, the Saxon wife of H-enry 1., founded the Priory of the Holy Trinity, within Aldgate, in 1108 : it is said to have been the first house of regular canons established in England. In 11 15 ac cording to some, or 1125 according to others, the barons of London, who held the JEnglish Cnichten-gild, which lay without the walls of the City at Aldgate, and extended to the Thames, bestowed it upon the Church of the Holy Trinity, and took themselves the habit of the order. The parishes of St. Michael, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Catherine, and the Blessed Trinity, Avere incorporated into one; .and the Church of the Priory was made the iparish church. The Prior, powerful through the tithes of his large parish, powerful through his broad lands, was still more powerful from his being, as proprietor of Cnichten-gild or Portsoken, an Alderman of London. He sat and rode among the Aldermen of London in the same livery, only the prior's habit was in shape that of a spiritual person. Stow, who records the fact, mentions that he had himself, -when a child, seen the Prior of the Holy Trinity in this array. We pass over the nunneries, though the image of Madame Eglantine rises CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 217 up to detain us. Doubtless they, too, had Prioresses (at times) with foreheads " almost a span broad ;" with " nose tretis and eyen grey as glass ;" with French " after the schole of Stratford atte Bow ;'' with ladylike manners, and a brooch on which was " Amor vincit omnia ;" and Avho, like that most elegant of devotion's hand-maidens, " Pained them to counterfeiten cheer Of court, and ben estatelich of manner. And to ben holden digne of reverence.'' And pleasant it would be to gossip of them, as the old chroniclers furnish occa sion ; but at present we have other game in view. They are here mentioned simply lest they should be left out from the estimate of the clerical element in London about and before a.d. 1400. The Black Friars backed by the White Friars, and the Grey Friars backed by the Priory of St. Bartholomew, with the minor stations of the Hermitage in the Wall, and Elsing Spltal, may seem a tole rable ecclesiastical garrison for the west-end of the City of London of those days. But this was only a small part of the fortalices of the Church which bristled on the Capitoline hill of the spiritualities of Lud's Town. Almost the whole space between the Grey Friars and the Hermitage Avas occupied by the wealthy and independ ent collegiate church of St. Martin, with its surrounding sanctuary. And cen trlcally placed within the ring formed by St. Martin's, the Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, was the metropolitan Church of St. Paul, with a body-guaril of smaller churches rising round it. The Cathedral and its cemetery were encom passed with a wall by Richard, Bishop of London, in 1109. The wall extended from the north-east corner of Ave Maria Lane, along Paternoster Row, to the north end of the old Exchange in Cheapside; thence it ran southwards to Carter Lane ; and, passing on the north side of that thoroughfare, it turned up to its great western gateway in Ludgate Street. About the beginning of the four teenth century this wall became dilapidated, and to prevent irregularities, which took place in consequence, a grant was obtained in 1317 from EdAvard II. " to fortify the same in such a manner as effectually to put a stop to these wicked practices." At the south-west angle of the Cathedral Avas the parish church of St. Gregory ; the vault under the choir was used as the parish church of St. Faith. Near the north-east angle was the church of St. Augusti-n ; east of the Episcopal Palace, which occupied the north-west angle of the enclosure, was the Chapel of Pardon Church Haw ; adjoining to Canon Alley, in the east, was the Charnel Chapel ; nearly in front of it, in the middle of the churchyard, was the Cross where sermons were preached weekly. When one calls to mind that St. Martin's Ludgate, and St. Ewen's (near the north-east corner of Warwick Lane), were stuck in between the churches of the Black Friars and the Grey Friars ; that St. Andrew's Holborn and St. 'Pulchre's kept up the line of communication between the White Friars and St. BartholomeAv's ; that there was a nest of churches, of two of which only the churchyards remain, immediately east of St. Martin's le Grand ;- and that all the churches now remaining betAveen St. Paul's Churchyard and Ludgate Street and Hill on the north, and the Thames on the south, with a feAV more, as St. Anne's Blackfriars, were there in the fourteenth century, one is puzzled to imagine how any room ceuld be left for any dwelling- houses on that sacred hill, except those which are known to have been inhabited 218 LONDON. by the Bishop, Dean, Canons Residentiary and Canons Minor, and the members of the various religious orders. The difficulty is not much lessened Avhen one turns to look at the rest of the space within and immediately around the City walls. In order to show the full difficulty of conceiving how the dwelling-houses of the citizens could get wedged in among so many churches, Ave must recall to mind the appearance which London in -those days presented. The great fen, in Avinter a lake, which Fitz-Stephen describes as lying in his time immediately north of the City, had undergone little alteration. It remained a marshy depression till the bones were emptied upon it from the Charnel-house at the Reformation, and the level of the soil raised and dried, that the archers might be enabled to walk over it dry-shod, that a mad house might next be erected there, and that in due time the edifices of Grub Street might find a firm foundation. A small stream, rising on the east side of Smith- field, ran down into this marsh, crossing the line of the present Whitecross Street. The surplus Avater of the marsh Avas drained off by Walbrook, which ran down to the Thames nearly in the line of Princes' Street, Walbrook, and Dowgate. Near Aldgate rose another brook, or burn, which ran at first westward along Fenchurch and Lombard Streets, and then turning to the south before it reached the site of the Mansion House, ran down to the Thames parallel to Walbrook. The little valleys in Avhich Walbrook and Langburn (or Sherburn) flowed Avere sunk considerably beloAV the eminences which bounded them, although the build ing, destroying, and rebuilding of more than four centuries have almost raised them to the same level. At the Avestern base of the eminence on which St. Paul's stands Avas the deep valley of the Fleet, in that part of its course parallel Avith Walbrook. The part of the City contained within the walls is Avell known ; Fore Street, or London Wall Street, and two lines connecting their extremities, with the Tower on one hand and the junction of the Fleet and Thames on the other, mark its limits Avith sufficient exactness. But it must be remembered that all the ground Avithin them Avas far from being built up. Large spaces Avere allotted to the houses and gardens of the nobility : the mansion subsequently called Devonshire House, where the square of that name now stands ; Crosby Hall ; the possessions of the Arundel family, Avhere noAV is Tokenhouse Yard : Baynard's Castle took up a great deal of room ; and so did the Tower Royal, and the factory of the Hanseatic merchants. The City had not spread itself over the Minories and the fields beyond them ; the sAvamp above alluded to hemmed its pro gress in the direction of the north ; Smithfield was still a free space for tilts and tour naments Avithout the Avail, as Cheapside Avas within it; only between the Temple and Chancery Lane, Holborn, the Fleet, and the Thames, a City Avithout the Avails appears to have groAvn up nearly as populous as the City Avithin them — which does not, however, imply crowding houses or a dense population. Here the palaces of the bishops and their gardens occupied no inconsiderable space. And noAV, keeping these things in mind, let us turn our attention to the number of parish churches and chapels Avhich sprung up in this double City, in addition to the monasteries, the cathedrals, and the collegiate churches, during the latter part of the fourteenth century. A catalogue of them all Avould be a sad infliction on the reader's patience ; and, after he had read it (or skipped it), he would scarcely have a more exact idea of the real state of matters than he can gain by CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 219 being told that in the comparatively little and straggling London Ave have been attempting to describe, there Avere quite as many churches, monastic establish ments, hermitages, and some odd chapelries not included, as there Avere in London immediately before the Great Fire, and at least one-third more than are to be found within the same area at present. Some of these dated from the Saxon ages. St. Botolph's, St. Edmund's, and St. Ewen aforesaid, by their very names betray their origin. St. Alban's (north side of Love Lane, and east side of Wood Street) is said by Matthew of Paris to have been the chapel of King Offa; and a square tower, which was still standing near it in 1632, Avas imagined by some of our Avord-torturing antiquaries, Avho derived Addle Street from Ethel (noble) Street, to have been part of Athelstane's palace. St. Gregory's Avas in existence in 1010, when it gave shelter for three years to the remains of King Edward the Martyr, which were removed thither Avhile the Danes Avere ravaging East Anglia. But by far the greater part of the churches of London are of a more recent date than the Conquest ; and of the majority of them Avritten contemporary records go no further back than the fourteenth century, Avhile of many it is known with certainty that they were built in that century. It was a busy time in London, Avhat with rearing new churches and furbishing up the old. But something may be done to help to form a picture of the appearance and distribution of London ecclesiastical buildings as they then stood Avithout running over the whole bead-roll of them. The clerical citadel on the hill of St. Paul's Cathedral has been portrayed above. To what has been said of the new town (such it was then) Avhich overhung the Fleet on its west bank betAveen Oldborne and the Thames, it is only necessary to add the churches of St. Bride (which had three rectors before 1362), St. Dunstan's in the West (the advowson of which was transferred from the croAvn to the Bishop of London in that year), and of the Temple. On the extremity of the ridge of ground Avhich, stretching southward from Highbury, and forming the eastern bound of the great SAvamp beloAv the north city wall, gave rise to the stream which ran where Fenchurch is on its west side, and to several rills which lost themselves in the marshes of Ratcliffe, were the Abbey of our Lady of Graces, the first approached by mariners ascending the Thames, built by Edward III. after he had encountered a tempest at sea; the Church and Hospital of St. Katherine's, near the ToAver ; the Abbey of the nuns of St. Clare, called the Minories ; the House of the Crossed or Crutched Friars; the Church of St. Botolph's before Aldgate; the Priory of the Holy Trinity ; the Hospital of St. Mary Spital. Along the eminence between the Thames and the upper course of Langburn, which extended from St. Katherine's near the Tower to the mouth of that rivulet, were the churches of St. Peter in the Tower, AUhallows Barking, St. Dunstan's in the East, and St. Magnus on the Bridge. On the side of the same rising ground, which sloped northwards to Langburn, were St. Katherine's Coleman, AUhallows Staining, St. Bennet Grace- church, St. Michael's Cornhill, St. Gabriel's, &c. Parallel to this eminence Avas the high ground betAveen the marsh beloAV the Avail and the shalloAV valley drained by Langburn. On it, proceeding Avestward from the Priory of the Holy Trinity, Avere the churches of St. Katherine Cree, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Dionis Back- church, AllhalloAvs Lombard Street, St. Helen's Church and Monastery, the churches of St. Ethelburga, St. Martin's Abchurch, St Peter's, St. Bennet Finck, 220 LONDON. St. Bartholomew Exchange, AUhalloAvs on the Wall, and St. Christopher. On the tongue of land which stretched down from this ridge to the Thames between Langburn and Walbrook, Avere St. Mary's Woolchurch and St. Mary's Woolnoth, St. Mary Abchurch, St. Clement's Eastcheap, St. Martin Ongars, St. Stephen Walbrook, St. Swithin, AUhallows the Great, AUhallows the Less, and St. Law rence Poxintney. On the three declivities of the hill crowned by the Cathedral, towards the brook AA'hich crossed the line of Whitecross Street on its way to the marsh, to Walbrook and to the Thames, stood churches which it would be waste of time to recapitulate : St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Alphage on the Wall, St. Mary's Aldermanbury and Aldermary, St. Mary de Arcubus, or Boav Church, the great centre of Cockney-land, St. Martin's in the Vintry, and many more. Having thus mapped out the local position of some of the leading churches, and indicated their relative positions, two things more are requisite to convey a just notion of their appearance, as their neighbourly spires towered up above the surrounding fields, in close juxtaposition, emulous each of rising nearer to heaven than its neighbours.. First, the straggling, semi- rural appearance of London in that age must be kept in mind. The brooks Avhich channelled its sur face were not embanked, much less vaulted over. Here and there was a wharf or bridge to be seen on the banks of the Thames, Avhere the King's customs were collected, where the Hanseatic ships or Genoese galleys lay, but for the most part they were much as the washing of the river had shaped them, deformed rather than ornamented by human cutting and carving. The lanes or roads twisted and winded in the most unaccountable manner ; few, if any of them, were paved, and all sorts of slatternliness lay ankle-deep in them, after the fashion of which we read in the ' Cottagers of Glenburnie.' Straggling -groups of houses arose here and there within the area, with garden-grounds around and between them, over hung with trees, some tolerably cultivated, but all sufficiently slovenly. The houses of the nobility, the royal castles and towers, the sanctuary of St. Martin's, the precincts of the Cathedral, and most of the monastic houses, were walled and battlemented, and fit to stand a vigorous siege. The City wall gave a factitious unity to the section of the City which lay within it, but where it was not seen the area had more the appearance of a number of villages and fortalices crowding together than of a town such as modern notions picture it. The next thing to be minded is to guard against imagining that all the churches we have named or hinted at were lofty, imposing, or even respectable specimens of architecture. Wren's report upon the construction of Westminster Abbey and old Paul's shows that, though the artistical taste of that age was tolerably deve loped, its mechanical skill was not great. The multiplication of churches was oAving, in no small degree, to men's anxiety to have a church of their own — one dedicated to their favourite saint, one frequented by the inmates of the special cluster of houses in which they dwelt, or by the guild to which they belonged A church would be often run up in haste in this manner without much forecast as to how itself or its ministers were to be kept upright and alive for the future. It Avould be small and unshapely, with no greater permanent fund than the scanty tithes of the little district the bishop was persuaded to allot to it and the inha bitants thereof The zeal of its founders would be apt to cool, or at least their •children Avould care less about it than they had cared. But the priest who was CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 221 placed in it, and his successors, would have an interest in keeping up the fabric. This is not said in the mere material or worldly sense of interest. Devotion to his saint, love for his flock, an allowable pride in keeping his church in good order or improving its appearance, the amiable vanity of keeping his congrega tion together, and laying down the law to it and amending it, would be so many spurs to such priests as are still to be found among the rude peasantry of Ire land (suggarth aroon l) to identify themselves with their church. It is amusing and something better at the same time to note, in turning over the old records of these edifices, the shifts to which the good fathers were often driven to keep up the foundation and to make ends meet with themselves. In one year we read of the parson of AUhallows, Bread Street, obtaining licence, in May, 1349, to re ceive a gift for himself and his successors of a piece of ground adjoining the chancel in Watling Street, of the length of twenty-seven feet and breadth of twelve ; and in February, 1350, of his successor in office being permitted to ap propriate a spot of ground, twenty feet long and eleven broad, for the building of a chapel contiguous to the church. Thus scantlings of land crept by degrees together and formed a tolerable field. It was mainly by the foundation of chapelries and altarages that the parsons of those small parishes were enabled to subsist. And it was these altarages and the voluntary guilds of the citizens that so completely identified the Church with the whole domestic life of the citizens of London. The wealthy citizens of Chaucer are all members of a guild : — " An Haberdasher, and a Carpenter, A Weaver^ Dyer, and a Tapiser, Were all yclothed in one livery Of a solemn and great fraternity. Full fresh and new their gear ypiked was, Their knives were ychafed, not with brass, But all with silver wrought full clean and well ; Their girdles and their pouches every deal Well seemed each of them a fair burgess. To sit in a Guildhall upon the dais. Every, for the wisdom that he can. Was shapely for to be an Alderman. For chattels hadden they enough and rent, And eke their wives would it well assent And eke certainly they were to blame, It is full fair to be ycleped Madame, And for to go to vigils all before, And have a mantle royally ybore." Such personal ornament, it may be thought, is inconsistent with the homely picture we have drawn of the London town of Chaucer's time ; but without going so far as Persia or Turkey, where men expend all their money on gay apparel, and dwell within bare Avails of no costly structure, we would remind our readers of what may be seen every Sunday in the moorlands of the low country north of the Tweed. There the cottages are still built of unhewn rag-stone, or of " wattle and daub," and thatched, it may be, with heather. The chimney is four upright posts, tied round with straw ropes ; and more smoke finds its way out by the door and the broken windows than by the legitimate opening for its exit. The floor is trodden clay ; the rafters, unconcealed by lathing and plaster, have derived 222 LONDON. from the perennial smoke-cloud which enwreathes them a glossy jet-black hue equal to any japan. Before the Avindow is a dunghill ; before the door a pool containing its drainings ; and against the gable of the hut a peat-stack. Here one would scarcely look for personal cleanliness, nor is it to be found on Aveek- days ; but on each recurring Sabbath the maidens of these unsightly dAvellings issue from them, in apparel Avashed in the clear brook which murmurs near, and bleached on the floAvery lea, pure and spotless as those in glistening raiment whom Bunyan saw in his vision. The nature of the religious guilds, or " solemn and great fraternities," may be gathered from the regulations of the " fraternity of good men " begun in the year 1375 in the church of St. James Garlickhithe, " in Avorship of God Almighty our creator, and his mother St. Mary, and AllhalloAvs, and St. James Apostle." The object of the association is declared to be " for amendment of their lives and their souls, and to nourish more love among the brethren and sistren of the brotherhood." The party admitted a member must "love God and holy Church, and his neighbours as holy Church maketh mention;" and "shall nothing of godless conditions and bearing." Members are to pay 6s. 8c?. entry money ; 2s. quarterly ; and " every brother and sister, if he be of poAver, shall give somcAvhat in maintenance of the fraternity — w'hat him liketh." Wardens are appointed to collect the contributions, and account yearly. " The brethren and sistren every year shall be clothed in suit, and every man pay for that he hath." Loose livers are to be expelled. Such as have been seven years members, and are overtaken by incurable disease, shall be alloAved 14c?. weekly for life. Such as are " imprisoned falsely by false conspiracy " shall have 13c^. a-week during their imprisonment. " Also the brethren and sistren, at one assent, in suit beforesaid, shall every year hold together, for to nourish more knowledge and love, a feast ; which feast shall be the Sunday after the day of St. James Apostle, and every pay their 20c^." In the Charnel Chapel, on the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard, Avere tAvo brotherhoods, one of which, the Fraternity of All Souls, was founded in 1379. " This fraternity," says Maitland, " on the eve of All Souls, met together in the chapel over the Charnel-house, and there Placebo and Dirge Avere said, with other orisons, for the souls of all the faithful departed. On the day of All Souls, at morning prayer, Avhen the bell rung at seven o'clock, they came together to the chiu'ch of the Holy Trinity, near Aldgate ; and so from that place, Avith a sIoav pace, they walked to the aforesaid chapel, muttering their prayers as they Avent along, and their secret orisons, pouring them out vultu cordiali, Avith a serious countenance, for the living and the dead. And when they had finished that journey, they attended one mass for the dead, most devoutly, at Avhich mass the brothers and sisters honourably performed oblations, and so returned home." The influence of such unions for the exercise of benevolence, and for mutual defence against oppression, animated by the mystic enthusiasm of devotional feelings, may easily be imagined. The eagerness shoAvn by kings and nobles to be received into them indicates the power of the fraternities. But it is with their influence on the citizens avc have to do. It was they that made the burgess feel himself a limb of the church — that brought the church to sit by his fireside, and made it a partner in all his enterprises. This was the unheeded root of which CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 223 the visible stems Avere the chapels dedicated by mariners, the churches round which markets and fairs were held, the consecration of the great acts of the com munity. The "folkmote" of the citizens of London was held in the churchyard of St. Paul's. In time of war, the banner-bearer of the City came, with his personal " following,'' and his own banner displayed, to the great Avest door of St. Paul's, Avhere he Avas met by the Mayor and aldermen, of Avhom the Prior of the Holy Trinity Avas one. There he received from the Mayor a horse, and money for his expenses, and the banner of St. Paul. The banner-bearer then directed the Mayor to choose a marshal for the host, and the Mayor and burgesses to warn the commons, and, taking in his hand the banner of St. Paul, he bore it to Aldgate, Avhere the Mayor and he intrusted it to whom they thought proper. And Avhen the banner and the host marched against an enemy, the Lord of the Banner named two sage persons out of every ward to look to the keeping of the City during their absence. These solemnities were imposing ; but it was in the religious guilds that men were trained to feel and act thus on great occasions. It Avas in this school, too, that the predilection for pilgrimages, if not contracted, Avas fostered. The pilgrimage made to Canterbury by the haberdasher and his guild-brethren was the necessary consequence of the tastes they acquired in their fraternity. There Avere many follies about these pilgrimages. The Wife of Bath, and still more the Cook of London, were not made much better by them — but were they made any Averse ? And the Knights' high-soaring thoughts had. their wings strengthened, and the Franklin heard much edifying discourse, and Chaucer collected matter for his deathless poem. So Avith regard to the clerical establishments of London, it is not meant to attribute to them any Utopian perfection. Chaucer glances at those clergymen who " Set their benefice to hire, And left their sheep accumbered in the mire. And ran unto London, unto St. Paul's, To seek them out a chauntry for souls.'' Nay, he has left us a picture of a cheat as well as a muckAvorm Avearing the garb of a canon. And Ave learn from Maitland that when Robert de Braybrooke Avas appointed Bishop of London in 1381, he found that " a very bad and scan dalous practice had for many years prevailed in this church, by the residentiaries not admitting a brother canon to residence unless he agreed to expend in the first year after his admission, in junketing and other excesses, at least seven hundred marks. This epicurean practice the Bishop had frequently attempted to remove, but without success ; till at last he and the residentiaries agreed to refer the affair in dispute to the King's arbitration, Avho awarded that for the future the residence of the church of, St. Paul should be regulated according to the sta tutes and customs of the church of Sarum." But these sad stories of the per sonal profligacy of priests, are mere illustrations of the truth that the flesh is Aveaker than the spirit Avhich seeks to give law to it. But for the teaching of the priests the multitude Avould never have knoAvn that there Avas anything improper in such conduct- as has been counted to them for a crime. Though members of the Church Avere guilty, the Church taught all men hoAV to become virtuous, and made them more virtuous than they Avould otherArise have been. The Chinch is not to blame because, through occasional mistakes, rotten and unsound materials Avere 224 LOMijuii. built into its walls. The Church was no more to blame because hypocrites occa sionally wore the clerical garb, than because the houseless ruffians of London slept in St. Paul's churchyard in 1300, when the wall Avas dilapidated. The citizens might learn a spice of superstitious folly from their clerical instructors, but the good lessons preponderated on the whole. - We must take the Londoners of the fourteenth century as men, and not despise their spiritual jewels because they ave found imbedded in a matrix of earth. [Porch of St. Alphage.] [Interioi- of Bow Stiuet I'ulice Ollice about 1816.] XC— SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE TN LONDON. We observed in a former paper on sharps and flats,* that, dexterous and accom plished as are the followers of the several varieties of illegal industry in London, perhaps above those of any other community in the world, their genius had not, at least in modern times, shone with any remarkable lustre in the inventive line. Their favourite modes of entrapping their prey seem to be nearly the same in the present day as they were two or three hundred years ago ; coneys are still caught, if not with all the scientific formality and display described by Greene in the end of the sixteenth century, yet substantiaUy by the same process ; im postors of many aspects then, as now, cheated charity with their artificial in firmities ; sweeteners and ring-droppers, and other artists of that class, may have lost some of their old designations, but have forgotten none of their ingenious stratagems ; pocket-picking in all its forms was practised as cleverly, and taught as elaborately, in the London of the times of Elizabeth and James as by the • Nc. LXXXV., Old London Rogueries. VOL. IV. Q 226 LONDON. Jew Fagin and his boys in the novelist's striking revelation of the hidden real life of our own day.* But probably the reason of this is really the excellence of these old tricks and wiles — their perfect serviceableness for their purpose, and nice accordance with the principles of human nature, as proved by the wonderful success with which they continue to be employed after having been in use for so long a series of years. Innovation is not to be needlessly ventured upon in pocket-picking any more than in politics (which, indeed, with its income-taxes and other ingenious contrivances, may be said to be in the main only a more respectable kind of pocket-picking). Time, however, is continually innovating, in spite of us, in all things ; and if we look back over a few generations, Ave shall find that, while all other things have been moving, sometimes forward, sometimes, perhaps, backward, the character of London roguery and crime has also under gone important changes, of which some may have merely followed the general progress or varying circumstances of society, but the most marked have been brought about by the improved methods that have been adopted for the repres sion of particular offences. The police of a state is, in reference to the lawless part of the population, what the army is against foreign enemies. In the case of both — in this and, probably, in all other countries — the old plan was to call upon every member of the com munity to take his turn in the service, which consequently had to be so regulated as that it should interfere as little as possible with each man's ordinary occu pations. Thus, the landed proprietor took the field with his tenantry and their labourers after the seed was put into the ground, and might remain for a few months while the grain Avas germinating and ripening ; but when it was ready to be cut down, the army necessarily broke up. Whatever conveniences or advan tages in other respects this system may have had, it was very unfavourable to * The readers of ' Oliver Twist ' will recognise something like the seminary kept in the darkened old house near Fifeid Lane, in the following account of a School for Thieves, discovered in 1585 by Fleetwood, the recorder and reported by him to the Lord Treasurer : — " Among the rest they found out one Wotton, a gentleman born, and sometime a merchant of good credit, but fallen by time into decay. This man kept an alehouse at Smarts Key, near Billingsgate, and after, for some misdemeanor, put down, he reared up a new trade of life; and in the same house he procurediall the cut-purses about the City to repair to his house. There was a school-house set up to learn young boys to out purses. Two devices were hung up ; one was a pocket, and another was a purse : the pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung about with hawk's-bells, and over the top did hang a little ecaring-bell ; the purse had silver in it ; and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public Foyster^ and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a judicial Nypper, according to their terms of art. A Foyster was a pick -pocket ; a Nypper was a pick- purse or cut-pur.se.'" — Maitland's London, i. 269, from Stow's Survey. Or, take this curious sketch of the vil lainies of the eighteenth century from the Chronicle of the ' Annual Register ' for 1 765 : — " March 25iii. At an examination of four boys, detected at picking pockets, before the Lord Mayor, one of them, admitted as evidence, gave the following account. A man, who kept a public-house near Fleet Market, had a club of boys, whom he instructed in picking pockets and other iniquitous practices. He began by teaching them to pick a handkerchief out of bis own pocket, and next his watch, by which means the evidence at last became so great an adept, that he got the publican's watch four times in one evening, when the master swore that his scholar was as perfect as one of twenty years' practice. The pilfering out of shops was the next art. In this, his instructions to his pupils were, that at such chandlers' or other shops as had hatches, one boy should knock for admittance for some trifle, whilst another was lying on his belly close to the hatch, who, when the first boy came out, the hatch remaining on jar, and the owner being withdrawn, was to crawl in on all fours, and take the tills or anything else he could meet with, and to retire in the same manner. Breaking into shops hy night was the third article ; which was to be affected thus. As brick walls under shop windows are generally veiy thin, two of them were to lie under a shop window as destitute beggars, asleep in appearance, to passers by ; but, when alone, were with pickers to pick the mortar out of the bricks, and so on, till they had opened a hole big enough to go in, when one was to lie as if *sleep, before the breach, till the other accomplished his purpose." SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 227 the efiiciency of a military force, and accordingly it early gave place to the practice of having armies composed of soldiers Avho had no other business or profession, and lived upon the pay they received for their services. In the department of police this improvement was everywhere much longer in being adopted. In its most extended meaning the police of a country may comprehend the entire establishment for the administration and execution of the laws — from the parish constable up to the Lord Chancellor inclusive. In ancient times, in our own and every other country, the functionaries employed in this work were, with scarcely an exception, persons who were chiefly engaged in other occupations, or whose proper profession was not that of the law ; the Chancellor and other superior judges were sometimes clergymen, sometimes soldiers ; the inferior magistrates were, as for the most part they still are, country gentlemen, mer chants, and others, having generally no particular qualification, beyond a little leisure, for the discharge of their magisterial functions ; the constables were, and continued in most places to be till very lately, anybody who could be got to serve the ofiBce. Whatever reasons not apparent upon the surface there may be (and we do not assert that there are not such) for leaving the ordinary adminis tration of the law in rural districts in the hands to which it has been long con fided, it is certain that a most objectionable state of things was engendered in the altogether different circumstances of large towns by this arrangement. Fielding has given us, in his ' Tom Jones,' a glimpse of the country magistrate of his day, the middle of the last century, in the chapter in which Mrs. Honour is brought before Squire Western by his sister to have " justiceship executed " on her for hcr unguarded words in the dialogue with her fellow-chambermaid. When the squire, on the suggestion of his clerk, and his recollection of the unpleasant consequences of some former decisions, declined to send the girl to Bridewell " only for ill-breeding," Mrs. Western, we are told, disputing his law, " named a certain justice of the peace in London who, she said, would commit a servant to Bridewell at any time when a master or mistress desired it." " Like enough," the squire is made to rejoin ; " it may be so in London, but the law is dift'erent in the country." The situation of the dispenser of the law, at least, was entirely different. In London, where there was no game to protect, and little local influence to be acquired or maintained, the commission of the peace was without its chief natural or usual attractions ; and the work of an acting magistrate was at the same time so much more laborious than in the country, that few were likely to undertake the oflSce on any mere amateur principle. In these circumstances it could only follow that men would seek it in order to make a living out of it ; and if that could not be done in one way it would be done in another. Hence the Basket Justices and Trading Justices of those times. The basket justices appear to have actually received presents or bribes from the parties who came before them ; game, poultry, and other contributions, were dropped into the baskets from which they took their name, or perhaps Avere brought to the court, decently covered over we may suppose, in such receptacles by the generous and disinterested donors. However the matter was managed, this was perhaps no worse a substitute for a salary than the other mode that succeeded it, of making a revenue out of the fees. To some of the fees the magistrate may have been legally entitled ; but of those also that of right belonged to the clerk, by an arrangement between them, with Q 2 228 LONDON. which of course nobody had any business to interfere, a share, and that probably in many cases the lion's share, might easily be made to find its way into the pockets of his worship on the bench. The London trading justice has been drawn by Fielding at full length in his ' Amelia.' Jonathan Thrasher, Esq., one of the Justices of the Peace for the liberty of Westminster, before whom the watchmen brought Booth and their other prisoners, was utterly without legal knowledge, but, " if he was ignorant of the laws of England, was yet well versed in the laws of nature " — that is to say, he made his own interest, wherever it was possible, the guiding principle of his decisions, and " was never indifferent in a cause, but when he could get nothing on either side." In the preface to his last work, his ' Voyage to Lisbon,' Fielding, who had himself, before his health broke down, oflliciated for a few years as a London police magistrate, says that one of his pre decessors used to boast that he had made a thousand a-year of the place ; but how this was done Fielding does not profess to understand. The prisoners that Mr. Thrasher had to deal with on that April morning being, as it would seem, every man and woman of them penniless and friendless, were all despatched to prison ; after which " the justice and the constable adjourned to a neighbouring alehouse to take their morning repast " — in the hope, no doubt, that the after noon might produce a better harvest. But, wherever it could be done, the plan of the trading justice was to make the party charged find bail : this bailing was the main stay and instrument of his trade. Among the witnesses examined by the Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the state of the police of the metropolis in 1816 was the famous Bow-street oflficer, John Townsend ; and his evidence is fuU of curious information, as well as richly characteristic. Townsend had then been an oflBcer at Bow Street for above fiAC and thirty years ;* his acquaintance with the police system, therefore, went back to the year 1780, at which date the trading justices still flourished. " In those days," says Town- send, " before the Police-bill took place at all, it was a trading business ; and there was a Justice this and Justice that. Justice Welsh, in Litchfield Street, was a great man in those days ; and old Justice Hyde, and Justice Girdler, and Justice Blackborough, a trading justice at Clerkenwell Green, and an old iron monger. The plan used to be to issue out warrants, and take up all the poor devils in the streets, and then there was the bailing them, 2s. 4d., which the magistrates had ; and taking up a hundred girls, that would make, at 2s. 4d., III. 13s. 4d. They sent none to jail, for the bailing them was so much better." The system, therefore, had been improved upon, and, we may say, carried to perfection, since Fielding's day. Yet it had not gone on Avithout endeavours having been made to check it and put it down. The Police-bill that Townsend speaks of was the great measure of 1792, which established seven new public oflices for the different districts of the metropolis, each with three magistrates : namely, those of Queen Square, Great Marlborough Street, Hatton Garden, Worship Street, Lambeth Street, Shadwell, and Union Street ; forming the basis of the system that still exists. But daily petty sessions had been held at Bow Street under the superintendence of paid magistrates for a good many years before this. Henry Fielding had no salary ; but his half-brother. Sir John Fielding, * He says himself, " I think somewhere about foijr and thirty years ; rather better ;" but, as we shall find, be afterwards speaks of knowing the office at Bow Street in the time of Sir John Fielding, who died in 1780. SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 229 (he was knighted in 1761,) who succeeded him, we believe, had.* Sir John, who, although blind, was a most active and useful magistrate, presided at Bow Street till his death in 1780. " When I first knew it," says Townsend, " there were three justices at Bow Street, — Sir John Fielding and two others." Among the measures that were taken to give respectability to this bench was the following device, as recorded in the Chronicle of the ' Annual Register ' for 1765 : — " The magistrates for the city and liberty of Westminster, for the better securing of their persons, and to procure a more ready obedience to the laws, have lately been honoured with his Majesty's most gracious permission to dis tinguish themselves by wearing the arms of Westminster, with the emblems of magistracy, on a gold shield, fastened to a riband hanging down the breast." What effect this decoration had, or whether it had any, in diminishing crime, we have not found recorded. But although the absolute quantity of crime ap pears to have been little affected by any of the improvements which the system of police' underwent in the course of the last century, some of the changes in the laws, or in the means and modes of 'carrying them into execution, which were adopted from time to time, operated at least to alter the character of the prevailing de scription of offences. Thus, the trade in the restoration of stolen property, car ried on from about the year 1712 by the famous Jonathan Wild, through a clandestine confederacy with all the regular thieves, burglars, and highwaymen of the metropolis, whose depredations he prompted and directed, received some check by an Act of Parliament passed in 1717, by which persons convicted of receiving or buying goods knowing them to have been stolen were made liable to transportation for fourteen years ; and by another clause of which it was enacted, with a particular A-iew to Wild's proceedings, that, whereas there were several persons who had secret acquaintance with felons, and who made it their business to help persons to their stolen goods, and by that means gained money from them, which was divided between them and the felons, whereby they greatly en couraged such offenders, any person taking money or reward under pretence or upon account of recovering goods that had been stolen, without apprehending the felon, and causing him to be brought to trial and giving evidence against him, should be guilty of felony ; and, although Wild's ingenuity and audacity enabled him for some years longer to elude this new law, his conviction upon the last-men tioned clause, and execution in consequence at Tyburn on the 24th of May, 1 725, appears to have effectually broken up and put an end to the iniquitous system which he had invented, and carried on for A time with such remarkable ability and success. Jonathan Wild really in one sense merited the surname of the Great, be stowed upon him by Fielding, in whose History of him, although the incidents are fictitious, there is no exaggeration of his talents and courage, any more than of his unscrupulousness and destitution of all kind of moral principle. Publicly, or to the world in general, it is to be understood. Wild professed to be the most zealous of thief- catchers ; to ordinary observation the good man's life * Townsend indeed asserts that Sir John Fielding was paid by the fees of office ; but he does not appear In have had a clear recollection of the matter. When afterwards asked if Sir John had any salary, he replied, " Very trifling, if any ; the chief magistrate used every Monday morning to settle with the clerk the account of those fees." We apprehend the three Bow Street Magistrates had salaries, though they may haA-e also been partly paid by fees. 230 LONiiOlN. /¦¦ :nF [Jonathan Wild.] and strength appeared to be spent in the pursuit and apprehension of felons, and his zeal for the punishment and extirpation of all kinds of lawlessness to be quite insatiable. At his trial he had a printed paper handed to the jury, entitled " A List of Persons discovered, apprehended, and convicted of several robberies on the highway, and also for burglary and housebreaking, and also for returning from transportation, by Jonathan Wild ;" and containing the names of thirty- five robbers, twenty-two housebreakers, and ten returned convicts, whom he had been instrumental in getting hanged. And this statement was probably true enough : in the accounts of the trials at the Old Bailey for many years before it came to his own turn, he repeatedly appears as giving evidence on the side of the prosecution, and in many cases as having taken a leading part in the ap prehension of the prisoner. Here, for instance, is a portion of his evidence on the trial of Butler Fox, indicted for a highway robbery in December, 1 72 1 : — " Upon the information of Hawkins [an accomplice, who turned King's evidence] I went o' Sunday to the prisoner's house, and found him at home, with his two brothers and two other men. I knew him by his black eye, and by the buttons on his breeches, which Hawkins had described to me, and told me that they were the same they took from Sir Edward Lawrence [the prosecutor]. The prisoner, at first, was very obstropolous, and swore he would not go Avith me ; but I pulled out a pistol, and swore as fast as he, that if they made any more resistance I'd fire among them; and with that he grew as quiet as a lamb." The records of these trials are at once the most authentic memorials we have of Wild, and the relics that afford us the most lively picture of his insolent, domineering, dare-devil character. In another case — that of the trial of John James, alias Eaton, alias John the Grinder, and two others, for a highway robbery — which came on in March, 1722, he said, " Upon Worrel's information I got a warrant against the Grinder for another robbery. 1 went to a house he frequented in Crown Court, in St. Giles's. Tom Eaves happening to see me before I got in, he thrust the door to, and stood against it. I swore, if they would not open it, I'd fire through, and clear the way directly. Upon this I was let in ; and, searching the house, I found the Grinder under the bed, and so secured him and Eaves." After some dialogue. Eaves SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 231 (who, after all, was probably in league with Wild, and had been accessory to his own apprehension) observed that he could make himself an evidence. ' Can you so ?' Wild says he replied, ' Very well !' And then he goes on : — " So I took care of my two chaps ; and next day I went in quest of the other two. Picket and Avery, whom I knew to be old snatch-pockets, and it was not long before I met 'em in the street. ' So,' says I, ' where are you two gentlemen a-going?' They said they had heard the Grinder was taken, and they were going to inquire how he came off. 'Came off!' says I : 'he is not come on yet; but you shall go and see — I'll carry you to him.' No, they said : they were satisfied with what I had told them. ' But,' says I, ' he'll take it ill if you don't go ; and why should you be against it ?' ' Because,' says Picket, ' as Ave have sometimes been in his com-. pany, and drank with him, maybe he may swear some robbery upon us.' ' May be so too,' says I, ' and for that very reason I must take you with me.' " In these and other similar instances Wild is understood to have taken the course he did, either because the prisoner was not one of his regular troop, or had broken loose from his allegiance, and attempted to do business on his own account ; or sometimes probably becauscj on a consideration of all the circumstances, it was deemed politic to let the gallows have the man merely to preserve appearances. Of course, in carrying on this trade of blood, he was occasionally turned upon by his betrayed, maddened, and desperate victim ; but, whenever this happened, his matchless effrontery bore down everything before it, as effectually as his energy, determination, and fearlessness had done in the previous stages of the affair. In another trial — that of three persons indicted for several robberies in January, ] 723 — ^he gave the following account of his proceedings : — " Some coming (I sup pose from the prosecutors) to me about the robbery, I made it my business to search after the prisoners, for I had heard that they used to rob about Hamp stead ; and I went about it the more willingly because I had heard they had threatened to shoot me through the head. I offered lOl. a-head for any person who would discover them, upon which a woman came and told me that the pri soners had been with her husband, to entice him to turn out with them ; and, if 1 would promise he should come and go safely, he would give me some intelli gence. I gave her my promise, and her husband came accordingly, and told me that Levee and Blake were at that time cleaning their pistols at a house in Fleet Lane. I went thither, and seized them both." The husband of the woman, it appears, had actually been a party in one of the robberies, though he now came forward to convict his associates, having been no doubt all along in league with Wild; and Blake (more famous under his other cognomen of Blueskin) also figured as King's evidence on this occasion, and frankly admitted that he had been out Avith the prisoners. They, the three unlucky parties, who found themselves placed in the dock, Avhile their associates were thus preferred to the witness-box, " all," says the account of the trial, " vehemently exclaimed against Jonathan Wild;" but they were all found guilty, and swung in company, " upon Tyburn tree," a few days after. Jonathan, however, to do him justice, did not to their last moment altogether desert even those of his friends whom, in his bold and comprehensive views of the true policy of trade, he thus occasionally found it expedient to sacrifice for the general good of the concern. It came to Blueskin's turn to be tried for his life, convicted, and hanged, within two years after this, ^^^ LONDON. Wild was to have been an evidence against him ; but a day or two before the trial, when he went to pay a visit to his intended victim in the bail-dock, Blue skin suddenly drew a clasped penknife, and, falling upon Jonathan, cut his throat, though the blade was too blunt to do the work effectually. When the verdict was given, Blueskin addressed the Court as follows : — " On Wednesday morning last, Jonathan Wild said to Simon Jacobs [another prisoner, soon after transported], ' I believe you will not bring 40/. this time. I wish Joe (meaning me) was in your case; but I'll do my endeavour to bring you off as a single felon.' * And then, turning to me, he said, ' I believe you must die. I'll send you a good book or two, and provide you a coffin, and you shall not be anatomized.' " This is the most characteristic anecdote we know of Jonathan Wild : it conveys the whole man. The sublime of cool assurance, and the mixture of the ludicrous and the horrible, were never carried farther. The reward of 40/. which Wild could not manage to make Jacobs bring " this time " was part of a system established by various Acts of Parliament, which assigned certain money payments to be made to persons apprehending and prose cuting to conviction highway-robbers, coiners, and various other sorts of delin quents. It amounted obviously to offering a premium for such evidence as would hang a man ; and there can be no doubt that it operated in many cases to procure such evidence against persons not really guilty of the crimes with which they were charged. A great sensation was produced in 1755 by the detection of the prac tices of a confederacy of miscreants, who it Avas discovered had for nearly twenty years^ been making a regular trade of charging innocent parties with crimes and prosecuting them to conviction and execution for the sake of the rewards. Four of the gang. Berry, Salmon, Macdonald, and Gahagan, alias Egan, were tried and found guilty of the facts charged in the indictment ; but on the special verdict of the jury being brought before the twelve judges, it was the unanimous opinion of their lordships that the said crimes did not fall within any statute by which they could be capitally punished — and the conviction consequently fell to the ground. The prisoners, however, were immediately indicted anew on a charge of conspiracy, and being found guilty were sentenced to be imprisoned in Newgate for the term of seven years, to be each of them during that time set twice in the pillory, and on being let out of jail to find sureties for their good behaviour for three years. But the popular sense of justice was not altogether defrauded of its prey : when, on the 5th of March, Macdonald and Berry were exposed in the pillory for the first time in Holborn, near Hatton Garden, they were so severely handled by the mob that they with diflBculty escaped with their lives ; and when, three days after, the other two were brought out to make a similar exhibition in the middle of Smithfield Rounds, " they were instantly," says the history, " assaulted with showers of oyster-sheUs, stones, &c., and had not stood above half an hour before Gahagan was struck dead ; and Salmon was so dangerously wounded in the head, that it was thought impossible he should recover. Thus, though the law could not find a punishment adequate to the horrid nature of their crimes, yet they met with their deserts from the rage of the people." It appeared that the plan usually followed by these villains was for one of them to entice two * Crimes punishable only by transportation, whipping, imprisonment, &c., were denominated single felonies. SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 233 persons to join him in robbing an accomplice ; a second accomplice then, taking care that the first should escape, apprehended the- two dupes, and, having his evidence supported by another of the gang who had managed to purchase some of the articles of which their confederate had allowed himself to be robbed, found no difiiculty in convicting them and securing the reward. But in some cases they appear to have gone the length of getting up a story of a highway-robbery or burglary which had never taken place even in appearance, and swearing away the lives of parties who were entirely innocent — if even that was really a more atrocious proceeding than first to seduce an unhappy wretch to commit a crime and then to get him sent to the gallows for it. When they received their money, it seems, it was divided at an entertainment which went among them by the sig nificant name of the Blood-feast. Incredible as it may be thought, it is insinuated that some magistrates, for the sake of the grist in the shape of fees which the bloody trade brought also to their mill, knowingly patronised and . encouraged these execrable proceedings ; but what is unquestionable, and hardly less strange, is, that the mistaken legislation, which was found to be pregnant with so much mischief and iniquity, was allowed to remain unchanged, and in constant action, till another fearful revelation in our own day of the practices which it gave birth to and fostered again excited the public indignation and horror. In 1816, sixty years after the trial of the former thief-takers, Vaughan, the police -oflScer, and seven others were found guilty of the same offence, of inducing persons to commit burglaries that they might obtain the blood-money for their conviction. How long they had carried on this system, or how much farther they had gone than was actually proved — how many victims they had first drawn into crime and then handed over to transportation or the scaffold — to what extent they had screened and promoted the commission of minor delinquencies by parties whom they had, as it were, in training for felonies that would yield the Parliamentary reward — whether they had not in some cases sworn away wholly innocent lives — all this remains in darkness ; but, having done what they did, we may be well assured that there was no inhuman wickedness they shrunk from upon which they thought they could venture with safety. Vaughan and his confederates were sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Newgate — for the law, armed as it was with so many death penalties against every-day offences, was still powerless to punish more severely such rare and enormous crimes as theirs ; but soon after the whole of this system of rewards was repealed and swept away. If this step had not been taken by Parliament, it would have been difiScult to have obtained the conviction of any person charged with a felony where the principal evidence, as often must be the case, was that of the oflScers of police by whom he had been apprehended. Juries would have smelt blood whenever such a witness presented himself. It is remarkable, however, how completely the former case of the same kind appears to have been forgotten while the public mind was occupied with that of Vaughan and his associates. There is no allusion to it either in the report presented next year (1817) by the Committee of the House of Commons on the Police of the Metropolis, the half of which is occupied with " the consideration of the subject of parliamentary rewards," nor, we believe, throughout the voluminous body of evidence thereto appended. Among the witnesses examined by the Committee 234 LONuoiN. was the late Sir Richard (then Mr.) Birnie, the well-known Bow Street magis trate : upon being asked if he thought the case proved against Vaughan was of common occurrence, Mr. Birnie answered, " I think it is a very uncommon case ; I never knew of any other ;" and being further pressed to say if he did not think it probable that the same thing must have happened in many other instances which had escaped detection, he replied again, with the same resolute ignorance or dignity, " I must still say 1 think it was a new offence." Most people never theless will probably agree with the homely philosophy of sharp, unceremonious John Townsend, who, in his evidence before the Committee of the preceding session (1816), said on this subject, " I have, with every attention that man could bestow, watched the conduct of various persons who have given evidence against their fellow-creatures for life or death, not only at the Old Bailey, but on the circuits;. . .they (officers) are dangerous creatures; they have it frequently in their power (no question about it) to turn that scale, when the beam is level, on the other side — I mean against the poor, wretched man at the bar. Why ? This thing called nature says profit is in the scale; and, melancholy to relate, but I cannot help being perfectly satisfied that frequently that has been the means of convicting many and many a man However we may be, in whatsoever state we are placed, nothing can be so dangerous as a public officer, where he is liable to be tempted ; for, God knows, nature is at all times frail, and money is a very tempting thing ; and you see frequently that much higher characters than police officers and thief-takers, as they are called, have slipped on one side and kicked over places." This, then, is another offence which, it may be said, has been done away with by a change in the law. It was indeed one which the law may be fairly charged with having produced — which would not have existed but for the law. The same thing may be said of the train of offences that attended upon the State Lottery. Among other things there was a large trade driven in the insurance of tickets, which was for the most part illegal, and to a great extent one of sheer fraud and robbery. Writing of the manner in which this trade was carried on in 1796, Dr. Colquhoun says, " The offices are numerous all over the metropolis, and are supposed to exceed four hundred of all descriptions ; to many of which there are persons attached, called Morocco men, who go about from house to house among their former customers, and attend in the back parlours of public-houses, where they are met by customers who make insurances. It is calculated that at these offices (exclusive of what is done at the licensed offices) premiums for insurance are received to the amount of 800,000/. during the Irish Lottery, and above 1,000,000/. during the English; upon which it is calculated that they make from 15 to 25 per cent, profit. This infamous confederacy was estimated, during the English Lottery of the year 1796, to support about 2000 agents and clerks, and nearly 2500 Morocco men, including a considerable number of hired armed ruffians and bludgeon-men : these were paid by a general association of the principal proprietors of these fraudulent establishments, who regularly met in committee, in a well-known public-house in Oxford Market, twice or thrice a-week, during the drawing of the lottery, for the purpose of concerting measures to defeat the exertions of the magistrates by alarming and terrifying, and even forcibly resist- SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 235 ing, the officers of justice in all instances where they would not be bribed by pecu niary gratuities; to effect which last purpose neither money nor pains were spared ; and the wretched agents of these unprincipled miscreants were, in many cases, prepared to commit murder had attempts been made to execute the warrants of magistrates, as can be proved by incontestable evidence." Many attempts were made to put down this practice of insurance ; but it survived as long as the state lottery itself did, in defiance of the law. It was one of the sub jects inquired into by the Police Committee of 1816. Sir Nathaniel Conant, chief magistrate at Bow Street, stated to that committee that there were persons who had made forty or fifty thousand pounds by that traffic ; and it appears from the evidence then received that, in addition to the evils described by Dr. Colquhoun, there had by this time arisen out of the practice an extensive system of trading in informations, from which a numerous class of persons derived a regular liveli hood, in great part, it is not to be doubted, by perjury. A considerable reward, something between three and five pounds, was received, it seems, upon each in formation. All this, of course, was put an end to, along with much more immo rality, when the lottery was discontinued — when the state declined any longer to raise a miserable twenty or thirty thousand pounds a-year by a process the same in principle with the thimble-rigging of our fairs and racing-grounds, only infi nitely more mischievous. We will notice only one other crime, formerly exceedingly prevalent, which an improvement in the police arrangements of the metropolis has also almost com pletely put down — that of highway-robbery. Here again we must have recourse to Townsend, who is very great upon this subject : — " There is one thing which appears to me most extraordinary, when I remember in very likely a week there would be from ten to fifteen highway-robberies. We have not had a man com- [Townscnd.] 236 LONDON. mitted for a highway-robbery lately ; I speak of persons on horseback : formerly there were two, three, or four highwaymen, some on Hounslow Heath, some on Wimbledon Common, some on Finchley Common, some on the Romford Road. I have actually come to Bow Street in the morning, and, while I have been lean ing over the desk, had three or four people come in and say, ' I was robbed by tAVO highwaymen in such a place ; — I was robbed by a single highwayman in such a place.' People travel now safely by means of the horse-patrol that Sir Richard Ford planned. Where are these highway-robberies now? — as I was observing to the Chancellor at the time I was up at his house on the Corn Bill. He said, ' Townsend, I knew you very well so many years ago.' I said, ' Yes, my lord, I remember you first coming to the bar, first in your plain gown, and then as king's counsel, and now Chancellor. Now your lordship sits as Chan cellor, and directs the executions on the recorder's report ; — but where are the highway-robberies now ?' And his lordship said, ' Yes, I am astonished. There are no footpad-robberies or road-robberies now, but merely jostling you in the streets. They used to be ready to pop at a man as soon as he let down his glass ; — that was by banditties.' " But the cruelty with which highway-robberies used to be accompanied had decreased nearly as much, according to Townsend, as their frequency. In his early days the plan followed was to attempt to put down the ferocity of the highwayman by an application of the penalties of the laAV, still more unsparing and merciless. Townsend relates that Lord Chief Justice Eyre once went the Home Circuit, beginning at Hej-tford and finish ing at Kingston, Avhen crimes were so desperate, that in his charge to the grand jury at Hertford he told them to be careful what bills they found, for he had made up his mind, whatever persons were convicted throughout the circuit for capital offences, to hang them all. And he kept his word; he saved neither man nor woman. In one case seven people, four men and three women, were convicted of robbing a pedlar in a house in Kent Street. " They were all convicted," says ToAvnsend, " and all hanged in Kent Street, opposite the door ; and, I think, on Kennington Common eight more, making fifteen; all that were convicted were hung." And, generally, he observes in another part of his evidence, " With respect to the present time and the early part of my time, such as 1781 — 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, where there is one person convicted now, I may say I am positively convinced there were five then : we never had an execution wherein we did not grace that unfortunate gibbet with ten, twelve, to thirteen, sixteen, and twenty ; and forty I once saw at twice — I have them all down at home." But this wholesale slaughter seems to have done no good at all ; the more hanging, there were only the more, and the more hardened and desperate, criminals to catch and hang : crimes of violence only decreased when the law began to restrain its own Ariolence — as if the law and its administration were scarcely more operative in suppressing or checking crime than in giving to it its peculiar character and temper. Still, what a standing reproof and opprobrium to our boasted civilization seems that one fact, the war between Law and Crime, that has gone on in every land without pause since the commencement of society, and that still rages with as little sure or distinct prospect of termination as ever ! Be it observed, that SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 237 this is not a war in any figurative sense merely., but in the plainest and most substantial meaning of the word. It is a contest carried on by force of arms, and, to as great an extent as any other war, by all sorts of bodily inflictions and agonies, including the plentiful effusion of blood and destruction of life. It has all the characteristics of what have been called the worst of wars — it is a civil war, a war of classes, a war of principles. It is a rebellion subsisting in the heart of every community, which will not be put down. The utmost, judging by all experience, that can be done, is to keep it from making head, to preserve law and order from being absolutely overborne and submerged by the angry tide that is constantly beating against their bulwarks. These bulwarks, police institutions for the prevention and detection of crime, prisons, hulks, convict colonies, stripes, treadmills, pillories, gibbets, solitary systems, silent systems, and all other penal contrivances that have yet been thought of, seem to have no more power to diminish crime than the dykes of Holland have to drink up the German Ocean. If crime has been, or is to be, diminished at all, it must be, apparently, through quite other means and influences. There is a notion which has got possession of many people's heads, that the proper use of our prisons and other places to which criminals are consigned is to serve as schools of reformation— that the primary or main end of punishment, in other words, is to reform the individual who is punished. The short-sightedness and confusion of thought which this notion involves might be shown in many different ways ; but it may be enough here to remark, that, even if we could effectually reform all the criminals we can catch, we should do very little, if anything at all, by that proceeding alone, to diminish the amount of crime. If we could convert all our actual criminals into Avell-behaved ladies and gentlemen by animal magnetism or a harlequin's wand, we should not thereby extinguish crime, nor even lower its swelling surges for more than a moment. The springs of that mare magnum wo'uld not be dried up merely by the waters which they had discharged being thus pumped off; effectual draining, draining to any purpose, whether in agriculture or in social economics, is another sort of operation altogether. Make our prisons simply so many conduits for distilling or running off vice into virtue, the only effect Avould be to cause the fountains of crime to flow the faster in order to supply the draught thus kept up, just as the production of corn is promoted by other kinds of distilling. Not, God forbid ! that we would check or chill the philanthropy which seeks to train and reform, whether the inmates of our prisons or the blackguardism and profligacy of our streets. Assuredly there is no ignorance or debasement that cries louder upon our pity than that which exists among the lawless and criminal part of the community — than that which is at once the mother and, in great part also, the offspring of crime. None can have a stronger claim upon our best exertions to rescue and preserve them than those whom any cause, be it what it may, has reduced to be the outcasts of society, or has placed under the ban and iron heel of the law — whether what appears to us to be their oavu inherent viciousness, or the unfortunate circumstances amid which they have been thrown. If they are to be compassionated who are only helpless and desl'i- 238 LONDON. tute, how much more they who are all this, and demoralized and covered with disgrace besides — abandoned in all senses of the word ? Let there be no doubt or hesitation therefore about the duty of taking up any such case of degradation and wretchedness when the opportunity presents itself, or even of endeavouring to apply a systematic moral and intellectual training as part of the discipline of our prisons and penitentiaries. We are at least bound to take care that those who may be consigned to these places of punishment shall not come out more depraved than they went in — that our prisons shall not be schools of vice and crime, normal seminaries or colleges, as it were, where the best education in the worst knowledge is provided at the expense of the state — where degrees are taken in the arts of dishonesty and plunder — whence a constant supply is kept up for town and country of the most accomplished practitioners and teachers of pocket-picking, SAvindling, and housebreaking. Perhaps the best way of pre venting a prison from becoming all this, from being a school of crime and profli gacy, is to make it a school of industry and virtuous instruction. But still we must not forget that, primarily and principally, a prison is not a school of any kind, but a place of restraint and punishment — an establishment devised and maintained for the purpose of deterring the breaker of the laws through the apprehension of something much more dreadful than the pains of learning to read and write. It may be advisable to provide criminals when in durance with the means of acquiring these accomplishments, just as it is expedient or neces sary to provide them, on a moderate scale, with meat and drink ; but a prison is not on that account to be regarded as mainly or properly a school, any more than it is to be regarded as an inn. Alas ! if, as some teach, the virtue of our actions lay always in their consequences, short-sighted humanity might better, in general, fold its arms and go to sleep than attempt to do good. An angelic intelligence might possibly manage to act upon this beautiful theory of consequences, but not the measure of faculty where with we have been gifted. Take what is perhaps the saddest of all the sights that deform our civilization, the fallen womanhood and beauty, for the most part not more steeped in sin than in sorroAv, that nightly prowls along our streets, gliding like a long glittering serpent through the common crowd of passengers, by whom the touch or gaze of the noxious thing is deemed to be insult and con tamination : is there any depth of wretchedness from which the heart would yearn more to deliver a fellow-creature than from this ? Yet should we in this way do anything to diminish the evil? Is it not possible that every individual saved and reformed would only by her removal make room for a successor ? — that the blind benevolence which rescues her may at the same time occasion the fall of another into the same state ? It is indeed pretty evident that it must be so, see ing that it never has been pretended that all the exertions of philanthropy, public and private, in this way have in the least reduced the numbers of the un happy class in question. But are these exertions, for all that, either mischievous or useless, and as such to be denounced and refrained from ? It is impossible to believe that the promptings of our highest and purest feelings are so false and misleading. It were better, in that case, for ourselves and for all around us that we had been made calculating machines than men. Being constituted as we are. SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CRIME AND POLICE. 239 our part seems to be, in such matters, to take up the case that is before us — to do good as we have opportunity — and not to regard consequences farther than we can clearly foresee them. Otherwise, in truth, we should not be capable of acting at all, for there is no movement we can make, of which the consequences are not infinite in number, in variety, in the time and space over which tl^y extend, and in the interests which they affect — while all we can discern, or even by any force of speculation conjecture about them, is but as the little circle which a farthing candle might illuminate, in the waste of universal night. Not being able to take in the whole range of these remote possibilities, what should we gain by attempting to regulate our conduct in reference to the insignificant portion of them which we think (but are never sure) that we do perceive and comprehend ? How should we be safer proceeding thus than by turning away from that region of unfathomable amplitude and mystery altogether, and acting at once as the crying circumstances of the case before us, and the sympathies of the human hearts within us, call upon us to do ? It is a leap in the dark (if you will have it so) in the one way as well as in the other. You may be as much misled, may be drawn in to act as detriinentally, by an imperfect consideration of possible consequences as by no consideration of them at all. But, in truth, this " thinking too precisely on the event," in the business and duties of life, is not only " vain wisdom all and false philosophy ;" it is at bottom " a craven scruple — a thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, and ever three parts coward." It is this in those who really feel it and act upon it, or rather who allow themselves to be deterred by it from acting : in others, it is a mere stupid theory ; in others, perhaps, a convenient though dishonest, profession. But it neither misguides nor perplexes any right-minded, earnest, courageous man or woman. To recur to the case with which we set out, who is there, with a heart in its right place, who, having the opportunity and feeling otherwise called upon to endeavour to rescue some poor outcast of the pavement from infamy and destruction, ever would be withheld from moving in the matter even by the apprehension that his humane act might possibly, operating both directly and in the way of example, contribute remotely, in the mysterious concatenation of all things, to the down fall of fifty or of five hundred other such victims ? Be it so ; better it should be even so, than that the virtuous action should not have been performed — the consequences of which in an opposite direction, we may be sure, will still over balance this and all other incidental evil ; if, at least, good and not evil be the life and governing power of the universe, — and that is a truth devoutly to be believed in by all who would believe anything. From no part of the economy of our world, indeed, does this truth receive stronger illustration than from a right view of the great social phenomenon of which we have been speaking. At first sight it may seem that crime ought to be effectually put down under a proper constitution and administration of the law — that the laAV, if it put forth all its strength, ought to be able to prevent there being any such thing as crime. But the real wonder is, not that crime should continue to exist, but that law should ever have existed — not that the law should fail in completely vanquishing and extirpating crime, but that it should be at all able to keep crime under, and to hinder knavery and violence from 240 LONDON. being the masters of the world. How is it that the sharp intellect and the stror.g hand have not everywhere asserted what appears to be their natural prero gative of lording it over the weaker and more timid part of mankind ? It is, no doubt, a wise policy which has substituted the rule of law and equity for this natural dominion of force and violence; but the substitution surely has been brought about and is maintained by something more divine than policy and calculation. It has the appearance of being much more the result of a senti ment or instinct of justice inherent in mankind, than of any cunning perception of its expediency or deliberate balancing of its good and evil. Of that, in any sueh case, masses of men are, and have ever been, nearly as incapable as the waters of the ocean would be of determining at any time by their own will and choice in Avhat direction they should flow. But influences from heaven lead and guide both ; and so human society is sustained in life and power throughout its whole organization by a wisdom higher than its own, even as the tide is rolled to and fro by a force not within itself — a. force that is seen only in its effects, and that is as irresistible as it is invisible. [East Wiudovv, from the Choir.] XCI.— OLD ST. PAUL'S. In our account of Westminster Abbey we had occasion to notice the intimate connexion that exists between the history of some of our chief cathedrals and the history of the growth in England of the faith and the worship to which they were devoted. Foremost among such structures stands old St. Paul's. Here is a scene which there is every reason to believe took place in it, after the apparently complete establishment of Christianity in and around the metropolis by the erection of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey : Sebert, the founder of Westmin ster Abbey, was now dead. " He," says Bede, " departing to the everlasting kingdom of Heaven, left his three sons, who were yet Pagans, heirs of his tem poral kingdom on earth. Immediately on their father's decease they began openly to practise idolatry (though whilst he lived they had somewhat refrained), and also gave free licence to their subjects to worship idols. At a certain time tnese princes, seeing the Bishop [of London, Mellitus] administering the Sacra ment to the people in the church, after the celebration of mass, and being puffed VOL. IV. & 242 LONDON. up with rude and barbarous folly, spake, as the common report is, thus unto him : — ' Why dost thou not give us, also, some of that white bread which thou didst give unto our father Saba [Sebert], and which thou dost not yet cease to give to the people in the church ? ' He answered, ' If ye will be washed in that wholesome font wherein your father was, ye may likewise eat of this blessed bread whereof he was a partaker ; but if ye contemn the lavatory of life, ye can in no wise taste the bread of life.' ' We will not,' they rejoined, • enter into this font of Avater, for we know we have no need to do so ; but we will eat of that bread nevertheless.' And when they had been often and earnestly warned by the bishop that it could not be, and that no man could partake of this most holy oblation without purification and cleansing by baptism, they at length, in the height of their rage, said to him, ' Well, if thou wilt not comply with us in the small matter we ask, thou shalt no longer abide in our province and dominions ;' and straightway they expelled him, commanding that he and all his company should quit their realm." The church in which this remarkable scene is pre sumed to have taken place had been erected by Ethelbert, King of Kent, only some six years before, or, according to Bede, at the joint expense of that king and of Sebert, his nephew, the governor of this part of England under Ethel bert ; and by whom it was dedicated to St. Paul, the apostle and doctor of the Gentiles. How many churches there may not have been prior to this one it is impossible to say, but in all probability there had been at least two or three, and the traditions and speculations concerning them are of no ordinary character. Although Wren, as Ave have seen in the account of Westminster Abbey, was in credulous both as to the Temple of Apollo at Thorney (Westminster), and that of Diana on the site of the present St. Paul's, it appears he found no difficulty in believing a circumstance much more interesting, but, we must add also, infinitely more difficult. He observes, in the ' Parentalia,' " The Christian faith, without doubt, was very early received in Britain, and, without having recourse to the monkish tale of Joseph of Arimathea and other legendary fictions, there is authentic testimony of a Christian church planted here by the apostles them selves, and, in particular, very probably by St. Paul." He does not, in words, state that the earliest metropolitan church was thus founded, but the inference is natural, and no doubt he meant it to be drawn. The evidences he adduces are pot very forcible, consisting, first, of the Avell-known fact that the apostle spent several years " in preaching in divers places, but more especially in the Western countries," and, secondly, of the lines from Vanutius Fortunatus's poem on the life of St. Martin— " Transit et oceanum, vel qua facit insula portum, Quasque Britannus habet terras ultima Thule ;"* — circumstances too slight to be worthy of much consideration, when we consider how nearly the sacred writings enable us to follow the route taken by St. Paul on each of his principal journeys; and yet that we find there no indications of such a visit. The true period of the foundation of the first Christian church in London, and perhaps the flrst in Erigland, and which there is little doubt was on * And he crosses the ocean, wherever the island has a harbour or a Briton has lauds, to farthest Thule. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 243 the site of the present St. Paul's, seems to us to be pointed out by the story, partly fabulous and partly true, which the early monastic writers give of the in troduction of Christianity among us. According to them, there Avas a King Lucius, sovereign of the whole island, Avho, having been baptized at the solicita tion of the reigning Emperor of Rome, became so zealous a Convert as to send to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, desiring spiritual assistance for himself and his people. Here we are among the fables. That no one king reigned over the whole island at the period alluded to, we may be tolerably sure from the tenor of all the records we possess; but, on the other hand, that some British prince may have been converted (perhaps, as it has been suggested, by fugitives from the Roman persecutions), and may have sought such assistance, is sufficiently credible, and may prevent our rejecting the circumstantial statements that follow. We are told that, about the year 185, Pope Eleutherius sent two " eminent doctors," Faganus and Damianus, to instruct the people of this country in Christianity, and to consecrate such churches as had been dedicated to divers false gods to the ser vice of the true God. The island was in consequence divided into three parts, and placed under the jurisdiction of the sees of London, York, and Caerlon. Both direct and indirect testimony tend to corroborate the truth of this part of the story. TertuUian, writing about the year 209, remarks " that even those places in Britain hitherto inaccessible to the 'Roman arms have been subdued by the gospel of Christ ;" and in 326 we find, among the ecclesiastical dignitaries met in council at Aries in France, Restitutus, Bishop of London. We may con sider, then, the latter part of the second century as the period of the erection of the first great church in the city of London. This edifice is supposed to have been destroyed during the persecution of the Christians under the Emperor Dioclesian, then restored or rebuilt on the return of prosperity, to be subjected, in the fifth or sixth century, to a worse fate than destruction at the hands of the pagan Saxons and Angles, who were overrunning the country; for, according to the remarkable words of the ancient monk of Westminster,* Flete, then " was restored the old abomination, wherever the Britons were expelled their place : London worships Diana, and the suburbs of Thorney offer incense to Apollo." And this brings us to the tradition which Sir Christopher Wren so summarily dismisses, because he did not find any decisive indication of the said temple when he turned over the ground in preparing the foundations of his structure. In the paper on the Abbey before mentioned, we expressed, incidentally, a concurrence in his view, which farther examination does not warrant. His argument is simply a negative one. He found no remains of sacrifices — no fragments of cornices oj capitals that might reveal the Roman handiwork — nothing to tell of a temple tc Diana. To this it might be answered, that the repeated pullings down and buildings up which had taken place on the site, before he had anything to do with it, may have swept away the vestiges he sought. But did he discover nothing ? What were those foundations, consisting of " Kentish rubble-stone, artfully worked, and consolidated with exceeding hard mortar, in the Roman manner" ? His answer is to be found in his expressed belief that they were the * See p. 66 of this volume. r2 244 LONDON. foundations of the first Christian church, the one we have referred to as destroyed during the Dioclesian persecution; but, as to the grounds of this belief, he leaves us entirely in the dark. He is satisfied these foundations are Roman, that they are anterior to the reign of Constantine (when he presumes they were again built upon), and yet he finds nothing to countenance the belief that there was a Roman temple of Diana ever standing here ; whilst at the same time it is well known that circular erections, and more particularly for temples of the very kind in question, were common among the Romans, both as parts of or as forming entire structures ! What, then, did stand upon these massive walls ? — Why, we are to suppose a Christian church built by Roman hands, with a semicircular chancel, in imitation of the Roman basilicse, a century or two before we hear of any such buildings even in the imperial city itself, and in the face of the fact that the merit (if it may be so called) of building the first of these Christian basilicse is expressly assigned to Constantine. Let us now see what another writer, who is justly placed at the head of English antiquaries, and what his editor, say of the tradition. In Bishop Gibson's edition of Camden there is a peculiarly rich and romantic passage on this subject, which also opens to us other speculations connected with the early history of St. Paul's, that will be new to most of our readers : — " Some have fancied that the Temple of Diana formerly stood here ; and there are circum stances that strengthen the conjecture, — as the old adjacent buildings being called in their records Diance Camera (i. e. the Chamber of Diana) ; the digging up in the churchyard, in Edward I.'s reign (as we find by our annals), an incredible number of ox-heads, which the common people at that time, not without great admiration, looked upon to have been Gentile sacrifices ; and the learned know that the Tauropolia were celebrated in honour of Diana But much rather should I found this opinion of a Temple of Diana upon the witty conceit of Mr. Selden, who, upon occasion of some ox-heads, sacred also to • Diana, that were discovered in digging the foundations of a new chapel on the south side of St. Paul's (1316), would insinuate that the name of London im ported no more than Llan Dien, i. e. Templum Diance. And against the foregoing conjecture it is urged, that as for the tenements called Camera Dianae, they stood not so near the church as some would have us think, but on St. Paul's Wharf Hill, near Doctors' Commons ;* and they seem to have taken their denomination from a spacious building, full of intricate turnings, wherein King Henry II. (as he did at Woodstock) kept his heart's delight, whom he there called Fair Rosa mond, and here Diana. Of these winding vaults there remained some parts in Mr. Stow's time, as also of a passage underground from Baynard's Castle to it, which possibly might be the King's way to his Camera Dianse, or secret apart ment of his beautiful mistress." In conclusion, it is observed the opinion ought not " to be altogether rejected, since it receives confirmation from those pieces of antiquity dug up hereabouts, not only in ancient times, but also of late years ; for in making the foundation of this new fabric, among other things they cast up the teeth of boars and of other beasts, and a piece of a buck's horn, with * The writer must have been thinking of the modern rather than the ancient limits of the Cathedral buildings and walls, as will be seen in another page. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 245 several fragments of vessels, which, by the figure, one would imagine to have been used in their sacrifices.'"* Upon the whole, it appears to us that, putting aside the consideration of what Sir Christopher did not discover, and remem bering what his predecessors did — ^weighing the corroborative testimony of the tradition, which can be traced to a very distant period, and of the undoubted fact that it was not only a custom with the early Christians to convert the heathen temples into Christian churches, but that the very men, Faganus and Damianus, to whom we are probably indebted for the foundation of the earliest church here, were, as we have seen, especially sent to consecrate such buildings to the service of the true faith — we are surely justified in thinking it highly probable that the tradition is true enough, after all. With Mellitus had fled also Justus, Bishop of Rochester; and Laurentius, Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine's faithful disciple, Avas about to follow them, when, according to Bede, a miracle was vouchsafed to prevent so great a calamity to the worshippers of Christ in England. On the night previous to Laurentius' intended departure, he slept in a church, where, at midnight, one of the apostles appeared to him, and, after reproaching him for his lack of zeal, gave him a severe flagellation. In the morning Laurentius went to Ethelbert's son and successor, Eadbald, who had relapsed into idolatry, and, throwing off his cloak, displayed his bloody shoulders. The rM.se succeeded, and Eadbald recalled the exiled bishops. To return to the cathedral ; it appears that, though it was erected in the beginning of the sixth century, the disturbed state of the country, and the unsettled standing of the faith itself, did not at first permit much expenditure of time or money in its adornment. Erkenwald, the son of King Offa, the fourth bishop from Mellitus, was the first to supply the defi ciencies. He not only procured privileges from the reigning kings of England, and from the Pope, but spent a considerable portion of his own estate in adding to the funds provided for the improvement of the fabric. Among other and sub sequent benefactors may be enumerated Kenred, King of the Mercians, who ordained that it should be in all things as free as he himself desired to be in the day of judgment ;f Athelstan, who endowed it with numerous lordships ; Edgar and his Queen, .Ethelred, Canute, and the pious Confessor. Then came the Conquest; and during the short struggle that preceded William's coronation as King of England, rude hands laid hold of some of its possessions ; but the politic Norman had not come to war Avith the Church ; so St. Paul's had every thing restored, and received at the same time a charter from the hands of the King, dated the very day of his coronation, conferring the whole of its property to it in perpetuity. The Conqueror added his benedictions to all who should augment the revenues, and his curses on those who should diminish them. During this reign the church was burnt, and a new one commenced by Bishop Maurice towards the close of the eleventh century. We need hardly observe that, since the erection of the previous edifice, architecture had made a great advance; Westminster Abbey (the Confessor's building) had just been erected ; * Edition folio, 1722, vol. i., p. 33L i A similar passage occurs in one of the Conqueror's charters. 246 LONDON. Lincoln was now in progress of erection by the able and indefatigable Remigius The eminent ecclesiastics of that day appear to have been inspired with a noble spirit of emulation, each striving to outstrip his fellows in raising those archi tectural wonders which we gaze on with admiration and awe, but seem unable to rival, or even finely to imitate. Let us not be understood to mean that we attri bute any considerable portion of the grandeur or beauty of those edifices to the rivalry, however honourable, of their builders. Never, in the history of the world, have there been works which speak more eloquently or unmistakably of the loftiness of the hearts and minds of their authors. For, if even the pro fusion with which rich men lavished their wealth, able men their skill, and poor men their labour, be liable to misconstruction as regards motives, there can be no possibility of mistake as to the influences that produced sublimity out of stone and marble, that made ranges of arches, tier upon tier, appear even to the dullest eye, when informed by faith, as " the spirit's ladder, That from this gross and visible world of dust Even to the starry world" was prepared to lift them up. Indeed, were it possible to imagine all records of Christianity to have perished, except our cathedrals, from them alone how much of the faith might not be recovered ! Bishop Maurice now felt in all its power the responsibility which the opportunity offered imposed upon him. His zeal is said to have been quickened also by the consideration of some injury he had earlier in life done to the church, for which he now desired to atone. In the same fire that burnt St. Paul's, the castle known as the Palatine Tower had suffered. In consequence, the materials were placed at Maurice's disposal. He now laid out his plan and began the foundations, which were designed for so ex tensive and magnificent a structure, that the good bishop could have hardly hoped to live to see the whole finished. But, in the language of Wordsworth — " They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build." So Maurice went patiently and courageously on for the twenty years he lived, and then left the completion as a noble bequest to his successors. William of Malmesbury about this time describes the church as being "so stately and beau tiful that it was worthily numbered among the most famous buildings." Maurice was succeeded by Richard de Beaumeis, of whose character it may be sufficient tp adduce one illustration : he bestoAved the entire revenues of his bishopric on the edifice, and maintained himself and family by other means. His share of the work seems to have been the completion of the waUs, enlarging the exterior space by the purchase and pulling down of houses that encumbered the pile, and the erection of a strong wall of enclosure, which extended as far as Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane on one side, and to Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed Lane, on the other. Scarcely, however, does the entire edifice seem to have been completed before architecture had again made such progress, that a work a century old was no longer able to satisfy our magnificent-minded churchmen. As we find Henry III., through a considerable portion of his reign. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 247 pulling doAvn and rebuilding the Confessor's erection at Westminster, so do Ave find his subjects in various places imitating his example, and more particularly at St. Paul's, In 1221 a neAv steeple was finished, and in 1240 a new choir. This was dedicated in the presence of Henry, attended by Otto, the Pope's legate, and the, most eminent of the English ecclesiastics. The mode in which the money was obtained for these works is an interesting part of the history of Old St. Paul's. The prime mover in and skilful designer of the whole business ¦yas Bishop Roger, surnamed Niger. Having, no king or other great benefactor to depend upon, he formed the determination of obtaining what he wanted from the people of England and Ireland. Accordingly he induced the general body of British bishops to issue letters to the clergy and others under their jurisdiction, granting indulgences for a certain number of days to all those who, having penance to perform,, and, being penitent, should assist the ncAv work. Dugdale speaks of seeing a multitude of such letters Avritten at the period and for the edifice in question. How cheerfully the people answered this and similar appeals we per ceive in the completion, not only of the works mentioned, but of the addition of an entirely new portion to the east end, including the subterranean church of St. Faith, which was begun, in 1256, by Fulco Basset, the then bishop. Nor was this all. The adornment of the interior of a cathedral in the middle ages, with pictures, shrines, books, ecclesiastical habiliments, all more or less blazing with gold, silver, and precious stones, Avas a work scarcely less necessary to the prevalet^t ideas, and little less costly, than the erection of the edifice itself Hoav these matters had been cared for, we shall see in the glimpse of Old St. Paul's in 'M^H [St. Faith's.! 248 LONDON. its greatest splendour that we shall now endeavour to obtain. The period we have in view is the beginning of the fifteenth century. Let the reader imagine himself passing up the hill from the moderately broad and rapid Fleet River, with its numerous vessels riding quietly at anchor, then through Lud gate, and so to the entrance into the cathedral enclosure. The place is crowded with people, chiefly of the poorer classes, who are being fed by the eccle siastical officers. It is evidently a day of high festival — no less, indeed, than the festival of the Conversion of the patron saint, Paul. Before we pass through the sumptuous western gates of the cathedral, let us cast a momentary glance at the Bishop's palace in the right-hand corner — a fit home for the prelate who has St. Paul's for his church. Here it was that Edward III. and his Queen were lodged after the great tournament in Smithfield ; and, as Froissart tells us, " there was goodly dancing in the Queen's lodging, in presence of the King and his uncles, and other barons of England, and ladies, and damoiselles, till it was day, which Avas time for every person to draw to their lodgings, except the King and Queen, who lay there in the Bishop's palace." But we must pass on into the cathedral before the great business of the day begins. We enter, and are at once fixed in amaze ment at the scene of enchantment suddenly visible. An apparently endless per spective of lofty arches, lost in the distance in a luminous mist — a confused blaze of many-coloured streams of light — great numbers of persons, in all kinds of dresses, moving to and fro — sublime sounds — at once press upon and beAvilder the atten tion. As we gaze more steadily, that wonderful perspective becomes gradually clear, until at last, for nearly seven hundred feet, we can follow the range — un broken, from the tessellated marble pavement below, to the roof with its gilded groins above — of arches upon arches, and of the dim but richly- coloured painted windows at the top. The only, and that very slight, interruption is the low screen which crosses the pavement there, far down, probably about the centre of the pile. The glorious vista is terminated by a rose window of great size, but ap pearing from hence scarcely larger than the flower from which it borrows its name ; whilst its colours, though revelling in the intensest of dyes, appear mingled into one glowing but nameless hue. As the eye wanders from this, the first impressive feature of the place, it falls upon the huge lighted tapers on the dif ferent altars that we see scattered about the nave and aisles, then to the kneeling people before them — here a large group, there a solitary individual. As we pace along the nave, and the transepts open on either hand, magnificent shrines lining the walls, tall crosses Avith tapers before them, and gorgeous pictures, are seen at every step. There seems no end to the wealth that has been lavished upon the place. Gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, pearls, begin even to lose their value from their profusion. A kind of low confused hum pervades the church, above which may be continually distinguished the voices of the priests, who are performing the duties of their respective chantries, scattered along the entire length of the nave, aisles, and transepts, seventy or eighty in number ; whilst, grandly towering over all, we hear the chant and responses of the choral multi tude. The cathedral is now rapidly becoming full. Noblemen, warriors, citizens, and labourers, arrayed in all kinds of materials — satin, damask, cloth of gold and silver, and the plain but good old English broad-cloth of wool of different colours — OLD ST. PAUL'S. 249 their dresses exhibiting every variety of fashion, as little hoods, long gowns, short coats, long piked shoes, particoloured hose — and ornamented in so many cases with costly gems and embroidery, that, as Knighton observes, " it is impossible to distinguish the rich from the poor, the high from the low." Nor are the ladies generally less fantastically or less sumptuously arrayed, though, with the tact which seems seldom to desert them, they have taken care not to obscure their native gracefulness of form. Here is a group that is seen for a moment by our side. Master Knighton's words are of course to be taken with a little alloAV- ance. There is no mistaking the very poor in any time, place, or country. It is pleasant, however, to see that their poverty is forgotten here by all — ay, even by themselves. The preparations for the coming festivity are now begun. Noiseless figures are gliding to and fro, setting up additional tapers in every part of the church where there is room and convenience for placing them ; but a short time elapses, and hundreds of such lights are burning in every direction. Hark ! the sound of horns blown more loudly than skilfully reverberates through the pile; and, as if it were some wizard's signal, there is a general cessation of the devotional business of the place. The devotee starts from his knees, the peni tent sinner wipes the tears from his cheeks, the grave become gay, the gloomy look cheerful, as all eagerly press forward, and line the intercolumniations of the nave, first in a single row, then a second behind that, then a third, till both aisles are filled, and little more than a lane is left for the passage of the coming pro cession down the central part of the nave. The officers with their gilded staves have to bestir themselves even to keep that clear. Again and again blow the horns, the western doors are thrown back, and a strange procession enters, con sisting of a group of horn-blowers, then a body of ruddy-cheeked yeomen and others, bearing, on a kind of frame raised aloft, the doe, which the family of Baud are bound yearly to offer in procession at the high altar on this day, in 250 LONDON. addition to a buck on the summer feast called the Commemoration of St. Paul— both being in lieu of certain lands granted to Sir WiUiam Baud, in the third year of EdAvard I., by the Church, to be enclosed within his park of Toringham in Essex. Immediately before the doe-bearers marches proudly the keeper, or huntsman — a man Avho might have sat to the author of the ' Canterbury Tales ' for the portrait in the prologue : — " And he was clad in coat and hood of green, A sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen Under his belt he bare full thriftily. Well could he dress his takel yeomanly ; His arrows drooped not with feathers low. And in his hand he bare a mighty bow. A nut-head had he, with a brown visage ; Of wood-craft could he well all the us^e. Upon his arm he bare a gay bracfir. And by his side a sword and a buckler ; And on that other side a gay dagg6re, Harnessed Avell, and sharp as point of spear ; A Christopher on his breast, of silver sheen. An horn he bare, the baudrick was of green : A forester soothly Avas he I guess." On moves the procession towards the choir, Avhich it enters, and so unto the steps of the high altar at its extremity. There it is met by the dean and chapter, arrayed in rich copes and robes, jewelled and embroidered, and wearing garlands of roses on their heads. The head of the doe is now divided from the body, and, Avhilst the body is at once sent off to be baked, the head is fixed on a spear, and borne before the cross in the usual daily procession, which noAv starts tOAvards the Avestern door. This reached, the keeper makes the whole neighbour hood ring again with his lusty horn, and, before the sound has well died away, it is answered from different quarters of the city by similar instruments. All the parties are noAV dismissed, with a small present in money, to their dinners, pro vided by the dean and chapter, whilst the keeper Avill also have to receive his customary five shillings and his loaf of bread, bearing the image of St. Paul, before he returns to his parks and chase. So ends this portion of the business of the day ; but the most splendid is yet to come : the commemoration of St. Erken- Avald's burial in the cathedral, where, we are told, his " glorious merits did shine forth miraculously.'' It will be only sufficient to mention, by way of tei5tImony of the truth of this statement, that it is believed the very litter in which he was borne about during his last sickness continued for ages to cure feverish per sons Avho merely touched it, and, when broken up, every chip became an infallible physician. Again, through the western door comes a procession, Avinding from the bishop's palace ; this time the bishop himself at its hea,d, preceded by two beautiful children bearing tapers, having the dean on his right hand, other dis tinguished officers of the church on his left, and followed by nearly all the clergy of his diocese ; with all the customary paraphernalia of the Church processions during such high solemnities. The sumptuousness of their appearance beggars description. The bishop wears a long, snow-white robe, almost concealing, his.feet ; OLD ST. PAUL'S. 251 above which is another of ruby-coloured silk reaching a little below the knees, open at the sides, embroidered all over in the most exquisite manner with representa tions of animals, birds, and flowers, and having a deep border, which consists chiefly^ of rows of interlaced pearls. From the low, upright collar of this upper robe, down the centre of the front, to the bottom, extends a band formed of one entire mass of precious stones, of different colours, and arranged in a variety of close patterns. The golden mitre on his head, and the golden pastoral staff in his hand, are each similarly ornamented. Towards the shrine of St. Erkenwald slovvly moves the procession, amidst the fragrant perfumes shed around by the incense-bearers from their silver censers ; now up the nave, thence through one of the aisles, and so round to the shrine at the back of the high altar. This is the most gorgeous piece of combined architecture, sculpture, and decoration even in a cathedral so rich in such works. Rising from behind a kind of table covered with jewels and precious stones of all kinds, including small shrines, rings, and silver girdles, the gifts of the pious, appears a lofty, pyramidal, Gothic structure, in the purest and most exquisitely decorated style ; the outlines formed by pinnacles rising one above another towards a single pinnacle in the centre at the top, and the central portion consisting of three slender windows side by side, and an exceedingly elegant one filling the triangular space above. A railing encloses the whole for the preservation of the invaluable treasures lying on the table within, or that have been used in the adornment of the shrine. Among the former we may find the sapphire stone which Richard de Preston, citizen and grocer of London, gave to be placed here for the curing of infirmities in the eyes, appointing at the same time that proclamation should be made of its virtues. Solemn masses for the repose of the dead are now said ; the indulgences granted to all who visit the shrine, and to those who bring oblations, are explained. The words fall upon no dull or unheeding ears. They come pressing forward, rich and poor, lay and ecclesiastic, depositing their gifts of money or jewels, or whatever else the tastes or means of the owners instigate ; the very poorest having at least a taper for their favourite shrine. All is still at last. Prelates, clergy, choristers, have gone ; the lights, save those which burn perpetually before. the different chantries, shrines, and altars, are extin guished ; the rich western window, lit up by a sudden burst of sunshine, seems to glow with preternatural radiance and splendour, and throAvs its warm light far along the pavement, and, catching the edge of the gilded crucifix raised aloft in the centre of the nave, makes it appear even more brilliant than the beams of the taper burning by its side. Occasionally other processions occupied the public attention. In the reign of Edward III. the wondering spectators were surprised by the appearance of the Flagellants, who, spreading themselves all over Europe, arrived in London from Italy, to the number of about one hundred and twenty. " Each day," says Lingard,* " at the appointed hour, they assembled, ranged themselves in two lines, and moved slowly through the streets, scourging their naked shoulders, and chanting a hymn. At a known signal, all, with the exception of the last, threw themselves flat on the ground : he, as he passed by his companions, gave * Hist. England, vol. iii. chap. 18. 252 LONDON. each a lash, and then also lay down. The others folloAved in succession, till every individual in his turn had received a stroke from the whole brotherhood. The citizens gazed and marvelled, pitied and commended ; but they ventured no further. Their faith was too weak, or their feelings were too acute ; and they allowed the strangers to monopolise to themselves this novel and extraordinary grace. The missionaries made not a single proselyte, and were compelled to return home with the barren satisfaction of having done their duty in the face of an unbelieving generation." At the close of these exciting exhibitions, some few persons may yet linger ii: the church — Wickliffites perhaps, who have looked impatiently upon the scenes we have described, and therefore stay to enjoy the natural influences of the place ; with a mixture of the idle, who have yet an hour or two to spare ; and of strangers from the country, who may be known by their gait, or costume, or at least by the busy air with which they walk round from chantry to chantry, tomb to tomb, to gaze on the wonders of which they have heard so much. We cannot do better than imitate their example. First, then, we have here on the right of the nave, as we ap proach the choir, the sculptured image of Our Lady, with its lamp constantly burning, and where the officers of the church are extinguishing the numerous small tapers which have been placed there by the pious during the day, claim ing the remnant as their perquisite. The iron box for oblations under the feet of the statue seems to be nearly full of coins. Behind this statue is the low tomb of Sir John Beauehamp, one of the founders of the Order of the Garter, and a son of the renowned Guy Earl of Warwick. His effigy, in complete armour, lies on the top, and beautifully painted and sculptured shields decorate the front of the tomb below. A few steps farther, and we stand below the tower of the church, supported on four arches, that seem to spring as lightly upward as though they bore nothing, instead of a tower and steeple of almost incredible height. First, the square tower soars upwards for two hundred and sixty feet; then begins the spire (of wood covered with lead), which mounts two hundred and seventy-four more ; or, in all, five hundred and thirty-four feet ! In the south aisle, at the end against the chapel of St. Dunstan, which forms the ex treme south-east corner of the building, are, side by side, the low tombs sunk in the wall, with a range of slender pillars supporting beautiful arches in front, and the effigies of Eustace de Fauconberge, Justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of John, and Henry de Wengham, Chancellor to Henry III. — both Bishops of London. In St. Dunstan's Chapel is the tomb of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lin coln, a great benefactor to the cathedral, but better known to history as Edward I.'s able lieutenant in his Scottish expeditions. As a work of art this is perhaps the finest thing in the place. The effigy is evidently a portrait, and a most masterly one, of the simple, unadorned, but dignified warrior. The sides and ends of the tomb below are one mass of beautiful decoration consisting of a great number of figures in niches with Gothic canopies. The centre of the ex tremity of the church at this end we find occupied by Our Lady's Chapel, on the floor of which lies an exquisitely wrought representation of Bishop Braybrooke. But the chief 'object is the altar of Our Lady, with the seven tapers weighing each two pounds, which are lighted during all celebrations in the chapel, with the OLD ST. PAUL'S. 253 ponderous silver chalice, and with the rich vestments for the officiating priests. A female is kneeling before it, come, no doubt, to avail herself of the forty days' indulgence granted to all penitents who here say a Pater Noster, or an Ave, or give anything to the altar. We cross now to the north aisle, where the first monu ment that attracts us is the one to the memory of Ralph de Hengham, Judge of the King's Bench in the reign of Edward I. ; and next to whom is the monument of the distinguished knight. Sir Simon Burley. The melancholy fate of this accomplished man must not be passed over without a word. He was the friend of Edward III. and of the Black Prince, the guardian and tutor of Richard II., who, with his queen, Anne of Bohemia, held him in especial love and honour. During the intrigues and contentions for power between the King (acting secretly through his partisans) and his powerful uncle, Thomas Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of John of Gaunt, the Duke, in 1388, obtained a decisive triumph, and immediately sent to the scaffold several of Richard's chief advisers. Among these was Sir Simon Burley. Richard spoke warmly in his favour, but was told his crown depended upon the execution taking place. He was but twenty-one years of age, it should be observed, at the time. The Queen still more earnestly interceded in his favour, soliciting Sir Simon's life on her knees, but in vain. Even Henry of Bolingbroke, who had aided Gloucester in all the transactions referred to (possibly even then thinking of the crown that might be won in the confusion that seemed likely to ensue), was equally unsuccessful in his pleading. For this, indeed, the future King is said to have never forgiven his uncle. Further on in the same aisle Ave find the two most ancient memorials of St. Paul's, the tombs of two kings, Sebba and Ethelred, which tell in their very aspect of the rude age to which they belong. Sebba, we learn from the tablet close at hand, was King of the East Saxons, and converted by Erkenwald a. d. 677. His neighbour monarch in death is Ethelred the Unready, son of Edgar and the infamous Elfrida, Edgar's second wife, who prepared the way for her son to the throne by the murder of his elder brother, the righful heir, Edward the Martyr. Ethelred's reign Avas in accordance with the commencement. He has the honour of having systematised a lucrative branch of trade for our neighbours the Danes, that of landing on our territory whenever they were unusually poor or more than commonly covetous, and rewarding them for their pillages, and burnings, and slaughter, by a good round acknowledgment in the shape, the first time, of some ten thousand pounds of silver, before they went home again. Of course, when they did take the trouble to return hither, Ethelred could not but meet such attention to him and his people by increased rewards, so that the 10,000 became 16,000, on a third occasion 24,000, a fourth 36,000, a fifth 48,000. But the Danes, it must be acknowledged, were as ungrateful as foolish ; like the boy in the fable, they could not be content without cutting up the source of their wealth ; so Sweyn, their king, must be our king, and Ethelred becomes an exile. On Sweyn's death Ethelred is recalled, promises to be somewhat more of a hero, and Canute, Sweyn's son, for the time bends before the storm raised against his countrymen by the English. Scarcely a year, however, elapses, when Ethelred, sick in bed in London, hears of Canute's arrival at the very gates ; and — dies. In the same tomb probably lie the remains of Ethelred's 254 LONDON. grandson, EdAvard the Atheling, or the Outlaw, as he Avas called, son of Ed mund Ironside, who redeemed the national honour Avhich his father had degraded, and became one of the great popular heroes of Saxon England. Edward, who had lost the kingdom by the arrangement between his father and Canute, that whoever lived longest should succeed to the other's share of the divided king dom, might probably have regained it, had his namesake, the Confessor, favoured his cause. He did send for him from his exile, to the great gratification of the people, but when he came would not see him. Whilst in this peculiar state of suspense, waiting to see whether he was to return to a joyless banishment, or stay to mount the throne of mighty England, he died in London — poisoned, it was thought, by Harold, though on no heavier grounds than suspicion. He was buried in St. Paul's. Turning the corner from the aisle, we stand before the beautifully-decorated screen of the choir, and, ascending the lofty flight of steps, enter. Facing us, at the farther end, is the high altar, railed off by a broad and massive carved and gilded balustrade. The altar itself is a splendid piece of workmanship, and, like most of the other objects of interest and value that surround us, owes its chief features to private beneficence. That sumptuous tablet, covered with decora tions in enamel, " variously adorned with many precious stones " and statues, the whole within a carved canOpy of oak, and .richly set out with curious pictures, was the gift of one Richard Pikerell, a citizen of Edward II. 's reign. Among the countless riches of gold, silver, and jewels on the altar, the four basons of gold offered by the French King John appear conspicuous.* Silver phials, silver candlesticks, lofty silver-gilt cups with covers, silver crosses, golden cups, illumi nated missals, &c., are among the other contents of the altar, f To the right of the altar another and more pretending work of art challenges the attention. This is a great picture of St. Paul, richly painted, and placed in a beautiful " tabernacle" of wood, costing no less than 12/. 16s. of the money of the four teenth century. On the left side of the choir are three monuments, all remark able for their beauty or grandeur, and one of them also as belonging to a most remarkable man. The first is the shrine of the Bishop, Roger Niger, before mentioned ; the second, the oratory of Roger de Waltham, a canon of the cathe dral, of the time of the second Edward. This was founded by himself in honour of God, Our Lady, St. Lawrence, and All Saints, and adorned, as we now see, " with the images or statues of our Blessed Saviour, St. John Baptist, St. LaAvrence, and St. Mary Magdalen ; so likewise with the pictures (or paintings) of the celestial hierarchy, the joys of the Blessed Virgin, and others, both in the roof about the altar and other places within and without." The same tasteful canon erected that " glorious tabernacle " which we see in the opposite wall (in the southern aisle), and which contains the image of the said Blessed Virgin, * Tkis visit took place in ]360, and it appears that, besides an oblation of twelve nobles at St. Erkenwald's sbrine and the bason of gold at die high altar, at his first approach to it, he laid down at the Annunciation twelve nobles ; at the crucifix near the north door, twenty-six fibrin nobles ; at the hearing of mass, after the oiftrtory, to the dean then officiating, five florin nobles ; and lastly, to the chapter-house, for distribution among the officers of the church, fifty florin nobles. — Dugdale. f The mere enumeration of the wealth of the cathedral in such and similar articles of still greater value occu pies twenty-eight pages of the last folio edition of Dugdale. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 255 "sitting as it were in childbed; as also of our Saviour in swaddling clothes, lying between the ox and the ass ; and St. Joseph at her feet :" above which is " another image of her, standing, with the Child in her arms. And on the beam thwarting from the upper end of the oratory (across the aisle) to the before- specified childbed " are seen " crowned images of our Saviour and his mother, sitting in one tabernacle ; as also the images of St. Katherine and St. Margaret, virgins and martyrs." Lastly, we may observe that Roger de Waltham espe cially provided that no part of the oratory, not even its roof, should be without " comely pictures and images, to the end that the memory of our blessed Saviour and his saints, and especially of the glorious Virgin his mother, might be always the more famous ; in which oratory he designed that his sepulture should be." He also founded a chantry in the oratory on the same magnificent scale, at which the dean and chapter were to officiate, coming in solemn procession, and arrayed as at all the great festivals. The other monument to which we referred is John of Gaunt's ; interesting in itself, as a truly magnificent piece of Gothic sculpture — still more so from its connexion with the man, whose effigy, with that of Blanche his wife (the subject of Chaucer's grateful muse), lies beneath that exquisitely fretted canopy. Athwart the slender octagonal pillars hangs his til ting-spear, with his ducal cap of state, and his shield. But the great warrior, all-powerful noble, father, brother, and uncle of kings — ^nay, himself claiming to be a king (of Castile) — has a title still nobler as the friend and patron of the two greatest men of his age, Wickliffe and Chaucer. St. Paul's witnessed a memorable scene in connexion with John of Gaunt's patronage of the Church reformer. On the 19th of February, 1377, Wickliffe was cited to appear before his ecclesiastical superiors, sitting in solemn convoca tion at St. Paul's, to answer certain charges of innovation and heresy. To the surprise of all parties not previously aware of what was intended, on the day ap pointed Wickliffe came with a magnificent train, comprising no less personages than John of Gaunt, the Earl Marshal — Percy, and numerous other persons, their friends or retainers. The Archbishop Sudbury presided, and Courteney, Bishop of London, conducted the prosecution ; but this prelate, irritated at the arrival of such visitors, which augured ill for the success of his endeavours against Wickliffe, seems to have been in an irritable mood ; nor did the opposite party fail to give him cause for irritation. An undignified but interesting and cha racteristic squabble took place, and the meeting broke up in confusion. But the business of the day unfortunately does not end here. Rumours had been circu lated by the party opposed at once to the Duke in political intrigue, and to Wickliffe in religion, that a proposition had been just brought before Parliament by Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke's brother, and the Earl Marshal, to annul the institution of a mayoralty for the city of London, and to place the civic government in the hands of a captain under the Earl Marshal's direction. The credulous mob were further exasperated by the story told of a threat uttered by the Duke, that he would drag the Bishop out of the cathedral by the hair of his head. A meeting of the citizens, on the subject of their liberties, is said to have been called on the day after the citation ; and Avhile these were deliberating, the mobcut the matter short, in their usual decisive mode of arguing, by proceeding 256 LONDON. m a body to the house of the Earl Marshal, where they forced the gates, set a prisoner at liberty, and searched the house for Lord Percy. He was not found, however; and they proceeded to the Savoy, the Duke's palace, where they com mitted similar outrages, and would probably have anticipated the destruction of that splendid building by Wat Tyler's followers, but for the interference of the Bishop himself, in whose cause they no doubt fancied they were very bravely ex erting themselves. Courteney, by his remonstrances, induced them to withdraw, when they went and amused themselves by the more innocent pleasantry of hanging up the Duke's arms, reversed, traitor fashion, in different parts of London. The last feature of the cathedral that we can notice in this hurried glimpse is a tablet hung up in the choir, on which is written in large characters the mea surements of the edifice, as taken accurately in 1315; when the length was found to contain 690 feet, the breadth 130, the height of the nave 102, and the length of the same 150. The ball on the top of the spire (520 feet high) was large enough to contain ten bushels of corn, and had a cross on the top of that, making the entire height 534 feet. The space of ground occupied by the building was found to measure three acres and a half, one rood and a halt and six perches. Such, in its palmy days, Avas Old St. Paul's. [Otd St. Paul's, before the destruction of the Stenple.] XC'IL— OLD ST. PAUL'S. No. IL To the glimpse of the metropolitan church, on St. Paul's Day in the fifteenth century, given in the preceding paper, we must now add a notice of two or three extraordinary customs that prevailed in it, in connexion with other periods of the year. Of these, foremost in importance was St. Nicholas's Day, the 6th of December, when a boy was elected from among the children of the choir by themselves; the mitre of silver and gilt, with precious stones, placed upon his head, rings of similar materials on his hands, the alb, cope, and tunic upon his body, and behold the youthful bishop ! armed with the amplest authority from that time forwards till Innocents' Day, the 28th of December. His companions, at the same time, put on the garb of priests, and, between them, during the whole period mentioned, performed all the ceremonies of the Cathedral, excepting only the Mass. Nay, it is even said that the boy-bishop's power was so com plete, that he had the right of disposing of any prebends that happened to fall vacant during his rule, and if he died within the same period, was buried with episcopal honours and a monument erected to him in the Cathedral. Among the other duties of their position which the boy-bishops were ambitious enough to attempt, was the preaching in regular course to the auditory. Even so late as 1518, Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, directs " that all these children shall, every Childermas Day, come to Paul's Church and hear the Child-bishop VOL. IV. s 258 LONDON. sermon ; and after, be at the High Mass, and each of them offer a penfty to the Child- bishop, and Avith them the masters and surveyors of the school." Their sphere Avas by no means confined to the church. According to Bishop Hall,* they Avere " led Avith songs and dances from house to house, blessing the people, Avho stood girning in the way to expect that ridiculous benediction." The boy chosen appears to have been one of the handsomest and most elegantly-shaped of the choral band. The custom extended also to Monasteries. The Nunneries had for their mock-dignitary a little girl. Archbishop Peckham, in 1278, in an injunction to the Nunnery of GodstoAv, in Oxfordshire, directed that the public prayers should not any more be said in the church of that monastery by little girls on Innocents' Day. The custom Avas put doAvn by a proclamation of Henry VIIL, but again revived in Mary's reign, Avhcn the boy -bishop sang before the Queen, in her privy-chamber at St. James's, and, in the course of his song, pane gyrized his royal mistress on her devotions, comparing her to Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary. The boy-bishops finally disappeared from St. Paul's in the reign of Elizabeth. The theatrical representations of Old St. Paul's form another highly inter esting feature. Pennant says, " The boys of St. Paul's Avere famous for acting of the Mysteries, or holy plays, and even regular dramas. They often had the honour of performing before our monarchs. Their preparations Avere expensive, so that they petitioned Richard II. to prohibit some ignorant and unexperienced persons from acting the History of the Old Testament, to the great prejudice of the clergy of the church." The idea of a cathedral turned into a theatre — the Bible into a play — seems someAvhat strange in our days; and the manner of much of the performances is no less startling than the place or the matter. The stage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries generally consisted of three plat forms, one rising above and behind another, on the highest of Avhich appeared a Tepresentation of God surrounded by his angels ; the second presented bands of saints and blessed martyrs; the third Avas filled by those Avho performed the mere mortal character's intended to be exhibited. By the side of this platform opened the mouth of Hell, from Avhich ascended fire and smoke, and the terrible cries of the damned. But our ancestors liked even their devils to be merry devils, so every noAV and then came bounding forth troops of the most jocund spirits that one could desire, bandying to and fro the jest, the repartee, and the practical joke. We are afraid that even the unfortunate sinners Avho fell into their hands were not half so much alarmed as they ought to have been at the sight of their future tormentors. What a strange medley of feelings must have possessed the bosoms not merely of the auditors at such spectacles, but of the clergy under Avhose auspices these representations Avere invariably got up in such places as St. Paul's ! If the roars of laughter thus produced, and resounding through the pile long after the exit of the demons, are little calculated to find an echo AvIth us, AA'e can, perhaps, still less sympathise Avitli the silence and reverent admiration that greeted the exhibition of the favourite coup-de-theatre of Old St. Paul's — the descent of a Avhite pigeon through a hole in the roof, to represent the third person of the Trinity, folloAved by a censer, which Avas SAVung to and fro the entire space of the choir, filling the air Avith its fragrant vapours. * ' Triumphs of Rome,' OLD ST. PALL'S. '^a^i The presentation of the banner of St. Paul to Robert FitzAvalter, the Castellan of the City in the event of threatened attack by enemies, has been elsewhere referred to; we need, therefojre, only transcribe the characteristic passage drawn up by one of the famil)', and presented in 1303 to tho Lord Mayor, which intro duces St. Paul's as the central object of the ceremony. " The said Robert ought to come, he being (by descent) the tAventieth man-of-arms, on horseback, covered Avith cloth or armour, unto the great west door of St. Paul Avith his banner displayed before him, of his arms. And Avhen he is come to the said door, mounted and apparelled as before is said, the mayor, Avith his aldermen and sheriffs, armed in their arms, shall come out of the said Church of St. Paul unto the said door, Avith a banner in his hand, all on foot : Avhich banner shall be gules, the image of St. Paul, gold ; the face, hands, feet, and sword, of silver : and as soon as the said Robert shall see the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs come on foot out of the church armed Avith a banner, he shall alight from his horse and salute the mayor, and say to him, 'Sir Mayor, I am come to do my service, Avhich I owe to the City.' And the mayor and aldermen shall answer, ' We give to you, as to our bannerer of fee in this City, this banner of this City to bear and govern, to the honour and profit of the City, to our poAver.' And the said Robert, and his heirs, shall receive the banner in his hands, and shall go on foot out of the gate, Avith the banner in his hands; and the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs shall foUoAV to the door, and shall bring a horse to the said Robert, AVorth 20^., Avhich horse shall be saddled Avith a saddle of the arms of the " said Robert, and shall be covered Avith sindals * of the said arms. Also, they shall present to him 20/. sterling money, and deliver it to the chamberlain of the said Robert, for his expenses that day. Then the said Robert shall mount upon the horse Avhich the mayor presented to him, with the banner in his hand, and as soon as he is up he shall say to the mayor, that he cause a marshall to be chosen for the host, one of the City; Avhich marshall being chosen, the said Robert shall command the mayor and burgesses of the City to Avarn the com moners to assemble together ; and they shall all go under the banner of St. Paul," &c. Then Avould be heard pealing forth its ominous voice the great boll of St. Paul's— a signal the potency of Avhich in the middle ages Ave can only judge of by the feelings such sounds excite to this hour in the great towns of Spain, or by imagining ourselves in the position of some unhappy Jcav of the - metropolis, Avho never heard its terrible sounds Avithout a shudder, remembering hoAV often it had been heard above the shrieks of his dying countrymen. During a century or tAvo of our history, no assemblage of armed men such as that bell was AVont to call together could be looked on Avithout fear by a Jew. Royalist or anti-roj'alist, all had an equal love of his gold, equal hatred of him, and an equally unscrupulous method of exhibiting both passions. When De Montfort, for instance, in 1264 called the Londoners together at the sound of St. Paul's bell to march against Henry III., they seem to have been unable to go forth till they had alike replenished their purses and satisfied their consciences by the plunder and massacre of some five hundred men, Avomen, and children of the detested faith. Such Avas patriotism and Christianity in the thirteenth century ! * Probably sendal, a, light ivooHen or silk stuff, woiked with the aims. s 2 260 LOMDON. Let us now briefly glance at the exterior of Old St. Paul's in the fifteenth century. The goodly dial on the tower, made " Avith all splendour that might be," with its angel pointing to the hour " both of the day and night,"* need not detain us, nor the bishop's palace before mentioned,! in the north-west corner of the inclosure, from the chapel of which we hear the voices of the priests chanting the masses for the souls of deceased bishops. We are approaching a more inte resting place. Pardon- Church-Haugh, the name given to that venerable-looking chapel and surrounding cloister, founded in the reign of Stephen by Gilbert Becket, portreeve of London, father to the famous archbishop, and the subject of one of the most delightful stories or legends in English history. Gilbert, it appears, whilst following the fortunes of his lord in the Crusades, was taken prisoner by a Saracen emir, and thrown into a dungeon. The emir's daughter beheld the captive, pitied him, loved him, and at last freed him. Escaped from his dungeon by her means, Gilbert soon reached his own country. Wretched at his absence, love at last suggested what only love could suggest under such cir cumstances — the determination to seek him through the world, knowing only the name — Gilbert, the place — London. Hastening to the nearest port, she found one at least of those talismanic words understood, and she embarked in a vessel for England. In " London'' at last, she wandered from street to street, with no friend to aid, knowing but one word of the language, " Gilbert," " Gilbert," — and, oh I the world of wisdom often contained within such simple faith !— they met at last. With tears of joy was the stout yeoman seen hurrying away his beau teous infidel to be baptized in his own faith, preparatory to their immediate [Baptism of the Mother of (Thomai a) Becket.] marriage. The extraordinary nature of the circumstance, taken in connexion with the foundation of the chapel before us, where he lies, and no doubt his bride also, make it more than probable, supposing the story to be true, that the bap tism took place in St. Paul's. After Becket's time the chapel and cloister • This is curious, if it means, as it appears to do, that the dial was illuminated at night. f By an oversight in the previous article the Palace is placed on the right of the top of Ludgate Hill. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 261 appear to have become favourite places with the wealthy and the pious, — the one for the repose of their bodies, the other for securing the repose of their souls. The cloister is rich with monuments, but we must pass on to the picture we see there on the eastern wall, with the verses beneath, and the strange title, ' Death leading away all estates.' An inscription informs us that the Avhole was done at the charge of Jenkyn Carpenter, citizen of London, in imitation of the one in the cloisters adjoining St. Innocents' churchyard, Paris ; whilst the verses are headed, " The Dance of Machabree ; wherein is lively expressed and showed the state of Man, and how he is called at uncertain times by Death, and when he thinketh least thereon. Made by Dan John Lydgate, Monk of S. Edmunds Bury." An aAvful dance, indeed! A double line of figures, commencing in the left of the foreground, and continued away on the right till the apparently end less procession is lost in the distance; the one line led by a pope with his' triple crown on his head, behind him an emperor, next a king, then cardinal, duke, archbishop, patriarch, baron, princess, bishop, squire, and so on regularly down wards through every condition of life ; whilst the other line presents one dread but sublime uniformity — emperor and labourer, duke and citizen, monk and minstrel, are each led on by the same ghastly partner, a skeleton Death. Won derful as is the conception of the picture, the execution is equal. The variety of expression given to the skeleton forms, in spite of the continual repetition — above all, the unearthly submissiveness with which the terrible .procession of the highest and lowliest of the earth move on together, as though in a deep and awful dream which deprived all alike of the power of resisting — seem to us among the greatest triumphs of the art. In the verses, which extend to great length, we have the conversation which may be supposed to preface the dance ; Death's invitation to each, and the answer, beginning with the pope and ending with the hermit. We transcribe a passage or two : Death speaketh to the Emperour. " Syr Emperour, lord of all the ground, Sovereine prince and highest of noblesse. Ye mot forsake of gold your apple round. Sceptre and swerd, and all your high prow^sse ; Behind letten your treasour and your richfis. And with other to my daunce obey ; Against my might is worth none hardinesse, Adam's children all they must6 deye." The Emperour maketh answer. " I note * to whom that I may appeal Touching Death which doth me so constrein, There is no gin t to helyeu { my querell, But spade and pickoys my grav6 to atteyne ; A simple sheet, there is no more to seyn, To wrappen in my body and visage. Whereupon sore I me compleyne. That great Lordes have little auvantage." Machabree, the author of the original verses, was a German physician, Avho is supposed to have written them from the sight of the picture, which was found in * Know not. •)¦ AVile. J Heal. 262 LONDON. many of the continental edifices about the latter part of the fourteenth century. The picture itself Avas probably first suggested by the Avide-SAveeping ravages of the plague, as Ave knoAv that it Avas subsequently painted on the Avails of churches to commemorate such occasions : as at Basle, after the plague Avhich carried off so many persons during the fifteen years' sitting of the General Council Avhich met in 1431 ; and, Ave may add, as in the cloister of St. Paul's, for the very name shoAvs that this cloister and chapel had been in some Avay used for similar pur poses Avith the Pardon Churchyard, ClerkenAvell, Avhere Sir Walter Manny bought ground for the interment of the victims of the pestilence. Lydgate is a somcAA'hat free translator of Machabree's verses, avc observe ; fbr, among the other passages, Ave see that "Death speaketh to " Master John Rikil, Avhilom Tregetour Of noble Henry, King of Englond,* And of France the mighty conqueror ; For all the sleights and turning of thine bond. Thou must come near, ray dance to understond: Nought may avail all thy conclusions. For Death shortly nothcr on sea nc lend Is not deceived by none illusions." The Tregetour maketh answer. " What may availe magike natural!. Or any craft sheAved by appearance Or course of stars above celestiall, Or of the heavens all the influence Againste Death to stonde at defence ? Legerdemain now helpeth rae right nought : Farewell my craft and sucli sapience. For Death mo maistriest hafh ywrought." The moral of the Avhole is summed up toAvard the conclusion by The King eaten of Worms. " Ye folke that look upon this portrature. Beholding here all estates daunce, Seeth Avhat ye have been, and what is your nature — Meat unto worms : nought els6 in substance. And have this mirror aye in remembrance, How I lie here, Avhilom crowned king. To all estates a true resemblance That wormes food is the fine of your living." Among the other noticeable features of the exterior of St. Paul's on the north side are the library over the cloister and the chapel near the door leading into the north transept of the cathedral : the first furnished with books at a great cost, and the second built by Walter Shiryngton, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan caster — a man of Avhom it is recorded he had in ready money at his death no less than the sum of 3233Z. I8s. 4d., kept in an iron chest in the vestry of the church, Avhereof 319/. were in groats, and the rest in gold. The charnel-house and chapel, a place of resort to pilgrims, is here also ; and, above all, the famous SL Paul's Cross, near the eastern extremity.^ The Bell ToAver on the east, with * Pronounced apparently as a trisyllable. \ Mysteries. X The subject of No. III. of tins publication. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 1^63 its great bells used in old times to summon the people to the folkmote, Avith its tall spire and image of St. Paul on the sumfliit, and the sumptuous chapter house, and cloisters surrounding it, on the Avestern side of the southern transept, are the only other objects demanding notice. With the exception of an accident noAV and then, such as the injury done by lightning to the spire in 1444, which took a long time to repair, there is nothing of moment in the history of the edifice from the period of its completion doAvn to that when the Reformation began to perplex hierarchies Avitli fears of change even more than monarchs. From that time St. Paul's is a troubled history for the next one hundred and fifty years. We can only deal with the more salient points ; and, first, here is a quiet little bit of correspondence going on betAveen tho au thorities of the cathedral and Queen Anne Boleyn's Vice-Chamberlain. As yet, proceedings of the nature indicated had to be done very decorously ; and our readers will OAvn that the writer (Dr. John Smythe, canon-residentiary) was the very man so to do them : — "After my right hearty recommendations: whereas the King's grace, by instruction, hath in knowledge of a precious little cross, with a crucifix, all of pure gold, Avith a rich ruby in the side, and garnished AvIth four great diamonds, four great emeralds, and four large ballasses, Avith tAVelve great orient pearls, &c., which cross is in our church among other jcAvels; and upon the King's high affection and pleasure of the sight of the same [Who does not see bluff King Hal standing before it Avith his mouth Avatering?], I, Avith others of my brethren residentiaries, had yesterday in commandment, by the mouth of Mr. Secretary, in the King's name, to be Avith his Grace Avith the same cross to- morroAV. I secretly asserten you, and my loving master and trusty friend, that, by mine especial instruction, conveyance, and labours, his Grace shall have high pleasure therein, to the accomplishment of his affection in and of the same, of our free gift, trusting only in his charitable goodness ahvays to be sheAved to our church of S. Paul, and to the ministers of the same, in their just and reasonable causes and suits." And is this all? — By no means. The crafty canon-residentiary knoAVS AA'ell enough that those Avho receive such kind of service are not unjire- pared to repay it in kind : so he goes on to point out that his " unkind brother, Mr. Incente," long time, as he understands, hath made secret labours to sup plant him of some house he holds, and to obtain certain authority ; and so a good Avord 'with the Queen's Grace is desired both for the house and the au thority, backed by this persuasive piece of eloquence to Sir Edward Baynton, the Vice-Chancellor's own ears: — " If ye can speed Avilh m,e," he says, " I shall give you two years' farm rent of my prebend of Alkennings, and so forth, as I shall find your goodness unto me." Turn Ave uoav to a somewhat more gratifying evidence of the progress of the Reformation — the sudden apparition, in or about most of the principal English churches, for the first time, of such a spectacle as this : Englishmen reading the Bible in their own language. The first announcement of the King's purpose Avas made known by his direction, in 1536, for a translation to be made. Coverdale had, the year before, completed his translation, Avhich Avas noAv placed in the King's hands ; and, as the translator himself told his audience one day at St. Paul's Cross, various opinions having been expressed as to its value, " Henry ordered divers bishops to peruse it. After they had had it long in their hands. 264 LONDON. he asked their judgment of it : they said there were many faults in it. But he asked upon that if there were any heresies in it : they said they found none. ' Then,' said the King, ' in God's name, let it go abroad among my people.' ' Cromwell accordingly directed a copy of Coverdale's Bible to be chained to a pillar or desk in the choir of every parish church. As soon as the new transla tion was completed in 1539, similar directions were issued with regard to that; and again in 1541, showing that the earlier orders had been but indifferently obeyed. Bonner was now Bishop of London ; and, iu obedience to the proclama tion, he caused six Bibles to be set up in different parts of the Church, with a brief admonition attached, that they should be read humbly, meekly, reverently, and obediently ; that no persons should read them with loud voices, or during divine service ; and, more particularly, that the laity were not to dispute of the mysteries contained therein. But the awakening mind of man was preparing to accomplish mightier things than breaking through a bishop's injunction. Many a group might be seen about these chained Bibles, noAv listening in deep silence to the voice of one who read, now arguing hotly upon some disputed passage or point of faith it involved. Bonner was the last man to submit"to this in peace. He threatened publicly to remove the Bibles if these abuses continued ; whilst in private, he, with the other chief heads of the clergy, who viewed with alarm the growing schism, strained every nerve to undo what had been done, but with little or no effect. The next evidence of the change going on, that we meet with in the history of St. Paul's, is the dissolution of the chantries in the first year of the reign of Edward VI. —an act which at once struck off fifty-four priests from the foundation, that being the number still employed in the daily performance of the celebra tions at the different chantries, then reduced to thirty-five. This blow was fol- loAved, six years later, by another — the stripping the church of the long list of valuables which we have before referred to, leaving only, as if by way of mockery, OLD ST. PAUL'S. 265 two or three chalices, basins, and a silver pot, a few cushions, towels, dresses, &c. Ruder hands were now laid upon the venerable structure. " In the time of King Edward VL," says Dugdale, " and beginning of Queen Elizabeth, such pretenders were some to zeal for a thorough reformation in religion, that, under colour of pulling down those images here, which had been superstitiously wor shipped by the people, as then was said, the beautiful and costly portraitures of brass, fixed in several marbles in sundry churches of this realm, and so conse quently in this, escaping not their sacrilegious hands, were torn away, and for a small matter sold to coppersmiths and tinkers.'"* In the place of the images or statues thus removed, various texts of Scripture were affixed against the wall, condemnatory, or thought to be so, of the former practice. A curious passage in Strype's 'Ecclesiastical Memorial' shows us the state of feeling among the clergy of the cathedral. In 1549 Bonner had received an indirect reprimand from the King's Council on account of the performance of masses, said to be still kept up in some of the chapels of St. Paul's. It was directed that the Communion, under colour of which the masses had been said, should be said at the high altar only. Some months after that, when Ridley was bishop, the Communion was still cele brated with such superstition as though it were a mass. In consequence, the Council sent, on the Uth of October, 1550, three or four "honest gentlemen in London " to observe the usage at St. Paul's, who reported that the Communion was " used as the very mass.'.' We may judge how joyously these parties must have received the ucavs of Mary's accession to the throne. The continuator of Fabian tells us, " on St. Katherine's Day, after even song, began the choir of Paul's to go about the steeple singing, after the old custom ;" whilst, on " St. Andrew's Day began the procession in Latin — the bishop, curates, parsons, and the whole choir of Paul's, with the mayor and divers aldermen, and the prebends in their grey amines ;j and thus continued three days following." And although Mary, for political reasons, issued almost immediately a declaration that she would constrain nobody In religious matters, her intentions were well known to the Catholic party ; and too soon, unhappily, to every one else. It was a blessed thing for England that one of its " most terrible reigns should have been also one of the shortest." The most important point in the history of St. Paul's during the reign of Elizabeth is the destruction of the tall steeple, in 1561. In the accounts pub lished at the time, the damage was attributed to lightning during a tempest, "for divers persons, in time of the said tempest, being in the fields near adjoin ing to the city, affirmed that they saw a long and a spear-pointed flame of fire (as it were) run through the top of the broche or shaft of Paul's steeple from the east westward;" but a later writer. Dr. Heylin (1674), says, that a plumber had since confessed that it happened through his negligence in leaving a pan of coals and other fuel in the steeple when he went to dinner ; and which, taking hold of the dry wood in the spire, had become so dangerous before he returned, that he kept his secret. The damage done was immense. Not only the entire steeple Avas destroyed, but the roof of the church and aisles. Many pious per- * Sir H. Ellis's edition, 1818, p. 31 ; to which we may once for all express our acknowledgmenla for the chief materials of the present papers. \ Amices — the cloth worn by the priests in front under the allis. 266 LONDON. sons no doubt Avere totally at a loss to understand the calamity ; for in the cross there had been long deposited the relics of certain saints, placed there originally by Gilbert de Segrave, Bishop of London about 1315, for the express purpose of defending the steeple from all danger of tempests ; but they Avere satisfied at last Avhen they discovered that the evil Avas oAving to the Reformation. A preacher at Paul's Cross thought it necessary to answer this hypothesis in a careful and learned manner. All parties, however, exerted themselves to remedy the mischance. By 1566 the roof Avas repaired; but it noAv began to be per ceived that a general repair of the edifice Avas needed, and there Avas still the steeple to build. James I., on one occasion, came in splendid procession to give eclat to a new attempt to raise subscriptions. A commission also was issued, but nothing further done till Charles's reign, Avhen, in 1633, Laud, then Bishop of London, laid the first stone, and Inigo Jones, the architect, the fourth. It Avould have been Avell for this great architect's fame if his connexion Avith St. Paul's could be altogether forgotten. After looking upon the elegant tracery and beautifully-pointed architecture of the old cathedral, and then on the mon strous additions made by him, such as Corinthian porticos, round-headed windows, balustrades ornamented Avith round stone balls along the top, one needs to re member the Banqueting House, Whitehall, to prevent something like a feeling of contempt for this fine artist. Strange that men like Inigo Jones and Wren, both able to do so much honour to their country by developing their OAvn tastes and principles, should have been AviUing to meddle with Avorks founded upon the tastes and principles of others, Avith Avhom evidently they had nothing in common. If the notion had ever crossed their minds that some restorer of the Gothic Avould one day be busily employed repairing St. Paul's or the Banqueting House on his OAvn peculiar vicAvs, Ave suspect their equanimity would have' been somcAvhat disturbed. Many honourable instances of private zeal in the restoration of the cathedral have been recorded. Charles himself set the example by erecting, at his oavu expense, the portico on the Avest, Avhilst Sir Paul Pindar restored the beautiful screen at the entrance into the choir (the one single Avork that seems to have been done in the right spirit), and gave no less than 4000^. to the repair of tVie south transept. And thus, by 1643, the whole Avas finished except the steeple, at an expense of about 100,000/., when the Civil War broke out; and men, in their struggle to prevent or to accomplish a reform of all the evils Avhich political or religious institutions are heir to, became too much engrossed to at tend any longer to the state of St. Paul's. In order that Ave may finally dismiss this part of our subject, we may observe that on the. abolition of bishops, deans, and chapters, in 1642, the revenues and buildings attached to St. Paul's were seized, and much injury done to the interior of the cathedral by the quartering of horse-soldiers in the nave, and the erection of a Avail betAveen the nave and choir, in order to partition the latter off for divine service. Charles II. began the AVork of repair and restoration in 1633, but before any great advance Avas made came the Great Fire. At the very beginning of the Civil War an eminent antiquary conceived and executed a scheme of no ordinary importance or toil, Avhich be has thus described in the preface to his work on St. Paul's : — " The said Mr^ Dugdale, therefore OLD ST. PAULS. 267 receiving encouragement from Sir Christopher Hatton, before mentioned, then a member of that House of Commons (Avho timely foresaw the near approaching storm) in summer, anno 1641, taking Avith him one Mr. William ScdgeAvick (a skilful arms painter), repaired first to the cathedral of St. Paul in the City of London, and next to the abbey church of Westminster, and there made exact draughts of all the monuments in each of them, copied the epitaphs according to the very letter, as also of all arms in the Avindows or cut in stone ; and having so done, rode to Peterborough in Northamptonshire, Ely, Norwich, Lincoln, Newark-upon-Trent, Beverley, SouthAvell, Kingston-upon-Hull, York, Selby, Chester, Litchfield, TamAvorth, Warwick, and did the like in all those cathedral, collegiate, conventual, and divers other parochial churches, Avherein any tombs or monuments Avere to be found, to the end that the memory of them, in the case of that ruin then imminent, might be preserved for future and better times." Amore interesting passage, or a more gallant deed than this, Ave shall noAvhere find in the annals of antiquarianism. And Avhatever the amount of the danger apprehended and the mischief done to our cathedrals during the Civil War, one event of infi nitely greater moment, that he could not anticipate, the Great Fire, has left us almost entirely dependent upon Avhat Dugdale did at this period for our knoAV- ledge of Old St. Paul's. In the vaults beneath the present cathedral are the remains of some half-dozen monuments dug up out of the ruins of the former edifice, and this is nearly all we should have known of the sumptuous structures already described, but for his labours. The amount of destruction Avrought in our great religious edifices during the Civil War, we belicA'e, has been much ex aggerated, and the error has probably arisen from overlooking the handiwork of the first reformers themselves during the reigns of Henry VIIL, EdAvard VI., and Elizabeth. Henry, at one cast of the dice, knocked doAvn the Bell ToAver before mentioned, Avith its goodly spire and bells, or at least his felloAV-game- ster Sir Miles Partridge, Avho Avas the Avinner of the throAV, did for him. Then as to Edward's and Elizabeth's reigns, Ave have already transcribed a passage from Dugdale shoAving that the " images," forming nearly the whole of the beau tiful sculpture, and many of the beautiful and costly portraitures of brass, chiefly of bishops, of AA'hom no less than tAventy-four had been buried in the cathedral, were then destroyed. But in Edward's reign private rapacity did greater injury even than any yet specified. The Protector Somerset, then busy erecting Somer set House in the Strand, SAvept aAvay the chapel and cloisters of Pardon Church Haugh, Avith the Dance of Death, and all the beautiful monuments; also Shiryng- ton's Chapel, and the Charnel-House and Chapel, in order that he might have the materials. Let us now see what Avere the principal memorials among those Avhich remained when Dugdale set to work, and which have not been already de scribed in the preceding paper. Among the tablets Avere one to Linacre, the great physician and founder of the College of Physicians, who Avas buried here ; an other to Sir Philip Sidney, Avith an inscription, beginning — " England, Netherlands, the Heavens, and the Arts, The soldiers, and the world, have made si.K parts Of noble Sidney ;" who was interred in St. Paul's, in January, 1588, amidst so deep and universal a 268 LONDON. grief as has seldom greeted the remains of poet or warrior ; indeed for months afterwards it was considered an infringement of decency for a gentleman to appear at court or in public except in mourning. Among the monuments were plenty of those cumbrous, tasteless pieces of magnificence which choke up the aisles and chapels of Westminster Abbey to this day. Such, for instance, were the monu ments of the noticeable triad of men — Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth's favourite Chancellor, with a long inscription in verse attached, detailing his descent and his tory at large, — Sir Francis Walsingham, her eminent Secretary, who. Pennant says, " died so poor that his friends were obliged to steal his remains into the grave, for fear lest they should be arrested '' — and lastly. Sir Nicholas Bacon, her Keeper of the Seals, the father of the great Chancellor, and himself a distin guished and excellent man. " He was," says his son, " a plain man, direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness, and one that was of a mind that a man in his private proceedings and estate, and in the proceedings of State, should rest upon the soundness and strength of his own courses, and not upon practice to circumvent others." His solidity of character was by no means incon sistent with the lighter graces of the intellect. When Elizabeth came to visit him at Gorhambury, the size and magnificence of the place seem to have draAvn from the Queen, who evidently had a jealousy of the power of her nobles, the satirical remark, that " his house was too little for him." " Not so. Madam," was the happy answer, " but your Majesty has made me too great for my house," The Earl of Pembroke's monument Avas also a work of great size and magnifi cence in this style. Lastly, there was here a large memorial of the founder of the school. Dean Colet, with a skeleton reclining at full length on a mat under a canopy, and a bust of the Dean in a niche at the top. The poet Donne's effigy, still preserved, we reserve for mention in our account of the existing structure. In St. Faith's, also, Avere many monuments and inscriptions. Perhaps the most memorable of them is that which stated — " Lo, Thomas Mind, esquire by birth, doth under turned lie. To show that men, by nature's law, are born to live and die !" The imagination starts back in awe as it asks, what would have been the con sequences had this gentleman been unwiUing to be made such an example of? Apart from the history of the Cathedral itself, using the word in its strictest sense, there are a variety of events Avhich belong to that history as having taken place within its walls. The Church and the State have each for many centuries used it occasionally for peculiar purposes — the one, for instance, for great ecclesias tical assemblies, proclamations, and trials of heretics — the other for pageants on occasions of public prayer or thanksgiving. Lastly, the people themselves ma naged, as we shall see, to turn Old St. Paul's to a variety of uses, none of them very consistent with the objects of the building. To begin with one of its mis cellaneous religious or ecclesiastical memories. Here, in 1213, John's acknow ledgment of the supremacy of the Pope was publicly read, in consequence of which acknowledgment the Church suddenly changed sides in the contest between the king and his barons, and Avanted the latter to do the same. The event OLD ST. PAULS. 269 next to be mentioned was of vast importance, no less than the degradation of the first English martyr, William SaAvtre, from the priestly order, by stripping him, in regular succession, of all the distinctive articles of his dress, preparatory to sentencing him to the stake at Smithfield, where he was burnt in March, 1401. This terrible act took place under the primacy of Arundel, and was performed with the view of putting down LoUardism at once and for ever. If, as in some systems of theology, the shades of the authors of this fatal pro ceeding could but have been allowed to revisit the earth, and watch for the next one hundred and fifty years the progress of the principle they had established in St. Paul's — have summed up the amount of misery and agony inflicted, and the amount of success obtained, they would have received a punishment adequate even to such a crime. The name of the Lollards' Tower, applied to one of the turrets of the western front, and below which was the parish church of St. Gre gory (at the S.W. corner of the pile), shows that Sawtre's case is not the only one, perhaps by hundreds, of the early Church Reformers, whose persecutions were carried on within the walls of the Cathedral. The Lollards' ToAver here, as at Lambeth, was the bishop's usual place of confinement for the heterodox, but enjoys a pre-eminence of guilt to which the other cannot pretend. Its walls were reported to be stained with the blood from many a midnight murder, and one case that has come down to us prepares us to believe any tale of horror in connexion with it. In 1514, Richard Hunne, a merchant tailor of London, had a dispute with the parson of a country parish in Middlesex, Avho demanded a bearing-sheet as a mortuary privilege accruing through the death of an infant child of Hunne's in his parish. Hunne objected, it is supposed, through his in clination to the new doctrines, and was sued in the Spiritual Court, when, by the advice of his counsel, he adopted a daring course, that of taking out a writ of premunire against the parson for bringing the King's subjects before a foreign jurisdiction —a Spiritual Court sitting under the authority of the Pope's Legate. The clergy were in a state of frenzy at such bold questioning of their power, and, as the speediest method of reaching him, charged him with heresy. He was arrested and thrown into the Lollards' Tower. Hunne was frightened, and whilst acknowledging the partial truth of the charges brought against him, re canted in due form. But he would not give up his writ against the parson. Instead, therefore, of being discharged, as he was entitled to demand he should be, he was sent back to his prison ; two days after he was found dead, hanging suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Of course he had hung himself, according to the officers of the prison, but, unfortunately for them, a coroner's inquest came to a different conclusion. Burnet says, " they found him hanging so loose, and in a silk girdle, that they clearly perceived he was killed ; they also found his neck had been broken, as they judged with an iron chain, for the skin was all fretted and cut ; they saw some streams of blood about his body, besides several other evidences, which made it clear that he had not murdered himself: where upon they did acquit the dead body, and laid the murder on the officers that had the charge of that prison ; and, by other proofs, they found the bishop's sumner v^summoner) and the beU- ringer guilty of it ; and, by the deposition of the sumner himself, it did appear that the chancellor, and he, and the bell-ringer, did murder 270 LONDON. him, and then hung him up." It seems scarcely credible that, Avith the suspicion of such an atrocity hanging over them, the bishop and his clergy should have begun a new process of heresy against the dead body ; yet they did so, and actually caused it to be burnt at Smithfield. Even this boldness, however, could not conceal the motive — it was too transparent ; their shoAv of conscious innocence availed nothing. Finally, after strong endeavours to stop the course of justice. Chancellor Horsey succeeded in escaping direct punishment, but not the odium which Avas universally raised against him. Parliament interfered in favour of Hunne's children, and compelled the restitution of his property, Avhich had been seized on the conviction of his dead body for heresy. But even this act of atrocity Avas not AVorse than many performed Avith all due form and ceremonies in the same cathedral : — here is one related by StoAV as to the fate of some poor people of Hol land, Avho had taken into their heads they had a mission to reform the st^te of religious belief, and came to this country to make the experiment. In May, 1535, there Avere examined in St. Paul's nineteen men and six women born in Holland, Avhose opinions Avere that in Christ is not three natures ; that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary ; 'that children born of infidels shall be saved ; that baptism of children is of no effect; that the sacrament of Christ's body is but bread only ; that he Avho after his baptism sinneth Avittingly, sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them Avere condemned : one man and Avoman burnt in Smithfield, the other tAveh'e sent to different parts of the country to receive the same punishment. Such AA'as tho treatment of reformers under the rule of a reformer ; Avhen they did not happen to AVait his good time, and make their opinions square exactly Avith his. The state pageants or exhibitions here might Avell furnish interesting matter for many pages : avc must dismiss them in a feAV lines. The taking possession of the English throne imder peculiar circumstances seems to have been accompanied in bid times by a splendid procession to St. Paul's. Thus Avhen Louis of Franco came into London in 1216, amidst the greetings of the barons and citizens, who Avere ready to Avelcome any one so long as they got rid of the tyrant John, he Avas conducted Avith great pomp and ceremony to St. Paul's, Avhere all those present swore fealty to him. Henry VI. and Edward IV. each came here after parti cular successes. At other times events of this nature Avere marked by a different kind of exhibition, shoAving Avho had lost, instead of those who had gained king doms. Richard II. 's body was exhibited at St. Paul's, and, says Stow, " had service, Avhere King Henry was present." Henry VI. before mentioned, and the great King-maker, Avere also publicly shoAvn here after their death. Henry's corpse is said to have bled on the occasion. One very sumptuous state pageant that took place in St. Paul's Avas the marriage of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., to Catherine of Arragon, aftei-Avards the unhappy Avife of Arthur's brother Henry. They Avere lodged for the time in the bishop's palace. Among the prayers and thanksgivings before alluded to, the most remarkable are those offered in 1555 for the preservation of Mary and her infant, the Queen having made an aAvlcAvard mistake; and those in 1588 for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Avords " Paul's Walk " at once revive recollections of the uses to AA'hich OLD ST. PAUL'S. 271 the public Avere accustomed to turn the nave and aisles of the Cathedral. " No place has been more abused than Paul's has been," says the author of a tract on the burning of the steeple in 1561, " nor more against the receiving of Christ's Gospel: wherefore it is more marvel that God spared it so long, rather than that he overthrew it now. From the top of the steeple down within the ground no place has been free. From the top of the spire at coronations, or other solemn triumphs, some for vainglory used to throAv themselves doAvn by a rope, and so killed themselves vainly to please other men's eyes. At the battlements of the steeple sundry times Avere used their Popish anthems, to call upon their gods with torch and taper in the evenings The south alley for usury and popery, the north for simony, and the horse-fair in the midst for all kind of bar gains, meetings, braAvlings, murthers, conspiracies ; and the font for ordinary payments of money, are so Avell knoAvn to men as the beggar knoAvs his dish." It is curious how early the traffic in benefices at St. Paul's has been noticed. Chaucer's Parson is described as one Avho " settc not his benefice to hire And lefte his sheep accombered in the mire And ran unto London, unto St. Paul's To seeken him a chanterie for souls," &c. Whilst Bishop Hall corroborates the author before quoted, not only as to the fact, but the part of the Cathedral Avhere such business Avas transacted : " Come to the left side alley of St. Foul's, Thou servile fool : why couldst thou not repair To buy a benefice at Steeple-fair?" The middle aisle Avas the famous Paul's Walk, Avhich betAveen eleven and tAvelve in the morning, and three and six in the afternoon, Avas the resort of persons of all ranks of society, and a pretty medley it seems they formed. " At one time in one and the same rank, yea, foot by foot, and elboAV by elboAV, shall you see Avalking the Knight, the Gull, the Gallant, the Upstart, the Gentleman, the Clown, the Captain, the Appel-squire, the LaAvyer, the Usurer, the Citizen, the Bankrout, the Scholar, the Beggar, the Doctor, the Ideot, the Ruffian, the Cheater, the Puritan, the Cut-throat, the High-men, the LoAv-men, the True man . and the Thief: of all trades and professions some : of all countries some. Thus Avhilst Devotion kneels at her prayers, doth Profanation Avalk under her nose in contempt of religion." '"" We mentioned in our former paper the monument of Sir John Beauehamp ; it Avas this it appears that, being mistaken for the monu ment of good Duke Humphrey, buried at St. Albans, led to the popular phrase among the poor idlers, Avho here Avhiled away their time, of dining Avith Duke Humphrey, Avhen they knoAv of no better host. The exterior Avas an equally popular place for various public proceedings. The first lottery of which we have any record Avas draAvn before the western doors in 1569. It included 10,000 lots, at 10s. each lot; the prizes consisting of plate. It began on the Uth of Jamiar}', and continued, StoAV says, " day and night " till the 6th of May. What a picture of national passion for gambling is Deldier's ' Dead Teavmo_, or Westminster's Speech to London,' I60T, 272 LONDON. given in those few words i The profits of the lottery were applied to the repair of the havens of England. Another lottery was draAvn in 1586, when the prizes consisted of rich and beautiful armour ; and, for the convenience of all parties, a wooden house was erected against the great door of the Cathedral. We may add that one of the objects of the erection of the great portico at the west end was to relieve the interior from the nuisances pointed out. [Inigo Jones'i Portico, St, PauVn.] [Somerset House, Strand Front.J XCin.— SOMERSET HOUSE. If the splendour of royalty only now illumines the City at rare and uncertain intervals, there was once a time when the citizens were more familiar with regal movements and processions, and when the numerous city mansions of the nobility attested the empire of the court over its narrow and crowded streets. The Tower, as the eastern seat of royalty, held the palatial pride of Westminster in check. In the fifteenth century, when the great nobles visited London, they came net to their mansions with the unobtrusiveness of private citizens. In 1485 the Earl of Salisbury rode with five hundred horsemen, all wearing his livery, to his house in the Herber, or Erber. And where was the mansion fit for the reception of so ostentatious and princely a retinue ? The exclusive who affects ignorance of the locality of Bloomsbury Square will blush to hear that it was "a great old house" by Dowgate. It was successively held by John Neville, Lord of Raby, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, then by Neville, the Earl of Salisbury above mentioned, and afterwards passed into the pos session of George, Duke of Clarence, by gift from Edward IV. When Stow wrote, the old mansion had been recently pulled down, and the house erected on VOL. IV. T 274 LONDON. its site Avas the residence of Sir Francis Drake. In the same year of 1485 Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, rode Avith six hundred men in his livery to his house in WarAvick Lane; Strange sights these Avould be for the citizens of the present day. Up to the commencement of the sixteenth century the nobility not only lived in the City, but even at that time built houses for themselves in this part of the town. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Marquis of Winchester erected a large mansion on the spot now knoAvn as Austin Friars. Here the Augustine Friars had a house, cloisters, and gardens, the site of which the Mar quis appropriated, converting a part of their church into places for storing corn and coal, and for other household purposes. Some of the old city churches contained numerous monuments of the nobility, and we are told that the Mar quis's heir sold the monuments of many noblemen who had been interred in the Friars' Church. At the end of the sixteenth century the more ancient mansions of the nobility were either pulled down or in a state of decay, and occupied by very different tenants. The house of Earl Ferrers, in Lombard Street, had be come a common hostelry, called the ' George.' Northumberland House, near Fenchurch Street, Avhich had been a toAvn residence of the Percies in the fifteenth century, had for some time been deserted by them, and its gardens were con verted into bowling-alleys, and other parts into dicing-houses, " common to all comers for their money, there to bowl and hazard." The town-house of the Earls of Worcester, in Vintry ward, Avas in Stow's time divided into many tenements ; and a great house built of stone, called Ormond Place, in Knightriders Street, and which had belonged to the Earls of Ormond, had, he tells us, lately been pulled doAvn. Another great house, for the most part .built of stone, on Fish Street Hill, Avhere, in the fourteenth century, the Black Prince was accustomed to lodge, had become a hostelry at the Cnd of the sixteenth century, and was called the ' Black Bell.' The history of the ' Pope's Head ' tavern on Cornhill puzzled our city antiquary. The place, with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, had evidently formed one tenement at some remote period. The royal arms, as they Avere quartered before the reign of Edward III., showed that it was erected be fore the fourteenth century. " Some say," remarks StoAv, " this was King John's house, which might so be ;" but he could find no proof of the fact. The nobility gradually removed from the City to the west end of tho town. Northumberland House, at the Avestern extremity of the Strand, is the only noble mansion Avhich noAv stands so far eastAvard. It possesses a different character from most of the houses of the nobility, and its porte-cocher and solid front give it something of the appearance of a mansion of the olden time. But even in Evelyn's time, now nearly two centuries ago, when manufactories Avere less numerous along the banks of the river, it was often wrapped in a murky veil of smoke. " I have," he says, "strangely Avondered, and not without some just indignation, when the south wind has been gently breathing, to have sometimes beheld that stately house and gar den, belonging to my Lord of Northumberland, even as far as Whitehall and Westminster Abbey, wrapped in a horrid cloud of smoke issuing from a brew house or two contiguous to that noble palace, so as, coming up the river, that part of the city has appeared a sea where no part of land was within ken." ' Besides the royal residence at the Tower of London, the Kings of Englsuid had other places, in the heart of the city, at which they were accustomed to SOMERSET HOUSE. 275 lodge pccasionally, or to take up their temporary abode. One of these places was Baynard's Castle, a very ancient edifice, which gives its name to one of the City wards. It was repaired in 1501 by Henry VII., or rather he rebuilt it, " not embattled, or so strongly fortified castle-like, but far more be9,utiful and commodious, for the entertainment of any prince or great estate." During his reign he frequently lodged there. He received at this place the ambassadors from the King of the Romans ; and the King of Castile lodged here while on a visit to 'this country. The council at Avhich it was resolved to proclaim Queen Mary, during the brief reign of Lady Jane |Grey, was held at Baynard's Castle. ToAver Royal, in Vintry >vard, Avas another royal residence, and at an earlier period. During his contests with the Empress Maude, King Stephen lodged here, " as in the heart of the city, for his more safety." In the reign of Richard II. this place Avas called the Queen's Wardrobe. During Wat Tyler's rebelljop Richard's mother fled hither from the Tower, so that it must have been a place of some strength. As soon as the heat of the rebels Avas quepched, he visited his mother, who had been in a state of alarm during three days and two nights, and bid her thank God, " for," said he, " I have this day reco vered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near hand lost." In Stojv's time this place was converted into separate tenements. In the fifteenth century Henry VI. had an ancient mansion which he styled his "principal palace in the Old JeAvry," and which a century aftenvards Avas known by the name of the Old Wardrobe. It was a large stone building, very ancient, and when Stow -wrote the outer stone walls had been gradually taken down and gopd houses built upon the site. No notice occurs of its having been used as a royal residepce. The Palace of Bridewell, just without the city Avails, the site of which is well known, was occasionally much used by Henry VIIL, especially during the discussions respecting his divorce from his first wife, which were carried on at the Black Friars. In the next reign this palace Avas converted into a House of Correction. In its further migration westward, royalty rested for a time at Somerset House, of which place we will uoav give a brief history. In 1536 the rising fortunes of Edwa,rd Seymour Avere crowned by the marriage of his sister to Henry VIII. He Avas immediately created a peer by the title of Viscount Beauehamp. On his sister giving birth to a prince in the following year, Seymour was elevated to the earldom of Hertford ; and, four years after Avards, was elected a Knight of the Garter, and next appointed Lord Chamberlain for life. The attainders in former reigns had so thinned the ranks of the nobility, that, a little before his death, Henry proposed creating new peers and elevating in rank those who Avere already in his favour. On this occasion the Earl of Hertford Avas nominated for a dukedom, and the extinct titles of Somerset, Exetei'i or Hertford, Avere offered for his choice ; but the King died before the ncAV patent could be made out, and he left instructions in his will for carrying his intentions into effect, so far at least as the Earl of Hertford Avas concerned. On the 1st of February, 1546, four days after the King's death, he was elected by the Privy Council Governor of the young King EdAvard VI., his nephew, and Protector of his realms, until he should attain the age of eighteen. On the 10th of February he Avas appointed Lord High Treasurer ; on the 16th created Duke of Somerset; and on the I7th.he was made Ea,rl Marshal. It seems probabl? t2 276 LONDON. that he already possessed property on the site of Somerset House. The whole of Covent Garden and its neighbourhood, and I^ong Acre, comprising seven acres of valuable ground, belonged to him. The desire to possess a residence suitable to his high station was natural, and he determined to build a palace on the site of the present Somerset House. To obtain space and building materials he was guilty of some infringements of public and private rights, which were urged against him in the hour of his adversity. An inn of Chancery, called Strand Inn or Chester's Inn, the Episcopal houses of the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and of the Bishops of Worcester and Llandaff, and the church and churchyard of St. Mary-le-Strand, were demolished for the site of his new house. The common mode of building was still with timber and rubble, bricks not being generally used, and only the mansions of the nobility were built of stone, which was neces sarily brought by sea, so that the most expeditious plan of obtaining the materials for new buildings of stone was to pull down old ones. With this object he caused the charnel-house of Old St. Paul's, and the chapel over it, to be demolished ; also a large cloister on the north of St. Paul's, called Pardon Churchyard, which contained a greater number and more curious monuments than the church itself. The 'Dance of Machabray,' or 'Dance of Death,' commonly called, says Stow, the ' Dance of Paul's,' was painted in a part of this cloister. Nothing was left of it but a bare plot of ground. He also pulled down the steeple and part of the church of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem. Burnet, alluding to the Pro tector's rapacity, admits that " many bishops and cathedrals had resigned many manors to him for obtaining his favour ;" though he adds, " this A^^as not done without leave obtained from the King." Bishop Babington, appointed in 1591 to the see of Llandaff, which had suffered from the spoliations of his predecessor in Somerset's time, said that he Avas only Bishop of " Aff," as "Land" had been dissevered from his see. Burnet also accuses the Protector of selling chantry lands to his friends at easy rates, for which it was concluded he had great pre sents. The flagrant proceedings of the previous reign had, however, blinded men to the sacredness of this species of property ; and this consideration, though it does not excuse the Protector's acts, is in some sort a palliation of them. But the rise of Somerset House exposed its owner to the reflection, " that when the King Avas engaged in such wars, and when London was much disordered by the plague that had been in it for some months, he was then bringing architects from Italy, and designing such a palace as had not been seen in England." While he was thus pursuing these false means of aggrandisement, now sending his brother to the block for caballing against him, and, within two or three weeks afterwards, ordering the demolition of Pardon Churchyard, which was commenced on the 10th of April, 1549, his own downfall was rapidly approaching, and, on the 14th of October following, he was committed to the Tower. One of the grounds of dissatisfaction exhibited against him was his ambition and seeking of his own glory, " as appeared by his building of most sumptuous and costly buildings, and specially in the time of the King's wars, and the King's soldiers unpaid." He did not fall with much dignity ; and his private appeal to Warwick, his great rival, to save him, was treated with neglect. Warwick, though without the title, succeeded to the real power of the Protectorate, and Somerset was reduced to such insignificance that he Avas released from the Tower, and even allowed to sit at the SOMERSET HOUSE. 277 Council. Whether he attempted to regain his former position, or Warwick, now become Duke of Northumberland, felt uneasy so long as Somerset lived, does not appear; but, in December, 1551, the ex-Protector was again placed in confine ment in the Tower on treasonable charges, and in January, 1552, he was beheaded. The marriage of his daughter to Warwick's eldest son did not save him. His nephew, Edward VI., mentions his uncle's death in the following laconic manner in his Diary : — " Jan. 22. The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning." The people who witnessed the execution were more accessible to feelings of pity. A circumstance occurred during the preparations which led them to believe that Edward had granted his uncle a pardon, and a general shout arose of " Pardon Pardon !" and " God save the King !" many persons throwing up their caps. They were exempt from the feelings of ambitious rivalry which had hurried him to the scaffold. It is very probable that Somerset House was never inhabited by the Protector. He commenced the building in March, 1546-7, and in October, 1549, up to which period it was in constant progress, his political life may be said to have termi nated. According to the scale of a print in Strype's ' Stow,' the site occupied an area of six hundred feet from east to west by five hundred north and south. The principal architect is believed to have been John of Padua, an Italian, who was appointed " Deviser of his Majesty's buildings'' in 1544. Old Somerset House was the first building of Italian architecture executed in this country. The engraving shows the general appearance of the river front of the old edifice. [Old Somerset House.] On the death of Somerset his palace came into the possession of the CroAvn, and Edward appears to have assigned it to his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, for her use when she visited the court. It is spoken of at this period as " her place, called Somerset Place, beyond Strand Bridge." When she came to the throne she seems always to have given the preference to Whitehall and St. Jameu's. In 278 LONDON. the first year of her reign some partial restoration of Somerset's property was probably made, as the Dowager Duchess Uved in Somerset House. When the Queen visited the new Bourse in 1570, and gave it the name of the Royal Exchange, she is described as coming " from her house at the Strand, caUed Somerset House." In the reign of her successor it became the residence of Anne •if Denmark, queen of James I. He kept up three palaces at one period— White- [Anne of Denmark.] hall for himself, Somerset House for the Queen, and St. James's for his son. Prince Henry; and" each on an expensive scale. In 1606, Avhen the Queen's brother, Christian IV. of Denmark, visited England, her Majesty expended a considerable sum in preparing her residence for his reception, and after his return she affected to call it Denmark House, under Avhich name it is frequently alluded to about this time. James was so lavish in his expenditure during the visit of his brother- in-laAv, that he expended in feasting and entertainments nearly the whole of a subsidy of 453,000/. granted by Parliament for the necessary and urgent demands of his household. The royal Dane Avas so well pleased Avith his visit, that he repeated it rather unexpectedly in 1614, and this time about 50,000Z. Avas squan dered in feasting and riotous living. Both kings were addicted to intemperance, and even drunkenness ; and in his cups Christian acted with gross indignity to some of the ladies of the court, one of Avhom, the Countess of Nottingham, addressed the Danish ambassador on the subject. Her letter to him may be seen in Harris's ' Life of King James.' Anne of Denmark died in 1618, and her body laid in state for some time at " Denmark House," which she is stated to have " beauti fied, repaired, and improved," by "new buildings and enlargements," for which Inigo Jones furnished the designs. The principal state apartments were in the central part of the edifice. She also caused a supply of Avater to be brought to it SOMERSET HOUSE. 279 from Hyde Park. James I. died in 1625, and his body laid in state at Somerset House from the 23rd of April to the 17th of May. [James I. lying in State. The Canopy, Sec, from a Design by Inigo Joiiea.] Denmark House, or, as Ave shall uoav call it, Somerset House, was settled for life on Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., and Avas fitted up for the reception of herself and household in 1 626. According to the terms of her marriage -settle ment, she Avas allowed pretty nearly the free exercise of her own religion, and soon formed a little ecclesiastical establishment Avithin the walls of the Palace, and built a chapel for herself from designs by Inigo Jones. The subsequent events of her husband's reign drove her out. of England for a time. During the Protectorate an Act Avas passed for selling " several tenements in the Strand, parcel of the possessions of Charles Stuart and Henrietta Maria, late King and Queen of England, belonging unto Somerset House," the money being wanted for the payment of the army. The Restoration brought Queen Henrietta to England again. She was uoav Queen Dowager, or Queen Mother, as she Avas then caUed. Granger says that on re-entering her Palace, she exclaimed that if she had known the temper of the English some years ago as well as she noAV did, she need never to have left that house. Her marriage-jointure Avas 30,000/. a-year, to which her son, now Charles II. , added an equal yearly sum. Much as she had formerly disliked the country, she now began to enjoy herself in England. One of her first objects was to put her palace in a state of repair. CoAvley Avrote some verses " On the Queen's repairing Somereet House," from Avhich Ave take the following lines : — 280 LONDON. " Before my gate a street's broad channel goes, Which still with waves of crowding people flows ; And every day there passes by my side. Up to its western reach, the London tide. The spring-tides of the term. My front looks down On all the pride and business of the town. if * * * * And here behold, in a long bending row. How two joint cities make one glorious bow ; The midst, the noblest place, possest by me. Best to be seen by all, and all o'ersee : Which way soe'er I turn my joyful eye. Here the great court, there the rich town I spy. On either side dwells safety and delight. Wealth on the left, and power upon the right." The rest are a continuation of the conceit (the Palace loquitur), Avith courtly com pliments to Henrietta. Evelyn mentions that the Queen Mother made consider able additions to Somerset House, and here she brought into use, for the first time in England, the mode of inlaying floors with different coloured woods. Pepys, the contemporary gossip of the time, frequently mentions Henrietta's Court. On the 7th September, 1662, he was taken into her Majesty's Presence Chamber, and here he saw for the first time the Queen Consort, Catherine of Braganza, of whom he says, " though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look which is pleasing." "Madam" Castlemain, the King's mistress, and Mr. Crofts, one of his illegitimate children, were present. By and bye the King arrived. He tells the Queen Mother that his wife is with child, which she denies. The only Eng lish words that Pepys heard her utter were, " You lie," in answer to his Majesty's badinage. Charles tried to teach her the words, " Confess and be hanged," which she would not repeat. Such were the humours of the " Merry Monarch." In December of the same year, Pepys met with " a little, proud, ugly, talking body," who, he says, " was much crying up the Queen Mother's Court at Somer set House above our own Queen's, there being before her no allowance of laughing and the mirth that is at the other's ;" and Pepys adds, " Indeed it is observed that the greatest Court now-a-days is there." In February, 1663-4, he hears that " the Queen Mother hath outrun herself in her expenses, and is now come to pay very ill or run in debt, the money being spent that she received for leases." On the 24th, being Ash-Wednesday, he makes the following notes in his Diary : — " To the Queen's Chapel, where I staid and saw their mass, till a man came and bade me go out or kneel down ; so I did go out. And thence to Somerset House, and there into the Chapel, where Monsieur d'Espagne, a Frenchman, used to preach. But now it is made very fine, and was ten times more crowded than the Queen's Chapel at St. James's, which I wonder at. Thence down to the garden of Somerset House, and up and down the new build ings, which, in every respect, will be mighty magnificent and costly." In October he again visited Somerset House, and saw the Queen's ncAV rooms, " which are most stately, and nobly furnished." In January following (1664-5) he was again there, and was shown the Queen Mother's chamber and closet, " most beautiful places for furniture and pictures ;" from thence he " went down the great stone stairs to the garden, and tried the brave echo upon the stairs. SOMERSET HOUSE. 281 which continues a voice so long as the singing three notes, concords, one after another, they all three shall sound in concert together a good while most plea santly." In June both the Court at Whitehall and Somerset House were pre paring to leave town in consequence of the plague. Queen Henrietta went to France, and did not again return to this country, but died in 1669. In 1670 the body of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, laid in great state at Somerset House for several weeks. On the death of Charles II. in 1685, it became the sole residence of Catherine of Braganza, now Queen Dowager, and she lived here until her return to Portugal in 1692. It had previously belonged to her as Queen Consort, and during the ultra-Protestant furor, which exhibited itself for some years prior to the Revolution, attempts were made to implicate her household in the pretended Popish plot of the time, and to connect the mysterious murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey in 1678 with persons in her service. In September, Titus Oates had made depositions concerning his ' Plot ' to Sir Edmondbury, who was an active justice of the peace. He deposed that the Pope had taken measures for assuming the ecclesiastical sovereignty of these kingdoms; that Sir George Wakeman, the Queen's physician, had engaged to poison the King, the Queen being privy to the design. Many persons suffered imprisonment and death through the accusations of Oateg^ and though it is now placed beyond a doubt that the plot which he pretended' to reveal was an infamous fabrication, yet events contributed to its apparent corroboration. One of these was the sud den and violent death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, the magistrate who had taken Oates's depositions. The general conviction at the time was, that he had been murdered by the Catholic party out of revenge, and partly to aid the escape of the conspirators. The body was discovered on the sixth day after he had been missing, in a ditch near old St. Pancras Church : it was pierced through and through with his own sword, but there was a mark around his neck showing that he had been strangled. His shoes were clean, as if he had not walked to that country spot, and his money was in his pocket. The funeral was at tended by seventy-two Protestant divines, and medals were struck to commemo rate the murder. A Catholic and silversmith named Prance, who, it was alleged, had absented himself about the time of the murder, was apprehended and charged with being privy to it, though it was proved that he had gone from home a week before. It is said that he was put to the torture, and in a few days he confessed his knowledge of the murder, and charged three obscure persons employed about the Queen's chapel at Somerset House with being accomplices. He stated that Sir Edmondbury had been decoyed into Somerset House and there strangled, and his body was afterwards taken at night to the place where it was found. As a writer of the time, Ralph, observes, " A strong faith in the plot was the test of all political merit ; not to believe, was to be a political reprobate; and according to the zeal was the cruelty of the times." The conse quence was, that the three pretended accomplices were executed at Tyburn, and died with solemn asseverations of their innocence. Cruelly neglected by her husband, and an object of the popular prejudice in one of its worst moods, the childless Catherine of Braganza must have left behind her few endearing ties in a country in which she had occupied so high a station for more than thirty years. - . . • 282 LONDON. From the period of Catherine's departure, Somerset House ceases to possess any interest fn its palatial character. It still continued to be an appurtenance of successive queens, until, on the 10th of April, 1775, Parliament Avas recom mended, in a message from the Crown, to settle upon Queen Charlotte the house in which she then resided, formerly called Buckingham House, but then known by the name of the Queen's House, in which case Somerset House, already settled upon her, should be given up and appropriated " to such uses as shall be found inost useful to the public." The demolition of the old buildings Avas commenced as soon as an act could be passed to carry into effect the royal message. Soon afterwards the street aspect of the old house is alluded to in the folloAving terms : — " There are many Avho recollect the venerable aspect of the court-Way from the Strand, as Avell as the dark and Avinding steps which led doAvn to the garden, for years suffered to run to decay, and where the ancient and lofty trees spread a melancholy aspect over the neglected boundary, by no means un- pleasing to the visitor, Avho, in a few moments, could turn from noise and tumult to stillness and repose.'' Sir William Chambers was appointed architect of the' ncAV building, and in 1779 one of the fronts Avas completed. From a Parlia mentary return printed in 1790, it appears that a sum of 334,703/. had been then expended, and a further sum of 33,500Z.Avas still required. The site occupies an area of eight hundred feet by five hundred, being a few feet less than the area of Russell Square. The front toAvards the Strand consists of a rustic base ment of nine arches supporting Corinthian columns, and an attic in the centre Avith a balustrade at each extremity. Emblematic figures of Ocean and the eight jjrincipal rivers of England in alto-relievo adorn the key-stones of the arches. Over the three central AvindoAvs of the firstfloor were once medallions in basso-relievo of George III., Queen Charlotte, and the Prince of Wales. Statues of Justice, Truth, Valour, and Moderation, divide the attic into separate portions ; the summit being croAvned by the British arms supported by Fame and the Genius of England. Opposite the entrance, in the court, is a bronze statue of George IIL, and at the foot of the pedestal a bronze figure emblematic of the Thames, by Bacon. The terrace toAvards the river is raised on rustic arches, and again we have an emblematic figure of the Thames, of colossal size. The vicAv from this terrace is perhaps the finest on the banks of the river, the grand features being St. Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge, on one hand, and, on the other, Waterloo Bridge and the Abbey ; and over the opposite bank may be seen the Surrey Hills. The scenery of the river itself is full of interest and animation, and the eye is grati fied with variety of motion. The crowded steamers pass rapidly up and down the stream in quick succession, the light wherry skimming the water, and the cumbrous river-barge moving sluggishly along ; and there are keels from the up-country, and even from the Humber and places on the coast, which hoist their sails to catch the favouring breeze. It is rather a matter of surprise that so fcAv noble mansions, and not one royal palace, overlook the broad stream which is one of the principal sources of London's greatness. From either Blackfriars or Waterloo Bridge, but particularly from the latter, Somerset House is seen to great advantage, and appears truly a magnificent pile. One of the earliest purposes to which the present Somerset House Avas appro priated Avas for the sftinual exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy. The SOMERSET HOUSE. 283 fir^t Somerset House Exhibition was opened on the 1st of May, 17S0, and con tinued annually until the erection of the National Gallery. The use of apart- inerits for the meetings of the Royal Society Avas also granted in the same year, and the Fellows ihet here for the first time on the 30th of November. The Society of Antiqiiaries, having obtained a similar privilege, met for the first time at Somerset House in January, 1781. Tavo other learned bodies, the Royal Astronomical and the Geological Societies, have also had apartments assigned to them : a great public building could scarcely be appropriated to a better pur pose. The entrance on the Avestern side of the vestibule leads to the apart- irients used by the Board constituting the University of London ; and by the same staircase Ave ascend to the rooms appropriated to the School of Design, instituted by the Government within the last feAv years, for elementary in struction in drawing, modelling from the antique and from nature, and in the use of oil and Avater colours. Another section of the course comprises instruc tion in the historical principles and practice of ornamental art, embracing the antique styles, the styles of the middle ages, and of modern times. There is also an important division of instruction Avhich is intended to improve the arts of design as applied to manufactures. In this department the student has the opportunity of studying practically the jjroccsses of several branches of manu facture, as silk and carpet Aveaving, calico-printing, paper-staining, &c. The inorning school is open five hours daily, for a payment of only four shillings a month ; and the evening school for about half this time for a fee of tAvo shillings a month. In connection with the School of Design there is a female drawing-- school under the same superintendence, one chief object of which is to instruct females in drawing and designing patterns for those branches of manufacture which seem best adapted to their tastes and pursuits, as the lace manufacture, embroidery, &c. DraAving on Avood and wood engraving, lithography, porcelain- painting, the manufacture of artificial flowers, Avith other descriptions of orna mental work, are also taught. The merit of first suggesting popular schools of instruction in this country in the art of design, particularly as applied to manu factures, seems to be due to the Bishop of St. Asaph, who strongly recommended them to be established, in a note to a sermon which he preached in 1741. The Avhole of the left Aving of Somerset House Avas left incomplete by Sir W. Cham- b.ers: but in 1829 this part of the edifice Avas completed from the designs of Sir R. Smirke, and it now forms King's College. About three hundred students in medicine, natural philosophy, and general literature attend the courses of in struction, and in the junior school nearly five hundred pupils are instructed. The collegian's cap and goAvn, seen Avithin sound of the traffic of the Strand, may fail to inspirethe place Aviththe air of study aud retirement, but they indicate in some measure that in our time the highest attainments are cultivated for the active business of life. W^e have only at present pointed out the parts of Somerset House Avhich are appropriated to science, learning, and the arts. Next come the uses to Avhich it is applied for several departments of the Government. Passing by the offices belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall, there are those connected with the Navy, which are subordinate to the central Board of Admiralty in Whitehall. First is the Admiralty Civil Department, the Transport Office, the Victualling Office, 284 LONDON. and the Sick and Maimed Seamen's Office. In one of these departments is the Model Room, where most of the articles used in the naval service are kept for inspection by those who undertake the naval contracts. The Audit Office for the Public Accounts and the Civil List Audit Office are also at Somerset House. The only Board of Revenue which has its seat here is that of Stamps and Taxes. Its offices are chiefly in the southern front. The probate and legacy duties, the land tax and assessed taxes, and now the income tax, are collected under the ma nagement of this Board. Seven hundred persons are employed in this branch of the public service, and the amount of revenue collected in 1841 Avas nearly 12,000,000/., or between a fourth and fifth of the total public revenue. The land and assessed taxes produced 4,715,000/., and the stamp and stage carriage duties 7,270,000/. Of the latter sum the probate and legacy duties amounted to more than 2,000,000/., collected on a capital exceeding 4 1,000,000/. The other principal items of this department of revenue produced in Great Britain in 1841 the fol lowing sums : — Bills of exchange, 549,000/. ; receipts, 171,000/.; bankers' notes, 110,000/.; fire insurances, 965,930/. ; marine insurances, 286,000/.; newspapers, 227,000/.; advertisements, 121,900/.; gold and silver plate, 91,000/. ; medicines, 30,000/. ; stage carriages, 460,000/. ; hackney carriages, 50,000/ ; licences and certificates, 2'22,000/. ; deeds not included under the foregoing heads, 1,580,000/. In several of these cases, as in advertisements, the revenue is not obtained by the use of a stamp being enforced. The salaries of officers on the establishment do not amount to 60,000/. a-year, and less than 50,000/. is paid as poundage to the stamp-distributors in the country. No other branch of the revenue is collected at so small a per centage, being only 21. 3s. 4d., while the Excise costs 61. 7s. 8d. There is little or no opportunity for fraud and collusion, though in the Customs and Excise there can be little doubt that large sums are lost to the revenue by these practices. The assessed taxes are not of course so cheaply collected, but they are obtained at a cost not exceeding 41. 2s. 9d. per cent. The salaries to the officers of this department are 60,000/. a-year ; 86,000/. is allowed as poundage to the collectors; and in 1841, the sum of 20,000/. was charged for travelling expenses. The two great items of receipt in this branch are, the land tax, 1,214,000/., and the window tax, 1,664,000/. The remainder is chiefly collected on servants, car riages, horses, dogs, and game certificates. The hair-powder still contributes a sum amounting to nearly 5500/. a-year. The number of persons charged Avith this duty in 1820 was 29,199, and in 1839 only 5329. The business of each of the different departments of the Stamp Office is transacted in separate rooms. Thus there is the Hair-Powder Office, the Medicine Licence and Stamp Office, the Pawnbrokers' Licence Office, the Stage Coach Duty Office, the Receipt Stamp Office, the Dice Stamp Office, the HaAvkers' and Pedlars' Office, the Allowance Office for Spoiled Stamps, the Attorneys' Certificate Office, &c. &c. ; and each is frequented by a distinct class of persons. Some of these rooms are tAvo stories beloAV the level of the court, and here the mechanical operations are conducted. The legal and commercial stamps are impressed by hand- presses, and the news paper stamps by hand Avithout any mechanical aid. In 1827, when the stamp was four-pence, the number of sheets stamped for newspapers in England and Wales Avas under twenty-six millions; and in 1841, with the penny stamp, nearly fifty millions. The inking-box is close to the right hand, in which the operator holds SOMERSET HOUSE. 285 the stamp, and his left is employed in turning up the corner of each sheet as soon as it has received an impression. The movement of the hand from the ink to the paper is a simple operation, performed with great rapidity, and a single person can stamp six or seven thousand sheets a-day. The name of each newspaper has been inserted in the die, in moveable type, since the reduction of duty in 1836, and by this means a register is obtained of the circulation of every newspaper in the kingdom. In the basement story are presses moved by steam, one of which is employed in printing medicine labels, another for printing the stamp on country bank-notes, and four or five are employed in stamping the embossed medallion of the Queen on the postage envelopes. The two former are compound presses — that is, they produce an impression in different coloured inks. The plate is en graved as if it were intended only to receive one colour, and that part of the plate which is to give an impression in a second colour is then cut out. When the press is in operation, each receives its particular colour from a separate inking apparatus ; and, this being done, the one is brought by the action of the ma chine into that part of the plate from which it had been cut out, and when thus placed on a level, so as again to appear one plate, the impression is taken. Of course great ingenuity is required to produce these complicated operations, and to render them rapid and successful. But by far the most interesting display of the beauties of mechanism is to be seen in the machinery for stamping the postage envelopes. The space occupied by a single press is not more than two feet square, and the manner in which it performs the operations assigned to it is so elegant and perfect, that it seems almost possible to forget that we are watching an inanimate body, but seem impelled to the idea that its exquisite performance is the result of its own intelligence. The inventor is Mr. Edwin Hill, one of that class of minds to whom this country is indebted for its superiority in automatic machinery. Somewhat similar to the machinery for coining at the Mint, these presses nevertheless differ from them in consequence of the necessity of providing for the working of an inking-table before a coloured impression can be taken, and the power exerted is, of course, much less. The paper for the intended envelope has a thin thread run ning through it, introduced during the manufacture at the mill, and the con tractor sends it already cut up into a diagonal form, a certain number of sheets, being assorted together. These are counted over in a room adjoining the presses. The boy who counts the sheets spreads them in a fan-like form, and, holding them up to the light to see that they are separate from each other, he tells them rapidly off into parcels, containing each a uniform number. These parcels are then taken to the press-room, and delivered to a boy who feeds the press, another boy, on the other side of the press, taking them off the instant the impression is given. The working of the press is so regular that no hurried movements are required from those who attend upon it, but merely vigilance and quickness, and yet the number of impressions is fifty-two per minute. When the experi ment was first tried, not so many as twenty were produced. The sheets are made up into envelopes by the contractor on his own premises. In another part of this mass of pubUc offices are three departments which have been organised within the last few years, and whose functions are of a very im portant character. These are the Poor Law Commission, the Registrar-General's 286 LONDON. office, and the Tithe Commission. Three centuries ago the gates of bountiful men in London were thronged with poor persons, and those who were charitably dis posed fed them out of their abundance. Stow mentions the names of several of the nobility Avho, in his youth, were accustomed to observe the " ancient and chari table custom of Hberal relief of the poor at their gates." The late Earl of Derby, he says, fed above sixty aged persons tAvice a-day, and all comers thrice a-week ; and every Good Friday he gave meat, drink, and money to two thousand seven hundred persons. At the gate of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Earl of Essex, he had often seen two hundred persons fed twice a-day, " with bread, meat, and drink sufficient." The Ma,rquis of Winchester gave " great relief at his gate." In 1532 the Bishop of Ely "daily gave at his gates, besides bread and drink, warm meat to two hundred poor people." Such Avere the means practised in London and elsewhere in the sixteenth century for diminishing the sufferings of poverty. Unhappily the growth of pauperism and its attendant evils soon became too great to be relieved by the hand of charity, and then compulsory alms-giving was enforced, and each parish was compelled to provide for its OAvn poor. The evils which grew up under this system at length became so intplerable, that all parties united in promoting measures for diminishing them, and, Avith this vIcav, the Poor Law Commission Avas appointed in 1834 as a Central Board ibr regu lating the mode of administering relief to the poor. Local administrative boards of representatives were created in place of irresponsible and generally ineffi cient bodies. " The Central Board may be described as an agency necessary for consolidating and preserving the local administration, by communicating to each board the principles deducible from the experience of the Avhole ; and, in cases where its intervention is sought, acting so as to protect the administration being torn by disputes betAveen the members of the same local board, betAveen a part or a minority of the inhabitants and the board, and between one local board and another, and in numerous other cases affording an appeal to a distant and locally disinterested, yet highly responsible authority, which may interpose to prevent the local administrative functions being torn or injured by local dissensions."* Adjoining the offices of the Poor Law Commission is the Registrar-General's office, a department created in 1836 by the passing of an act for registering all births, marriages, and deaths in England and Wales, after the 30th of June, 1837. In the year ending 30th June, 1840, there Avere registered 501,589 births, 350,101 deaths, and 124,329 marriages; altogether 976,019 cases. It is the busi ness of the Registrar- General to see that every arrangement connected with the business of registration is strictly carried into effect by the different persons on Avhom it devolves. The Avhole of England and Wales is divided into convenient districts, over Avhich there is a Superintendant Registrar, to whom the clergy of the Establishment and other ministers of religion, and the subordinate registrars, transmit quarterly returns of all the births, marriages, and deaths Avhich have occurred during the preceding three months. These returns are collected from upwards of 14,000 persons, and are finally transmitted to the central office at Somerset House. Here they are examined and arranged, and indexe,") are formed of the names, Erasures, interpolations, informalities, omissions, errors, or defects of any kind are detected, and the person Avho registered the defective * Evidence of Edwin Chadwick, Esq^., before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1838. SOMERSET HOUSE. 287 entry is immediately referred to, and his explanatory letter is filed for reference in connection with such entry. Separate alphabetical indexes are made for re ference to the births, marriages, and deaths of each quarter, being twelve separate indexes fbr each year. To each entry there is a reference to the district from which the certified copy was made. Various other means are adopted to render the registration complete and easy of reference. Already these indexes contain the names of nearly three million persons who have been born, married, or have died, since June, 1837. The information collected by the Registration Office Avill throAV light on a variety of questions relating to public health and the social condition of the people, and Avill be the means of preventing much future litigation. Cases have occurred where the register of a birth, marriage, or burial being required for legal purposes, it has been impos sible to ascertain, first, Avhether the registration had ever been made, and, next, in Avhich of the parishes of England it Avas to be found. It has happened that, after hunting through ten thousand registers, the search has been given up in despair. At the Registration Office a few minutes only Avould be required to find the name sought after. Patish registers were first ordered to be kept in 1538, on the dissolution of monasteries. Cromwell's injunction to the clergy to this effect created great excitement at the time, as it was surmised that the registry Avas preliminary to a noAV levy of taxes. The ancestor of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe " scrybelyd in hast" to Cromwell, telling him that the king's subjects in Cornwall and Devonshire " be in greate feer and mystrust, Avhat the Kyngg's hyghness and his Conseyll schulde meane, to give in com- mandement to the Parsons and Vycars off every parisse, that they schulde make a book, and surely to be kept, Avherein to be specifyyd the namys off as many as be Aveddyd, and the namys off" them that be buryd, and off all those that be crystynyd." Mr. Rickman* says that one-half of the registers anterior to a.d. 1600 have disappeared. Previous to the Census of 1801 there existed no official returns of the population of this country ; and the only plan of obtaining the movement of the population was by ascertaining the difference between the births and deaths. But as many persons neglected to avail themselves of the system of voluntary registration, the data thus obtained were imperfect. In stead of conjecture we now possess full information as to the ages and number of the population, its annual rate of increase, the influence of occupations and local causes upon the rate of mortality ; and a number of important facts are indicated Avhich cannot be passed over with neglect, as might have been the case Avhen all these points were undetermined. The Registration Office may be regarded as an instrument Avhich enables the statesman to take a Avide survey of the condition of the great mass of interests whose Avelfare it is his duty to promote. The Population Returns under the Census of IS41 are now preparing for publication at this office. The Tithe Commission has its offices in the same line of building as the Registration Office, and it Ukewise has been created to work out a valuable legis lative improvement, which has placed property in tithes on an unobjectionable basis. The process which the Tithe Commissioners were appointed to superin tend is the commutation of tithe into a rent-charge, fluctuating in value with the * Preface to Population Returns, 1831. 288 LONDON. septennial price of wheat, barley, and oats. For example, if the tithe of a parish be settled by agreement or award at 300/. a-year, the mode of ascertaining its subsequent annual value is by supposing one-third of this sum invested in wheat, one-third in barley, and one-third in oats, at the prices of these commodities for the preceding seven years, and the result gives the amount due in money to the titheowner. By this means, the objection which Paley urged — that the tithe- oA«mer stepped in to participate in profits realised by the outlay of capital he had never advanced — is completely obviated. The Commission has completed about one-half of its work. [Medal struck to commemorate the Murder of Sir S. Godfrey.) '-^_-- XCIV.— THE OLD BAILEY. One of the most essential of the reforms so long demanded by our eminent lave- reformers — speedy Justice — has certainly been obtained at last at the Court which forms the subject of the present paper. Whilst justice through the country ge nerally continues to hold the even tenor of its way — sitting in due course, at long intervals, to try prisoners, many of whom, even if guilty, may have already suf fered a greater punishment than their crimes deserved, and if innocent, have endured irreparable wrong and misery, — whilst thus justice, in mockery of its own name, moves sluggishly on out of London, we find in London a striking contrast. One may pass many times through the Old Bailey without discovering that the greatest of English criminal courts is ever shut. Month after month invariably presents the same scene, — the narrow street, covered with straw to deaden the noise of the vehicles (till the recent introduction of the wooden pave ment), having on the one side the solid granite walls of Newgate, divided only VOL. IV. V 290 LONDON. from the lofty building (Avith that gigantic ventilator on the top) containing the famous courts of justice, by the open area through Avhich prisoners pass from confinement in the former to their trial in the latter, and on the other side, Avaggon-yards, public-houses, and eating-houses, filled Avith a heterogeneous assemblage similar to that in the street before us. Merchants and professional men, fretting at the loss of their valuable time and the uncertainty of the period Avhen they may be Avanted ; country farmers looking anxious and puzzled, and gaping rustics appearing even more Ibolish than ever ; small tradesmen, Avhose Sunday's coats are evidently donned for the occasion, and the many varieties of that extensive and peculiarly London genus, the costermonger, Avho, acting on the poet's precept, " beauty unadorned," &c., pay as little respect to dress as to many other social conventionalisms; these, Avith a plentiful admixture of police men ill their neat blue clothes ; females, chiefly of the poorer classes ; thieves of every gradation, from the member of the aristocratic SAvell mob down to the area sneak, curious to knoAV hoAV matters are going AvIth their friends and associates, and Avith a smaU spice of curiosity as to any little revelations that may come out affecting themselves ; and, lastly, the frequent apparition of a bustling, sham- faced attorney, of Old Bailey notoriety, gliding like an eel through the press, or of that much more imposing-looking member of the laAV Avho delights in flowing goAvn and poAvdered Avig, the barrister : such are the ordinary staple of an Old Bailey croAvd on court days. And hoAV much insight Into men may not one derive here from half an hour's silent but attentive examination !, Mark the' meeting of that policeman and that dashing youth Avith the long-floAving hair, the fashionable loose coat, so carefully velveted — collar, AA'rists, and pocket- holes — and the large diamond in his gay stock ; see hoAv exactly they understand each other in that exchange of most significant glances : the face of the one a little flushed, but gay and assured — the policeman knoAvs him, but has just noAv no case against him ; and of the other — quiet, penetrative, and full of mean ing : " I shall have something to say to you some day, my fine felloAv, depend upon it :" and so for the present they part. Look again at that group of miser able Avomen surrounding one Avho is passionately telling, for the tAventicth time, the story of her boy apprehended and condemned, to her surprise and horror, for some petty felonj^, and Avho, she noAV declares, in a voice almost choked Avith emotion, is sure to leave his prison at the twelvemonth's end a confirmed thief. In the corner there, apart from the croAvd, you may read a history in the attitude, ges tures, and faces of those tAvo men ; it is a prosecutor and his chief Avitness pre paring for the crucifying cross-examination which they Avell know aAvaits them. Move a fcAv )'ards and it is a fair chance you meet Avith the fellow of the picture — Avitnesses fortifying themselves to swear very hard for the defence : yet AvIth their courage oozing out, not, like Acres', at the fingers' ends only, but at every pore of their body, as they think of that unpleasant feature of the laAv, prosecu tions for perjury : " They Avould do much for Jem, but — " One group more and Ave have done. See Avhere, opposite the entrance into the chief court, a body of policemen are handing out of a coach a tottering, most venerable-looking old man, AvIth his silver hair falling about his shoulders. What does he here? Why at such a period of life is he brought from the quiet privacy of his fire-side In a remote agricultural county? Alas ! he comes to-day to find a long-lost brother THE OLD BAILEY. 291 in the felon's dock, and to mitigate, if he can, his punishment by speaking as to his former character. Frequent, hoAvever, as are the trials at the Old Bailey, there is- a pause. Justice, probably, must nod sometimes, and therefore it is as avcU to provide for fitting repose elscAvhere than on the judgment-seat. The sittings of the Central Criminal Court are held monthly, but as the Avhole of the month is not occupied in the trial of the list of prisoners on the calendar, the spare time forms a vaca tion, and such are the only vacations at the Old Bailey. In consequence, trials frequently take place Avhich illustrate with a kind of practical epigrammatic force the advantages of that speedy justice to Avhich Ave have referred ; such, for instance, as the apprehension of a prisoner for theft one day, his committal by a magistrate on the second, and his trial, conviction, and sentence at the Old Bailey on the third or the fourth. This state of things dates from 1834, Avhen the Act Avas passed for the establishment of a Central Criminal Court, for the trial of offences in the City of London, the .County of Middlesex, and those part's of the adjoining counties which lie Avithin a certain distance of the metropolis : Woodford, in Essex ; Woolwich, in Kent ; and Richmpnd, in Surrey, are all Avithin the jurisdiction of the Ncav Court. It Avill thus be seen that no incon siderable portion of the entire population of England enjoys the benefit it has conferred. Under the general title — Central Criminal Court, are joined tAvo courts of trial, both sitting at the same time for the greater despatch of business, the one the scene of most of the events Avhich readers of the Newgate Calendar delight in, as well as of events which give a deeper and purer interest to the history of the Old Bailey; Avhilst the other, called the Noav Court, has been used only of recent years. Crimes of every kind, from treason down to the pettiest larceny, are tried by the tribunal in question ; even offences committed on the high seas, formerly tried at special sessions, by the judges of the Admi ralty Court, are noAv submitted to its judgment. The judges of the Central Criminal Court are, the Lord Mayor, the Lord Chancellor (such is the order in the Act), the judges, the aldermen. Recorder, and Common Serjeant of London, and such others as the sovereign may please to appoint by Avay of assistants Of these, the Recorder and the Common Serjeant are, in reality, the presiding judges at an immense proportion of the cases brought hither for trial, a judge of the laAV only assisting occasionally — when, for instance, unusual points of laAv arc involved, or when conviction affects the life of the prisoner. As to the juries, they are summoned indiscriminately from London, and from the neighbour ing counties over Avhich the sphere of the Court extends. Let us noAV take a glance at the interior. The Old Court will be, in every point of vIcav, the most interesting, that being the one to AvhIch the Avell-knoAvn Avords " Old Bailey " Avere so long exclusively applied. The name, Ave may observe in passing, is supposed, according to Maitland, to be " a corruption of Bail hill, i. e. the place of trial for prisoners (by the bailiff) ; as uoav avo retain the name of the Bail Dock for a certain part of this court, in Avhich the malefactors are confined till called up for trial;"'* Avhilst, in the 'Penny Cyclopaedia' (article 'Ballium'), we find the phrase derived from the BaUium, or outer walled court, supposed to have existed here in connection, with the old city wall, Avhich ran along at the back of "• ' Hiskry of London,' vol. ii., p. 939. u 2 292 LONDON. the present street, where traces of it are yet to be found. To which source Ave are to attribute the name, therefore, is unknown, both being so likely ; but it is highly probable there was a ballium at this part of the wall, and that that Avas also used from a very early period as a place of trial : at all events the judicial sittings here are of such antiquity, that we have lost all records of their com mencement. Passing through a door in the wall which encloses the area between Newgate and the courts, we find a flight of steps on our right leading up into the old court ; this is used chiefly for prosecutors and witnesses. Farther on in the area, another flight of steps leads through a long passage into a corridor at the back of the court, with two doors opening into the latter, by one of which the judges and sheriffs reach the bench, and by the other, the barristers their place in the centre at the bottom. Both doors also lead to seats reserved for visitors. We enter, pause, and look round. The first sentiment is one of disappointment. The great moral power and pre-eminence of the Court makes one, however idly or unconsciously, anticipate a grander physical exhibition. What does meet our gaze is no more than a square hall of sufficient length, and breadth, and height, lighted up by three large square windows on the opposite wall, showing the top of the gloomy walls of NeAvgate, having on the left a gallery close to the ceiling, with projecting boxes, and on the right the bench extending the- whole length of the wall, with desks at intervals for the use of the judges, whilst in the body of the Court are, first, a dock for the prisoners below the gallery, with stairs descending to the covered passage by which prisoners are conveyed to and from the prison, then just in advance of the left-hand corner of the dock, the circular witness-box, and in a similarly relative position to the witness-box, the jury-box, below the windows of the Court; an arrangement that enables the jury^to see clearly, and without turning, the faces of the witnesses and of the prisoners, that enables the witness to identify the prisoner, and, lastly, that enables the judges on the bench and the counsel in the centre of the Court below, to keep jury, Avitnesses, and prisoners all at once within the same or nearly the same line of view. We need only add to these features of the place, the formidable row of law-books Avhich occupies the centre of the green-baized table around which are the counsel, reminding us of the passage in the ' Beggars' Opera' — " The charge is prepar'd, the lawyers are met, The judges all rang'd, a terrible show." the double line of reporters occupying the tAvo seats below us ; the sheriff in attendance for the day, looking so spruce in his court suit, stepping noiselessly in and out ; and lastly, the goodly personage in the blue and furred robes and gold chain, who sits in the centre on the chief seat, with the gilded sword oi justice suspended over his head against the crimson-lined wall. Some abstruse document, apparently, just now engages his attention, for he appears utterly absorbed in it, bending over his desk. It must surely be the Lord Chancellor come to try some great case, thinks many an innocent spectator ; but he rises, and we perceive it is only an ex-Lord Mayor reading the newspaper of the day. But we forget : Hazlitt said that a city apprentice Avho did not esteem the Lord Mayor the greatest man in the world would come some day to be hanged ; and here everybody apparently is of the same opinion. Who, then, is the judge ? one naturally asks; when, looking more attentively, we perceive, for the first THE OLD BAILEY. 293 time, beyond the representative of civic majesty, which thus asserts its rights, some one writing, taking frequent but brief glances at the prisoners or the wit nesses, but never turning his head in any other direction, speaking to no one on the bench, unspoken to — that is a judge of the land, quietly doing the whole business of the court. We are fortunate : there must be some case of more than ordinary import. As we listen, and begin to understand what passes, Ave find that it is one which, whilst in a legal sense it is of little general interest, in other points may well deserve attention. And not only is there a judge of the land on the bench, but we perceive the Attorney-General among the counsel con ducting the prosecution. The prisoners at the bar are an aged widow, her son, her son-in-law, and two other persons. The charge against them is thus stated by the Attorney- General. The mother of the widow some years since left 2000/., the interest of which the latter was to receive during her life, and the principal to be divided at her death among her children. Some little time since the mother and her children desired, for purposes of business, to draw out some portion of the capital, which could only be done by all the parties joining in a petition to the Court of Chancery. One of the sons, however, had gone to sea, and had not been heard of for many years. Under these circumstances the son-in-law, anxious for his wife's share, and no doubt in concert Avith the others, unfortunately allowed himself to be tempted by the idea of getting some one to personate the missing son. This was done, the petition signed and presented, the money obtained. Now it does seem most probable, from the circumstances stated even by the prosecutor him self, that these misguided- persons intended no injury to any one by their decep tion ; they may have felt sure the absent man was dead, in which case his share became theirs, and if he were not, enough money remained in Chancery to pay him all that he would be entitled to, on proving that he had not joined in the former petition ; at the same time the apparent and possible effect was a fraud upon the Court of Chancery. The mode in which the court obtained cognizance of the case is one of the most curious parts of the trial, and suggests still greater excuses for the prisoners. As the trial proceeds we learn that the soli citor, a gentleman of high respectability, through whom the application to Chancery was made, occasionally employed as clerk a man who had been a hosier. He, it appears, had frequent interviews with the more active of the prisoners (the son-in-law and the two stranger confederates), and acknowledged in his cross-examination that he " had his suspicions " even before the money was obtained that there was a personation — " he had his eyes open of course," yet said nothing to any one. This same person further acknoAvledges that, having determined to write to the proper parties to give information, he called on one of the prisoners tAVO or three days before he did so write, sat down and drank with him for two hours, and that when he left him he called upon another. Such was the case. For the widow's son it was pointed out by counsel that he had never been con cerned in any way in the affair, further thah being present when the personation took place on the receipt of the money, and that although he did not, for his mother's sake, interfere, he had a right to be there to receive his oAvn unques tioned share ; whilst for all the prisoners it Avas alleged that they had been in- yeigled, Avithout evil intention, into a criminal act, by the chi^f witness, the 294 LONDON. hosier-clerk, Avho had only informed against them on their refusing to submit to his extortionate demands for money. This is the compassionate vieAv of the case. The jury, with scarcely a moment's hesitation, found the Avhole guilty. What a ter rible moment to a prisoner must the pause after such an announcement be ! Look to the dock, there is a slight commotion — one of the prisoners faints and falls. It is the Avidow's son. Sobbing and Avringing her hands, the wretched Avoman assists her companions in raising him, when the court suddenly rings again Avith the exclamation, " I am innocent !" " I am innocent !" A female cry now bursts from the gallery over head, folloAved by the dull, heavy sound of a fall : that is the son's Avife. But let us close the scene. The fcentence subsequently pro nounced Avas transportation against the son-in-laAV and the personator, and imprisonment against the others. We had forgot to add, among the other notice able features of the trial, that the principal Avitnesses against the man Avho per sonated the absent son Avere his own brothers. Whilst the crier, Avith sepulchral voice, is calling for the silence Avhich he the most disturbs, our thoughts, reverting to the past, people the dock in rapid succession Avith the shades of some few of the chief persons Avho have stood there: — Fauntleroy (1824); the Cato Street conspirators (1820); poor Eliza Fenning (1815), universally believed to be innocent of the crime foi" Avhich she suffered; Bellingham, the assassin of the statesman Perceval (1812) ; Dr. Dodd (1777); Elizabeth Canning, a case of inexplicable mystery (1753); the poet Savage (1727); Jonathan Wild (1725); Jack Sheppard (1724); the infamous Colonel Francis Charteris, on Avhom Avas written the famous epitaph commencing " Here lieth the body of Colonel Don Francisco, Avho, Avith an inflexible con stancy and inimitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human vice, excepting prodigality and hypocrisy ; his insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the last." Although our space Avill not admit cither of our extending the list, or dAvelling upon the trials generally of those Ave have mentioned, we must make an exception in favour of the hero of so many poems and pantomimes, ser mons and satires, farces and farcical essays, in his OAvn day, and Avho has lately been revived for the similar edification of ours; — Avhat novelist or dramatist but anticipates the name Jack Sheppard ? On looking over the ' Annals of Ncav- gate,' by the ' Reverend Mr. Villette, Ordinary of NcAvgate, and others,' Ave find the foUoAving story, told to the clerical functionary by a friend in the foUoAving words:* — "One Sunday evening," says he, "as I Avas returning home from the other end of the toAvn, I somehoAV missed my way, and, passing by a porch, I heard the sound of a preacher's voice, upon which I turned back and stepped in. He Avas pretty near the conclusion of his sermon. What I heard Avas so small a part, and so remarkable, that I believe I can repeat it almost verbatim. These Avere his words, or at least to this effect : — ' Now, my beloved, what a melancholy consideration it is that men should show so much regard for the preservation of a poor perishing body, that can remain at most for a few years, and at the same time be so unaccountably negligent of a precious soul, Avhich must continue to tht? ages of eternity ! . . . . We have a remarkable instance of this in a notorious * Vol. i., p. 269. THE OLD BAILEY. 295 malefactor, Avell knoAvn by the name of Jack Sheppard. What amazing diffi culties has he overcome, what astonishing things has he performed, for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass, hardly Avorth hanging ! How dexterously did he pick the padlock of his chain Avith a crooked nail ! Hoav manfully burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, Avrench out an iron bar, break his Avay through a stone Avail, and make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison ; and then, fixing a blanket to the Avail Avith a spike he stole out of the chapel, how intrepidly did he descend to the top of the turner's house, and hoAv cautiously pass down the stairs, and make his escape at the street door ! O that ye were all Hke Jack Sheppurd. ! Mistake me not, my brethren : I don't mean in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense ; for I pur pose to spiritualise these things Let me exhort you, then, to open the locks of your hearts Avith the nail of repentance ; burst asunder the fetters of jour beloved lusts ; mount the chimney of hope ; take from thence tho bar of good resokition ; break through the stone wall of despair, and 'all the strongholds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death; raise yourself to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith AvIth the spike of the church; let yourselves doAvn to the turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility : so shall you come to the door of deliverance from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner the devil, Avho goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking Avhom he may devour.' " Surely the accom plished author of ' Jack Sheppard ' Avas unaware how completely his object had been previously achieved in this eloquent passage, Avhich leaves nothing to bo desired, either as to the pointing of the moral or the adorning of the tale. An incidental passage in the history of the Old Bailey may here be mentioned. During the sessions of May, 1750, the gaol fever raged so violently in the neigh bouring prison, that the effluvia entering the Court Avere so poAverful as to cause the death of Baron Clark, Sir Thomas Abney, Judge of the Common Pleas, and Pennant's " respected kinsman," Sir Samuel Pennant, tho Lord Mayor, in ad dition to various members of the bar, and of the jury and other persons. It is painful to reflect that any circumstances should bring into the place chiefly notorious for its connection Avith men of the Sheppard stamp, the actors in the terrible but elevated and noble war of principles Avhich have made the seven teenth century one of the most momentous in English history; yet thus it was : at the Old Bailey AVcre tried, in 1669, immediately after the Restoration, such of Charles I.'s judges as Avere alive, and, confiding in the promised biU of indemnity, remained in England ; and, a quarter of a century later, in the same reign, the nobleman whose name has become as a household word with EngHsh patriots— in connection with his illustrious friend Sidney— Lord William RusseU. The trial of the " regicides " commenced on the 9th of October, before thirty- four commissioners, among whom Avere the ChanceUor Clarendon, Monk Duke of Albemarle, and several other noblemen, the Lord Chief Baron, and several other judges, every one of them men who had been engaged in the mighty struggle which had for the time so completely overwhelmed them, but who now, by a ncAV turn of fortune, were to sit in judgment upon their former opponents. Nay several of them had actually been engaged on the same side as the pn- Boc^'s at the bar, after actual war had broken out. Such were Mr. Denzil 296 LONDON. Hollis ; the Earl of Manchester, whose name is so frequently met with as an active parliamentary general in the civil war; Mr. Annesley, a member of the Parliament itself; Lord Saye and Sole ; and Sir Anthony Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, both determined opponents of Charles. Above all. Monk himself, the restorer, had been released from prison by the party to which the prisoners belonged, and employed by Cromwell in the most important matters. The very appearance of such men against such men, told what was to come. After overleaping that difficulty any others would be light. The prisoners Avere twenty-nine in number, and included Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Har rison, Colonel Carew, Cook, Hugh Peters, Scott, Harry Marten, Hacker, and Scroop, among other scarcely less noticeable names. Waller was first called, who pleaded guilty, and thus escaped the scaffold. The next was Harrison ; and surely no Englishman, whether he may condemn or applaud the political act for which he was brought to the bar, can now read his address to the court without deep sympathy and admiration for the high principle and courage of the man. " My Lords," said he, calmly, ''^^the mattdr that hath been offered to you, as it was touched, was not a thing done" iri^ a corner. I believe the sound of 'it hath been in most nations. I believe the fifearts Ofsome have felt the terrors of that presence of God that was with his servants in those days (however it seemeth good to him to suffer this turn to' come on us), and are witnesses that the things were not done in a corner. .''.' . i'T-do profess that I would not offer, of myself, the least injury to the poorest mah Or womari'that goes upon the earth. What I have humbly to offer is this, to your Lordships — you know what a con test hath been in these nations for many years: divers of those that sit upon the bench were formerly as active " ' ' Here he* was interrupted ; but the interrup tion spoke even more significantly than' the words hfe Avas debarred from utter ance. When he was allowed to go on, he said— " I followed not my own judg ment ; I did what I did as out of conscience to the Lt5rd. For Avhen I found that those that were as the apple of mine; eye, tq-turn aside [he alludes to Cromwell and his supporters], I did loathe them, and -'suffered imprisonment many years rather than to turn, as many did that did put their hands to this plough ; I chose rather to be>separated from wife and family- than to have compliance with them, though it was said, ' Sit on my right hand,' and such kind of expressions. Thus I have given a little poor testimony that I have not been doing things in a corner or from myself May be I might be a little mistaken; but I did it all according to the best of my understanding, desiring to make the revealed will of God in his holy Scriptures as a guide to me. I humbly conceive that what was done was done in the name of the Parliament of England, — that what was done was done by their power and authority ; and I do humbly conceive it is my duty to offer unto you in the beginning, that this Court, or any court below the high court of Parliament, hath no jurisdiction of their actions." To rightly estimate the heart and mind of the speaker during the utterance of these memorable words, we must not forget that he knew that every sentence took him in all pro bability a step nearer that frightful death, of which the executioner by his side, with a holier* in his hand, was a significant symbol. He was sentenced to death, * This seems to have been a new reading, got up for the occasion, of the custom of placing an executioner wiUi an axe by the side of prisoners at (he bar for treason. THE OLD BAILEY. 297 and retired saying he had no reason to be ashamed of the cause in which he had been engaged. Colonel Carew exhibited equal enthusiasm and courage, and fought with still greater pertinacity when interrupted, as he was continually. At last he said, " I have desired to speak the words of truth and soberness, but have been hindered," and so listened in quiet to the bloody sentence. Colonel Scroop, who had surrendered under the King's proclamation commanding all persons concerned directly or indirectly in the late King's trial to surrender themselves within fourteen days, and had in consequence received the King's pardon, was now convicted and sentenced, for having subsequently said to Major- General Brown, in a private conversation, that there would still be a difference of opinion among men touching the execution of the late King. Harry Marten defended himself essentially in the same spirit as Harrison and Carew, but made even still clearer the violationrof all law in the legal proceedings then carrying on against him and his companions. The Solicitor-General having said, " I am sorry to see in you so little repentance," Marten replied, "My Lord, if it were possible for that blood to be in the body again, and every drop that was shed in. the late wars, I could wish it Avith all my heart ; but, my Lord, I hope it is lawful to offer in my own defence that which, when I did it, I thought I might do. My Lord, there was the House of Commons as I understood it : perhaps your Lordship thinks it was not a House of Commons, but it was then the supreme , authority of England ; it was so reputed both at home and abroad. My Lord, I suppose he that gives obedience to the authority in being de facto [from the fact], whether de jure [from the law] or no, I think he is of a peaceable disposition and far from a traitor. My Lord, I think there was a statute made in Henry the Seventh his time, whereby it was provided that -whosoever was in arms for the King de facto, he should be indemnified, though that King de facto was not so de Jure ; and if the supreme officers de facto can justify a Avar (the most per nicious remedy that Avas ever adjudged by mankind, be the cause Avhat it will), I presume the supreme authority of England may justify a judica'ture, though it be but an authority de facto. My Lord, if it be said that it was but a third estate, and a small parcel of that, my Lord, it was all that was then extant. I have heard lawyers say that if there be commons appurtenant to a tenement, and that tene ment be all burnt doAvn except a small stick, the commons belong to that one piece, as it did to the tenement when all standing." But he must have been something more than human who could have convinced the Old Bailey jury and judges of that day. Marten also was condemned. Among the other prisoners, every one of whom was found guilty, we can only briefly refer to the cases of Cook and Hugh Peters. Cook was the lawyer who had conducted the prosecution. As he himself observed, he had neither been accuser, witness, jury, judge, r or execu tioner, but simply counsel ; placed in his post by a public order, and could not be said to have acted maliciously, or with a wicked intention, as set forth. Further, that, if it were accounted treason in counsel to plead against the King, it must also be felony to plead against any man that might be unjustly condemned for felony. Cook was not only sentenced, but it was decided that he should be the first to suffer. But, perhaps, the case above all others that shoAvs the animus of the prosecution and the judges — the utter absence of any high guiding principle 298 LONDON. — is that of Hugh Peters, the preacher, who Avas not one of the King's judges, but merely, like some of those Avho sat on the bench before him, an active, but not, like them, a time-serving partisan of the CommonAveaUh. The executions began on the 13th of October, and ended for the time on the 18th, the fate of the ten Avho had suffered in the interim having, there is no doubt, produced an effect that seriously alarmed the more prudent royalists. " The King," says Burnet, " Avas advised not to proceed further." And no Avonder ; for, from the first victim to the last, these men (on the abstract character of Avhose acts we desire to express no opinion) exhibited, in their endurance of the sufferings those acts brought upon them, a heroism Avhich in no age nor country has been surpassed. Harrison, and not Cook, was the first. As he Avas draAvn along toAvards the place of execution, at Charing Cross (so as to be Avithin sight of Whitehall, where Charles had been executed), some one called out in the crowd, " Where is your good old cause noAV ? " " Here it is," said Harrison, smiling, and placing his hand upon his heart; " and I am going to seal it Avith my blood." We scarcely dare to shock our readers Avith the details of the scene on the scaffold, even al though it be a scene that Charles II., the merry, good-natured monarch, stood to look on. The brave enthusiast Avas cut down from the gallows alive, his boAvels torn out and thrown into the fire, and the body then quartered. Tavo days after CarcAV underwent the same fate, saying that, if Avhat he had done Avere to do again, he Avould do it. Cook and Hugh Peters Avere brought out on the 16th, and the head of Harrison Avas placed in Cook's hurdle, with the uncovered face turned tOAvards him. As for Peters, the devilish ingenuity of his executioners had devised even a still more awful enhancement of the punishment that aAvaited him. He was placed within the rails of the scaffold, Avhilst the whole of the revolting barbarities already described Avere performed on Cook. It is enough to make one shudder to think that men could Avitness, much less perform, or cause to be performed, such atrocities. It is strange, but undeniable, that the only gentleness, or sense pf humanity, that these proceedings ever exhibit, comes from one or other of the sufferers by them. Thus Peters, perhaps formerly the most violent of Commonwealth-men, seems, on this day, to have completely changed his character. Whilst prepared to endure the double torture allotted him, with such courage and constancy, that he should die at last Avith a smile upon his face, the spirit of his great Master, in all its meekness and gentleness, Avas evidently at work with equal vigour. To a man who upbraided him in opprobrious Avords with the King's death, he said, "Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man : you are greatly mistaken ; I had nothing to do in the death of the King." Another incident is exquisitely touching and beautiful. On the way to the scaffold he had espied an acquaintance, who being permitted to - come to the hurdle, Peters took apiece of gold, bent it, and gave it to him, desir ing him to go where his dear daughter lodged, and carry that piece of gold as a token, letting her knoAv that his heart Avas as full of comfort as it could be ; and that, before that piece should come to her hands, he should be with God in glory. Colonel Scott suffered on the last day but one of the executions, and, although prevented by repeated interruptions from speaking freely to the people as the others had done, yet succeeded in making that policy as untenable as the THE OLD BAILEY. 299 former. " Surely," said he, as he resigned himself at last to silence and the executioner, " it must be a very bad cause Avhich cannot suffer the Avords of a dying man." On the folloAving day these ghastly scenes suddenly terminated. Twenty-three years later (1683) occurred two trials, one of AvhIch at least had a close political connection Avith those Ave have described. The history of the Ryehouse Plot is so involved in obscurity, that it is impossible to tell with any certainty Avhat Avere the exact objects of those concerned, or supposed to be con cerned, in it. We knoAV that the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl of Essex, Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney, Avere all opposed to the government, " the designs of the most moderate of whom certainly extended to such a change of government as Avould have amounted to a revolution ;" '* Avhat, then, must the others have aimed at ? Sidney's last Avords give a sufficiently decisive ansAver. He Avho had fought the battles of the CommonAveaUh Avith Harrison and the others, Avho had sat as one of the King's judges, had subse quently gloried in having so acted, thus wrote in a paper Avhich he delivered to the Sheriff before his execution (the passage forms the conclusion of a prayer) : — " Grant that I may die glorifying Thee for all Thy mercies, and that at the last Thou hast permitted me to be singled out as a Avitness of Thy truth, and, even by the confession of my very opposers, for that old cause in which I was from my youth engaged." But it is Avith the trial of his friend Lord William Russell, arrested at the same time, and on the same grounds, that Ave have noAv to speak. This trial commenced on the 13th of July. As in the case of Harrison and his associates, there is no doubt the jury Avas packed by the Sheriffs. Russell Avas charged with conspiring the death of the King, and consulting hoAv to levy Avar against him. Having desired the postponement of the trial unto the afternoon merely, on account of the non-arrival of some Avitnesses from the country, and on account of some mistake that had been made in the list of the jury, the Attorney-General, Sir Robert SaAvyer, corruptly assuming his guilt as already proved, answered in this brutal manner : " You Avould not have given the King an hour's notice for saving his life ; the trial must proceed." Having obtained pens, ink, and paper, and permission to use certain papers he had brought with him, the prisoner, de siring to have notes of Avhat might pass, asked if he might have assistance. " Yes, a servant," said Sir Robert ; and Chief Justice Pemberton added, " Any of your servants shall assist you in Avriting anything you please for you." " My Lord," Avas the ansAver, '' my wife is here to do it." Well may those Avho Avere present say a thrill of anguish ran through the assembly Avhen they beheld the prisoner's wife, the daughter of the estimable Earl of Southampton, rise to assist in such a scene. The evidence adduced was not only contradictory in many points, but utterly insufficient. Still there seems no doubt that Lord Russell had attended a meeting Avhere a general rising Avas spoken of, and the feasibility of seizing the King's guards discussed; but it Avas not shown that he had ap proved of either scheme, much less that they had been determined upon. The incident already mentioned Avas not the only one by Avhich this trial Avas to be signally commemorated. Whilst the principal Avitness against Russell, the In famous Lord HoAvard, whose conduct on the occasion in turning against his * ' Penny Cyclopsedia,' article 'Sidney.' 300 LONDON. associate to save his own life is said to have been the least exceptionable part of his history, was speaking, it Avas observed that his voice at a certain period began to falter, and the jury said they could not hear him. " There is," said he, in ansAver, " an unhappy incident which hath sunk my voice : I was but just noAV acquainted with the fate of my Lord Essex." The news, indeed, had but just reached the Court of the suicide of that nobleman in the Tower, who lay there under the same charge as Russell and Sidney, of whom he was a mutual friend. Who would suppose that the lawyers for the prosecution could be capable of turning such an event to the prejudice of the prisoner? " My Lord Russell," observed Sir Robert Sawyer, " was one of the council for carrying on the plot Avith the Earl of Essex, who has this morning prevented the hand of justice upon himself." Evelyn expressly says this news was " said to have had no little in fluence on the jury ;" Lord Russell was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields. On his way he passed the paternal home of his admirable wife, Southampton House, and the tears were seen to start to his eyes. He died with perfect fortitude. Quitting the court, and noticing, as we walk along the corridor, the various conveniences for the judges, sheriffs, and others, as robing-rooms and rooms for refreshment, we are reminded of a custom thus described in an amusing passage in the ' Quarterly Review ' for 1836 : — " If we are not misinformed, the fiat has gone forth already against one classof City dinners, which Avas altogether peculiar of its kind. We allude to the dinner given by the sheriffs, during the Old Bailey sittings, to the judges and aldermen in attendance, the Recorder, Common Ser jeant, City pleaders, and occasionally a few members of the bar. The first course was rather miscellaneous, and varied with the season, though marrow-puddings always formed a part of it; the second never varied, and consisted exclusively of beefsteaks. The custom Avas to serve two dinners (exact duplicates) a-day, the first at three o'clock, the second at five. As the judges relieved each other, it was impracticable for them to partake of both, but the aldermen often did so, and the chaplain, whose duty it Avas to preside at the lower end of the table, was never absent from his post. This invaluable public servant persevered from a sheer sense of duty, till he had acquired the habit of eating two dinners a-day, and practised it for nearly ten years without any perceptible injury to his health !" If such a fiat did go forth, it must have been recalled very speedilj^ for the Old Bailey dinners yet flourish. Probably the time when their fate hung poised in the balance, and many a civic functionary awaited anxiously to see the result, was the same as that when, owing, we are told, to some remarks about the expense which the Bar thought uncalled for, the pleaders, and other favoured barristers, with drew in offended dignity, and have never returned. One feature of the dinners not mentioned in the above passage is the earliness of the hour at which they break up. Precisely as the clock strikes eight, the Lord Mayor, who presides, remarks, apologetically, " You know the rule, gentlemen " — or some such words ; and the hint is immediately acted upon. Returning into the area before mentioned, additional horrors of the old cri minal laAV throng upon the recollection, in connection with the name of the spot, the " Press Yard." To many of our readers the meaning of these words THE OLD BAILEY. 301 will be unknown. The advancing spirit of civilisation has swept away the fearful custom that gave the appellation, along with the torture, the browbeating of Avitnesses, twisting of law into any shape a government might desire, corrupt judges, and packed juries. The custom to which we allude is that of Ptine forte et dure (the strong and hard pain), a torture applied to persons who refused to plead when called upon at the bar, with the view of thereby saving their property, which would be forfeited to the crown on conviction for the crimes charged. Our best legal writers differ as to the origin of this custom, some believing it to have been in use before the reign of Edward I., others that it dates from that reign, when it was declared, in the statute usually known as the Statute of Westminster, that " such persons as will not put themselves upon inquests of felonies at the suit of the King shall be put into hard and strong prison, as those which refuse to be at the common law of the land." For a considerable period the punishment appears to have remained of the character here indicated, being simply imprison ment of a "hard" nature ; that is, the prisoner Avas barely kept from perishing of cold and hunger. But a most important alteration had obtained by the reign of Henry IV., when we find from the ' Year Book' that the judgment upon per sons standing mute, according to the advice of all the judges, was " that tho marshal should put them in low and dark chambers, naked except about their waist ; that he should place upon them as much weight of iron as they could bear, and more, so that they should be unable to rise ; that they should have nothing to cat but the worst bread that could be found, and nothing to drink but Avater taken from the nearest place to the gaol, except running water; that on the day in Avhich they had bread they should not have water, and e contra ; and that they should lie there till they were dead." And this Avas the custom that continued down to the last century, with the mere alteration, from humane motives, of making the weight sufficient to ensure death speedily, the placing a sharp stone or piece of wood under the back with the same view, and the addition of a pre liminary process of tying the thumbs with whipcord, in order to compel the culprit to plead without resorting to the more terrible infliction. By the statute 12 Geo. III., it was provided that persons refusing to plead, when arraigned for felony or piracy, should be convicted of the same. One of the latest cases of the operation of the old law at the Old Bailey appears to have been in 1734. Pre vious instances at the same place are very numerous. In April, 1721, Mary Andrews refusing to plead, had her thumbs tied with whipcord, but remained so firm under the infliction that three several cords Avere broken before she would plead. In the same year Nathaniel Hawes suffered in a similar manner, without giving the slightest evidences of a faltering resolution. In consequence, he was placed under the press, where he bore, for seven minutes, the weight of 250lbs. before he submitted.. But the most interesting case we have met with is the following : — In 1659 Major Strangeways was placed at the bar charged with the murder of his brother-in-law, Mr. Fussell. The father of Strangeways left him in pos session of a farm, an elder sister of the latter being executrix. Here they Uved together, it is said, very happily till the sister formed an acquaintance Avith Fussell, a respectable lawyer. The brother appears to have been from the first 302 LONiJuiN. greatly averse to this connection, and once SAVore, " if ever she married Mr. Fussell, to be the death of him, either in his study or elscAvhere." They parted, and in parting quarrelled about their property. This led to litigation; Fussell, after his marriage with the sister, prosecuting certain suits against StrangcAvays. One day, Avhilst the former was in London, engaged in this and similar business, he Avas suddenly struck, AVhere he sat in his lodgings, by tAvo bullets, and fell dead. Suspicion fell on StrangcAvays, Avho was taken into custody. On the day of the inquest he Avas conveyed by. a guard " to the place Avhere Mr. Fussell's body lay, Avhere, before the coroner's jury, he is commanded to take his dead brother-in-laAV by the hand, and to touch his Avounds ; a Avay of discovery which the de{endev& of sympathy highly applaud — on what grounds, here is no place to dispute. But here the magnetism fails ; and those effusions which, according to their opinion, being part of the anima media, tenaciously adhere to the body, till separated by its corruption, being the same that, by united atoms becoming visible, conjure those spectrums that wander about the cenotaphs ' and dormi tories of the dead ; and do, Avhen hurried from the actions of vitality by a vio lent death, as endeavouring to revenge its Avrongs, fly in the face of the mur derer, and, though in such minute parts as are too subtle for the observation of sense, keep still hovering about him, and Avlien he is brought to touch the mur dered body Avhich Avas its former habitation, by the motion of sympathy, calls from the sally-ports of life some of those parts of her life, Avhich yet remains Avithin it ; Avho, that they may floAv forth to meet it, are conveyed in the vehi culum of the blood."* This sage expedient having failed, the foreman of the jury jiroposedthat all the gunsmiths' shojis in London and the adjacent places should be examined, to see what guns had been lent or sold on the day of the murder. The jury mostly thought this proposition impracticable, and one of them, who Avas. a gunmaker, a Mr. Holloway, said decidedly the thing Avas not to be done from the great number of his profession ; adding that he, for one, hacL-}ent a gun on the day in question, and no doubt many others. Strange to- say, that Avas the very gun Avith Avhich the murder had been committed, and by its means StrangcAvays Avas discovered to be the murderer. Overcome by the extraordinary nature of the proof, he confessed his connexion Avith the alleged crime. The day of trial Avas February 24th, Avhen, on being asked to plead, he said, " that if it might, on his being tried, be admitted him to die by that manner of death by Avhich his brother fell, he Avould plead ; if not, by refusing to plead, he Avould both preserve an estate to bestoAV on such friends for Avhom he had most affection, and withal free himself from the ignominious death of a public gibbet." Persisting in this resolution,- he Avas sentenced by Lord Chief Justice Glynn to be " put into a mean house, stopped from any light, and that he be laid upon his back, Avith his body bare ; that his arms shall be stretched forth with a cord, the one to the one side, the other to the other side of the prison, and in like manner shall his lo^s be used ; and that upon his body shall be laid as much iron and stone as he can bear, and more ; and the first day shall he have three morsels of barley-bread, and the next day shall he drink thrice of the Avater in the next channel to the prison-door, but no spring or fountain * From a very curious pamphlet printed in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv., giving an account of the trial. THE OLD BAILEY. 303 Asrater: and this shall be his punishment till he die." On the Monday following, at eleven in the forenoon, the sheriffs and other officers came to the Press Yard, Avhither the miserable prisoner Avas presently brought. He Avore a mourning cloak, beneath Avhich he appeared clothed in white from head to foot. By the sheriffs he Avas conducted to a dungeon, Avhere, after prayers, " his friends placed themselves at the corners of the press, Avhom he desired, Avhen he gave the Avord, to lay on the Aveights." This they did at the signal of " Lord Jesus, receive my soul :" but, finding the Aveight " too light for sudden execution, many of those standing by added their burthens to disburthen him of his pain." He died in about eight or ten minutes. The press used on this occasion Avas of a triangular form, and so constructed as to press upon the breast of the sufferer, about the region of the heart, as the speediest mode of relieving him from his agony. In order to furnish some idea of the extent of the business transacted at the Old Bailey, avc append a table extracted from the Parliamentary papers pub lished in 1838 (no later document of the kind has appeared, Ave believe), showing the number of prisoners convicted, acquitted, or against Avhom the bills were ignored, from the years 1831 to 18-37. The foUoAving returns are given from the annual statements published by the governor of NoAvgate. We may premise that an immense proportion of the cases arc larcenies unaccompanied hy violence ; in the returns for 1835, for instance (in Avhich year the extended jurisdiction of the Criminal Court came into operation), of the 1918 convictions, 1561 are for petty larceny. Iqnoued. 357 291 123 153 2C1 331 175 223 153198 229 Durin"- the last nine years thirteen of the convicts have been, executed, a Year. Convicted. Acquitted, 1831 1957 Of these 217 had been previously convicted, and 478 previiiusly imprisoned. 514 1832 2223 274 previously convicted, 628 , , imprisoned. 542 1833 1254 169 previously convicted, 434 , , imprisoned. 383 1834 1579 118 previously convicted, 409 , , imprisoned. 435 1835 1918 137 previously convicted, 465 , , imprisoned. 6-27 1836 2190 204 previously convicted, 697 , , imprisoned. 594 1S37 ¦2292 214 previously convicted, 763 , , imprisoned. 'Ji^k 1.S3S 2442 559 V839 2710 560 1840 2366 473 18tl 2625 501 304 LONDON. smaller number than in many a single year not more than a quarter of a century since. To render the view as complete as possible, we give the statement for 1841 of the classification of crimes, and of the punishments awarded : — Mur. Offences. Accessory before the fact to felony Arson . Bigamy . Burglary . Cattle Stealing . . Coining . . Cutting and Wounding, with intent der, &c. Embezzlement . Forging and uttering forged Instruments Horse Stealing . . . Housebreaking and Larceny Larceny, Larceny Person and Larceny Servant Larceny in a Dwelling House above 51. Letter, Stealing from the Post Office a Letter, sending threatening Manslaughter . . Misdemeanour . Murder . Perjury . Eape . Receiving Stolen Goods Robbery . Sheep Stealing . Shopbreaking ^ud Larceny Transportation, returning from 4 16 41 1 5 16 70 35 IS 57 2010 61 11 1 9 226 3 1 2 26 15 72 2 2625 Sentences. To Death, or Death recorded (2 executed) . 5 Transportation for Life . 20 — for 15 years 72 — for 14 years 46 — for 10 years 217 — for 7 years 387 Imprisonment in Newgate and the Houses of Correction : for 2 years 38 for 18 months . 22 for 1 year 203 for 9 months 98 for 6 months 473 for 4 months 90 for 3 months 497 for 2 montlis 93 for 6 weeks . . 36 for 1 month and under . 284 1834 Whipped and discharged . I Judgment respited .... . 18 Fined . 2 Discharged on Recognizance . . 13 Total 2625 [Uanf; of p-fcT";r« being conveyed to ti ial ; from r,» original dlKWing.] [ColTee Stall.] XCV.— PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 1'he spirit of the age is marked in a signal manner by the prevailing customs ol London respecting clubs, taverns, coffee-houses, eating-houses. Sec. The pro gress of Metropolitan society, whether for better or for worse, is closely connected with the features which such places present. Whether for the highest or the humblest classes of society, they all have a tendency to render comforts cheap through the principle of co-operative economy. The description given by Addision, in one of the early numbers of the ' Spec tator,' of the origin of clubs, may have been coloured to raise a laugh, but it doubtless affords a clue to the nature of the clubs existing a century and a quarter a,go : " Man is said to be a social animal, and as an instance of it we may observe, that we take all occasions and pretences of forming ourselves into those little nocturnal assemblies which are commonly known by the name of clubs. When a set of men find themselves agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind of fraternity, and meet once or twice a week upon the account of such a fantastic resemblance. I knew a considerable market- town in which there was a club of fat men, that did not come together (as you may well suppose) to entertain one another with sprightliness and wit, but to keep one another in countenance. The room where the club met was something of the largest, and had two entrances, the one by a doOr of a moderate size and the other by a pair of folding- doors. If a candidate for this corpulent club could VOL. IV. 306 LONDON. make his entrance through the first, he was looked upon as unqualified ; but if he stuck in the passage and could not force his way through it, the folding-doors were Immediately thrown open for his reception, and he Avas saluted as a brother. I have heard that this club, though it consisted of but fifteen persons, weighed above three tons."* The Isaac BIckerstaffs and Will Honeycombs of Anne's reign introduce us to many clubs, in AvhIch oddity, good fellowship, and eating and drinking seem to have gone hand in hand. Thus the Beef-steak club and the October club convey in their names sufficient Indication that the genius of good living was worshipped by the members. The ' Kit-Cat Club ' affords a curious instance of the trans mission of a name. The members of this club met for the purpose — one among many, we may charitably suppose — of eating mutton-pies; and as the maker of these pics was named Christopher Cat, the club became known by a familiar abbreviation of this name. The club was originally formed in Shire Lane, about the time of the trial of the seven bishops ; and in Queen Anne's reign it compre hended above forty noblemen and gentlemen of the first rank, all friends to the Hanoverian succession. The portraits of all the distinguished members were painted by Kneller, in one uniform size, Avhich has ever since been knoAvn among portrait-painters as the ' Kit-cat size.' When we come down to a later period of the last century, to the days of John son, of Goldsmith, of Reynolds, of Burke, and of other bright names in the intellectual world, we find clubs still existing, or starting into existence, among men removed from the humble stations of society ; but still widely different from the clubs of our own day. They- were clubs, not for exclusive orders of society )r exclusive professions, not for breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, but attractive foci or centres, to which orators, poets, statesmen, painters, and composers tended. Of the general nature of such a club we may meet with abundant evidence in Boswell, or in such a paragraph as the foUowing, from Prior's ' Life of Gold smith :' '' In order to increase the opportunities of social intercourse between persons formed to delight general society and each other, the ' Literary Club ' Avas formed ; a name not assumed by themselves, but given to the association by others, from the talents and celebrity of its individual members. "The proposers were Johnson and Reynolds, who selected Burke, Goldsmith, Mr. Topham Beau- clerk, Mr. Langton, Sir John HaAvkins, and Dr. Nugent (a physician, and father of Mrs. Burke) as associates; to whom, in consequence of the frequent absence of Mr. Beauclerk and Sir John Hawkins, were added Mr. Chamier and Mr. Dyer: the former Under Secretary-at-War and well known in the first circles of London ; the latter a man of general erudition, a friend of the Burkes, and formerly a Com missary in the army. They agreed to sup together every Monday evening, after wards changed to Friday, at the ' Turk's Head,' in Gerrard Street, Soho." What were the precise steps by which the clubs of the Johnson era gave way to those of the present day, need not be catalogued : — war, commercial enter prise, manufacturing invention, education — all have acted a part in bringing about social changes which have affected clubs as well as other institutions. The clubs of the working men do not come within the scope of the present * 'Spectator,' No. ix. PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 307 article ; they are, in fact, insurance associations, often based on wrong principles. and often held, unfortunately, at places where a temptation to drink is afforded; but still, they are for prospective advantages. The clubs of the West End present features in which the social club of the last century is combined with the hotel of the present. Each club elects its own members by ballot, so that no one can gain admission without the free good-Avill of a prescribed majo rity of the members already admitted. Generally speaking, too, the members have, either in opinion or professional avocation, something Avhich serves as a bond of union, and which distinguishes one club from another. Thus the ' Carlton Club ' and the 'Conservative Club,' the ' Reform Club,' 'White's' and ' Brookes's,' are governed by an implied unity of political feeling among the members of each. The ' United Service,' the ' Junior United Service,' and the ' Guards,' indicate pretty nearly, by their names, the kind of members Avho belong to them. The 'University' and the 'Oxford and Cambridge' clubs likewise tell their own tales, while the ' Travellers ' and the 'Athenaeum,' and some others, are more general in the qualifications of their members. Altogether there are about thirty of these clubs at the Court end of the town, of which two- thirds are located either in St. James's Street or in Pall Mall. There Is scarcely any feature in London more remarkable than the growth of magnificent club houses on the south side of Pall Mall, where the most distinguished are situated, Avithin the last few years. The old houses in Pall Mall have been demolished one by one, or rather group by group, and replaced by elegant and imposing structures. But it is in reference to their hotel-like regulations that we chiefly notice these clubs here. Every member, when elected by ballot, pays an entrance fee, and afterwards an annual subscription, for which he has the full use of all the advan tages afforded by the club-house. Then all the refreshments which he has, whether breakfast, dinner, supper, wine, or any other kind, are furnished to him at cost price, all the other expenses of the system being defrayed out of the annual subscriptions. Perhaps we cannot do better than describe the working of this system in the words of the late Mr. Walker, in his ' Original :' " One of the greatest and most important modern changes in society is the present system of clubs. The facilities of living have been wonderfully increased by them in many ways, Avhilst the expense has been greatly diminished. For a few pounds a-year, advantages are to be enjoyed which no fortunes except the most ample can procure. I can best illustrate this by a particular instance. The only club I belong to is the ' Athenaeum,' which consists of twelve hundred members, amongst whom are to be reckoned a large proportion of the most emi nent persons in the land, in every line — civil, military, and ecclesiastical, peers spiritual and temporal (ninety-five noblemen and twelve bishops), commoners, men of the learned professions, those connected with science, the arts, and commerce, in all its principal branches, as well as the distinguished Avho do not belong to any particular class. Many of these are to be met with every day, living with the same freedom as at their own houses. For six guineas a year every member has the command of an excellent library, with maps, the daily papers, English and foreign, the principal periodicals, and every material for writing with attendance for whatever is wanted. The building is a sort of x2 308 LONDON palace, and is kept with the same exactness and comfort as a private dwelling. Every member is a master, without any of the trouble of a master. He can come when he pleases, and stay away as long as he pleases, without anything going Avrong. He has the command of regular servants, Avithout having to pay or to manage them. He can have whatever meal or refreshment he wants, at all hours, and served up with the cleanliness and comfort of his OAvn house. He orders just Avhat he pleases, having no interest to think of but his OAvn. In short, it is impossible to suppose a greater degree of liberty in living. Clubs, as far as my observation goes, are favourable to economy of time. There is a fixed place to go to, everything is served with comparative expedition, and it is not cus tomary or general, to remain long at table. They are favourable to temperance. It seems that when people can freely please themselves, and when they have an opportunity of living simply, excess is seldom committed. From an account I have, of the expenses at the ' Athenaeum ' in the year 1832, it appears that 1 7,323 dinners cost, on the average, 2s. 9|c?. each ; and that the average quan tity of Avine for each person was a small fraction more than half a pint."* Since Walker wrote the essays which constitute his very clever 'Original,' Pall Mall has been enriched by a club-house surpassing all the others in magni ficence and grandeur. This — the ' Reform Club House ' — more resembles an Italian palace than any other building in London, with the single exception, per haps, of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The area coA'ered by the building is very large ; the four parts present faqades of great architectural beauty; and the interior fittings are appropriately splendid. But it is to the economy of the establishment, as a place of refreshment, that our attention will be chiefly draAvn here. The Club — whose name sufficiently denotes the recent period of its formation, and the political tenets of its members — consists of about sixteen hundred noblemen and gentlemen, who, by entrance fees and annual payments, maintain this magnificent establishment. The payments are now, twenty-five guineas as an entrance-fee, and ten guineas annual subscription. For these payments each member has the use of dining and drawing rooms, billiard-rooms, library, ncAvs-rooms, reading-rooms, baths, &c. ; and he may, at all hours of the day, have any kind of meal or refreshment. In all these matters the Reform Club very closely resembles the other distm- gulshed clubs at the West End : but it is by the possession of its famous kitchen that this club has gained a peculiar notoriety ; a kitchen which baffles the con ception of those who are accustomed only to ordinary culinary arrangements. The " genius loci " is M. Alexis Soyer, whose occupation is that of chief cook to the club, and Avhose invention the general arrangement of the kitchen seems to have been. The gastronomic /art, certainly, never before had so many scientific appliances at its disposal. We have seen many large factories, where furnaces and boilers are largely employed ; but, Avith one single exception, we knoAV of none which can rival this kitchen in the arrangements for economizing heat. The arrangement is someAvhat as follows : — The kitchen, properly so called, is an apartment of moderate size, surrounded on all four sides by smaller rooms, which form the pastry, the poultry, the * ' The Original," by T. Walker, No. xvii., 1835. PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 309 butchery, the scullery, and other subordinate offices. There are doorways, but no doors, between the different rooms ; all of vVhlch are formed in such a man ner that the chief cook, from one particular spot, can command a vieAv of the whole. In the centre of the kitchen is a table and a hot closet, where various knick-knacks are prepared and kept to a desired heat, the closet being brought to any required temperature by admitting steam beneath it. Around the hot closet is a bench or table, fitted with drawers and other conveniences for culinary operations. A passage, going round the four sides of this central table, separates it from the various specimens of cooking apparatus, which involve all that modern ingenuity has brought to bear on this matter. In the first place there are two enormous fire-places for roasting, each of which would, in sober truth, roast a sheep whole. The screens placed before these fires are so arranged as to reflect back almost the entire of the heat which falls upon them, and effectually shield the kitchen from the intense heat which would be otherwise thrown out. Then, again, these screens are so provided with shelves and recesses as to bring into profitable use the radiant heat which would be otherwise wasted. Along two sides of the room are ranges of charcoal-fires for broiling and stewing, and other apparatus for other varieties of cooking, which will easily be conjec tured by those who are learned in such matters. These are at a height of about three feet, or three and a half feet, from the ground. The broiling fires are a kind of open pot or pan, throAvIng upAvards a fierce but blazeless heat; behind them is a frame-work by which gridirons may be fixed at any height above the fire, according to the intensity of the heat. Other fires, open only at the top, are adapted for various kinds of pans and vessels ; and in some eases a polished tin reflector is so placed as to reflect back to the viands the heat Avhich would otherwise be an inconvenience. Under and behind and over and around are pipes, tanks, and cisterns in abundance, either for containing water to be heated by the heat which would otherwise be wasted, or to be used more directly in the multitudinous processes of cooking. A boiler, adjacent to the kitchen, is ex pressly appropriated to the supply of steam for cooking various dishes by the method of " steaming," for heating the hot closets, the hot iron plates, and similai: apparatus which everywhere abound. If we go to the adjacent rooms from the central kitchen, Ave find that — so effectually is heat economized — all are cool, and fitted to the object for which they are intended. In one small room the butchers' meat is kept, chopped, cut, and otherwise prepared for the kitchen. In the pastry all the appliances for making the good things which its name indicates are conveniently arranged around. In another room there are drawers, in the bottoms of which a stratum of ice is laid; above this a light covering; and above this such small articlee. of undressed food as require to be kept perfectly cool. To tell how bright the pots and the pans and the cups are, and how scru pulously clean is every part of the range of rooms, and hoAV quietly and system atically everything is conducted, and how neat are all the persons employed. therein — is more than we can attempt ; but the system of operations betAveen the cooks and the consumers pertains so closely to our present object, that it must be noticed. In one corner of the kitchen is a little compartment or counting-house. at a desk in which sits the " clerk of the kitchen." Every day the chief cook 310 LONDON. provides, besides ordinary provisions which are pretty certain to be required, a selected list, which he inserts in his " bill of fare " — a list which is left wholly to his oAvn judgment and skilL Say three or four gentlemen, members of the club, determine to dine there at a given hour; they select from the " bill of fare," or order separately if preferred, or leave altogether to the choice of M. Soyer, the requisite provisions. A little slip of paper, on Avhich is written the names of the dishes and the hour of dining, is hung on a hook in the kitchen on a blank board, where there are a number of hooks devoted to different hours of the day or evening. The cooks proceed with their avocations, and by the time the dinner is ready the clerk of the kitchen has calculated and entered the exact value of every article composing it, which entry is made out in the form of a bill — the cost price being that by which the charge is regulated. Immediately at the elbow of the clerk are bells and speaking tubes, by which he can communicate with the servants in the other parts of the building. Meanwhile a steam-engine is " serving-up." In one corner of the kitchen is. a recess, on opening a door in which we see a small square platform, calculated to hold an ordinary-sized tray. This platform or board is connected with the shaft of a steam-engine, by bands and wheels, so as to be elevated through a kind of vertical trunk leading to the upper floors of the building ; and here servants are in waiting to take out what ever may have been placed on the platform. What will the steam-engine be made to do next? If now we leave clubs, professedly so called, and notice the taverns of different periods, we find that they have not altered quite so much in their character; for a tavern at the present day, as well as a century ago, is a place where almost all kind of refreshments may be procured. And yet there is sufficient difference observable at different periods. The taverns were formerly distinguished each for its particular class of visitors ; and though no formal subscription seems to have been paid, yet it would appear that a sort of ballot decided the introduction of a new visitor to the social circle. Thus, CoUey Cibber says that a sort of interest and introduction was necessary before he could make one among the visitors at Wills's in Govent Garden. Here the acknowledged wits and poets of the day met. The politicians met at the St. James's Coffee House, from which many of the political articles in the ' Tatler ' were dated. Many men of education Avere wont to meet each other at the ' Grecian ' in Devereux Court ; while young and gay sparks patronised Locket's in Gerard Street, and Pontac's, where they used to dine. At an earlier hour of the day, " chocolate-houses " seem to have been frequented, Avhich were deserted at about three or four o'clock (the fashionable dinner-hour of those times), and the tavern then became the place of ren dezvous. The modern taverns, with some few exceptions, are either downright public- houses, or else they combine the qualities of inns and provide accommodations for the traveller or the temporary visitor to London. Indeed the terms tavern, hotel, and inn, are not easily distinguishable in London. All taken together are about five hundred in number ; while the public-houses amount to about seven times as many. Some of the hotels are analogous to furnished apartments, where families or gentlemen may take up their abode temporarily or for a con tinuance ; and where all are admitted whose appearance and purses are adequate. PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 311 Such are the aristocratic ' Long's,' and ' Warren's,' and ' Mivart's,' and several others whose names are familiar to the readers of " fashionable arrivals " and " fashionable departures," in the daily newspapers. The two principal qualities of these hotels are, that an inmate can get almost CA'ery thing he can want, and that he pays handsomely for all that he gets. Others, less noted among the fashionable world, are conducted on the same principles, but at a somewhat lower rate of charge. Others again, such as the ' Gloucester Coffee House,' the ' White Horse Cellar,' the 'Saracen's Head,' &c., comprise almost all the features of inn, hotel, tavern, and coach-office, and some of them those of public-house like wise. The traveller who has just come to London, and Avho does not intend to remain long enough to render the hire of a furnished apartment desirable, and he who makes it a temporary resting-place ere he trudges to seek his friends, both "put up'' here and obtain what refresbments they need. The railway system has started some splendid establishments of this nature. But there was never any want of truly comfortable accommodation in the old hotels, such as the ' Hummums,' the ' Tavistock,' and many others, whose names are familiar to the London visitor. It is when Ave descend to the middle and humble classes of society, and to those who reside continuously in London, that the details respecting refreshment- houses become most worthy of note, because such details furnish a more exact index to the social condition of large bodies of men. We may put such a question as this — How do those commercial and working men, who take but few meals at their OAvn homes, procure their breakfast, and dinner, and tea; and into Avhat society are they thrown ? The answer to this question takes us at once to the "dining-rooms," the "eating-houses," the "chop-houses," the "ham and beef shops," the " alamode-beef houses," the " oyster-rooms," the " coffee-houses," &c., whicb form such a notable feature in London trade at the present time. The allusions to London houses of refreshment, in past times, evidently relate to liquid rather than to solid food — to the " flowing tankard" and the " generous bottle ;" yet there are occasio'Aally passages which refer more or less to cooked provisions, vended either in the open street or in shops close at hand. Thus Fitzstephen, who Avrote an account of London more than six centuries ago, says : — ¦ " The several craftsmen, the several sellers of Avares, and workmen for hire, all are distinguished every morning by themselves, in their places as well as trades. Besides, there is in London upon the ' river's bank ' a public place of cookery, among the wines to be sold in the ships, and in the wine-cellars. There every day ye may call for any dish of meat, roast, fried, or sodden; fish both smaU and great ; ordinary flesh for the poorer sort, and more dainty for the rich, as venison and fowl. If friends come upon a sudden, wearied with travel, to a citizen's house, and they be loth to wait for curious preparations and dressings of fresh meat, let the servants give them water to wash, and bread to stay their stomach, and in the mean time they run to the waterside, Avhere all things that can be desired are at hand. Whatsoever multitude of soldiers, or other strangers, enter into the City at any hour of the day or night, or else are about to depart : they may turn in, bait here, and refresh themselves to their content, and so avoid long fasting, and not go away without their dinner. If any desire to set their dainty tooth, they take a goose ; they need not to long for the fowl of Africa; no, not the 312 LONDON. rare gadAvit of Ionia. This is the public cookery, and very convenient for the state of a city, and belongs to it. Hence it is Ave read in Plato's ' Gorgias,' that next to the physician's art is the trade of cooks, the image and flattery of the fourth part of a city." Then again, Lydgate, who Avrote his ' Londop Lyckpenny ' in the first half of the fifteenth century, gives tAvo stanzas which may be worth quoting : — " Then to Westminster gate I presently Avent, When the sun was at high prime ; Cooks to me they took good intent. And proffered me bread, Avith ale and wine, Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine ; A fair cloth they 'gan for to spread. But, wanting money, I might not be sped." " Then I hied me unto Eastcheap : One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie ; Pewter pots they clatter'd in a heap ; There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy ; Yea, by cock ! nay, by cock ! some began cry ; Some sung of Jenkyn and Julyan for their meed. But, for lack of money, I might not speed." The luckless fellow, who, " for lack of money," was thus tantalized with good things which he could not purchase, has not told us whether they were open stalls or shops in Avhich the provisions were sold. " Minstrels " seem to have attended much on the same principle as fiddlers now do at public-houses. The fortunes of Roderick Random and his companion Strap show that, in Smollett's time, there were cellars in London attended as eating-houses, down which many a man was wont to " dive for a dinner." When Roderick and Strap arrived in London, and had taken a cheap and obscure lodging near St. Martin's Lane, they asked their landlord where they could procure a dinner. He told them that there were eating-houses for well-dressed people, and cellars for those whose purses were somewhat of the lightest. Roderick said that the latter would better suit the circumstances of himself and his companion ; whereupon the land lord undertook to pilot them to one of these cellars : — " He accordingly carried us to a certain lane, where stopping, he bid us observe him, and do as he did ; and, Avalking a few paces, dived into a cellar, and disappeared in an instant. I followed his example, and descended very successfully, where I found myself in the middle of a cook's-shop, almost suffocated with the steams of boiled beef, and surrounded by a company consisting chiefly of hackney-coachmen, chairmen, draymen, and a few footmen out of place or on board-wages, who sat eating shin- of-beef, tripe, cow-heel, or sausages, at separate boards, covered with cloths which turned my stomach. While I stood in amaze, undetermined Avhether to sit down or walk upwards again. Strap, in his descent, missing one of the steps, tumbled headlong into this infernal ordinary, and overturned the cook as she was carrying a porringer of soup to one of the guests. In her fall she dashed the whole mess against the legs of a drummer belonging to the foot-guards, Avho happened to be in her way." How the drummer swore, and the cook rubbed his leg with salt, and Roderick recommended the substitution of oil, and how Strap made his peace PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 313 by paying for the soup and treating the drummer, need not be told. The cook's- shop in the cellar is sufficiently depicted. It is probable that itinerant piemen, such as Hogarth gives to the life, have for centuries formed one class of London characters, and that various other eat ables, and drinkables too, have been vended about in a similar manner, time out of mind ; but by what steps the modern cook's-shop, or eating-house, has reached its present condition, it is not perhaps easy to say. There are, it appears, about two hundred places in London which can fittingly come under the deno mination of eating-houses, occupying a place betAveen the hotels on the one hand and the coffee-rooms on the other. At all of these places joints of meat are dressed every day, depending for variety on the extent of business done, but generally including boUed beef and roast beef, as well as the necessary appendages for the formation of a dinner. In some of these houses the quantity of meat dressed in a week is quite enormous ; and it seems pretty evident that the greater the sale the better the quality of the articles sold-^or perhaps we may take it in an inverse order, that the excellence of the provisions has led to the extent of the custom. Some of these dining-rooms are the scenes of bustle during only a few hours of the day ; while others, either from the extent of their trade, or the different classes of their visitors, present a never-ceasing picture of eating and drinking. Some, such as a celebrated house in Bishopsgate Street, are frequented almost entirely by commercial men and City clerks, who, during a few hours in the day, flock in by hundreds. Then again others, such as Williams's boiled-beef shop in the Old Bailey, and a few in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields, are fre quented almost entirely by lawyers' clerks, witnesses, and others engaged in the law or criminal courts. In all such cases there is a " best " room for those whose purses are tolerably supplied ; and a more humble room, generally nearer to the street, for such as can afford only a " sixpenny plate." Again, on going farther Avestward, we find, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden and the Hay market, dining-rooms in great plenty, the visitants at which are altogether of a different class. Here we may see actors, artists, paragraph-makers, aud foreigners, most of whom seem in much less haste than the City diners. In this quarter of the town there are many French restaurateurs, whose rooms present the agreeable variety of ladies dining without any restraint from the observation of the male visitors. It is observable that in some houses the waiter gives the diner a long detail of the good things which are "just ready," while in others there is a printed bill-of- fare placed before him. The latter is certainly the most systematic method; for, by the time the nimble waiter has got through his speech, we almost forget the first items to Avhich he directed attention. In the " bill of fare " all the dishes customarily prepared at the house are printed in certain groups, and the prices are written opposite those which are to be had hot on any particular day, so that a customer can at once see what provisions are ready, and how much he shall have to pay for them. In the opposite case, where the visitor knows nothing of the matter but what the waiter tells him, the routine of proceedings may be thus sketched :— The guest, perhaps a man of business who has but little time to spare for his dinner, enters the room, takes the first seat he can find (the one nearest the fire in cold weather), takes off his hat. and asks for the ' Times ' or the 314 LONDON. ' Chronicle.' While he is glancing his eye rapidly over the daily news, the active, tidy waiter, with a clean napkin on his left arm, comes to his side, and pours into his ear, in a rapid but monotonous tone, some such narrative as the foUoAving : — " Roast beef, boiled beef, roast haunch of mutton, boiled pork, roast veal and ham, salmon and shrimp-sauce, pigeon-pie, rump-steak pudding." The visitor is perhaps deep in the perusal of ' Spanish Scrip ' or ' Colombian Bonds,' or some other neAvspaper intelligence, and the waiter is obliged to repeat his catalogue; but, generally speaking, the order is quickly given, and quickly attended to. A plate of roast beef, which may be taken as a standard of com parison, is charged for at these places at prices varying from 4d. to lOd., generally from 6d. to 85^. ; and other articles are in a corresponding ratio. When the meat and vegetables have disappeared, the nimble waiter is at your elbow, to ask whether pastry or cheese is Avanted; and when the visitor is about to depart, the waiter, adds up, with characteristic rapidity, the various items constituting the bill. " Meat 8flf., potatoes Id., bread Id., cheese Id.," &c., are soon summed up ; the money is paid, and the diner departs. At the alamode-beef houses the routine is still more rapid. Here a visitor takes his seat, and the waiter places before him a knife, a fork, and a spoon ; and gives him the choice among sundry lumps of bread kept in an open basket. Meanwhile the visitor asks for a " sixpenny plate ;" and it may happen that two other customers ask at the same time, the one for a sixpenny and the other for a fourpenny plate. Out goes the waiter, calling, in a quick tone, for "two sixes and a four ;" a brevity which is perfectly well understood by those who are to lade out the soup from the cauldron wherein it is prepared. Presently he returns with a pile of pewter plates, containing the "two sixes and a four," and places them before the diners. There is a house near the theatres where this scene of operation continues almost uninterruptedly from twelve o'clock at noon till an hour or two after the theatres are over in the evening ; some taking soup as a luncheon, some as an early dinner, some as a late dinner, some as a substitute for tea, and the remainder as a supper. There is a lower class of soup-houses, where persons to whom sixpence is even too much for a dinner may obtain wherewithal to dine. Whoever has had to walk through Broad Street, St Giles's, or down the northern side of Holborn Hill, may have seen shops, in the windows of which a goodly array of blue and white basins is displayed, and from Avhich emanate abundant clouds of odour-giving steam. Around the windows, too, a crowd of hungry mortals assemble on a cold day, and partake (in imagination) of the enticing things within. A poor fellow, all in tatters, with a countenance which speaks strongly of privation, gazes eagerly through the window at what is going on within, and thinks how rich a man must be who can afford to pay twopence or threepence for " a basin of prime soup, potatos, and a slice of bread;" — for it is at some such charge as this that the viands are sold. As for the quality of the soup, we should, perhaps, only be just in supposing that it is good enough for the price. Otie thing is certain, that the quantity sold every day at these houses is extremely large. The " chop-houses " in the City form a class by themselves. They are neither eating-houses nor taverns, nor do they belong to classes hereafter to be noticed. The solid food here to be procured is chiefly in the form of a steak or a chop, with PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 315 such small appendages as are necessary to form a meal. There is no hot joint from which a guest may have a "sixpenny" or a "ninepenny" plate; nor are there the various dishes which fill up the bill-of-fare at a dining-room. Every guest knows perfectly well what he can procure there. If a chop or a steak will suffice, he can obtain it ; if not, he goes to some house where greater variety is provided. With his chop he can have such liquor as his taste may prefer. There are some of these houses which have been attended by one generation after an other of guests, comprising merchants, bankers, and commercial men of every grade. The portrait of the founder, or a favourite waiter, may perhaps be seen over the fireplace in the best room ; and the well-rubbed tables, chairs, and benches tell of industry oft repeated. Sometimes the older houses exhibit a waiter who has gone through his daily routine for half a century. There is a dingy house in a court in Fleet Street where the chops and steaks are unrivalled. Who that has tasted there that impossible thing of private cookery — a hot mutton chop, a second brought when the first is despatched— has not pleasant recollections of the never-ending call to the cook of " Two muttons to follow ?" At most of the respectable eating and chop houses it is a pretty general custom to give a penny or twopence to the waiter when the "reckoning " is paid. This is a bad system. It would be much bettei* to pay an extra penny for the price of the dinner, and let the waiter be paid by the master ; instead of, as is at present the case, the waiter giving the master a dottceur for permission to hold the situ ation. But whether such a change would change the characteristics of a waiter, we cannot say ; certain it is that a London ¦waiter is quite a character. Here is Mr. Leigh Hunt's picture of one: — " He has no feeling of noise, but as the sound of dining, or of silence, but as a thiiig before dinner. Even a loaf with him is hardly a loaf; it is so many ' breads.' His longest speech is the making out of a bill viva voce — ' Two beefs — one potatoes — three ales — two wines — six and two pence,' — which he does with an indifferent celerity, amusing to new comers who have been relishing their fare, and not considering it as a mere set of items." Many houses have what is termed in France a ttlble-d'hSte, or in England an ordinary ; that is, a dinner ready for all comers at a fixed hour in the day, and at a fixed charge. The host determines on the choice of good things to constitute the bill of fare ; and the diner partakes of such as may best accord with his palate. Some of these places are attended day after day by nearly the same persons, while others see a constant succession of new faces. There is one such house near or in Billingsgate, celebrated for the excellence of the fish, which forms a component part of the cheer ; and Avhich is, on this account, much fre quented by the connoisseurs in fish. Nay, Ave have heard that so far does the demand for table-room exceed the supply, that the "knowing ones" have their seat at the table half an hour before the prescribed dinner-time, as the only way to be prepared for the fish by the time the fish is prepared for them. A public- house (really one) in a street near Covent Garden has an ordinary of three courses, which the lovers of economical good eating, Avho cannot dine without fish and pastry, delight to haunt. But there are few of these. The ordinaries of the days of Elizabeth have left few successors. Besides the dining-rooms and chop-houses, properly so called, there are many places where a man can get a dinner by a sort of indirect arrangement. Not to 316 LONDON. mention oyster-rooms, which are frequented rather for suppers than dinners, or pastry-cooks' shops, which are rather for lady-like delicacies than for stout hearty food which Avill enable a man to buffet through the world, or Garraway's, and one or two similar houses, where a sandwich and a glass of wine or ale may be rapidly swallowed, there are public-houses where a gridiron is kept always at hand for cooking a steak or a chop belonging to a customer. If we draw a circle of a few hundred yards radius round the Royal Exchange, we shall find more than one place of which the following is a sketch. A butcher's shop within a door or two of a public-house supplies a purchaser with a steak or a chop at a reasonable price. He carries it into the public-house (or tavern, if the name be preferred) and places it in the hands of a Avaiter or servant, who speedily dresses it on an enormous gridiron, the bars of Avhich are so constructed as to save a great portion of, the fat from the meat. For this service the small sum of one penny only is charged, in addition to an equally moderate charge for bread, potatoes, and whatever drink may be called for. Some of these houses are celebrated for the "fine old cheese," or the "baked potatoes," or the "mutton pies," which they provide for their customers; each place having a reputation for some one or other welcome dish. In humble neigh bourhoods, again, all such dainties as " sheeps' trotters," " sheeps' heads," "pigs' faces," "faggots," &c. are to be had hot at certain hours of the day; but these are not supplied by the owners of public-houses ; they are procured at shops adjacent, and very often demolished in the tap-rooms of the public-houses. Let us next direct our attention to the remarkable features presented by the coffee-rooms and coffee-shops of London. These differ from the places hitherto noticed principally in the kind of beverage supplied, but partly in other matters likewise, which present points of considerable interest. The first coffee-house established in the vicinity of London is said to have been the so-called 'Don Saltero's Coffee-house,' in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Many of those who have lately availed themselves of the little fourpenny steamers have, probably, seen a house stiU called by this name, near one of the steam boat piers at Chelsea: this was the identical house. This Don Saltero was a cunning fellow, half barber, half antiquary, named Salter, who having attracted many visitors to his house by virtue of the antiquarian trifles with Avhich it Avas stuffed, sought to make it a kind of lounge by introducing ready-made coffee as an article of sale. Steele gives a sketch of the man, his curiosities, his fiddle-playing and other characteristics, in one of the early numbers of the ' Tatler.' In the time of Addison and Steele, besides the coffee-houses and chocolate- houses which were attended by the gay and the rich, there was a "floating coffee-house " near Somerset House, a print of which was engraved at the time. This house was a lounge for idle pleasure-seekers ; but the company frequenting it grew, by degrees, so disreputable, that the affair was froAvned out of ex istence. Throughout the eighteenth century coffee-houses were abundant in London; but they more nearly resembled taverns than the modern coffee-shops: they were beyond the reach of the humbler classes. About thirty or forty years ago, when coffee was, for a temporary period, enormously dear, a beverage called PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 317 [floating Coff^ House on the Thames.] saloop was vended both vx houses and street-stalls. Thi^ saloop was a kind of infusion of sassafras, served hot with milk and sugar in the same manner as coffee, and was sold at from one penny to sixpence per cup, according to the style in which it Avas served. This beverage has now wholly given way to that which is connected with so many social features at the present day — coffee. On the 5th of May, 1840, the House of Commons directed a Committee to Inquire into the operation of the Import Duties ; and in the Report which the Committee made to the House on the 6th of August in the same year many curious details occur respecting coffee-houses, coffee-house keepers, a^nd the class of persons who frequent coffee-houses. The evidence arose out of the cou- sideration of the duty upon coffee ; but it involves statistical details of a highly curious character, and closely connected with the subject of our paper. On one of the days of meeting, five coffee-house keepers, residing in as many different parts of London, gave evidence before the Committee. It was there stated, by Mr. Humphreys, that the gradual increase of coffee-houses in London may be estimated at nearly a hundred per annum ; that twenty-five years ago there were not above ten or twelve coffee-houses (of the kind now under consi deration) in the metropolis ; but that they had since increased to sixteen or eighteen hundred. The following are two of the questions put to Mr. Hum phreys, and the answers given to them : — " Has the charge for coffee, to the consumer, been reduced, in consequence of this competition (between rival coffee-house keepers) ?"—" Very materially. About twenty-five years ago there was scarcely a house in London where- you could get any coffee under sixpence a cup, or threepence a cup ; there are uoav coffee-houses open at from one penny up to threepence. There are many houses where the charge is one penny, where they have seven or eight hundred persons in a day. There is Mr. PamphUon, who charges three halfpence per cup ; and he has from fifteen to sixteen hundred persons a day."* " It is the particular beverage that you sell which is the great attraction to * Report, of the Import Duties Committee, p. 209. 318 LONDON. the persons that come to your house ? '-^" Yes; I have, on the average, four ti five hundred persons that frequent my house daily ; they are mostly lawyers' clerks and commercial men; some of them are managing clerks, and there are many solicitors likewise, highly respectable gentlemen, who take coffee In the middle of the day, in preference to a more stimulating drink. I have often asked myself the question, where all that number of persons could possibly have got their refreshment prior to opening my house. There were taverns in the neighbourhood, but no coffee-house, nor anything that afforded any accommoda tion of the nature I now give them ; and I found that a place of business like mine was so sought for by the public, that shortly after I opened it I was obliged to increase my premises in every way I could ; and at the present moment, besides a great number of newspapers every day, I am compelled to take in the bighest class of periodicals. For instance, we have eight or nine quarterly pub lications, averaging from four shillings to six shillings each ; and we are con stantly asked for every new work that has come out. I find there is an increasing taste for a better class of reading. When I first went into business, many of my customers were content with the lower-priced periodicals; but I find, as time progresses, that the taste is improving, and they look out now for a better class ¦ of literature." There are other places, more generally designated " coffee-shops," where working men mostly congregate ; and it is interesting to know that among this class also the growth of a taste for refreshing beverage and sober decency has been by no means slow. Mr. Letchford, one of the witnesses examined before the Committee, keeps a coffee-shop in a densely populated and humble part of the metropolis. When this shop had been established seven years, there were from seven to nine hundred persons visited it per day, most of them hard-working men. He has three rooms, in which the charges for a cup of coffee are respectively Id., l^d., and 3d., according to the kind of customers for which they are intended. The cheapest room is that which is most frequented, and which has a constant influx of customers from four in the morning till ten at night. To the question, " Does a man come there and get his breakfast ?" Mr. Letchford replied, "Yes; he comes in the morning at four o'clock and has a cup of coffee, and a thin slice of bread and butter, and for that he pays Rd. ; and then again at eight, for his breakfast, he has a cup of coffee, a penny loaf, and a pennyworth of butter, which is 3d. ; and at dinner time, instead of going to a public-house, at one o'clock he comes in again, and has his coffee aiid his bread, and brings his own meat. I do not cook for any one." It was stated that nine newspapers were provided for these numerous but humble customers. Another feature strikes the observer, in glancing over the evidence given before this Committee, viz., that the coffee-rooms have in many cases become also dining-rooms, and not merely places where breakfast or tea is taken. Mr. Humphreys stated that latterly the coffee-house keepers have been compelled to sell meat ready cooked. Persons became so desirous of having their meals in houses of this description, that they have gradually got into the habit of dining there, as well as of purchasing the beverage for which the houses Avere originally established. " I now sell," said Mr. Humphreys, " about three cwt. of cold ham and meat every week. I was first compelled to sell it by persons going to a PUBLIC REFRESHMENT. 319 cook's shop, and buying their meat, and bringing it in and asking me for a plate; and I found it a matter of some little trouble without any profit. It occurred to me that I might as well cook ; and I have myself now, in consequence of that, a business during the whole of the day. A number of gentlemen come in and have a plate of beef for 4d., a cup of coffee for 2d., and a loaf of bread ; and for 6d. or 7d. they have what is for them a good breakfast. In fact, a gentleman may come to my house and have as good a breakfast for 8d. as he can have in any hotel for 1*. 6d." To the same effect was the statement of Mr. Pamphilon. He said that a large middle-day trade had sprung up among coffee-room keepers, in conse quence of the pursuance of this system ; and that he had often had a hundred people dining in his rooms in the middle of one day, off cold ham, and beef, and coffee. Mr. Hare, also, who keeps a first-class coffee-room in the City, gave evi dence corroborative of the same view. He said that bankers' clerks, and mer cantile men of a similar description, were constantly in the habit of having steaks and chops at his house, coffee being the beverage : he explained this latter point by saying that men of this class find that they can transact their afternoon's business better after coffee than after malt liquor. The same witness stated that when he commenced business, nine or ten years previously, he did not cook any thing ; the custom had its origin in the request, as a matter of favour, on the part of some of the gentlemen who took coffee at his house, that he would furnish them with the means of partaking of a chop or a steak Avithout going to a ta\'ern. He did so ; and thus arose a custom which has now become very prevalent in the majority of the coffee-houses of London. As an item in the economy of Lorrdon refreshment, confessedly brought into existence within the last dozen years, this Is not unworthy of notice. The cigar-divans and chess-rooms are modifications of the coffee-room. They are for those who require something more than coffee and reading, and yet at the same time wish to have those luxuries. The owners of these rooms are not so much accustomed to supply meals as evening refreshment. Your true chess player can sit many hours without eating or drinking largely: his "checking," and " castling," and " mating," absorb nearly all his attention ; and he has only time to whiff his cigar and sip his coffee once now and then. At some of the places here indicated the guest pays a shilling on entrance, for which he re ceives a " fine Havannah" and cup of coffee; while at others he pays for what he may purchase, without paying for admission. In closing this paper we must not forget the old woman who serves hot coffee to the coachmen and labourers at four in the morning ; or the ' Baked tato ' man, whose steaming apparatus glistens before us; or the 'Ham-sandwich ' man, who encounters us on leaving a theatre. Respecting the first, it may suffice to say, that there are many labouring men abroad in the morning at an hour too early to find coffee-shops open ; and for the supply of such customers with an early breakfast, a table is laid out al fresco, with sundry huge slices of bread and butter, an array of cups and saucers, and a vessel full of hot coffee — all served, we have no doubt, at a very small charge. The baked-potato dealer is a mer chant of modern growth; he sprang up somewhere in the neighbourhood of St.^George's Fields, and has since spread his trading operations to every part of London. His apparatus is really a very ingenious and smart-looking affair, and. 320 LONDON. Avhen lighted up at night constitutes a locomotive cook-shop, of which the last generation could have had no idea. How the man takes out a steaming potato, cuts it open, seasons it with butter, pepper, and salt, and exchanges it for a half penny — every apprentice boy in London knows ; and it must be owned that this is a ha'p'orth which would comfort many a hungry stomach. As for the ham-sandwich man, he is a nocturnal dealer : he puts on his white apron, lays his sandwiches in a small handbasket, which he holds before him, and takes his post ooposite the gallery-doors of the theatres, where, at or near midnight, he attracts the notice of Ms customers by the cry of " Ham-sandAviches, only a penny 1" [Baked Potatoes,] •«%. >: I I 1 Si»j *\ IP"'-' [View of St. Paul's from the North-east.] XCVL— NEW ST. PAUL'S. No. L " In the beginning of the new works of St. Paul's," writes Sir Christopher Wren, in the ' Parentalia,' " we are told an incident was taken notice of by some people as a memorable omen : when the surveyor in person had set out upon the place the dimensions of the great dome, and fixed upon the centre, a common labourer was ordered to bring a flat stone from the heaps of rubbish (such as should first come to hand) to be laid for a mark and direction to the masons : the stone, which was immediately brought and laid down for that purpose, happened to be a pieco of a gravestone, with nothing remaining of the inscription but this single word in large capitals — Resurgam" (I shall rise again). How much the architect himself was struck by the circumstance, we see by the decorations of the pediment over the northern portico, where an exquisitely sculptured Phoenix rising from the flames, with the motto " Resurgam," has been placed in accordance with the idea suggested by the incident. And St. Paul's has indeed risen again in consummate beauty and grandeur. Surrounded as it is on all sides with the countless struc tures which the religion, traae, commerce, amusements, and luxuries of the first capital of the world have required, many of them separately deserving and enjoying our high admiration, who ever thinks for a moment of comparing any of them (Westminster Abbey excepted) with St. Paul's ; who ever, indeed, thinks of them at all, when the eye, casually glancing over the mighty panorama of which they form a portion, is so completely occupied by the one sublime object, soaring upwards so far into the skies, the far-famed dome of the Cathedral. The man who was born within the sound of its bell, and can scarcely remember when he overpassed those limits — the stranger from the country on a brief visit, who obtains perhaps but a single view — the foreigner, familiar with the archi tectural marvels of other climes — the old and the young, the ignorant and the enlightened, alike feel this wondrous pre-eminence, which makes St. Paul's seem VOL. IV. • Y. 322 LONDON. not so much a feature, however great, of London, as an embodied idea of London itself. Can any one fancy London Avithout it ? In the absence of this grand central object, toward Avhich, as in a picture, everything around appears to tend, and grow regular and coherent from that very connexion, the British metropolis Avould certainly look like the " great Aven " that Cobbett calls it. For this reason it may be said, somewhat paradoxically, that the finest vicAV of St, Paul's is obtained from a spot Avhere a considerable portion of it cannot be seen, namely, Blackfriars Bridge ; for the body of the structure being hidden, the dome, in consequence, with its pilastered basement and colonnaded pedestal, really seems to rest as it were upon the City ; and we can imagine nothing more magnificent than the effect. Wren, it must be owned, was most fortunate in the site for his AVork. It is true that it is sadly shut in on all sides, but Ave can amend that matter Avhenever we please ; on the other hand, the advantages of the spot are inestimable. It is in the very heart of the metropolis, and so elevated, that — if Ave may trust the inscription on the curious little piece of sculpture Avith a naked boy in the neighbouring Panyer Alley : — " When you have sought the city round. Yet still this is the highest ground." Above all, it stands in the midst of the busiest of London thoroughfares, where thousands daily, as they hurry along with the press, must logk upon it ; and Avho shall say how often many of these may not have carried away with them some impression of its beauty, majesty, and power, which may open, hoAvever un consciously, the door to a thousand other refreshing and elevating influences? The chief view of the Cathedral obtained by such passers by — that from Ludgate Hill — was of course an object of great solicitude Avith Wren ; forming too, as he saw it would, the only good view that could be afforded within any calculable period of the building generally. And, certainly, a thing to be remembered is the first ascent of that hill, the first sight of the glorious faqade Avhich rises directly before us, with its double range of sump tuous columns, windows and arches rising some ninety feet, then the superb campanile towers at each corner, whose gilded pines at the top are not less than 208 feet from the ground ; and lastly, between the two, and over the richly- decorated pediment of the front, Avith its colossal apostolic figures, the gigantic dome Avith its lantern, ball, arid cross, mounting to the giddy height of between 300 and 400 feet;* and of which a distinguished critic says, " It may be safely affirmed that for dignity and elegance no church in Europe affords an example worthy of comparison." f Grand as is the aspect of this Avestern front. Wren designed something that would have been still grander, had it been 'practic able ; but he had forgotten, for the moment, that if there are no limits to the poAver of genius to conceive, there are very decided and narroAv ones as to the means by which its conceptions are to be executed. Instead of the exist ing lower order, Avith its Corinthian pUlars, and an upper Avith composite. Wren * The differences which pervade the published accounts of the dimensions of most of our cathedrals are more than usually striking at St. Paid's. Thus the ' Parentalia' gives the height of the " cupola and lantern" at 830 feet ; Maitland tlie height to the top of the cross at 340 ; other authorities make the entire altitude 360 ; AVhilst the ' Guide ' sold in the Cathedral gives the same at 404 feet Part of this disciepancy seems to arise from the measurement being sometimes made from the pavement of the church, sometimes from the ground-line of the exterior. f Mr. Gwilt — Britton's ' Public Buildings in London." NEW ST. PAUL'S. 323 intended to have had but one range of pillars, ascending from the ground Avithout interruption to the height of both the present ranges ; but there Avas no finding blocks of stone large enough to form the cornice to such a portico. So that idea, with many others equally cherished, Avas abandoned. The decorations of this faqade are chiefly by Bird, an artist Avho occupies a certain position in the history of art during the early part of last century, for we learn from his AVorks how low must have been the state of sculpture among us, when such Avere its chief fruits. He is the author of the monument to Sir Cloudesley Shovel in Westminster Abbey, a work which has positively groAvn interesting from the wit and ridicule lavished upon it by Addison, Washington Irving, and others. Yet it is but justice to add that Dr. Busby's monument in the Abbey is also by him, a piece of sculpture so different from his other acknowledged productions as to warrant the suspicion that he had received assistance of some kind. Bird's chief performances at St. Paul's consist of the sculpture in high relief on the pediment of the west front, representing the Conversion of St. Paul, the bas-reliefs over the doors in the portico beloAv, the centre having for its subject St. Paul preaching to the Bereans ; and lastly, the statue of Queen Anne in the area before the Cathedral, with the four attendant figures at the corners of the pedestal typifying Britain, France, Ireland, and America. The sculptor of the colossal figures Avhich adorn the top of the pediment and the base of the campanile towers does not appear to be known. The figure on the apex of the pediment is of course St. Paul ; St. James is knoAvn by his pUgrim habit to the right, and St. Peter by the cock to the left. The figures of the Evangelists at the sides may be simi larly recognised. The statue of Queen Anne, of Avhich a lunatic a century ago broke the nose and shattered the sceptre, suggests some interesting recollec tions. Here, during the brilliant career of Marlborough, was the Queen ac customed to come year after year to return thanks for his successes. The pro cession on these occasions seems to have been very imposing. Our space Avill only allow us to mention the visit in January, 1706-7, when there were tAvo in dividuals present Avho must have given unusual eclat to the spectacle. After the Members of the House of Commons, headed by their Speaker, the Masters of Chancery, the Judges, and the Peers of the realm, in their curious low coaches (such as Ave see represented in the prints of the period, illustrating some of these public processions to St. Paul's, and from which the foUoAving is ex tracted), came the Queen in her state equipage, drawn by eight horses, and having V a 324 LONDON. by her side the Duchess of Marlborough, the Avife of the conqueror, and her Ma jesty's early and bosom friend. The streets through which the procession passed were lined by the Westminster militia and the City trained bands ; the balconies and windows of the houses were hung with " fine carpets and tapestry," and crowded with spectators. The Queen was received at St. Paul's by the peers, and preceded into the choir by the great warrior himself — Marlborough, carrying the sword of state. Two years later Queen Anne came to St. Paul's again for a similar pur pose ; and four years after that dismissed the man to whom she owed so much from all his employments, and left him as helpless as it was possible to meet the charges of peculation which his enemies had brought against him. The " dear Mrs. Freeman," as the Queen delighted to call the Duchess (she, herself, assuming the name of Mrs. Morley), was now, also, as much hated as she had been previously loved ; though with some reason : there is no doubt the mascu line-minded spouse of Marlborough endeavoured to advance his interests and the interests of his party with too high a hand, and in a kind of reckless forget fulness of her mistress's own very decided political principles. So a new favourite came in : the existing ministry was broken up and another formed, who gave the nation one reason, at all events, for the disgrace of Marlborough : they showed they did not want him, but treated for peace, which they obtained — many thought, at no small sacrifice of honour — by the famous Peace of Utrecht. One of the dissatisfied persons we have alluded to has left his opinions on record in connection with the statue before us ; and whatever may be thought of the sound ness of his views, there can be no question as to the wit displayed in their exhibi tion. Thus writes Sir Samuel Garth : — " Near the vast.bulk of that stupendous frame Known by the Gentiles' great Apostle's name. With grace divine great Anna 's seen to rise. An awful form that glads a nation's eyes. Beneath her feet four mighty realms appear. And with due reverence pay their homage there ; Britain and Ireland seem to owe her grace, And even wild India wears a smiling face. But France alone with downcast eyes is seen. The sad attendant of so good a queen. Ungrateful country ! to forget so soon All that great Anna for thy sake has done : When, sworn the kind defender of thy cause. Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws. For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword. For thee she broke her general — and her word : For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told. And learn'd to speak like oracles of old. For thee, for thee alone, — what could she more ?— She lost the honour she had gain'd before ; Lost all the trophies which her arms had won, (Such CsBsar never knew, nor Philip's son.) ; Resign'd the glories of a ten years' reign. And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain. For thee in annals she's content to shine Like other monarchs of the Stuart line." We must add to these verses, a striking evidence of the effects of the party spirit of the time : Voltaire says, that whilst he Avas in England, he heard Marl borough called a coward, and Pope a blockhead ! NEW ST. PAUL'S. 325 Though not only the dome, but the entire exterior of St. Paul's, has received the highest praise that could be lavished upon it — it has been held, for instance, superior to its mighty rival at Rome — yet, it must be owned, this success has been obtained at some sacrifice. Not only does the real dome, such as it is (as seen from the interior), bear but a small proportion to the apparent one, but the height of the cathedral walls all round is a splendid deception. It consists, like the front, of two stories, of which the lower one only shows the real height of the aisles of the church within, the upper being a mere mask to the roof of the aisles and the buttresses which support the vaulting of the nave and choir.. With that exception, the exterior of St. Paul's challenges the warmest admiration. In walking round it we may observe, among many other admirable features, the art with which Wren has repeated the idea of the dome in various parts of the buildifig : thus both the northern and southern porticoes are domed, as AveU as the upper part of the campanile towers; the effect being a material enhancement of the harmony that pervades the different parts of the structure. The sculp tured Phoenix, before mentioned, on the pediment of the south portico, is by Cibber, who received, it appears from Malcolm, 61. for the model and 100/. for the work. One may wonder that the author of the two famous statues at the Bethlehem was not more extensively employed at St. Paul's ; but Bird, no doubt, was the fashionable sculptor — so whilst he Avas working away at the high est departments of the art, Cibber, immeasurably his superior, had to be content with the lowest. Before we enter the Cathedral, we may observe there is a building nearly opposite the northern portico, which is seldom noticed, even by curious observers, and which yet recalls the memory of a passage in modern eccle siastical history, not without interest. That tall, substantial, but somewhat dingy- looking mansion, is the Convocation or Chapter House of the Cathedral, and was repaired by Wren during the rebuilding of St. Paul's. Many of our readers will be aware that a kind of clerical parliament, or Convocation, as it is called, is summoned with every new parliament of the kingdom. The writ of the sovereign is directed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, commanding him to sum mon the bishops and lesser clergy. When they meet, which is usually in St. Paul's, they form the two Houses, and nominate their Speakers ; but — the con clusion is rather ludicrous — the moment they proceed to business, the Convoca tion is prorogued, to meet no more, except under similar circumstances and for a similar termination. But there was a period when the clergy turned restive under this treatment, and made a bold but unsuccessful attempt to turn their nominal powers into real ones. During the, reigns of William and Anne, the clergy of the establishment became divided into two parties — the one looking with the deepest mortification and disgust on the principles of toleration in reli gious matters which were secured by the Revolution, and not hesitating to extend their hatred to the government of the Revolution itself; the other, holdin"- sentiments as nearly as possible diametrically opposite. One of the modes adopted by the former party in the pursuit of their objects, was an attempt to restore to a state of speech and action their ecclesiastical parliament, which had been muzzled by repeated prorogations from the time of the meeting just after the Revolution, when the King perceived but too clearly their hostile spirit. The last year of William's reign gave them a favourable opportunity. A Tott 326 LONDON. ministry came into power, and one of the stipulations, attenamg that event Avas, that a Convocation should have leave to sit. Accordingly, on the 10th of February, 1701, the day of the opening of parliament, the two Houses of Con vocation met in St. Paul's, and then adjourned to the neighbouring building. [Convocation or Chapter Hduse, St. Paul's. From a print of ITOl.] And noAV they went to work in a most vigorous style. Their mortal enemies, the old CommonAveaUh men, might have been their exemplars. They asserted that they had a right to sit Avhenever the parliament sat, and could only be pro rogued Avhen that was prorogued ; and when the Archbishop, on the third day of their sitting, February 25, prorogued them, they continued to sit in defiance of the order, for some time, and then adjourned themselves to the day named in the Archbishop's prorogation. At one of their subsequent meetings, they asked for another of the privileges of parliament, and one seldom resorted to even by that potential assembly — a free conference with the Upper House, Avhich did not participate in its violence : the request was, of course, refused. Open Avar between the Houses uoav broke out. The Lower House again defied an order of prorogation : severe recrimination took place. One of the bishops, Burnet, was ofiicially attacked for the doctrines he had put' forth in his ' Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles,' and the whole business grew daily more and more em broiled, and was, at last, only put an end to for the time by a royal writ directed to the Archbishop, at the period of the dissolution of Parliament. The accession of Anne, with her known Tory principles, made the Lower House, at their subse quent meetings, bolder than ever, and, in consequence, made their pretensions less dangerous from their extravagance. With all the Queen's desire to support them, she was obliged more than once to reprove them in a marked man- NEW ST. PAUL'S. 327 ner, and although the contest continued through several interesting phases for the next few years, it was at last effectually stopped in 1717 : from that time the Convocation have never been allowed to proceed to any business. It is to this period, and these divisions in the Church, that Ave owe the designations— the first of which, at least, is still in vogue — the High and Low Church parties. With so many cathedrals in the Gothic style existing in this country, the erection of a similar building in a style as much opposed to the Gothic as it could Avell be was and yet is an interesting experiment. And it Avill no doubt be generally conceded that no better existing type could be chosen for the ncAV building than the magnificent architecture of imperial Rome afforded, — no worthier artist than Wren, a man of high genius, and full of veneration for that particular school. Yet we must own that, if the excellence of the tAvo styles be measured by Avhat appears to be the highest standard, those old pointed arches and windows, those irregularities of transept and chapel, and massive buttresses, with their continual play of light and shade, the contemned " crinkle-crankle " of Wren, are to this hour not only the more beautiful, but tbe more appropriate. In Westminster Abbey the devotional feeling predominates over every other — the sense of the unrivalled beauty and grandeur all around you is absorbed in the higher sense of Him to whom that beauty and grandeur are dedicated : in St. Paul's, on the contrary, as we now enter, Ave perceive that the beauty and grandeur, and not the devotional spirit, are paramount. You are prepared for a church, or you would certainly see a Pantheon. The very statues, so Avretchedly unsuitable to the place in every other point of view, have a strikingly mis chievous significance in this. A great mistake, it seems to us, has been made in ecclesiastical architecture since the decline of the Roman Catholic religion. Artists have thought and talked so much about the ritual of the old form of worship, and the adaptation of the Gothic cathedrals to that ritual, as at last to have believed, or at least to have acted as though they believed, that the ritual and the essential sublimity of the style had some indivisible connexion ; and, con sequently, that in the abolition of the ritual the style must be abolished too. Others probably thought, and Avith greater truth, that the associations of the Gothic with the Roman Catholic Avorship had, for the time at least, rendered that style distasteful to Protestants ; and this feeling no doubt might have been a permanent one, if the value of our cathedrals had really depended upon their peculiar adaptability to a particular time and form of Christian faith, instead of being, as they are now pretty generally once more acknowledged to be, the grandest, and in all essential respects the most suitable of Christian temples. There is one reflection connected Avith this subject suggested by the foregoing remarks. Quitting the high ground of principle for expediency, Avith how many buildings have not architects studded the country, which, if they suggest any thing at all, suggest the most remote and discordant associations. Thus, one class of churches reminds us of Greek and Roman temples ; another has some indefinable connexion Avith Egypt and Egyptian theology ; a third — but we need not multiply examples already familiar to every one : such has been the success of our architects in avoiding the Gothic, in order to avoid jarring associations. On the other hand, time passes on, the heats of religious contest subside, and Protestant and Catholic alike perceive that the associations of our cathedrals are 328 LONDON. after all their most precious weallth: they remember how intimately those build- . ings were connected with the early history of the faith ; when their forefathers, before words of division were known, and, instead of Catholics and Protestants, there were only Christians, worshipped in common together at their fanes : above all they remember, with no unnatural pride, that these wonderful buildings first sprung from Christianity, and have ever been devoted to its service. But, we repeat, the experiment of a new style Avas and is an interesting one, and even the lovers of the old cannot regret that it was made. The plan of St. Paul's is [PtanofSt. P*ul'ii.] essentially that of most other cathedrals, a cross, formed one way by the nave and choir, and the other by the transepts. Over the circular space, where the nave, choir, and transepts join, rises the dome, supported by eight great piers, forming as many semicircular arches, disposed in an octagonal form. The view enjoyed by a spectator standing directly below the dome is truly magnificent. The imposing circle of lofty arches, which seems to enclose the charmed gazer, or to open only that his eye may range along the vistas of the nave or choir, and enhance his sense of what he sees by a consciousness of how much still remains to be seen, becomes still more imposing as he looks upward, and sees how grand a duty has been allotted to them — that of bearing, now and for ever, the glorious concave which more peculiarly makes " St. Paul's " an honoured name through the civilised world ; and which, suddenly rising to the mental vision of the far-off traveller, sick and friendless in Lihospitable climes, or the tempest-tossed and despairing mariner, must have many and many a time given fresh heart and hope, new impulses and energies, enabling them to reach the home of which that dome would be the most appropriate symbol. Another fine view of the structure is obtained from the western doors, though in St. Paul's, as at Westminster Abbey, you must pay to see it. From thence you look along the nave, across the circular space below the dome, and, when the doors of the choir are open, through that also, an arched perspective in all of 500 feet, the nave alone mea suring 340 feet. In still closer imitation of our Gothic cathedrals than Wren desired, the nave has its side aisles, a measure forced upon him, and, it is sup- NEW ST. PAUL'S. 329 posed, through the influence of the Duke of York, then secretly planning the restoration of the Roman Catholic rehgion, when the " long-drawn aisles " would have been again in requisition. The architect is said to have shed tears when yielding to a measure which he conceived so objectionable. Although we can not quite agree with the author of the ' Guide ' before mentioned, that the " shields, festoons, chaplets, cherubims, and other devices " give St. Paul's " a richness and grace which are wanting in all buildings of Gothic construction," yet there is no doubt Sir Christopher was sedulously attentive to the important subject of decorations ; and, whilst he has in consequence left us some valuable works of this nature, we also know how much more he would have done had he been more liberally supplied with funds. We cannot, however, addiice the " shields, festoons," &c., as any remarkable example of refined elegance in the art, or as any striking proof of Wren's taste ; nor need we dwell upon the hand some marble pavement, " paved alternately with dark and light- coloured mar bles, the dark slabs forming a complete mariner's compass, exhibiting the thirty- two points with the half and quarter points complete;" nor on the "beautiful screen of wpought-iron, the workmanship of Monsieur Tijou:" for, passing through the gates of that screen, we behold in the carved wood-work of the choir some thing of a much higher character. On those flowers and fruit, and on those more ambitious works the Caryatidal figures, which adorn the stalls, the different thrones or chief seats, and the organ gallery, we recognise the unmistakeable impress of the hand of genius : these can but be by one^nan — Gibbons. Evelyn's account of his first drawing this fine artist from obscurity, and of the narrow escape he had, for the time at least, of being sent back to it, is very interesting. He found Gibbons in a cottage at Deptford, carving his famous work, the Stoning of St. Stephen, after Tintoretto ; and immediately determined to introduce him through his work to the court. " The King," says he, " saw the carving at Sir R. Browne's chamber, and was astonished at the curiosity of it, but was called away, and sent it to the Queen's chamber. There, a French peddling woman, who used to bring baubles out of France for the ladies, began to find fault with several things in it, which she understood no more than an ass or a monkey. So, in a kind of indignation, I caused it to be taken back and sent doAvn to the cot tage again." Charles, however, appreciated the skill exhibited, and placed Gibbons in one of the government oflSces, and, what was better still, employed him in his own way : of course he soon grew famous, and was extensively em ployed. For his work in the choir of St. Paul's he received the sum of 1333/. 7s. 5d. To all this richness of decoration, and general grandeur -of the building decorated, the high altar, Avhich should be the most sumptuous part of the whole, offers a melancholy contrast. It is to be hoped that some liberal and munificent-minded dignitary of the Cathedral may hereafter remember what Wren's intentions were, and endeavour to have them carried into effect. " The painting and gilding of the architecture at the east end of the church over the communion-table was intended only to serve the present occasion, till such time as materials could have been procured for a magnificent design of an altar, con sisting of four pUlars wreathed, of the richest Greek marbles, supporting a canopy hemispherical, with proper decorations of architecture and sculpture ; for which the respective drawings and a model were prepared. Information, and particular 330 LONDON. descriptions of certain blocks of marble, Avere once sent to the right reverend Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, from a Levantine merchant in Holland, and communicated to the surveyor, but, unluckily, the colours and scantling^s did not answer his purpose : so it rested in expectance of a fitter opportunity ; else pro bably this curious and stately design had been finished at the same time with the main fabric.'' * Choral service is performed here tAvice a day (at a quarter to ten in the morning and quarter past three in the afternbon), and fcAV things can be more deliciously soothing to the " o'erwrought spirit " than to step out of the ceaseless turmoil, the petty cares and strifes of the Avorld's daily business, into the holy quiet of this place — a quiet only broken by the divine harmonies which we hear rising every now and then, in tones of solemn and almost unearthly grandeur and beauty. It may be here mentioned that on the north side of the nave, near the western extremity, there is a morning-prayer chapel, Avhere divine service is per formed every morning (Sundays excepted) at seven in summer and eight in Avinter. This chapel, Avith the Consistory Court on the opposite side of the nave, forms a kind of lesser transept, of the same breadth as, and connecte'd with, the western front, so that from the exterior it hardly looks like a transept. The organ of the choir is justly reputed one of the finest instruments in the country. It Avas erected by Schmydt about the close of the seventeenth century, Avho re ceived 2000/. for it. Interesting as St. Paul's is in its general and more essential features to all persons of Avhatever amount of taste or knoAvledge, yet it must be oAvned that a fcAV of its adjuncts enjoy at least their fair share of attention and admira tion. Nay, Ave fear the numbers are somcAvhat considerable who think a great deal less of the dome than of the ball at the top, into Avhich they themselves have actually ascended — who are much more anxious to appreciate the Avonders of the clock-work than of the architecture — whose amazement is more readily called into action by the size of the great bell than by the statement of the dimensions of St. Paul's — Avho Avould be infinitely better pleased by being able to distinguish the friendly Avhisper across the famous gallery, than to listen in aAvful silence to the voice of their own heart, Avhich such a scene is calculated to call forth, and with the happiest effects. And if we do not participate in such views, there is no doubt all these, with the other curiosities of St. Paul's, are deserving of notice. Before Ave ascend to the upper portion of t'ne building, Avhere these curiosities are to be found, Ave may mention two assemblies which annually draAV a considerable share of the popular attention to the Cathedral. These are the musical meeting for the benefit of the Sons of the Clergy in May, and the meet ing of the great body of the charity children of the metropolis (connected with the established church) in June. The origin of the former is thus described. In 1655 the Rev. G. Hall preached a sermon for the relief of the sons of such of the clergy as had been reduced to indigence for their Nonconformist principles. The appeal was so successful, that a similar one was made annually, and during the reign of Charles II. a charter was granted to the promoters of the charity, which then took the form that it still holds, of a charitable establishment for the relief of the Avidows and orphans of poor clergymen. The house is situated at * 'Parentalia.' NEW ST. PAUL'S. 331 St. John's Wood. The performances consist of a miscellaneous selection of sacred music from our great Avriters, Handel, Boyce, and others. The collections average nearly 1000/. The other meeting is one of still greater attraction. *The circle beneath the dome is now formed into an amphitheatre of seats for the five or six thousand children present, the members of the choir are placed against the organ, the area in the centre is filled with persons of rank, fashion, and intel lectual distinction, whilst the nave accommodates that portion of the public which can obtain tickets of admission. One feature of the day is certainly very touching and beautiful — the sound of so many youthful and infant voices when they join in the choruses and other portions of the service. It may be useful to add, that to these meetings, as well as to the previous rehearsals which take place on each occasion, any one can obtain admittance to the body of the church by making a contribution to the charity, which is expected to be not less than half-a-croAvn. Let us now ascend. A door in the south aisle, close to the circle, opens to a staircase Avinding upwards, and which presently conducts us to the long gaUeries over the aisles of the Cathedral, Avith their massive timber rafters overhead and along the right side. In the southern gallery we find the Library, ' founded by Bishop Compton, whose portrait adorns the walls. Here are preserved some jnanuscripts belonging to old St. Paul's, and on the table facing us as Ave enter is an open book of ancient music, Avith square notes, and Avritten on four lines only. The decorations of the room are very beau tiful : the gallery is supported by exquisitely carved oaken brackets of great size, and the floor consists of small pieces of variously-coloured oak disposed in geometric patterns. As we glance around the shelves Ave see that Chry- sostom, Cyril, Gregory, and Thomas Aquinas are somcAvhat more tolerant than usual as to their company — the golden dreamer, Plato, is amongst them. At the end of this gallery is the geometrical staircase, built by Wren, for the convenience of access to the Library. In the northern gallery is the model of the first design for St. Paul's, Avhich, however, is so badly situated, that to judge of the character of the proposed building is almost impossible. Here hang some of the tattered flags which formerly desecrated the dome. Returning to the southern gallery, a very narrow circular staircase in the southern campanile toAver leads up to the bell and clock Avorks. A strange mistake has been made Avith regard to the bell. It is continually said to be the same, only recast, as that which, from the reign of Edward I., hung in the bell-tower in front of West minster Hall, and Avhich was at first knoAvn as Edward of Westminster, and then as the Great Tom. It is true that this bell Avas given by William III. to St. Paul's, and re-cast by one Wightman, but proved so faulty, that " Sir Christopher employed Mr. Phelps (an honest and able bell-founder, as appeared by several specimens and testimonials) to make a bell proper for the clock, all of new metal ; and the agreement was so ordered, that this new bell should be delivered and approved before he was paid anything for it ; and that he should accept the bell cast by Wightman, in part of payment towards the ncAV one, so far and at so much as the weight produced at the price of old bell metal ; and Wightman's bell was likewise to remain at the Church till the neAV bell Avas approved. And there were all other due and necessary cautions used in the agreement with Mr. Phelps, as may be seen by it, at the ofiice of the works at St. Paul's. This ncAV 332 LONDON. bell, then, after trial, being found good, and approved of, Wightman's faulty bell Avas delivered to Mr. Phelps, for the balance of his account."* But we do not 'need a six-centuries' character to enable us to know that the bell of St. Paul's is a truly magnificent instrument : we are not even obliged to believe the story of the soldier, at Windsor, who saved himself from capital punishment by hearing St. Paul's strike thirteen, when it was alleged he was asleep, to teach us how far and wide its voice may be heard as it continues, hour after hour, to record the steps of Time ; or when, still more grandly, it announces the death of some distinguished personage — for on such occasions alone is Great Tom called upon to put himself in positive action, the hour being merely struck upon the bell. Its weight is 11,474 lbs., its diameter nine feet. As the mode in which it is hung is considered a good example of the methods adopted for supporting heavy bells, we subjoin a [Section of the Belfry of St. Paul's.] c c, gudgeons ou which the bell swings. A s to the clock, when we state that the dial on the exterior, the guide of innu merable minor satellites, is 57 feet in circumference, and the minute-hand 8 feet long, it will be tolerably evident the works behind must be of no ordinary calibre. If, in descending the narrow staircase, the visitor should happen to hear the hour struck, as we did, he will not speedily forget it. Returning towards the Dome and again ascending, we reach the uppermost of the two galleries which encircle it, known as the Whispering Gallery, from the circumstance that a whisper uttered in one spot may be heard right across the vast circle, to the spot directly opposite. The Whispering Gallery had formerly a higher purpose. From hence was enjoyed the best view of the paintings, by Sir James Thornhill, in the cupola above, but which are no longer distin guishable. The space is divided into eight compartments, devoted respect ively to subjects illustrative of the different events of the life of St. Paul. Sir James was paid for this work at the rate of forty shillings a square yard. It was whilst engaged in these paintings that he had so narrow an escape from instant destruction. Stepping backwards, one day, painter like, to observe the effect of * Wren's Answer to the Tract ' Frauds and Abuses at St. Patd'a.' NEW ST. PAUL'S. 333 his finishing touches upon the head of one of the Apostles, he gradually came close to the undefended edge of the scaffold. Fortunately a friend was with him, who, with admirable presence of mind, snatched up a brush and hastily smeared the picture. " Bless my soul," said the artist, rushing forward, " what have you done ?" " Only saved your life," was the reply, and there did not need many more words of explanation. Whatever the character of Sir James Thornhill's works may have been, they are, in effect, worthless now (through the damp), and thus another opportunity is afforded of decorating the Dome in the manner de signed by Wren, and on which he had evidently set his heart. He says : " The judgment of the surveyor was originally, instead of painting in the manner it is now performed, to have beautified the inside of the cupola with the more durable ornament of mosaic work, as is nobly executed in the cupola of St. Peter's, in Rome, which strikes the eye of the beholder with a most magnificent and splendid appearance ; and which, without the least decay of colours, is as lasting as marble or the building itself. For this purpose he had projected to have procured from Italy four of the most eminent artists in the profession ; but as this art was a great novelty in England, and not generally apprehended, it did not receive the encou ragement it deserved : it was imagined, also, that the expense would prove too great, and the time very long in the execution ; but though these and all objections were fully answered, yet this excellent design was no further pursued." Before we again begin to ascend towards the top of the dome, we may say a few words on the construction of that great work, which, as we stand in the whis pering-gallery, appears to terminate at no considerable height above us, but the very base of which, as it appears on the exterior, we can hardly fancy we have reached. On inquiry, therefore, we learn that the dome may be said to consist of no less than three domes, the inner one being that which is seen from the interior; the second, of brick -work, rising over this in a conical form and supporting the lantern, ball, and cross ; and the third, surrounding the second, of wood covered with lead, which is the dome seen from without. The acccompanying cut shows the outlines of these several domes or cupolas, and is further interesting as show ing the relative forms and dimensions of the four chief cupolas of modem times : the cupolas of Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence ; of St. Peter's at Rome, from which the idea of that of St. Paul's was borrowed ; and lastly, of St. Genevieve at Paris, which had St. Paul's for its exemplar.* * . The cone-shaped dome of brick is strengthened with girdles of Portland stone, around the lower part of which is inserted in a channel an immense iron chain, doubled, weighing nearly five tons. We are now once more mounting : the stairs, at first so broad, and so gentle in their elevation, become narrow and steep, and as we step out into the first gallery, the one encircling the base of what we have called the great "colonnaded pedestal" of the dome, we see we are already considerably above the level of the tallest houses around. The * Their respective external dimensions and heights are as follows : — ' External Diameter in Feet. Height from the ground-line. Santa Maria del Fiore . -. . 139 310 St. Peter at Rome .... 139 330 St. Paul's 112 215 St. Gfe^viSve, or the Pantheon, Paris 67 190 To this we may add that the circular gallery just above the external dome of St. Paul's is 274 feet 9 inches above the pavement of the uave 334 LONDON. figures on the pediment of the western front here appear of the gigantic stature they are, eleven feet, and the beautiful toAvers display their graceful outlines and decorations in an almost startlingly clear manner. But the wind is bloAving Avith such violence that Ave can hardly maintain a footing : so after a moment's pause in the enjoyment of the shelter of the doorway, listening Avith closed eyes to the sound, Avhich seems like that of a tumultuous ocean, Ave again foUoAV the apparently interminable circle for some time. Another pause ; a door is opened, and we are in the second gallery, Avhich, though still beloAV the dome, lifts us above the tops of the lofty campanile toAvers, as well as of the innumerable surrounding spires. The houses around the base of the pile are Avith diflSculty separately distinguishable ; the occupants of the streets begin, like the fishermen in Shak spere's well-known passage, of which we are instinctively reminded, to " appear NEW ST. PAUt'S. 335 like mice." But we must not lose time. We have as yet accomplished Uttle more than half our journey. A narrow door in the external wall noAv opens for our admission, and our way lies through the almost impenetrable gloom of the interior of the chief dome. All about us are gigantic ribs of the vast body of the dome, looming through the darkness. Now in this direction, noAV that, shoots upAvard through the whole .the felt but unseen staircase. At every turn there is a kind of unpleasant suspicion of the possibility of finding some un guarded spot, some accidental opening in the Ioav rails, through which one may plunge suddenly into the unfathomable abyss. But there is no fear. Ah, light again ! Another door, and gallery ; but how small the circle it makes ! yes, we are above the dome. We must loqk down for the western toAvers. As to London, it seems little else than one dense mass of house-tops, chimneys, and spires^ shutting in the Cathedral on all sides, and extending to beyond the scope of our vision, the whole seen but dimly through the thick atmosphere. The Thames, however, has become a conspicuous object from its form and colour, and we know that those dark lines across at intervals are the different bridges. The rest of our Avay lies through the upper portion of the brick cone before mentioned, and the elegant lantern it supports. It is well that our fair readei's can accompany us in these pages, for we should otherwise have to part company speedily. The ascent, growing more and more difiicult, is at last accomplished only by perpendicular ladders rising from one stage to another. The last of these ladders admits us through a little square aperture to a narrow chamber in the small dome immediately below the open support of the ball and cross. Forcing ourselves with difficulty into the circle of slender iron pillars in the centre bf the chamber, we must noAV advance merely by the assistance of the small projections placed against the masonry on one side, and by our grasp of tAVO of the pillars. The top of this reached, Ave pass through a circular opening just large enough to admit a man of ordinary bulk, and we are suddenly standing in a place open on all sides to the sky from the feet upwards, and scarcely large , enough to admit of any companionship. Above us we look into the dark ball. We would fain look down, but such a place and such a height require a little time to habituate ourselves to both, as well as a powerful vision to enjoy the prospect. We may add, also, firm nerves are useful. With these requisites, the view from hence during the clear and serene mornings of summer, before a. natural pr artificial cloud of any consequence rests on the sky above, or on the sleeping and wonderful world below, must be such that it would be difficult to pai-allel either in its physical or moral features. Who has not read and en joyed the description of the mornings spent in this Avay by the painter of the Diorama noAv in the Colosseum ? Who that has seen that Avork— as faithful as it is beautiful— but must be struck Avith the change Avhich the same panorama presents to our vicAV at this season and hour, as, Avith a foot on each side of the circular aperture beloAV, Ave turn round in our narroAV and gilded cage, and look down — but our head grows dizzy — speculations as to the solidity of these bars Avhich alone hem us in Avill intrude— we begin half to doubt whether, if one of them were suddenly to fall, Ave should not yield to that strange fascination Avhich most persons must have felt on looking from some great height, and try a less 336 LONDON. tedious mode of descent than the actual one. That consideration is quite enough to quicken our departure. As we descend we suddenly catch the sound of the organ, pealing upwards in tones of inexpressible beauty : it is the afternoon service ; we shall yet be in time to be present, and allow the mind to re-assume the feelings which more fitly harmonise with the objects of the structure. [The Choir.] [Interior View of St. Paul's— The Dome and Tranajpu.j XCVIL— NEW ST. PAUL'S. No. IL Standing the other day before one of the monuments in this Cathedral, and allowing our thoughts to glide insensibly into the train suggested by the " classic ' character of the sculpture, we could not help wondering what would be the nature of the impressions made upon the mind of a Grecian sculptor of the age of Praxi teles or Phidias, could his shade be allowed to revisit the earth, and to wander awhile among the monuments of St. Paul's. The fancy seemed a pleasing one; aiid pursuing it, we fell into a kind of reverie, in which, whilst we gradually lost all consciousness of time and of the gazers moving to and fro, the monuments, on the contrary, seemed to stand out from their alcoves and recesses unusually sharp and distinct both in their general outlines and in their minuteness of deco rative detail. Presently we became aware of two figures by our side, who were engaged in an animated conversation. The little of their dialogue we could catch ran to something of the following purport : — " And what has been the effect on Art of all these marvellous changes you describe in the religion, morals, and manners of the world, during these two or taree thousand years ; and, more particularly, in my own department, sculpture f Art, to be true to its own first principle — Truth — must be an exponent of what 11 sees of beauty or sublimity in the double world around it, — nature and man. VOL. IV a 338 LONDON. These materials by its own inherent powers it idealises — making the beauty more beautiful, the sublimity still more sublime. The new work then returns to the people, from whom so much of it Avas derived : their sympathies — nay, their vani ties are excited by the partial reflection of themselves ; and thus the artist obtains a vantage-ground to raise them to the contemplation of higher things — to bring them, in a word, nearer to his oavu level. From their improvement he again de rives fresh strength; and thus Art and the enjoyers of Art act and re-act upon one another, to their constant and mutual improvement. In this Ave see but the beautiful harmonies and reciprocities of Nature generally— the ceaseless circle she so delights in ; with the difference — glorious privilege of Man ! — that he at the same time goes forward. These considerations render me unable even to guess what new form sculpture can have- assumed to be Avorthy of what you tell me of the greatness of your country. I can only fear our works must have faded from your recollection, from the difiiculty of making any practical use of them in a state of society so essentially different." " Hem ! hem ! Why, no, we have managed that pretty well. If you look round, you will see that a forgetfulness of either Grecian or Roman sculpture is the last fault with which Ave can be chargeable. Here, for instance, is the monu ment to a zealous and intrepid soldier, Major-General Hay, Avhere we have intro duced a naked figure of Valour to support the dying man, although he is in his proper military uniform as an officer of the nineteenth century, and the rank of soldiers there, Avith the short square-tailed jackets, are in theirs. I flatter myself that does not look like forgetfulness." " You jest ; this medley must be caricature." " Jest ? If you read the inscription, you will see it was erected at the ' public expense ' of a people not at all remarkable for levity, more particularly where thousands of pounds are concerned." " I must see further before I ask for any explanation of the many difiSculties that crowd upon me. Yet there is one question I should be glad to have answered. How do the people — having, as you before explained, lost the faith Avhich with us made these impersonations of Valour and other deities a stirring impulse to the hearts and minds of those who gazed upon them — how do they relish such (to them) cold abstractions ; or, rather, how do they know this figure means Valour at all ?" " We tell them so." " Ah, that is indeed an answer ! You open a melancholy prospect ; but go on." " Well, here is a monument by a mightier hand. This is by Banks, in memory of a naval hero who fell in one of our great victories, the battle of the Nile ; a locality marked, as you perceive, by the sphynxes and palm-trees, and by the river god himself. The hero is falling into the arms of Victory" " Who is almost thrown off her balance by the weight, and, instead of keeping him up, seems likely to fall herself, and in a not very dignified or decorous manner. The idea, however, is ingenious — the fall of so great a man overpowers for the moment even Victory ; and the sculptor has exhibited considerable tact in choosinof the precise moment that shows this, and yet leaves it to be inferred and hoped that the goddess may recover herself Are these the only kind of monuments that I am to expect ? — for, if so, I will not trouble you any further." NEW ST. PAUL'S. 339 « Pause one moment before this, and then perhaps I may better satisfy you. The ship's prow and other devices on the base show you it is a naval monument. The hero is Captain Faulkner, who fell in maintaining a contest for five hours with a much stronger French frigate." " Do your English captains, then, like our athletae of old, go naked into battle ?" " Excuse a smile at your question : they do not. But we consider the costume of our own time too suggestive of a matter-of-fact spirit ; and we imitate you we desire to cultivate the ideal." "Imitate us ! — the ideal ! — is it possible ? Why, my friend, this figure is posi tively revolting to me, from the absence of anything not mischievous that my imagination can take hold of. It is simply and truly a colossal piece of nudity, only the more striking for the paltry strip of drapery that hangs from one shoulder, and from the prim garb in which Victory is arrayed as she presents the sword." " I fear you are right ; for about the period of its erection it is said that certain parties were so struck by this effect, as to induce them to apply to the artist to add a little to the breadth of the drapery. But come, here at least, in the southern aisle, is a work better calculated to please your somewhat fastidious taste. This is the monument to Lord Collingwood, by Westmacott. I will read you the description of it given in the • Guide Book.' ' The moment chosen by the sculptor for illustration in this monument is, the arrival of the remains of the Admiral on the British shore. The body, shrouded in the colours torn from the enemy, is represented on the deck of a man-of-war ; the sword of the hero, which he used with so much glory to himself, and to a grateful country, is in his hand. In the foreground, attended by the genii of his confluent streams, is Thames, in a cumbent posture, thoughtfully regarding Fame, who from the prow of the ship reclines over the illustrious admiral, proclaiming his heroic achievements.' " &c. " The pervading principle of Grecian sculpture was simplicity ; but then, it is true, we had not the ' Guide Book.' How much Ave had to learn ! The general grouping of this work I admire; the separate figures are excellent; that of Thames, when you can manage to forget the associations raised by the babes playing about his knee, has a lofty and severe air, in which I recognise something kindred to the old spirit ; yet, with us, the general effect of a work — the senti ment expressed at once by it to the mind of ordinary spectators — was so pre-emi nently the object of the sculptor's toil and ambition, that a compliment to any of the lesser points, whilst that was passed by in significant silence, would haA'e been the signal for the artist instantly to break up his work, and re-task his energies for a race where success was indeed glory. What sentiment, at once simple and forcible, does this convey? That exquisite bit of Avorkmanship there on the latter part of the ship is, for this reason, to me, worth all the rest. The delicate continuous scroll enA'eloping the different phases of the story suggests but to the eye — what the examination of each confirms to the mind — the beauty and completeness of the thought. We do not need your Guide Book here to tell us the meaning of the boyish form gazing upon the movements of the 'Nautilus' in one compartment; or of his trusting himself so doubtfully to a frail bark with a flowing streamer, in imitation of the ' Nautilus's ' sail in the next, or the rude support for the sail he has raised in a third, whilst looking upwards to the star* z2 340 LONDON. thai guide his course ; or of the compass in his hands in the fourth ; or, lastly, of the weapons he finds it necessary to forge for defence in the fifth. In that space of three or four feet long by only a few inches broad, you have a history of Navi gation, which Art may be proud of." " Under the windoAV there, at the farther end of this transept, is another work by the same artist. Sir Ralph Abercromby's memorial.'' " Aye, this is truly a step upwards. Here we can understand an entire work without the aid of the ' Guide.' The death-wound given in the moment of con flict — the fall from the horse into the arms of an attendant soldier, and the scene — Egypt — marked by the sphynxes on each side, express at least an inte resting fact in a vigorous and truthful manner. But it does more than this. The choice of these Egyptian symbols is truly artistical. Remaining to this hour one of the most characteristic features of that ancient kingdom, the mind at once acknowledges the propriety of their presence, as a means of marking the scene of the event commemorated ; and then gazing upon their passionless yet high and solemn countenances, imbibes an influence felt, but indescribable, which affects the aspect of the whole work : the sculptor, in short, has idealised it by their means. What is that monument which caught my -eye to the right of the en trance into the innermost part of the structure ?" " You mean Flaxman's memorial to Nelson, our great naval hero. There it is." " I begin now to perceive you may have a great English school of sculpture, if your sculptors wiU but understand their deficiencies. Cut away this feeble moral on the one side, Britannia and the two boys she is bidding to look up to their exemplar, do the same with the still feebler allegorical lion on the other, and you have a truly great work — a representation of your hero as simple and austere as it is grand and expressive. It is very unlike a Grecian hero, it is true — and there lies one of its merits — the artist is not ashamed of his own coun try, but shows us, as he ought, an English warrior in an English garb. Yet neither this nor the other monuments of merit I see here and there around us speak' to me as they ought of the acknowledged genius of your country. You tell me of the superiority of your religion and morals to those we cherished — of our love for physical and yours for mental and moral beauty and grandeur; surely that superiority should evidence itself in your arts. Yet what is there among these productions, which include, it appears, some by all your best artists, that can possibly be to your posterity, two thousand years hence, what ours, you tell me, are still to you ? You are silent. Well, let us change the subject. I see, from the great number of the monuments to naval and military men, that Ave must be in a temple dedicated in some way or other to their worship, or, pardon me, to their honour. If I might venture to guess its name, I think I should not be far wrong. There must be some latent idea in the great number of shapes I see representative of the God of Victory — is it not some kind of Temple of Victory ?" With the echoes of a loud burst of laughter ringing, as it seemed, in our ears, the reverie was broken. The monument before which we had been standing, whilst fancy had been so busy, was Chantrey's striking work to the memory of Major-General Houghton, where the dying General is seen rising for a moment to direct his men in a sue- NEW ST. PAUL'S. 34i. cessful charge, but which is deformed by the eternal conceit of a Victory, or some mythological personage, appearing in the field of battle to crown the fallen warrior. But — the consideration is forced on us — what have such works to do with a place of religious worship ? There must be something indeed inexpressibly shocking to a pure and devout mind, filled with the spirit of Him who came to preach "Peace on earth, good will among men," to find the records of deeds of violence and slaughter intruded upon his notice, in the very temples where he might least expect to find such associations. War may be necessary, and, as a consequence, some form of " hero-worship ;" but it is truly humiliating to find a Christian country and a Christian government so inconsistent as to make every pier and window and recess in our chief Cathedral repeat the same melancholy story .of war — war — still everywhere war. There are now about forty-eight monu ments in St. Paul's, of which there are but seven devoted to other than naval and military men. The recklessness with which such monuments have been determined on is no less striking ; we have had in half a century forty-one heroes, or we have, in many cases, expended our money and degraded the art in cutting in stone " paragraphs of military gazettes," to use Flaxman's phrase. And if, as it often happens, there be in the lives of such men some delightful incident which would really render their memory dear to us, that, be sure> is forgotten. Here is a signal instance in this monument by Rossi, where Victory and Fame, seated at the two corners, in a posture as unbecoming as it must be uncomfortable, are placing medallions of Captains Mosse and Riou on the front of the work. The inscription does tell something more, for it records an act of intrepidity of RIou's, in the preservation of a ship under his command, not unworthy of remem brance. But this friend of Nelson's, this seaman of whom Southey, alluding to his death, says, that " except it had been Nelson himself, the British navy could not have suffered a severer loss," was something better and higher still. Before the fleet left our shores for Denmark in 1801, some Danes in Riou's frigate, the ' Amazon,' learning the place of their destination, went to him, and entreated that he would get them exchanged into some other ship not included in the pro posed expedition. They assured him they had no wish to quit the British service ; but begged most earnestly that they might not be sent to fight against their own country. " There was not," says Southey, " in our whole navy a man who had a higher and more chivalrous sense of duty than Riou. Tears came into his eyes while the men were speaking. Without making any reply, he instantly ordered his boat, and did not return to the ' Amazon ' tiU he could tell them that their wish was effected."* During the tremendous battle of Copenhagen, Riou, whilst endeavouring to obey Sir Hyde Parker's signal of retreat, was exposed to a most murderous fire. Although he had been already wounded in the head, he took his place upon a gun to encourage his men. First, his clerk was kiUed by his side ; then several of the seamen, who were hauling in the main brace, were swept away. " Come then, my boys," was Riou's address to the others, " let us all die together." The words had scarcely left his mouth, when he feU dead, cut in two by a raking shot. We must dismiss the remaining monuments of the class in question, by merely recalling to the recollection of those who have seen them, or suggesting as worthy of examination to those who have not, the noble * ' Life of Nelson,' in ' Family Library,' p. 228. 342 LONDON. figure of Lord Duncan by Westmacott, Chantrey's powerful battle-pieces, the Cadogan and Bowes memorials, and the recently erected statue of Sir Puilcney Malcolm, by the same artist. The more ambitious works we have passed un noticed speak very loudly for themselves. Among this host of heroes, seven men of pacific eminence have been conde scendingly admitted, and very ingenious and thoughtful seem to have been the arrangements. Thus we have two bishops, Fanshaw Middleton and Heber, a considerate compliment to the church in Avhich the heroes have been so kindly treated ; one philosopher, Johnson ; one philanthropist, Howard ; one artist, Rey nolds ; one physician, Babington ; and as a mere poet would have been, perhaps, too greatly honoured in being chosen, a kind of medley of all the foregoing, added to some poetical reputation, makes up the seventh in Sir William Jones. Of these the memorials of the three first alone demand notice. Johnson's, by Bacon, is often the subject of high praise ; and, no doubt, if it Avere the memorial of some Stoic of the earlier ages of the world, or of some bulky philosopher of the Avoods, it would be indeed a masterly performance; but — the desire may be a very foolish and inartistical one — we confess we Avould rather see Johnson in a representation of the author of the ' Rambler ' than all the Stoics of ancient Greece. Howard's and Reynolds' statues are among the finest works in the whole Cathedral — the first, from the perfect and impressive manner in which the history of a life is told in the simplest manner, by the key in his hand,, the chains at his feet, and the dungeon scene in the bas-relief of the base ; and the second, for the graceful, serene dignity Avhich so happily represents the original, as well as for the unob trusive manner in which we are reminded of him who was little less than an object of idolatry with Reynolds, Michael Angelo, by the medallion-portrait on the pedestal, to which our great painter's fingers seem, as they rest on the latter, unconsciously to point. The sculpture is by a kindred spirit, Flaxman. If, for the reasons before given, the sculpture in St. Paul's be little else than a desecration of the sacred edifice to the devout, and a barbarism from its inajipli- cability to every man of refinement, there is an incident in the history of the edifice, the mere remembrance of which may well make both classes doubly im patient : the what is is so strikingly contrasted with the what might have been. The reader will remember Wren's intentions (as pointed out in our last number) with regard to the sumptuous altar-piece and the mosaic dome : let him suppose these views carried out, and then the views developed in the following passage from Northcote's ' Life of Reynolds,' and imagine what a scene of splendour St. Paul's would have become : " The Chapel of Old Somerset House, which had been given by His Majesty to the Royal Academy, was mentioned one evening at the meeting [of the members] as a place which offered a good opportunity of convincing the public at large of the advantages that would arise from ornament ing cathedrals and churches Avith the productions of the pencil : productions which might be useful in their effect, and at the same time not likely to give offence in a Protestant country. The idea Avas therefore started, that if the mem bers should ornament this chapel, the example might thus afford an opening for the introduction of the art into other places of a similar nature, and Avhich, as it was then stated, would not only present a new and noble scene of action that might become highly ornamental to the kingdom, but would be in some measure NEW ST. PAUL'S. 343 absolutely necessary for the future labour of the numerous students educated under the auspices of the Royal Academy. All the members were struck with the propriety, and even with the y>robability of success that attended the scheme ; but Sir Joshua Reynolds, in particular, immediately took it up on a bolder plan, and offered an amendment, saying, that instead of the chapel, they should fly at once at higher game, and undertake St. Paul's Cathedral. The grandeur and magnificent liberality of this idea immediately gained the suffrages and plaudits of all present, and the President was empowered to make the proper application to the Dean and Chapter : an application which was immediately acceded to on their part. At that time Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, Avas Dean of St. Paul's, who was a strong advocate in favour of their scheme. A meeting of the Academy then took place, Avhen six artists Avere chosen for the attempt ; these were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. West, the present President, Barry, Dance, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffman. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures also took up the business, and added four artists to the original number. The subject which Sir Joshua proposed to execute was that of the .Virgin and Christ in the Manger, or the Nativity. But the whole plan was set aside in consequence of Dr. Terrick, then Bishop of London, having refused his consent." This has been noticed by Barry in one of his letters, where he says, " Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had undertaken the management of this business, informed me last Monday, after his return from Plympton, where he was chosen mayor, that the Archbishop of Canterbury ahd Bishop of London had never given any consent to it, and that ajl thoughts of it must consequently drop." The Dean (Bishop Newton) has also left an account of this splendid offer, and its reception, with some addi tional particulars. He says, "The Dean [himself], in the fullness of his heart, went to communicate it to the great patron of arts, and readily obtained his royal consent and approbation ;" and half intimates that it was from jealousy of his having thus anticipated his ecclesiastical superior that the latter refused his consent, although the plea was — the noise and clamour that would be excited against the measure as an artful introduction of Popery. To some such miserable feeling we certainly owe this great national loss, for Dr. Terrick had himself sanctioned the setting up a picture of the Annunciation, by Cipriani, in his own College Chapel, Clare Hall, Cambridge, and, when pressed to admit only two pictures by way of experiment in St. Paul's, returned an equally ungracious refusal. These two were to have adorned the compartments over the doors leading from the choir into the north and south aisles ; the painters named were Reynolds and West, the former having, as before mentioned, the Nativity for his subject, the latter the Giving of the Two Tables to Moses from the Cloud of Glory : " Here," as the Dean remarks, " was the beginning both of the Law and the Gospel." To appreciate the value and self-sacrifice of the artists in this offer, it is only necessary to give a single illustration— Reynolds ob tained twelve hundred guineas for the picture with which he had proposed to commence at St. Paul's. Allan Cunningham, alluding apparently to the Royal Academy, says, the rejection of this offer is •' considered as an injury deserving anuual reprobivtlon." It Is pleasant to see such a fecUng among our chief artists ; but a repetition of the offer from them would be pleasanter still, and might be more successful. What say they ? It is but justice to the memory of the warm- 344 LONDON. hearted and persevering Dean to state that, having failed one way to introduce the Arts, he tried another. He left, by his will, five hundred pounds for the erection of a monument in the Cathedral; but the ecclesiastical heads were as obdurate as ever. And it was not till 1791 that any relaxation of the severe rule of exclusion took place : Howard's statue was then admitted, and soon after Johnson's. How widely the doors were subsequently thrown open we have already seen. " Is there no monument here to Wren ?" is, no doubt, a question often asked, before that inscription over the entrance into the choir has been noticed, but never after. In the few concluding words — " If you would behold his monu ment, look around you" — a monument has been raised, Avhich makes the cold frigidities of the greater part of the surrounding sculpture positively painful to contemplate. Let us hasten to a more interesting spot. Wren himself lies below in the Crypt, or vaults, a solemn and mysterious looking place, dimly lighted at intervals by the faint beams which alone penetrate into their depths. ~ . -..* - . I. *¦ Tombut till- Chrislopher Wren.] Tread reverently on these stones as you move forAvard — great men repose be neath. Mark the names which those half-illegible letters form : Sir Thomas Lawrence, Benjamin West, John Opie, James Barry, Sir Joshua Reynolds-^-a company that may well make death itself proud — gathered together into those few yards of space. Step a little farther, and you add Fuseli's name to the list. Near the men Avhose works he had so appreciated, and so enthusiastically striven to introduce into his Cathedral, is the grave of Bishop Newton. And, lastly, in the same aisle, in appropriate juxtaposition, the tombs of Mylne and Rennie, the engineers and architects, both men who have adorned their country with some of her most useful and grandest Avorks. The Blackfriars Bridge of the one, and the Waterloo and Southwark Bridges and the famous Breakwater of the other, promise to both a long period of fame, Avhich men of equal merit in other departments of art and science can scarcely hope to enjoy. Penetrating still farther into the crypt, along the middle avenue, where the massive character of the piers and arches and pillars constantly remind you that St. Paul's is upon them, the guide lights his lantern, and the grandly picturesque NEW ST. PAUL'S. 345 resting-place of Nelson is before us in the centre of a circle of piUars directly below the dome. The sarcophagus we see was originally prepared by Cardinal Wolsey for his own interment in the chapel at Windsor, but unused on account of his disgrace, and subsequently forgotten. On the top of the sarcophagus are Nelson's coronet iand certain knightly emblems ; the latter having a suggestive value, which changes what would be otherwise a mere heraldic absurdity into some thing appropriate and forcible. They seem to remind us that, if the age of chivalry has gone, never perhaps did the spirit of chivalry burn more brightly than ill the breast of our great naval commander. There are events in his Ufe as a man which rival some of the most touching stories of the world's history, and which would make his name an honoured one, were it possible that the events of his profes sional history could be forgotten. Two incidents in particular rise to the recollec tion, and these are not the only ones of the kind to be found. In the night attack on Teneriffe, where our forces were defeated, he received so severe a wound in his arm, that he must have perished in the boat where he was, but for the assistance rendered him during all the hurry and excitement of the scene ; which assistance, of course, was of the rudest kind. The first vessel the retreating boat came across was the Seahorse, commanded by Captain Freemantle, whose newly-married bride was on board. Faint as he was, however, he iftsisted on being carried to another vessel, saying, " I had rather suffer death than alarm Mrs. Freemantle by letting her see me in this state, when 1 can give her no tidings whatever of her husband ;" and so they went on till another was found. It was that wound which caused the loss of his arm, and three months of intense agony before the amputated limb healed. The other incident occurred during the battle of the Nile, when a piece of langridge-shot laid bare his forehead to the bone, and blinded him. He thought the wound was mortal. As soon as he was brought to the cockpit, the surgeon came running to assist him, not unnaturally forgetting every one else around in the appalling danger of losing his commander. " No," said Nelson, quietly, " I will take my turn with my brave fellows ;" and he rigidly kept his determination. Who can wonder at the idolatry of the sailors for such a man, or help sympathising in their delight when " Saint Nelson's " turn did come at last, and the dreaded wound was pronounced superficial ? His prayer before the battle of Trafalgar, and the circumstances of his death in it, reveal another phase of his character, StiU more deserving of honour and imitation. " May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory, and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity, after victory, be the predominant feature in the British fleet," &c. That these were no empty words, the sad issue of that battle as regards him reminds us but too painfully. Twice did he order his own men to cease firing into the French ship, the Redoubtable, which was alongside, thinking she had struck ; but his humanity towards his enemies had outrun their desire to avail themselves of it : he was mistaken, and from that ship received his death-wound soon after. His last words were, " I thank God, I have done my duty ;" and they found solemn response in the anguish with which his countrymen generaUy of all classes and parties received the news of their bereavement. They could think little of the great victory that had been achieved : it appeared at the best only a fatal success. And as the first effects of the blow wore off, and the funeral rites had to 346 LONDON. be paid to the hero's remains, the anxiety of the nation generally to lavish all conceivable honours upon them is almost without parallel. At the Nore the body Avas shifted from the coffin in which it had been brought home, and placed in another, the history of Avhich forms an interesting episode in Nelson's life. After the battle of the Nile, part of the mainmast of I'Orient, the French ship which blew up with so terrible an explosion during that battle, was picked up by Captain Halliwell of the Swiftsure. Some time after Nelson received the strange present described in the following letter : — " Sir, 1 have taken the liberty of presenting you a coflSn made from the mainmast of I'Orient, that, when you have finished your military career in this world, you may be buried in one of your military trophies. But that that period may be far distant is the earnest Avish of your sincere friend, Benjamin Halliwell." Nelson not only accepted the coflSn in the spirit in which it was offered, but caused it to be placed upright against the bulkhead of his cabin, behind the chair in which he usually sat. He Avas persuaded, however, to remove it out of sight by a faithful and attached servant, and ultimately it was sent to his upholsterer in London. Before leaving London for the last time, he called on the upholsterer, and desired him to engrave the history of the coflffn on its lid, remarking that it was highly probable he might want it on his return. After lying in state in the Painted Chamber at Greenwich, the body Avas brought in procession to Whitehall Stairs, the sombre but magnificent pageant comprising, first, four principal barges, then the barges of the King, the Lords of the Admiralty, the Lord Mayor, and each of the civic companies, the whole flanked by gun and other boats keeping clear the line of progress, and moving to the sound of the 'Dead March in Saul,' and the occasional booming of the artillery at the ToAver and other places passed. From thence the body was conveyed to the Admiralty for the night. The next day, Januarj'9, 1806, the grand procession to St. Paul's thronged the streets with the densest multitude ever perhaps col lected in them. To describe the pageant would occupy many pages. Suffice it, therefore, to say that, from the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York and Cla rence downwards, all that was distinguished in rank, as well as all that Avas illus trious in judicial, legal, or political station, Avas present. Hardy and a little band of the other dear companions of the dead chief were objects of especial interest. So Avere those veterans, forty-eight in number, chosen from Nelson's oAvn ship, from among Nelson's OAvn men. The marked attention to these men is one of the most delightful evidences of the spirit in Avhich the funeral Avas conducted. Around the opening in the pavement beneath the centre of the dome, where the body Avas to be loAvered into the vaults, they took precedence even of the blood of royalty itself, forming a circle round the beloved remains they Avere soon to behold no more. Beyond them Avas a starred and gartered multitude, with all the lesser personages of distinction who had shared in the procession ; then a clear space, like a broad encircling ring, the outer line of AvhIch Avas formed by the Highland soldiers, Avho had been with Abercromby in Egypt; and, lastly, a lofty amphi theatre of densely packed human faces, Avith other ranges, branching off Avithout interruption along the nave to the very entrance doors. As the afternoon came on a magnificent effect was given to the scene by an octagonal lantern, covered with innumerable lamps, suspended from the centre of the dome. But there were NEW ST. PAUL'S. 347 feelings at work that made the moral grandeur of the scene far outstrip the phy- sical, unprecedented as that seems to have been. Could Nelson have been sensible of all that passed, we doubt not he would have felt more deeply the touching incident that marked the lowering of his body into the grave than aU the honours of the magnificent ceremonial. Nelson's flag was to have been placed [Monument over Nelson's body in the Crypt.] by his side in the grave ; but, just as it was about to be lowered for that pur pose, the sailors, moved by one impulse, rent it in pieces, keeping each a frag ment. Lord Collingwood, in accordance with his own request, lies near Nelson, beneath a plain altar-tomb. Retracing our steps, we meet with the graves of Dr. Boyce, next to Purcell perhaps the greatest English musician, and of George Dance, the architect, and last survivor of the original forty of the Academy. But what is this dark recess in the eastern wall, Avhere all sorts of grotesque or mutilated figures are dimly descried ? " They are the remains of the monuments of Old St. Paul's," we are told ; and the guide, ascending the platform of the recess with his lantern, the cause of their grotesque appearance in the gloom is explained. One statue of goodly aspect, and in complete armour, has lost its legs : strange enough to say, that is supposed to be Elizabeth's dancing Lord ChanceUor. Two others, male and female, that appeared to be equally deprived of their fair proportions, Ave noAV see are in a sitting posture, a third is noseless, a fourth still more exten sively mutilated. Among the additional remains Avhich have been recognised are the efiSgies of Sir Nicholas Bacon, in full armour, bare-headed, and of Dean Colet. Of all the figures here, but one remains perfect, and that is Donne, the poet, whose whole history is a kind of serious but deeply interesting romance, and in which this effigy itself forms not the least unromantic feature. Why this statue is not carefully cleaned, and placed in one of the best parts of the Cathe- 348 LONDON. dral, it is impossible to say. St. Paul's certainly does not possess any other relic of half its interest — the history of the Cathedral presents no name that is calcu lated to shed so much lasting honour upon it as the poet-dean's. There is a pride of ancestry which every one can appreciate : such was Donne's, who could point to his descent by the mother's side from the author of the ' Utopia.' His father was a merchant, Avho bred him so carefully at home, that when, at the age of eleven, he was sent to college, some one gave " this censure of him," says de lightful old Izaak Walton : " that this age had. brought forth another Picus Mirandola ; of Avhom story says that he was rather born than made wise by study." Donne's parents Avere Roman Catholics, who were anxious that he should remain in the same faith, but the continual mingling through all his studies with Protestants naturally compelled him to think of the respective merits of the two creeds, and he had the additional motive that he was unable to take honours on account of the oath then administered. Accordingly, at the age of nineteen he set down in earnest to the inquiry, and, in a spirit which demands the warmest admiration, " he proceeded, " he says, " with humility and diffidence in himself; and by that which he took to be the safest Avay — namely, frequent prayer, and an indifferent affection to both parties." It does not seem, however, that his judgment rose satisfied from the inquiry : as no result is giA'en by Walton. After travelling abroad for some years he became secretary to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, an event which materially influenced all Donne's subsequent life. In the Chancellor's household was a young gentlewoman, niece to the Lady Ellesmere, and daughter to Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, who attracted Donne's attention : an acquaintance Avas formed which soon ripened into love, and mutual promises Avere interchanged before probably either Avas aware of the severity of the opposition that would be offered. Sir George, the moment he received intimations of what was passing, removed her into the country, which seems to have only brought matters to a speedier issue : they Avere married, and in secret. The rage of Sir George was unbounded, and sought the most unnatural modes of gratification. He would not rest till he obtained Donne's discharge from Lord EUesmere's service, though the latter, in reluc tantly acceding to his wishes, observed, " He parted with a friend, and such a secretary as was fitter to serve a king than a subject." It may give the reader a foretaste of the peculiarities of Donne as an author, to state that in the letter to his wife announcing this melancholy news, he thus subscribed his name : — " John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done." Sir George further threw his son-in-law into prison, with the friends who had assisted at his marriage. The imprisonment, however, does not appear to have been protracted. Another misery now awaited him. His wife was kept from him, and only obtained back through the medium of " a long and restless suit in laAv," Avhich took aAvay nearly the whole of his little patrimony. " Silence and sub mission," observes Walton, " are charming qualities, and work most upon pas sionate men." Sir George relented in some degree ; and, as a first evidence of his altered feelings, endeavoured to obtain his son-in-law's restoration to the secretaryship. Lord EUesmere's answer was in itself a punishment for all the violence he had exhibited : " That though he was unfeignedly sorry for what he had done, yet it was inconsistent with his place and credit to discharge and re- NEW ST. PAUL'S. 349 admit servants at the request of passionate petitioners." Most men, under such circumstances, would have endeavoured to do all for Donne and his wife that their own power, at least, enabled them to do : Sir George, however, having given them his paternal blessing, left them to live as they might, and die, apparently, if they could find no mode of living. It is difiicult to imagine a more melancholy posi tion than Donne's at this time : his own privations and sufferings were nothing in comparison with those he saw inflicted on his beloved wife, who had been nursed in the lap of luxury, and accustomed to have her lightest wishes anticipated, her hghtest troubles made a matter of anxious attention. But there was something about Donne which seems to have won upon every heart that he came in contact with except Sir George's : in the midst of tbeir distress Sir Francis Wolly of Pir- ford " entreated " them to make his house their home. They did so, and there " remained with much freedom to themselves, and equal content to him, for some years ; and as their charge increased — she had yearly a child — so did his love and bounty." Circumstances now began to try searchingly the depths of Donne's character. Dr. Morton, then only a beneficed clergyman, sent for him one day, and told him he had a proposition to make to him, but which he would not declare till Donne had promised him to think it over for three days before giving his answer. The promise was given ; and then the good bishop, telling him he was no stranger to his necessities, said, " The King hath yesterday made me Dean of Gloucester, and I am also possessed of a benefice, the profits of which are equal to those of my deanery ; I will think my deanery enough for my maintenance — who am, and resolve to die, a single man — and Avill quit my benefice, and estate you in it — which the patron is willing I shall do — if God shall incline your heart to embrace this motion," &c. Donne received this remarkable offer with a " faint breath and perplexed countenance," showing the inward conflict that at once began, but departed in silence according to his promise. We wish our space admitted of our transcribing his answer in his own words ; as it is, we can only observe that, with a heart " full of humility and thanks,'' he declined the offer, partly on account of " some irregularities " of his early life, which he thought might dishonour the sacred calling, partly that as God's glory should be the first end, and a maintenance only the second motive, to embrace the church, he could not clearly satisfy himself that it would be so with him in his present condi tion, and partly because there were other reasons, which he craved leave to forbear expressing ; but Avhich, no doubt, were connected with the undecided nature of his rehgious tenets. On the death of his noble patron. Sir Francis, he took a house at Mitcham, in Surrey, where his pecuniary diificulties recommenced; nearly his whole dependence being some 80/. a-year, wrung from his father-in- law a little before. A second patron again partially relieved him. This was Sir Robert Drewry, " who assigned him and his wife a useful apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his, in all their joys and sorrows." Soon after occurred one of the most interesting passages in Donne's life. Sir Robert, determining to go with Lord Hay on his embassy to France, desired Donne to accompany him. His wife, at the time near her con finement, ill in health and low in spirits, begged him not to leave her, saying, " Her divining soul boded her some iU m his absence :"— the affectionate husband 350 LONDON. at once agreed. But Sir Robert again pressed so earnestly, that Donne, in a chivalrous sense of gratitude, again sought his Avife's consent. It was given, aiid they parted. The following verses belong to this period and severance. We omit the commencement : — " Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul in sense cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined. That ourselves know'not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind. Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two soul?, therefore, which are one. Though I must go, endure not yet • A breach, but an expansion. Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are tAvo so As stiff twin compasses are two : Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move ; but doth if the other do. And though it in the centre sit. Yet when the other far doth roam. It leans, and hearkens after it ; And grows erect when that comes home. Such Wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run : Thy firmness makes my circle just. And makes me end where I begun."* Whilst in Paris, Donne was one day left alone for a short time in a room where he and Sir Robert and other friends had been dining. " To this place," accord ing to Izaak Walton's narrative, " Sir Robert returned within half an hour ; and, as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone ; but in such an ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him : insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his ab sence. To which Mr. Donne Avas not able to make a present ansAver ; but, after a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, ' I have seen a dreaidful vision since I saw you : I have seen my dear Avife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms : this I have seen since I saw you.' To which Sir'Robert replied : ' Sure, sir, you have slept since 1 saw you ; and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now aAvake ! ' To Avhich Mr. Donne's reply was : ' I cannot be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you ; and am as sure that, at her second appearing, she stopped, and looked me in the face, and vanished.' A servant was immediately sent off to England to satisfy Dunne, who returned on the twelfth day with the intelligence that Mrs. Donne had been delivered of a dead child, after a long and dangerous labour, on the same day and about the same hour of the supposed appearance of the apparition." At length a more powerful patron took Donne by the hand — no less a personage than the King (James), who was so pleased with the substance of a conversation he chanced to engage the poet in respecting the Oath of Supremacy and Alle- * Transcribed from the recent handsome edition of Doane'i Works by the Rev. Henry Alford. NEW ST. PAUL'S. 351 giance, as to bid him put his matter into a methodical form. Hence resulted in SIX weeks Donne's ' Pseudo-Martyr.' James himself noAV sought to bring him into the ministry, and, all his weightier objections being removed he no longer gave an absolute refusal, but spent three years in preparation. When he did enter preferment was rapid. He was almost immediately made the Royal Chaplain in Ordinary. A delightful instance of his modesty must not be forgotten. His earlier sermons were delivered privately in the neighbouring villages of London, whither he was accustomed to go with some one friend. His biographer's account of his characteristics in the pulpit, given in connection with his first sermon before James at Whitehall, will live as long as the discourses they -commemorate. He "shoAved his OAvn heart was possessed with those very thoughts and joys that he laboured to distil into others : a preacher in earnest ; weeping sometimes /or his auditory, sometimes with them; ahvays preaching to himself, like an angel from, a cloud, but in none ; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives : here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it ; and a virtue so as to make it beloved, even by those that loved it not; and all this Avith a most particular grace, and an unexpressible addition of comeUness." As an evidence of the general estimation of the beauty and great ness of Donne's character, a circumstance recorded in his biography is very interesting:— In the first year of his ministry he had fourteen advowsons of as many benefices offered to him. All the troubles of his earlier years past, a new and greater than all threw an almost impenetrable shadow over his latter ones. His wife, beloved as few wives have been beloved, died and left him with seven children. Walton is evidently guilty of no exaggeration when he says that Donne, having voluntarily assured his children never to bring them under the subjection of a step-mother, buried " Avith his tears all his earthly joys m his most dear and deserving wife's grave, and betook himself to a most retired and solitary life." The first sermon he jireached after this event Avas at St. Cle ment's in, the Strand, taking for his text, " Lo, I am the man that has seen affliction ;" and his whole manner told but too sadly the applicability of the words to his oAvn case. He was made Dean of St. Paul's by James, on the removal of Dr. Carey to the bishopric of Exeter. Among other pleasant reminiscences of his connection with St. Paul's, is that of the hymn composed during one of his illnesses, commencing— " Wilt thou forgive that sin where I began," &c. which he caused to be set to " a most grave and solemn tune," and sung fre quently by the choristers to the accompaniment of the organ during the evening service. He was wont to say of such occasions, " The Avords of this hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it. And, O 1 the power of Church music I" His latter days were spent in a state of beatitude such as we read of only in the lives of the saints of the primitive Christian Church. The monument to which we have referred was originated by Donne's intimate friend, Dr, Fox, who persuaded him to have one made. The mode he adopted of carrying his friend's wishes into eff'ect was not a little remarkable. He first sent for a carver to make him an urn. 352 LONDON. " Then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw h^ picture, which was taken as followeth. Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into fheir coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned to wards the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus Christ." He was drawn in this posture ; and the picture became from that time an object of continual contemplation. After his death, the statue seen below was sculptured from it. He died in 1630. With a verse from one of the poems written on his death-bed, a ' Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness,' we conclude " Since I am coming to that holy room Where, with the Choir of Saints, for evermore I shall be made thy music ; as I come I tune my instrument here at the door, Aiid what I must do then, think here before. ' [Statue of Donno] tinner Temple Hall,] XCVIII.— INNS OF COURT. THE INNER AND MIDDLE TEMPLE. On the Continent of Europe, jurisprudence, and even municipal law, which among the Continental nations is almost universally founded on the Roman civil law, is taught in the universities, among which Leyden, Heidelberg, and Jena have long been famed for the learning of their legal professors and teachers. In England, at a very early date, the science was taught in Inns* of Court, situated in the metropolis, and in the immediate vicinity of the courts of law, The foundation of these voluntary bodies may be traced to the promise made by * Ivm, a mansion or place : thus Spenser — " Now -Brhenas Fhoebus with his fiery waine Unto his inne began to draw apace." VOL. IV. 2 A 354 LONDON. John and Henry III. in the Magna Charta, that " common pleas should not thenceforth follow the Court, but be held in some certain place ;" which, by the establishment at Westminster of the Court of Common Pleas, necessarily led to the gradual collecting in the metropolis of the whole body of " common " lawyers, who most probably then began to settle themselves in places best suited to their studies, practice, and conferences. Instruction in the learning of the common law was also now felt to be needed ; for the ecclesiastical bodies, who in general engrossed all learning, and who alone were competent to impart a know ledge of the liberal arts and sciences, had an unconquerable aversion to the com mon law of England, which the nobility of the country held as their most precious birthright. Jealous as the monks were of the newly established court at West minster, they would fain have thrown every obstacle in the way of its supporters. Rejected, therefore, by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, over which the ecclesiastics ruled supreme, the lawyers founded hostels, or hospitia curice, in the metropolis, which were so denominated, as we are informed by Stow, because they were attached to, or dependent upon, the Court. Of these " hostels," one, called Johnson's Inn, is said to have been at Dowgate, another at Fewter's or Fetter's Lane, and a third at Paternoster Row;* from which last we may sup pose originated the custom of the serjeants-at-law and " apprentices" sitting in Paul's Walk, each at his own pillar, hearing his client's cause, and taking notes thereof on his knee. A vestige of this ancient custom remained to the reign of Charles II., when, upon the calling of a lawyer to the degree of the coif, a formal procession was made to St. Paul's Cathedral, that the serjeant elect might choose his own peculiar pillar. At these hostels the gentlemen of the law lived, or rather transacted business, and schools were opened for the purpose of reading and teaching the law ; until at length, in 1346, being the twentieth year of Edward III., the Knights Hospi tallers of St. John of Jerusalem, to whom the forfeited estates of the rival brother hood of the Templars had, after much entreaty, been granted by the Pope, demised the magnificent buildings, church, gardens, " and all the a|)purtenances that belonged to the Templars in London," to certain students of the common law, who are traditionally reported to have removed thither from a temporary residence in Thaive's Inn in Holborn, in which part of the town the Knights Tem plars themselves had resided before the erection of their superb palaces on the Thames. The new Inn of Court at the Temple was most fortunately placed ; and, after its establishment, we hear no more of the ancient hostels, whose scholastic esta blishments had previously been suppressed by a proclamation of Henry III., enjoining the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City of London that they " forbid that any one should teach the laws there for the time to come." Thus pleasantly situated, as Fortescue describes the Temple,! " out of the City and the noise thereof, and in the suburbs of London ; between the City of Westminster, the place of holding the King's court, and the City of London ; for advantage of ready access to the one, and plenty of provisions in the other," the worthy " practisprs" of the law lived in peace and quiet, occasionally displaying their * Crabbe's ' History of English Law,' p. 215. Dugdale, 'Orig. Juris.' f ' De Laulibus T^egum Anglia,' [NNS OF COURT. 355 erudition in the capacious intellects of our Cokes, Fitzherberts, and Seldens, and receiving into the bosom of their fraternity many noble scions of the haughtiest famiUes of England, to Avhom they imparted their learning, encouraging them also to " dance, to sing, to play on instruments on the ferial days, and to study divinity on the festival, using such exercises as they did who Avere brought up in the King's court." Indeed, in the days of the writer Avhom we here quote, Fortescue, Chief Justice of England to Henry VI. , the Inns of Court were only accessible to men of high rank and fortune, the average expense of a young man's education at one of them being annually twenty marks, no small sum at that period. " If he had a servant with him," adds our authority, " his charge is then the greater; so that, by reason of this great expense, the sons of gentlemen only do study the law in these Inns, the vulgar sort of people not being able to undergo so great a charge, and merchants are seldom willing to lessen their traffic thereby." Feme, formerly a student of the Inner Temple, in his ' Glory of Ge nerosity,' also makes honourable mention of the Inns of Court ; — " Nobleness of blood, joined with virtue, counteth the person as most meet to the enterprising of any public service ; and for that cause it was not for nought that our ancient governors in this land did with especial foresight and wisdom provide that none should be admitted into the Inns of Court, being seminaries sending forth men apt to the government of justice, except he were a gentleman of blood. And that this may seem a truth, I myself have seen a calendar of all those which were together in the society of one of the same houses, about the last year of King Henry V., with the names of their house and family, and marshalled by their names ; and I assure you the selfsame monument doth both approve them to be gentlemen of perfect descent, and also the number of them much less than it noAv is, being at that time in one house scarcely threescore." In the course of a few years the number of students greatly increased; and Fortescue enumerates four Inns of Court, the same now existing, viz., the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn, each containing two hundred mem bers ; and ten Inns of Chancery, only one of which, Clifford's Inn, remains to this day. The Inns of Court and Chancery constituted what Stow quaintly styles " a whole University of Students, Tractisers or Pleaders, and Judges of the laws of this realm, not living on common stipends, as in the other universities it is for the most part done, but of their owne private maintenance, as being altogether fed either by their places or practice, or otherAvise by their proper revenues, or exhi bition of parents and friends : for the younger sort are either gentlemen, or sons of gentlem.en, or of other most wealthy persons. Of these houses there may be at this day fourteen in all, whereof nine do stand within the liberties of this cities and five in the suburbs thereof. . . . These Societies are no corporation, nor have any judicial power over their members, bat have certain orders among themselves, whicb by consent have the force of laws. For slight ofl'ences they are only excommoned, that is, put out of commons, which is, not to eat with the rest in their halls; and for greater, they lose their chambers, and are expelled the house— and being once expelled, they are not to be admitted by any of the other three societies. " The gentlemen in these societies may be divided into four ranks— I. Benchers ; 2 A 2 356 LONDON. II. Utter Barristers; III. Inner Barristers; IV. Students. Benchers are the seniors, to whom the government of the house, and ordering of matters thereof, is committed ; and out of these a treasurer is yearly chosen, who receiveth, dis- burseth, and accounteth for all monies belonging to the house. Utter Barristers are such as from their learning and standing are called by the benchers to im plead and argue in the society doubtful cases and questions, which are called moots, and whilst they argue the said cases they sit uttermost on the forms of the benchers, which they call the bar. Out of these mootmen are chosen Readers for the Inns of Chancery, which belong to the Inns of Court of which they are mem bers, where, in term-time and grand vacations, they argue cases in the presence of attornies and clerks. And the rest of the society are accounted Inner Bar risters, who, for want of learning or time, are not to argue in these moots ; and Students." These mootings, or discussions on abstruse points of law, took place in the Inn Hall, in the presence of the benchers, one of whose number, styled the Reader, presided and delivered the opinion of the bench on the points mooted. But in creased occupation, different modes of life, and the short period now spent by law-students at the Inns of Court, have thrown these mootings into disuse, and there has been no attempt of late years to restore their primitive importance. During his " reading " the Reader always kept a splendid table, entertaining at his own expense the judges, nobility, bishops, ministers of state, and not unfre quently royalty itself, so that it sometimes cost a reader as much as 1000/., a circumstance which, perhaps, had its Aveight in abolishing these ceremonies.* But to return to the Temple, in which we find the " studious lawyers " esta blished " Where whilome wont the Templar Knights to bide. Till they decayed through pride." From the time that an influential body of lawyers thus acquired a respectable and elegant site for their Inn, they increased rapidly in number and importance, so that, although the Inn suffered greatly, during the short rebellion of Wat Tyler, from the attacks of the mob, who plundered the students and destroyed almost •svery book and record upon which they could lay hands, it was thought necessary to divide the Inn into two separate bodies, to be called the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, having separate halls, but making use of the same church, and holding their houses as tenants of the Knights Hospitallers until the general suppression of monasteries and monastic bodies by Henry VIII ; and after this event, of the croAvn by lease. So strong was the vindictive feeling of the ancient mobs of London against the, lawyers, that the Inns of Court were always the first to be singled out as an object for vengeance by the rioters. The complaints of Jack Cade, a fair speci men of this vulgar sentiment, have been graphically portrayed by Shakspere in his scenes of the mad freaks of that renowned rebel : the outpourings of his heart against the law and its instruments are quickly followed by the command to pull down the Inns of Court. " Dick. The first thing we do, let 's kill all the lawyers. " Cade. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that the * 'Antiquities of the Inns ol Court and Chancery,' by W. Herbert, 8vo., 1804. INNS OF COURT. 357 skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings : but I say it is the bee's wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man si°'=e Now go, some, and puU down the Savoy; others to the Inns of Court ! down with them all 1"* Grievously did the misguided followers of this reckless leader put into execu- tion his orders ; and the burning of the Temple Libraries, and the cold-blooded murders of aU the students and "practisers" who fell into the hands of the in furiated populace, bore dreadful witness to the ascendency which Cade had gained over the minds of his instruments, and the ill odour in which the gentle men of the law were then held among the commonalty. In the sixth year of James I. the whole of the buildings of the two Temples were granted by letters patent, bearing date at Westminster, the 13th day of August, to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Recorder of London, aud others, the benchers and treasurers of the Inner and Middle Temple, " to have and to hold the said mansions, with the gardens. Sec, unto them and their heirs and assigns for ever, for lodging, reception, and education of the professors and students of the laws of this realm ;" and by virtue of these grants do these Inns of the Inner and Middle Temple still continue in the occupation and possession of an incorporated society of the " students and practisers of the laws of England." From whatever point these beautiful Inns are viewed, the casual observer cannot but be struck by their elegance of appearance and the convenience of their site, — a convenience Avhich increases daily from the immensity of business necessarily flowing in from the greatest and most opulent city in the world. The magnificence, external and internal, of the public buildings, and the com modious, roomy chambers, attract his notice ; but how much more interesting does the place appear to the man of taste and of education, in whose mind are raised up associations connected with the troubled lives and chequered fortunes of the first dignitaries of our country, and of the able bulwarks of its liberties, who have at length their earthly " abiding place " where once the haughty soldier's armed heel rang on the pavement, and the red cross was displayed on each resident's mantle. Perhaps' he wanders into the garden, where knights, monks, benchers, and children have successively sauntered before him, have marched and countermarched, and, looking around, he feels inclined to believe that Elia might have been right when he asserted of his beloved haunt, that " it is, indeed, the most elegant spot in the metropolis." Its appearance has, however, no less altered since Ella's boyhood, than it had between that date and the seventeenth century. It is a pretty spot, this green oasis, in the midst of the wilderness of houses, with Whitefriars, the Alsatia of Shadwell and Scott, on its one side, and as dense a neighbourhood beyond Essex Street, on the other side. There was a rookery in bygone years, in this Inner Temple Garden, " a colony," as Leigh Hunt teUs us,t "brought by Sir Edward Northey, a weU-known lawyer in "• Second part of King Henry VL, Act i\. sc. 3 and 7. -f Looauii Joomiu. 358 LONDON. Queen Anne's time, from his grounds at Epsom. It was a pleasant thought, supposing that the colonists had no objection. The rook is a grave legal bird, f-oth in his coat and habits ; living in communities, yet to himself, and strongly addicted to discussions of meum and tuum." Mr. Leigh Hunt adds, that there have been no rooks seen in the garden for many years ; thousands of sparrows twitter in their stead on the old trees by the river-side, and on the broad gravel walk which extends from end to end, and remind the visitors of the item in the treasurer's accounts when Daines Barrington filled that office, and which, to the immortal honour of his brother benchers, was disallowed by them : " Item. Disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, 20s. for stuff to poison the spar rows, by my orders." The Temple Garden does not appear to be so much frequented at present, as it was during the last and the preceding century. Shakspeare makes it the scene of the origin of the factions of York and Lancaster, in the first part of his historical play of ' Henry the Sixth.' It was a celebrated promenade in the time of Lord Keeper Guilford ; and Charles Lamb and Dr. Dibdin have given their recollec tions of it at the close of the last century. " Towards evening," writes the latter of these gentlemen, " it was the fashion for the leading counsel to promenade, during the summer, in the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin smallclothes and silk stockings, at this time constituted the usual evening dress. Lord Erskine, though a good deal shorter than his brethren, somehow always seemed to take the lead, both in place and in discourse, and shouts of laughter would frequently follow his dicta." The winged horse over the garden gate is the cognizance of the Society of the Inner Temple, as the lamb is of the Middle Temple, and the foUoAving epigram is founded on these very different devices ; — INNS OF COURT. 359 " As hy the Templar's haunts you go. The Horse and Lamb display'd, In emblematic figures shoAV The merits of their trade; That clients may infer from thence How just is their profession, The lamb sets forth their innocence, — The horse their expedition ! O, happy Britons, happy isle ! Let foreign nations say. Where you get justice without guile, And law without delay ! " " To charge the law's delay upon the lawyers," says the editor of a recent amusing work (' Law and Lawyers'), in allusion to the above effusion, " is about as just as it Avould be to ascribe the rapidity with which some medicines effect a cure to the wisdom and honesty of the physicians." The foUowing answer to the above lines is quite as witty, if not more so : — " Deluded men ! their holds forego. Nor trust such cunning elves ; These artful emblems tend to show Their clients, not themselves. 'Tis all a trick, these all are shams By which they mean to cheat you ; But have a care, — for you 're the lambs, And they the wolves that eat you I Nor let the thoughts of no delay To these their courts misguide you ; 'Tis you 're the showy horse — and they The jockeys that will ride you ! " The present Hall of the Inner Temple, which was built on the site of a more ancient structure, supposed by Dugdale, from the form of the windoAvs, to be about the age of Edward III., is a fine room, but comparatively small. It is ornamented with emblematical paintings by Sir James Thornhill, and contains full-length portraits, in oil, of Littleton and his commentator, honest, imperious, malignant, incorruptible Coke, the savage prosecutor of Raleigh, and the bold [Sir Edward Coke.l 360 LONxj'Un. defender of the hberties of his country. No public character of EngUsh history has been more vehemently attacked than that of Sir Edward Coke, whose very enemies cannot forget that he alone, of all the judges of England, disdained to succumb to the arbitrary and indecent interference of their pedantic sovereign; and who, in so doing, conferred such lasting benefits on his country, that it is dif ficult to decide whether even his rival, Bacon, the creator of the new philosophy, has greater claims to the gratitude of posterity. The judges had been long regarded as in some degree bound, by virtue of their ofiSces of royal counsellors, to justify the acts, however arbitrary, of the crown. Coke despised this degrading notion ; and, despite the persecutions and cruelty heaped on him in consequence of his upright conduct, laid the foundation of that independence of character which the Bench of England has, for the most part, since preserved inviolate. In the Hall, dinner is prepared for the members of the Inn, every day during Term time ; the Masters of the Bench dining on the state, or dais, and the Bar risters and Students at long tables extending down the hall to the carved screen at the western end. Students keep twenty terms, that is, five years, at the Inns of Court, before they are entitled to be called to the Bar, and they are required to dine in hall at least four times in each term. Graduates of either University are called upon keeping a smaller number of terms. On the " grand days " the hall is graced not only by the attendance of a large number of the members of the Inner Temple, but occasionally by the presence of the Judges, who dine in succession with each of the four Inns of Court ; and on these " grand days " extra commons are served out to the students who are keep ing their terms at the Inn. When the room is well illuminated, the scene has an imposing effect. At the state sit the Judges of England, surrounded by many of the leading men in the profession. Masters in Chancery, Commissioners in Bank ruptcy, equity and common-law lawyers, and occasionally the Attorney or Solicitor General for the time being ; and at the tables in the body of the hall sit the men who are to take their places, when they shall have "shuffled off this mortal coil," and shall be "no more than Tully or than Hyde." How many law dignitaries, in prospectu, sit unconscious of their future greatness at these long tables ! — and how many more, who find that here the race is not always to the swift and the battle to the strong — that the highest talent is not all-powerful — that literature is regarded by the wise as an impediment to fortune — and that even the plodder can accomplish little unless he has " a connexion ! " The gentlemen of the Inner Temple were celebrated in former times for their good cheer and sumptuous entertainment, as well as for their individual gallantry and accomplishments. The Christmas of 1561-2 was kept in great splendour at the Inner Temple : many of the Queen's Privy-Council honoured the Inn with their presence, and the Lord of Misrule rode through the city " in complete har ness, gilt, with a hundred horse, and gentlemen riding gorgeously with chains of gold, and their horses goodly trapped." On the 18th of January there was a play performed at Westminster " by the gentyll men of the Tempull, after a grett maske, for there was a grett skaffold in the hall, Avith grett Tryhumphe, as has been sene." The play was ' Ferrex and Porrex,' written by Sackville and Norton, and probably the most ancient tragedy in .the English language. The title-page states that ." it was shewed before the Queenes most excellent Majestic in her INNS OF COURT. 36) Highnes" Court of Whitehall, the 18th Jany, 1561 (2), by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple." In 1615, forty gentlemen of the Inns of Court, of whom ten were members of the Inner Temple, were appointed to be Barriers at Court, in honour of Prince Charles being created Prince of Wales, which they are reported to have performed in great style, the charge being defrayed by a contribution of 30*. from each bencher; every barrister, of seven years' standing, 15.s. ; and all other gentlemen in commons, 10*. each. At the marriage of the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of James I., to the Elector Palatine, the gentlemen of the Inner Temple and of Gray's Inn performed a mask, written by Beaumont and Fletcher ; and in the Christmas of 1634 the four Inns performed another mask at court, at their joint charge. At the grand feast kept in the Inner Temple hall during the readership ofSirHeneage Finch, the Solicitor- General in 1661, the Society was honoured by a visit from the King, who came in his barge from Whitehall, accompanied by-the Duke of York, and attended by the Lord ChanceUor, the ministers, and the great officers of state. At the stairs, where his Majesty disembarked, the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas received him, in his state robes and collar of SS. On " each side, as his Majesty passed, stood the Reader's servants in scarlet cloaks and white tabba doublets ; and above them, on each side, the Benchers, Barristers, and other gentlemen of the Society, all in their gowns and formalities ; the loud music playing from the time of his landing till he entered the Hall, where he was received with twenty violins, which continued as long as his Majesty stayed. Dinner was brought up on this occasion by fifty select gentlemen of the Society in their gowns, who waited the whole time, no others appearing in the haU."* In the succeeding year the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, Prince Rupert, and other noblemen, Avere admitted Members of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. Halloween, Candlemas, and Ascension Day were anciently kept at this Inn in great splendour : the Master of the Revels for the ensuing year was elected at the first of these feasts : his business was to conduct the revels and to arrange the dancing and music, which always constituted the chief entertainment on these days. After the play, which was the usual commencement of the evening, one of the barristers sung a song to the judges, Serjeants, or masters of the bench, after which the dancing was commenced by the judges and benchers, who, es corted by the master of the revels, or Lord of Misrule, led the dance round the sea-coal fire, and the dances were continued by the younger members of the Inn until the judges or benchers thought fit to retire. One of these festivals is minutely, but quaintly, described by Gerard Leigh, in his 'Accidence of Armony :' the hero of this feast was Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who euphuistically styled himself on this occasion Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie. Our author's description, somewhat abridged, is as follows: "After I had travelled through the east parts of the unknown world to understand of deeds of arms, and so arriving in the fair river of Thames, I landed within half a league from the city of London, and drawing near the city suddenly heard the shot of double cannons, and demanding of an honest citizen the cause of this great shot, -"It is,' quoth he, ' a warning shot to the Constable-marshal of the Inner Temple to prepare for dinner.' I then demanded what province did that • Herbert's 'Inns of Court,' p. 305. R62 LONDON. officer govern ? He answered me, ' The province was not great in quantity, but ancient in true nobility. A place (said he) privileged by the most excellent princess, the high governor of the Avhole island, wherein are store of gentlemen of the whole realm that repair thither to learn to rule and obey by law, to yield their fleece to their prince and common weal ; as also to use all other exercises of body and mind whereunto nature most aptly serveth to adorn the person of a gentleman.' The next day 1 thought, for my pastime, to walk to this temple ; and entering in at the gates, I found the building nothing costly, but many comely gentlemen of face and person, and thereto very courteous, saw I to pass to and fro ; and passing forward, entered into a church of ancient building, wherein were many monuments of noble personages in knightly attire, with their coats depainted in ancient shields, whereat I took pleasure to behold. Anon we heard the noise of drum and fife, and so I was brought into a long gallery that stretcheth itself along the hall near the prince's table, where I saw the prince sit ; and at the nether end of the table were placed the embassadors of sundry princes; and at divers tables sat the lord steward, treasurer, and keeper of Pallas' seal, with divers honourable personages of nobility, and on the other side (of the hall) the lieutenant of the Tower, with divers captains of footbands and shot. The prince so served with tender meats, sweet fruits, and dainty delicates, that it seemed a wonder a world to observe the provision; and at every course the trumpeters blew the courageous blast of deadly war, with noise of drum and fife, with the sweet harmony of violins, sackbuts, recorders, and cornets, with other instruments of music, as it seemed Apollo's harp had tuned their stroke. " Thus the hall was served after the most ancient order of the island ; in com mendation whereof I say I have also seen the service of great princes, in solemn seasons and times of triumph, yet the order hereof Avas not inferior to any. " But to proceed, the herehaught of Palaphilos, even before the second course came in, standing at the high table, said, in this manner: 'The mighty Pala philos, Prince of Sophie, high constable, marshal of the Knights Templars, patron of the honourable order of Pegasus !' and therewith cryeth a largess. The prince, praying the herehaught, bountifully rewarded him with a chain to the value of an hundred talents. " The supper ended and tables taken up, the high constable arose and awhile stood under the place of honour, where his achievement was beautifully em broidered, and devised of sundry matters with the embassadors of foreign nations, as he thought good, till Palaphilos' king-at-arms came in, his herehaught, mar shal, and pursuivant before him, and after followed his messenger and caligate knight, who, putting off his coronal, made his humble obeysanee to the prince, by whom he was commanded to draw near and understand his pleasure, saying to him in few words to this effect : that he should, choosing throughout the whole army of Templars then present, select the number of XXIII special gentle men to appear in the presence of their prince in knightly habit. This done, Palaphilos obeying his prince's commandment with XXII 1 valiant knights, all apparelled in long white vestures, Avith each man a scarf of Pallas' colours, who them presented with their names to the prince." The Christmassings lasted several days, and on each day the ceremony differed ; INNS OF COUJRT. 363 the dull ceremonious presentation of " special gentlemen " to the Prince of Sophie gave place to more festive and humourous entertainment : each day after dinner the carolls or songs were " very decently performed," and on Christmas- day, after breakfasting on "braAvn, mustard, and malmsey,'' and the presentation of the boar's head at dinner, the gentlemen of the Temple honoured the day by giving a grand feast to their friends and acquaintance, " with minstraylsie." Hardly a vestige of these hospitable proceedings now remains in the Inns of Court. The Templars hav^ long ceased to boast of any prince, much less of the " renowned Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie," being themselves a pure aristocracy ; we have not lately heard of any Master of the Revels exercising his office, nor, though we occasionally pass through the Temple cloisters, and under the ancient HaU, do we remember ever to have heard the "courageous blast of deadly war " braying out the "triumph" of the benchers' "pledge." After dining in the hall, the benchers retire to their Parliament chamber, in which the business of the society is transacted : one from among the Masters of the Bench is annually elected to fill the office of treasurer : he is the virtual head of the society, carrying into execution all the resolutions of the bench " in Parliament assembled," presiding at dinner in the haU, and receiving and ex pending all monies on behalf of the whole society. Pepys's account of the quarrel between the Temple and the City is a striking picture of the yet rude and unpolished manners of the time, when the " young gentlemen" of the Temple so grossly insuUed their guest as to force him to leave their haU. "Meeting Mr. BeUwood," says the autobiographer, "did hear how my Lord Mayor being invited this day to dinner at the reader's at the Temple, and endeavouring to carry his sword up, the students did pull it down, and forced hira to go and stay aU the day in a private counciUor's chamber, until the reader himself could get the young gentlemen to dinner, and then my Lord Mayor did retreat out of the Temple by stealth with his sword up. This do make great heat among the students; and my Lord Mayor did send to the king; and also I hear that Sir Richard Browne did cause the drums to beat for the trainbands; but all this is over, only I hear that the students do resolve to try the charter of ihe city." — March 3rd, 1668-9. " I to the council-chamber, and there heard the great complamt ot the city tried against the gentlemen of the Temple for the late not, as they would have it, Avhen my Lord Mayor was there. But upon hearmg of the whole business, the city was certainly to blame to charge them m this manner as with a riot; but the king and councU did forbear to determine any thing in ittiU the other business of the title and privilege be decided, Avhich is now under dispute at law between them, whether the Temple be withm the liberties of the city or no. But 1 was sorry to see the city so dl-adjised as tc complain in a thing where their proofs were so weak."-Aprd 3rd, IbbS-y. Crossing the lane which divides the Inner from the Middle Temple,^the cele brated hall of the latter Inn presents itself to the view ; abutting on the garden towards the west, at the upper end of which the "only fountain in London throws up its smaU torrent the whole day, stands this famous hall, in which tlie lawyers had the honour of representing ' Twelfth Night,' probably for he first time; in which Eldon and Hardwicke have feasted, and Curran has set the 364 LONDON. table in a roar." A communication was formerly made to the Society of tho Middle Temple, offering to hold the Chancery Courts in vacation in their hall, a proceeding which offered great advantages by rendering the property round the hall much more valuable than formerly, but the offer was not accepted : the Society did not wish that their hall should be applied to such a purpose, and the Society of Lincoln's Inn ultimately lent their hall, a much smaller one, to the Court of Chancery. The Middle Temple Hall was commenced in the year 1562, and completed in 1572, in the treasurership of Edmund Plowden, the eminent jurist. In the Cottonian collection of MSS. in the British Museum is one written in the time of Henry VIIL, entitled, ' A Description of the Form and Manner, how and by what Orders and Customes the state of the Fellowship of the Mid dle Temple (one of the Houses of the Court) is maintained, and what ways they have to attaine unto learning.' The chief grievance mentioned in this document is the want of a hall : in lieu of this necessary appendage to an Inn of Court, the Temple Church was used as a place " to walk in, and talk, and confer their learnings,'' and it is not diflScult to believe that "from this cause the place, all the terme times, hath in it no more quietnesse than the pervyse of Pawles, by occasion of the confluence and concourse of such as are suters in the law." The same authority also informs us, " there is no lands or revenues belonging to the house, whereby any learner or student mought be holpen and encou raged to study, by means of some yearly stipend or salary ; which is the occa sion that many a good witt, for lack of exhibition, is compelled to give over and forsake study, before he have any perfect knowledge in the lawe, and to fall to practysing, and become a typler in the lawe." This being the case, the Society, by a subscription of all the members, erected the present beautiful building. Entering the hall by one of the doors beneath the music gallery, the coup d'aeil which presents itself is truly magnificent. The emblazoned arms, the elaborate carvings, Vandyke's paintings, all contribute to render this the most sumptuous, as it is the largest, hall of the Inns of Court, and worthy of a Society reckoning among its members the names of Somers, Hardwicke, Cowper, ThurloAv, Dunning, Eldon, Blackstone, Stowell, Tenterden, Curran, and many other legal worthies. The arms of these and of upwards of a hundred others, all of whom received their legal education in this Inn, are em blazoned on the windows on either side of the hall : the great bay-window in the south-west corner alone contains thirty coats of arms, among the most con spicuous appearing the arms of Hardwicke and Somers. In the opposite recess shine the arms of the late Lord Tenterden and Lord Gifford ; and of the two Scotts, Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, whose busts in marble also adorn the room. These are the only marble busts which the Middle Temple Hall con tains ; but round the hall are placed busts of the Twelve Caesars in imitation of bronze, and over the "state " are hung portraits of Charles I. and II., James II. when Duke of York, William III., Queen Anne, and George II. : the central portrait by Vandyke, of Charles I. on horseback, is a noble painting, one of three by the same great master, each of which is claimed as the original. It is diflScult to decide upon the real claims of Windsor, Warwick, and the Middle INNS OF CbfJRT. Temple.- Each of the pictures is admirable, and no doubt from hand. 365 the same "¦Charles I.] Standing on the raised dais, or " state," let us view the hall from its western end. The carved screen and music-gallery at the eastern end, the armour and weapons of the Elizabethan era, which are almost hidden from the view on entering the hall, form from this position as beautiful an appearance as the pictures, stained glass, elevated dais, and massive furniture give to the room when seen from the screen : the strong oaken tables extend from end to end of the hall, the same tables at which the members diped in the sixteenth century, when the noble spirits, whose arms are now emblazoned on the walls and win dows, with many more, their companions, gathered round thefji, some to speak of decisions by Coke, or Popham, or Bacon, some to laugh at some newly reported anecdote of Will Shakspere or Burbage, such as we find in the ' Templar's Diary,' preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. This diary appears to have been kept by a member of the Society of the Middle Temple, and extends from Christmas 1601-2, to April 14, 1603-4. The diary contains the following entry : — 366 LONDON. " Feb. 1601. — At our fest we had a play called ' Twelfth Night ; or. What you will,' much like the comedy of errors, or ' Menechmis ' in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called ' Inganni.' A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from his lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c. ; and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." [Middle Temple Hall.J The editor of the Pictorial Edition of Shakspere thus notices this entry in connection with the noble hall :— " There is something to our minds very pre cious in that memorial of Shakspere which is preserved in the little Table-book A the Student of the Middle Temple : ' Feb. 2, 1601 [2]. At our feast we had a play called ' Twelfth Night; or. What you wiU.' What a scene do these few plain words caU up before us! The Christmas festivities have lingered on tiU, Candlemas. The Lord of Misrule has resigned his sceptre ; the Fox and the Cat have been hunted round the hall; the Masters of the Revels have sung their songs ; the drums are silent Avhich lent their noisy chorus to the Marshal's proclamations ; and Sir Francis Flatterer and Sir Ranile Rackabite have passed INNS OF COURT. 367 into the ranks of ordinary men. But there is still a feast ; and after the dinner a play ; and that play Shakspere's ' Twelfth Night.' And the actual roof under which the happy company of benchers, and barristers, and students first listened to that joyous and exhilarating play, full of the truest and most beautiful humanities, especially fitted for a season of cordial mirthfulness, is still standing ; and we may walk into that stately hall and think, — Here Shakspere's ' Twelfth Night' was acted in the Christmas of 1601 ; and here its exquisite poetry first fell upon the ear of some secluded scholar, and was to him as a fragrant flower blooming amidst the arid sands of his Bracton and his Fleta ; and here its gentle satire upon the vain and the foolish penetrated into the natural heart of some grave and formal dispenser of justice, and made him look with tolerance, if not with sympathy, upon the mistakes of less grave and formal fellow-men ; and here its ever-gushing spirit of enjoyment, — of fun without malice, of wit without gross- ness, of humour without extravagance, — taught the swaggering, roaring, over grown boy, miscalled student, that there were higher sources of mirth than affrays in Fleet Street or drunkenness in Whitefriars. Venerable Hall of the Middle Temple, thou art to our eyes more stately and more to be admired since we looked upon that entry in the Table-book of John Manningham ! The Globe has perished, and so has the Blackfriars. The works of the poet who made the names of these frail buildings immortal need no associations to recommend them ; but it is yet pleasant to know that there is one locality remaining where a play of Shakspere was listened to by his contemporaries ; and that play, ' Twelfth Night.' " The author of the ' Diary ' gives us no account of any of " the ferial days," and the glorious merrymakings of the lawyers of his age. Even the important event of the representation of one of Shakspere's comedies in the presence of the most eminent lawyers of England is dismissed in the above entry. Yet the Templars' feasts were not often " done by halves ;" and though stately was the measured step of the old benchers as they led the dance, following their Master of the Revels round the sea-coal fire, the younger members of the profession did not fail, in the language of the comedy so peculiarly their own, " to make the welkin dance indeed," and " to rouse the night-owl in a catch that would draw three souls out of one weaver !" We find record but of one of the Templars to whose soul these noisy feasts were uncongenial, who longed for the blissful shades and sober retirement of his beloved Wotton : in December, 1642, Evelyn thus writes : — " I was elected one of the comptroUers of the Middle Temple re vellers, as y« fashion of the young students and gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this yeare with great solemnity ; but being desirous to passe it in the country, I got leave to resigne my staff of office, and went with my brother Richard to Wotton." And again in 1668:— -"Went to see the ReveUs at the Middle Temple, which is also an old, but riotous custom, and has relation neither to virtue nor policy." Truly, were it not the philosophic and amiable Evelyn, we should be inclined to employ the words of ' Twelfth Night' once more, and say—" Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ?" But perhaps old customs had lost their innocence. The times of Evelyn Avere those of Charles II. But, however they may have been corrupted in a vicious age, our 368 LONDON. ancestors showed their wisdom in no small degree in these periodical festivities. Differences between neighbours, which otherwise might have long festered in their hearts, were healed in these revels and joyous Christmassings. They had their good eft'ects, like the ancient custom we have elsewhere mentioned, of going into the fields round the metropolis, to gather the dew in the "merry month of May," thence to bring rosy cheeks and glad hearts to enliven the streets and the firesides of smoky old London 1 In kind remembrance, then, of the ancient members of these Inns in the Tem ple, let us take one more turn on their velvet lawn, and look around us once more at this interesting locality ! That old red-brick house in King's Bench Walk is the " Number five " of Pope's ' Ode to Venus,' the house where the poet visited his friend Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. It is but five years since we could have shown you, gentle reader, the rooms in which Anstey, the witty author of the 'Pleader's Guide,' resided; and we could fill a dozen pages with the names of other spots as interesting, in — " Fig-Tree, or Fountain-Side, or learned shade Of King's Bench Walk, by pleadings vocal made, — Thrice hallow'd shades ! Avhere slipshod benchers muse. Attorneys haunt, and special pleaders cruise !" But, at least, before Ave quit the Temple for the other Inns of Court, let us wish all health and happiness to the kind souls who have left us one green spot in the great metropolis ! Can we conclude in words more appropriate than those of Charles Lamb ? — " So may the winged horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! So may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your Church and chambers ! So may the sparroAvs, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks ! So may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! So may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with Avhich the child Elia gazed on the old worthies that solemnized the Parade before you.'* v^ [Lincoln's Inn HalL] XCIX.— INNS OF COURT. No. IL Lincoln's inn — gray's inn. Lincoln's Inn, the next in importance to the Inner and Middle Temple, is situate on the west side of Chancery Lane, the " New Street" of Stow, and sub sequently styled " Chancellor's Lane." Chancery Lane was the birth-place of the celebrated and unfortunate Lord Strafford, who discovered, too late, that he should have " put not his trust in princes," and died the victim of his own cre dulity and his sovereign's weakness, unlamented even by the party whom he had served — but deserted. In Chancery Lane also, at the wall of the garden of Lincoln's Inn, Ben Jonson is reported, on the authority of Fuller, to have worked, in his capacity of bricklayer, with a trowel in one hand and his Horace m the other. A strange medley of personages, as Mr. Leigh Hunt remarks «CL. IV. " 2 B 370 LONDON. have passed up and down this narrow thoroughfare, a world of vice and virtue, fraud and impudence, truth and chicanery, violence and tranquil wisdom ! " Through this lane, the connecting link of all the Inns of Court and Chancery, must have passed all the great and eminent lawyers, from Coke and Hale to Erskine and RomUly ; Sir Thomas More with his weighty aspect; Bacon with his eye of intuition ; the coarse ThurloAV, and the elegant Mansfield ! " Many a suitor has impatiently traversed this little street again and again in breathless agitation : the dun, the bailiff, and the hired perjurer may be daily found there, and perhaps more misery, injustice, and rapacity have originated in its neigh bourhood than in any other part of London. But if Chancery Lane affords instances of the foulest practices, of gross immo rality and roguish cunning, its outAvard appearance, at least, does not belie the character which it is said to bear ; it is almost invariably dirty under foot in ¦CJhancery Lane. In the time of Edward I., John Briton, custos of London, had it barred up, to prevent any accidents that might happen, were people allowed to pass that Avay ; and the Bishop of Chichester, avowedly for the same reason, kept the bar up for many years. " AfterAvards, however, upon an inquisition being made of the annoyances of London, the inquest presented that John, Bishop of Chichester, ten years past, stopped up a certain lane, called Chan cellor's Lane, levando ibid, dvas stapulas cum una barra, whereby men with carts and other carriages could not pass. And the Bishop answered, that John Briton, while custos of London, for that the said lane was so dirty that no man could pass, set up the said staples and bar, ad viam illam defutand. ; and he granted that what was an annoyance should be taken away ; which was done by the sheriff accordingly." The nuisance of an almost impassable and most unwhole some thoroughfare, however, remained until the year 1540, Avhen it Avas paved with stone at the expense of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. A considerable part of the west side of this street is occupied by the buildings of Lincoln's Inn, so called from its having been the site of the palace of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and constable of Chester, who died there in the year 1310, into whose hands the ground passed by virtue of a grant from King Edward I. " of the old friars' house juxta Oldbourne :" the friars here mentioned were a house of Black Friars, who subsequently established themselves in the quarter now denominated from them Blackfriars. The Earl of Lincoln assigned the ground formerly occupied by these friars, and his own mansion, Chichester House, to certain professors of the law, who, adding to the space thus obtained the greater part of that belonging to the see of Chichester, built there an Inn of Court for the study of the laws of England. Part of the Inn, namely, the part which belonged to the bishopric, was leased to the Society until the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIIL, when the Bishop of Chichester granted the inheritance to Francis Sulyard and his brother Eustace, both students, the survivor of Avhom, in the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth, sold the fee to the Benchers for 520/. The fine old gateway, or gatehouse tower, so conspicuous a feature of Chan cery Lane, was the work of the early part of the sixteenth century, having been completed in the ninth year of Henry VIIL, and almost entirely at the charge of Sir Thomas Lovell, the founder of Holywell Nunnery, a member of the INNS OF COURT. 371 '¦Lincoln's Inn Gateway.^ Society of Lincoln's Inn,, and a knight of the Garter. The arms of this worthy adorn the gatehouse, on which are also placed the escutcheons of the Lacy family, which also were " cast and wrought in lead, on the louer * of the hall of the house, which was in the three escutcheons, a lion rampant for Lacie, seven mascules voided for Quincie, and three wheatsheafs for Chester."f These escutcheons, however, had, in the course of repairing and altering the public buildings, disappeared before the close of the sixteenth century, and the only memorials of Sir Thomas Lovell now existing may^ be seen over the ancient gateway in Chancery Lane. The bricks and tiles used in the building of this gateway and of the hall were made from clay dug from a piece of ground, then called Coneygarth, lying on the west side of the Inn adjoining to Lincoln's Inn Fields ; and we are further informed by the indefatigable chronicler of these legal localities, that the cost of sculpturing the arms over the gate, together with the wroughtwork for the chimnies, and forty-three loads of freestone, was 16/. 7s. 5d. The gatehouse and all the buildings facing Chancery Lane are noAV completely saturated with smoke, but some of the buildings in the interior of the Inn, especially the " Stone Buildings," are both handsome and commo dious ; the chambers are chiefly occupied by chancery barristers, conveyancers, and persons in attendance on the Cgurt of Chancery, now held in the hall of Lincoln's Inn and in two temporary Vice- Chancellors' courts, which uoav occupy nearly the whole of the small square, of which the gatehouse forms the eastern side. The gardens, in which Bickerstaff (' Tatler,' No. 100) delighted to walk, being pri vileged so to do by the Benchers " who had grown old " with him, are extensive. Prom the garden the spectator may readily distinguish the modern erections from the more 'ancient buildings of the sixteenth century : the former occupy the * Louer, or loover, from the Latin labia, lauhia,- or labium, a gallery (Uucange's Glossarium). Hence also Louvre, Gall. t Stow's Survey. 2b2 372 LONDON. greatest extent, and consist of the Stone Buildings and New Square, formerly called " Searle's Court," from Henry Searle, Esq., a Bencher of this Inn, whose property this square was about 1697, when it was purchased by the Society. In the centre of the square stood a small Corinthian column, designed by Inigo Jones : at the four corners of the pedestal were infant tritons holding shells, which formerly spouted water ; this was intended for a fountain, but, from some mismanagement, it has long ceased to be entitled to that name. The Stone Buildings are from the design of Sir Robert Taylor, and are only part of a noble plan for rebuilding the whole Inn, but which has never yet been carried out. Several plans have been devised at various times for the embellishment of this Inn and its vicinity, among which those of Inigo Jones prove that that great man, however pure and elegant his taste, was never formed for a Gothic archi tect : the Chapel, his design, is built upon huge pillars and arches, which once formed a promenade beneath, cold and damp in bad weather, and in fine weather too retired : this has been of late years enclosed with an iron railing, and has been used as a place of interment for the Benchers. From the terrace Avalk of the garden a fins view is obtained of one of the largest squares in Europe, for the embellishment of which the same architect had formed some grand ideas, intending to have built all the houses in the same style and taste, and to have laid out the garden and formed the inlets to this beautiful square on a most magnificent scale ; but unfortunately his designs were never carried out, " because the inhabitants had not taste enough to be of the same mind, or to^unite their sentiments for the public ornament and reputation." There are plans entertained of building new courts of justice in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in lieu of the present courts at Westminster, which are thought to be inconveniently far from the Inns of Court, and for building a new hall for Lin coln's Inn, on the western side of the garden of that Inn, near the spot mentioned above as the ancient-" Coneygarth." Lincoln's Inn Hall, which has been repeatedly altered and modernised, was commenced in 1506, and is an exceedingly fine room, though smaller and by no means so handsome as the halls of the Inner and Middle Temple. It is used for the sittings of the Lord Chancellor out of term time, as well as for the usual commons of the Society during term. At the end is a picture by Hogarth of ' Paul preaching before Felix ;' a lamentable failure of that eminent painter, so ^great in his own walk. The statue of Thomas Erskine, instead of encumbering Westminster Abbey, is most appropriately placed at the southern end of the Hall, opposite to the chair of the Lord Chancellor. Erskine was a member of this Inn, and his coat of arms decorates the walls of the Hall, together with the escutcheons of Spencer Perceval, Canning, Lynd- hurst. Brougham, and other eminent lawyers; and here also are the arms of the clergymen emblazoned who have filled the office of preacher to the Honourable Society. Among these appear the names of Reginald Heber, William W^ar- burton, and John Tillotson. Erskine's career was a splendid one, though his parts were more shining than solid. At an early age, while in the army, he mar ried a young lady to whonv he was much attached, and who accompanied him to Minorca ; and this union, foolish and thoughtless as it was considered by his family, was always declared by himself to have been the incitement which INNS OF COURT. 373 [Statue of Erskine.] spurred him on to exertion. In the year 1772 he returned to England, and shortly afterwards, conceiving that his talents were hidden in the poor society of marching regiment, he entered at Lincoln's Inn, and immediately commenced his studies at the Bar. Amongst the distinguished characters who assembled at the house of Mrs. Montague, Mr. Erskine was not unfrequently seen. " He talked," says Boswell, " with a vivacity, fluency, and precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular attention." Erskine, a husband and a father, struggled hard with pecuniary difficulties. The time at length arrived when he was at liberty to commence his professional life ; but, on rising to speak, though it was but to make a motion of course, he was so overcome with confusion, that he was about to sit down. " At that time," he was accustomed to relate, " 1 fancied I could feel my little children tugging at my gown, so I made an effort — went on — and succeeded." Of one famous member of this Inn of Court — Prynne — we have spoken in our Number on " Ely Place," and again in Number LXVIIL, and in the former we have given Whitelock's account of the famous masque which the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, with this historian at their head, determined on performing in the most splendid manner, in order to eradicate entirely the bad effects of the " Histriomastix." Lincoln's Inn was never behind the Temple in its masques, revels, Christmasings ; nor were the exercises of dancing and singing merely per mitted at this Inn, but insisted on : for, by an order, made on the 6th of February, m the 7th of James I., it appears " that the under-barristers were by decimation put out of commons, for example's sake, because the whole Bar Avere offended by 374 LONDON. their not dancing on the Candlemas-day preceding, according to the ancient order of the Society, when the Judges were present," and a threat that if the like fault were repeated, they should be fined or disbarred. Instead of the Temple Lord of Misrule, the " King of the Cocknies " ruled over the festivities at Lincoln's Inn, and they also had a " Jack Straw," but " he and all his adherents were utterly banished in the time of Elizabeth," and an order issued that they " should no more be used, upon pain of forfeit for every time five pound, to be levied on every fellow offending against this rule." From the following entry in the register, it would seem that the grand Christmasings Avere not kept regularly : " It is agreed, that if the two Temples do kepe Chrystemas, then Chrystemas to be kept here ; and, to know this, the steward of the house ys commanded to get knowledge, and to advertise my masters by the next day at night." The men of this Inn appear, however, to have been rather " topping the mode," so that it was deemed proper in Elizabeth's reign, besides curtailing the grand banquets and limiting the number of assumed characters represented at them, to enact sumptuary laws, prohibiting long hair and lace ruffs, also the introduction into the ball of cloaks, swords, and spurs ; while, unmindful of Justice Shallow's chaunt, — " 'Tis merry in hall When beards wag all" — the Benchers had previously forbidden beards at dinner, under pain of paying double commons ; the fashion of Avearing beards was, nevertheless, found too deeply rooted, and the prohibition Avas subsequently repealed. Hale, one of the youngsters of 1630, was considered a gay young felloAV, and, doubtless, parted more readily with his fine of double commons than his beard ; and Hale, Den ham, and Ellesmere were young once. The gayest young student on record, and he Avas a Templar, was Samuel Foote ! " He came into the room," says Dr. Harrowby, " dressed out in a frock suit of green and silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point ruffles, and immediately joined the critical circle of the upper end of the room. Nobody kncAv him. He, hoAvever, soon boldl}' entered into conversation, and, by the brilliancy of his Avit, the justness of his remarks, and the unembarrassed freedom of his manners, attracted the general notice. The buz of "the room went round, ' Who is he?' 'Whence comes he?' To which nobody could answer, until a handsome carriage stopping at the door to take him to the assembly of a lady of fashion, they learned from the servants that his name Avas Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, and a student of the Inner Temple.'' The scene of this was Nando's coffee house, the resort of the great leaders of the Bar for many j'ears, where, of later years, Erskine, Gibbs, Garrow, Plumer, Park, and Jekyll— in short, aU who were eminent in their profession waited until the full court, to Avhich they be longed, Avas assembled. To return to the gay members of Lincoln's Inn and their feasts. In the Christmas of 1661 Pepys writes : — " The Kuig visited Lincoln's Inn, to see the reveUs there ; there being, ac cording to an old custome, a prince and all his nobles, and other matters of sport and charge." This must have been a glorious Christmas at Lincoln's Inn, Charles II.'r pre- INNS OF COURT. 375 sence, the attendance of Clarendon, Ormond, and Shaftesbury, and the perform ance at the revels of Hale, Ley, and Denham ; Prynne standing by, and gloomily regarding the merriment and joyous faces, which he held both profane and un worthy of a pious man : the whole must have presented a curious spectacle, but we have but a crude report of it by Pepys. Yet these representations must have been " meat and drink " to him ; and some of the masques presented by these learned societies were written by men of genius, and contain beautiful poetry, as in the ' Circe and Ulysses ' by Browne, of which some specimens have been given to the world by Sir Egerton Brydges. Decker, in his satire against Ben Jonson, accuses him of having stolen his jokes from the Christmas Plays of the Templars : " You shall sweare not to bumbast out a new play with the old lyning of jestes stolen from the Temple ReveUs." Whether the native talent of the Inns was considered of a high character by this dramatist does not appear : it is more probable that the usual custom Avas to employ a professional play writer for the purpose of composing the masques at these place. Thus, in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, we have " The Masque of the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn," &c. Sir Matthew Hale contributed a large collection of Manuscripts to the Library of this Society, which is now situate in Stone Buildings. The formation of this Library Avas begun in the reign of Henry VII. ; and in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth the first building was erected, and the accumulation of books greatly forwarded by an order made in the sixth year of James I., "for the more speedy furnishing of the Library, every one that should thenceforth be called to the Bench in this Society should give xx s. toward the buying of bookes for the same Library ; and every one thenceforth called to the bar xiii s. iiii d. : all which summs to be paid to Mr. Matthew Hadde, who, for the better ordering of the said Library, was then made master thereof" The Library is now greatly enlarged, and besides the valuable bequests of Sir Matthew Hale and other members of the Society, contains some thousands of volumes, principally on law and history, to which additions are continually made from the funds of the Society. » The books, of course, must not be removed from the Library, but with few other restrictions they are always open to the examination of the curious. The MSS. of Sir Matthew Hale are very valuable, relating chiefly to profes sional subjects ; and by a clause in his will, in which he speaks somewhat egotisti cally of his own lucubrations, he expressly forbids any lending of his donations, " unless there be any of my posterity that desires to transcribe any book, and gives very good security to restore it again within a prefixed time ; then, and not otherwise, only one book at any one time may be lent out to them by the Society;" adding " they are a treasure not fit for every man's view, nor is every man capable of making use of them." Valuable additions have also been made, in pursuance to testamentary orders, out of the private libraries of various de ceased members of the Society : several volumes of MS. in Selden's handwriting are here preserved, and a tolerably extensive collection on legal subjects be queathed by Mr. Sergeant Maynard, Mr. Coxe, and Mr. S. HIU. Lincoln's Inn, containing at the present day the Chancery Courts, is more occupied by counsel attending the equity bar than by common-law lawyers. Of the latter, the greater number have their chambers in the Temple: Grays Inn 376 LONDON. has also a large number of resident members, but, from its increased distance from legal business, is not so greatly occupied by barristers or attorneys. y. ' • . > L ¦ Ml ¦ "^ ^/)' ^^ [Gray's Ion Hall.] Gray's Inn, the fourth Inn of Court in importance and in size, derives its name from the Lords Gray of Wilton, whose residence it -originally was, and one of Ashom, Edmund, Lord Gray of Wilton, in August, 1505, by indenture of bargain and sale, passed to Hugh Denny, Esq., his heirs and assigns, " the manor of Portpoole, otherwise called Gray's Inn, four messuages, four gardens, the site of a, windmill, eight acres of land, ten shillings of free rent, and the advowson of the chantry of Portpoole." The parties into whose possession this property after wards came, disposed of it to the prior and convent of East Sheen, in Surrey, a place celebrated for having been the nursery of Cardinal Pole and many other eminent ecclesiastics of the sixteenth century. The convent leased the mansion of Portpoole, as Gray's Inn was then frequently denominated, to certain students of the law, at the annual rent of 6/. 13s. 4d.,at which rent they continued to hold them until the suppression of the ecclesiastical communities by Henry VIIL, Avhen they received a grant from the King, who seized these estates, together with the Temple and »11 other monastic property, upon which he could lay his IN'NS of COURT. 377 hands; and the Benchers of Gray's Inn were thenceforth entered in the Kind's books as the fee-farm tenants of the crown, paying annually the same rent as was reserved by their former landlords, the monks of Sheen. As Chancery Lane bounds Lincoln's Inn on the east, "so does Gray's Inn Lane bound Gray's Inn, and if there be a shade of difference between these two streets, certainly the former must be aUowed to have the advantage both in cleanliness and respectability. Yet the northern end of Gray's Inn Lane though not so richly "furnished with fair buildings and many tenements on both the sides," as in the times of Stow, has yet a very neat aspect and assumes a fresher appearance as the distance increases from Holborn Bars "lead ing to the fields towards Highgate and Hampsted." The garden was first planted about the year 1600, at which period Mr. Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord Verulam, in his account as treasurer of the Society, debits the Inn in the sum [Monument of Bacon.] if 7/. 6*. 8d. for the planting of elm trees therein. Gray's Inn at present consists of two large squares^ of which that which is entered immediately from the Lane IS the handsomer, but the recent restoration of the public buildings of the Society has rendered the square very much more elegant than it formerly was. The Hall and Chapel separate these squares, and occupy the whole of the south- side of the larger ; the former was built in Queen Mary's reign, and completed in 1560, costing 8631. lOs. 8d. : it is a very handsome chamber, little inferior to Middle Temple Hall, and its carved Avainscot and timber roof render it much more magnificent than the Inner Temple or Lincoln's Inn Hall. Its Avin dows also are richly emblazoned with the armorial bearings of Burleigh, Lord Verulam, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Jenkins, and others. The Chapel is of modern erection . it was probably buUt on the site of the " Chauntryof Portpoole," men tioned in the grant to Hugh Denny. In this " chauntry " divine service was daily performed, and masses sung for the soul of John, the son of Reginald de 3"8 LONDON. Gray, for which certain lands were then granted to the Prior and Convent of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield. And, at the expense of the latter, divine service in succeeding ages was here performed on behalf of the students and other mem bers of this Society, as is evident from a decree made in the Augmentation Court, 10th November, 33 Henry VIII. This decree further expresses that the said Prior and Convent, and their predecessors, were yearly charged with the pension of 71. 13s. 4d. for the salary or stipend of the chaplain for this chauntry, and that the said house of St. Bartholomew being then dissolved, this Society, " in recom pense thereof, should receive of the King's Highness, for finding of the said chap lain, during the King's pleasure, the sum of 61. 13s. 4d. sterling, yearly, to be paid by the hands of the treasurer of the said Court of Augmentations, at the, feasts of the Nativity of St. John Baptist and St. Michael Archangel, by even portions." The internal economy and manners of this Inn seem to have been very similar to that of the other Inns of Court at the same period: their masques and revels were participated in by the men of Gray's Inn, as we find was the case in the famous masque conducted by Whitelocke, and arranged at Ely Place, but though the " practisers " of Gray's occasionally displayed a gorgeous inter lude and held a plenteous Christmasing, the same bad report attaches to them as their brother barristers of Chancery Lane had incurred, by their laxity in the " ferial " days, of which fault the Templars had never been accused. In Michaelmas term, 21 Henry VIIL, there was an order made that " whenever there are revells, the fellows of the house shall not depart out of the hall until the said revells shall be ended, under the penalty of I2d'' The famous comedy, which was acted here at Christmas of the year 1527, and was written by John Roos, a student of this Inn, and afterwards Sergeant-at-Law, gave such offence to Cardinal Wolsey, probably by its containing reflections on the pomp and arrogance of the clergy, that its author was degraded and imprisoned. Nor was this the first time that the power of the Chancellor had been felt in the Inns of Court. In the year ] 501, Sir Amias Paulet having found it necessary, in his capacity of Justice of the Peace, to put Wolsey, then only parson of Lymington, into the stocks, the Prelate never forgot the insult; and about 1520. Sir Amias Avas glad to make peace with the haughty Prelate by rebuilding the gatehouse of Middle Temple, which he did, adorning it with the Cardinal's hat and cog nizance in a " most glorious manner." On the site of this gatehouse, which was destroyed by fire, was the present erected. The two most eminent members of whom Gray's Inn can boast are Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and Lord Burleigh, the celebrated minister of Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Cecil had entered at Gray's Inn, as he informs us, in his MS. diary, in 1541 : " Whether this removal to Gray's Inn," says Dr. Nares, " were for the purpose of his being bred wholly up to the profession of the law, we are not able to say, since it was no unusual thing in those days for young men of family and talents, who had any prospect of becoming members of the legis lature, to go through a course of law at some one of our Inns of Court, in order to become better acquainted with the laws and constitution of their country. It was regarded, indeed, as almost a necessary qualification." An anecdote of Bur leigh's Gray's-Inn days is related by his old historian, in the quaint language of INNS OF COURT. 379 [Ceoil.j the age, in which he flourished; " A mad companion having enticed him lo play, in a short time he lost all his money, bedding, and books to his companion, having never used play before. And bein^ afterwards among his other company, he told them how such a one had misled him, saying he Avould presently have a device to be even with him. And with a long trouke he made a hole in the wall, near his playfellow's bedhead, and in a fearful voice spake thus through the trouke : ' 0 mortal man, repent ! repent of thy horrible time consumed in play, cozenage, and lewdness, or else thou art damned and canst not be saved 1' Which being spoken at midnight, when he was all alone, so amazed him, as drove him into a sweat for fear. Most penitent and heavy, the next day, in presence of the youths, he told with trembling what a fearful voice spake to him at midnight, vowing never to play again ; and calling for Mr. CecU, asked him forgiveness on his knees, and restored him all his money, bedding, and books. So two gamesters were both reclaimed with this merry device, and never played more. Many other the like merry jests (?) I have heard him teU, too long to be here noted.' Who Burleigh's " playfellows" Avere nowhere appears, but the future statesman himself was a married man during the greater part of his sojourn at Gray's Inn, and ought to have been more steady than to stake hi^ " books and bedding," after losing his " money ;" but, from many memoranda of Gray's Inn which have come down to our time, it would seem that the students of this society were rather an unruly set. Pepys writes thus in May, 1667 : " Great talk of how the bar risters and students of Gray's Inn rose in rebeUion against the benchers the other day, who outlawed them, and a great deal to do ; but now they are at peace again." 380 LONDON. Romilly was a member of Gray's Inn. " I sometimes lose all courage," writes he, despondingly, to a friend, in the year 1 783, " and wonder what fond opinion of my talents could ever have induced me to venture on so bold an undertaking : but it often happens (and I fear it has been my case) that men mistake the desire for the ability of acting some distinguished part." Romilly studied diligently and successfully, and, like Erskine, Burke, and Curran, delighted in attending on the debating societies, which among the modern law-students have taken the place of the ancient mootings of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Curran's account of his introduction and debut at one of these societies is most witty and instructive : it is the identical " first appearance " of hundreds. " Upon the first occasion of our assembling, I attended, my foolish heart throbbing with the anticipated honour of being styled ' the learned member that opened the debate,' or ' the very eloquent gentleman who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had been flitting before my fancy and cajoling it ; my ear already caught the glorious melody of ' Hear him, hear him !' Already I was practising how to steal a cunning sidelong glance at the tear of generous approbation bubbling in the eyes of my little auditory; never suspecting, alas ! that a modern eye may have so little affinity with moisture, that the finest gunpowder may be dried upon it. I stood up — my mind Avas stored with about a folio volume of matter ; but I wanted a preface, and for want of a preface the volume was never published. I stood Up, trembling through every fibre ; but remembering that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took courage, and had actually proceeded almost as far as ' Mr. Chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived that every eye was riveted upon me. There were only six or seven present, and the little room could not have contained as many more ; yet was it, to my panic-struck imagina tion, as if I were the central object in nature, and assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation. I became dismayed and dumb ; my friends cried, ' Hear him !' but there was nothing to hear. My lips, indeed, went through the pantomime of articulation ; but I was like the unfortunate fiddler at the fair, who, upon .coming to strike up the solo that was to ravish every ear, discovered that an enemy had maliciously soaped his bow ; or rather like poor Punch, as I once saw him, grimacing a soliloquy, of which his prompter had most indiscreetly neglected to administer the words." Need we add that it Avas not many months before the sun shone forth in all its splendour, and " stuttering Jack Curran," or " orator Mum," as he Avas frequently styled, became inappropriate epithets when applied to this gem of the Sister Isle. In connection with the Inns of Court, and their associations and inhabitants, it will be proper to make some mention of the Inns of Chancery, formerly t'he nur series of our great lawyers, but at present attached only by name to the parent Inns of Court. Of these Inns of Chancery, the Inner Temple has three, Cle ment's, Clifford's, and Lyon's Inn ; the Middle Temple, one. New Inn ; Lincoln's Inn, two, Thavies' and Furnival's ; and Gray's Inn, two, Barnard's and Staples'. Strand Inn, or Stronde Inn, was an Inn of Chancery in the reign of Henry VIII., and probably long before that period, and belonged to the Middle Temple : this, together with the Bishop of Worcester's Inn, and the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield's house, commonly called Chester Inn. were pulled down by the Duke INNS OF COURT. 331 of Somerset, in making room for his mansion, Somerset House. The Inns of Chancery are principally inhabited by attorneys; but anciently it was considered indispensable that a student should spend some years at one of these, employing himself in learning the forms of the writs which issued from the High Court of Chancery to the courts of common law. Thus Sir Edward Coke was one year at Clifford's Inn and six at the Inner Temple ; and even " Master Robert Shallow, Esquire, justice of the peace and quorum," though doubtless not one of the brightest ornaments of his time, passed some time at Clement's Inn. In the middle of the garden of Clement's Inn is a sundial, supported by a figure of considerable merit, kneeling (a naked Moor or African), which was pre sented to the society by Lord Clare, by whom it was brought from Italy. The following verses are said to have been found stuck upon this figure :— " In vain, poor sable son of woe. Thou seek'st the tender tear ; From thee in vain with pangs they flow. For mercy dwells not here. From cannibals thou fled'st in vain. Lawyers less quarter give : The first won't eat you 'till you're dead. The last will do't alive t" The Inns, denominated " Sergeants' Inns," one of Avhich is in Chancery Lane, and the other in Fleet Street, are exclusively appropriated to gentlemen who have been caUed to the degree of the coif : the Judges are always members of Sergeants' Inn, and have official chambers in Rolls Garden, Chancery Lane, where a great deal of the minor business of a suit at law is transacted. But little of this sort of in formation needs to be included in a sketch of the Inns of Court and Chancery. The lawyers of London are not,^ at the present day, so corporate a class of men as at former periods ; the Inns of Court are not so much a place of residence as formerly ; "the habits of the barrister are the habits of any other gentleman. Morning visits are not made in black silk gOAvns and powdered wigs ; and the Chief Justices of our courts have ceased to wear fans, as Sir Edward Coke was in the habit of doing, carrying about one of those " prodigious " fans, which Dugdale mentions, having long handles, Avith which the gentlemen of those times " slasht their daughters when they were perfect women." Society has gained much by the great abandonment of the Inns as places of residence, except for the younger members; and the curtailment of a few hours a-day from professional avocations, since the Masters in Chancery sat at five in the morning, must have acted beneficially on all classes. It may be desirable to conclude this sketch of some of the peculiarities of the Inns of Court by a notice of the modes of admitting Students, and of calling them to the Bar after the required course of probation. Each of the Inns of Court is independent. They agree, however, in the ob servance of certain common regulations. Though without any control over each other, they have all undertaken, voluntarily, by committees of the benchers, the observance of certain general and mutually-advantageous resolutions. No per son can keep a term in any of them without being three days in the hall when the grace is said after dinner. None of the societies can call a gentleman to the 382 LONDON. bar before he has been five years a member of the society, unless he is a master of arts or a bachelor of laAVS of any of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, when three years is the period required. No person in trade or in dea con's orders, and no one who has held the situation of a conveyancer's clerk, can be admitted at all ; and solicitors and attorneys must have their names struck off the rolls for two years, and the articles of clerks must be expired or cancelled two years, before they can be admitted, if one of the societies reject an applicant for admission, the circumstance is communicated to all the other inns, and, ac cording to the resolutions by which all the societies are voluntarily bound, none of them can admit him. No one can be called to the bar until his name and de scription have been put up on the screen in the hall of the society to which he belongs for a fortnight previous to his call, and communicated to all the other societies. Before the call, the oaths of allegiance and supremacy are required. If the applicant gives a wrong description of himself in any one respect, his ariplication avUI be rejected. Without the approbation of the treasurer or one of the benchers, no gentleman can be admitted. The mode of admission varies little in the Inns. In stating his wishes to the society, the applicant must describe his age and condition in life, and the abode and condition in life of his father, — set forth the object which he has in view in seeking admission, — and bind himself to abstain from practice as a conveyancer unless he obtains the permission of the benchers. Recommended as a gentleman of respectability by two barristers, with the surety of a householder or a barrister for the payment of his dues, the applicant must give in a paper, containing his application, recommendation, and surety, to the steward of the society, for the approval of a bencher or the treasurer. When his application is approved, the admission takes place on the payment of a sum for the stamp, the bond, the ad mission-money, and other items, varying in the different Inns from 30^. to 40/. On his admission, the Student enters into a bond of 100/. penalty, along with another member of the Inn, for the payment of his commons or dinners while a student. Before he can keep terms, that is, eat a certain number of dinners in each term, he must deposit 100/. (which will be returned Avithout interest on his call to the bar, or when he leaves the society), or produce a certificate ot having kept the requisite number of terms at Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, or of membership of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland. In all the Inns the Student must keep twelve terms before he can be called.* Irish Students must keep eight in England, and nine in Dublin, and there is a ceremonial of nine exercises which all Students must undergo, the object of which is to make tho benchers acquainted Avith the persons of the Students. In the Inner Temple this assumes the form of an examination, in order rather to learn how the Student has spent his time than to ascertain his abilities and acquirements. On the expiring of his terms, his age being more than twenty-one years, and his certificate on commencing his exercises having been approved, the student informs the steward of his inn of his intention, some days previous to the com mencement of the term in Avhich he wishes to be called, in order that the neces- sarv preparations may be made. Having obtained the support of one of the benchers to his petition, which he addresses to the benchers at a special council. * By tui oversight, the number of terms to be kept was stated as twenty, iu the preeeding Number. INNS OF COURT. 383 if he obtains their approbation he attends the benchers after dinner, the usual oaths are administered, and he is called to the bar. When this has taken place, new bonds are entered into for the payment of his dues under a penalty of 200/. ; and the expense, made up of various items, differs in the inns from about 66/. (the expense of being called in Gray's Inn) to 93/. (the expense in Lincoln's Inn). There are different degrees among the members of the inns. The barristers were anciently called apprentices of the law, from apprendre, to learn. Above them formerly were the ancients — this was a degree of precedence bestowed as a mark of honour upon, barristers, though enjoyed as a right by the sons of judo-es. The Serjeants are the highest degree at common law, as the doctors are in civil law. The Court of Common Pleas was, until lately, set apart to this order of barristers. Serjeants-at-law are made by the King's writ, directed to the bar risters upon whom the honour is conferred, commanding them to take upon them that degree by a certain day. The appointment of a barrister to the office of Queen's Counsel is another mode of conferring rank, technically called giving a silk gown, by which costume the bearers of this honour are distinguished. This honour is sometimes conferred by letters patent of precedence. The benchers are elected out of barristers at the bar according to seniority. They govern and direct the Society. Their poAver is discretionary, and cannot be questioned. They may reject an application for admission without even assigning a reason. They possess this power, however, only in common with all voluntary societies. There is no appeal from their decision. The twelve judges are visiters of the inns. It is their province to take cognizance of the conduct of the benchers to the members of the inns ; so that, though a person .never ad mitted has no appeal to the judges, the refusal of a call to a member may be subjected to the revision of the visiters. The privilege of conferring upon indi viduals the right of pleading is enjoyed by the inns only in consequence of the permission of the judges. The authority of the benchers in the rejection of an applicant for admission was tried in Michaelmas term, 1825, before the Court of King's Bench, in the case of Mr. Thomas Jonathan Wooler. Mr. Wooler appUed in Michaelmas term, 1824, for admission as a member of Lincoln's Inn, but received, on the 27th of January following, an official communication of his rejection from the steward, Avithout any reason assigned. He then petitioned the benchers for a statement of the reasons of his rejection, and a'hearing in his own behalf; and having received no answer from them, he petitioned the twelve judges for redress. He was in formed by the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, that the twelve judges had no power to interfere in the case. Mr. Wooler then appUed for a mandamus — a prerogative writ, used in all cases where the law has established no other mode of redress— on the ground, that if the judges had no jurisdiction in such cases, the powers of the benchers were both grievous and unconstitutional. The judges delivered their opinions seriatim, which coincided with the opinion formerly expressed by Lord Mansfield— that the society was a voluntary body, and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Court— that no one had an inchoate right to admission, since the Inns of Court were not incorporations, but voluntary societies, enjoying the privUege of calling persons to the bar by the permission of the. judges— and th^t, unless in the ease of a member refused a caU to the 3fl4 LONDON. bar, when, as visiters, they might revise the decision of the benchers, or in case the system of exclusion were carried so far as not to call a sufficient number of persons to the bar to transact the public business conveniently, the twelve judges had no right to interfere with the conduct of the benchers. The way in which the benchers have exercised their powers may be ascer tained, in some degree, from a few facts to be found in the evidence taken before the Common Law Commissioners. It appeared from the examination of Mr. Thomas Lane, steward of Lincoln's Inn, that from ninety to upwards of a hun dred gentlemen were admitted members of the society every year, while the average number of calls to the bar was forty-two in the course of a year. He had held the office of steward for forty-one years, and remembered only one rejection of an applicant for admission, and two of persons applying to be called to the bar. Both the gentlemen rejected were afterwards called to the bar. One of them was an editor of a newspaper, and was rejected upon the ground of having been con victed of a libel. Neither Mr. Burrell the treasurer, nor Mr. Griffith the steward of Gray's Inn, were aware of any refusals of admission into the society to which they belong. Mr. Griffith stated that one individual had been refused admission to the bar because he was an uncertificated bankrupt. He appealed to the judges, and was heard by his counsel, Mr. Denman, but the judges sanctioned the refusal of the benchers. Mr. James Gardiner stated that four persons had been refused admission to the Inner Temple since he was under-treasurer. One was refused because he had been in trade, was a bankrupt, and did not intend to be called to the bar ; another because he did not intend to be called to the bar, and was a barrister's clerk. Mr. Gardiner mentioned two cases which occurred in his predecessor's time. One of them was a person who had stolen papers from an attorney's office, and the other was this person's brother. The Irish Inns of Court were established after the model of the English Inns, on the establishment of courts of justice in Dublin. By an old statute, Irish students must keep eight terms in one of the English Inns, as well as nine in the King's Inns, Dublin, before they can be called to the Irish bar. The original intention of this statute was to cultivate English habits and associations, as well as to enable them to observe the working of the law in the courts at Westminster. It is complained of as a grievance. Irish students may keep terms in London and Dublin alternately, or in any other order they think proper. Gray's Inn is the resort of the generality of Irish students, it being by far the most convenient to them, not only on account of the facility of keeping terms there, but also that of admission ; for they are not required at this Inn to have their entrance docu ment signed by two barristers, or to procure two housekeepers to enter into a bond. It will suffice if any other student or member of the Inn sign both. There is also no charge made for absent commons, as in Lincoln's Inn. "rM*- [Reading Room — British Museum.] C— THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. BY JAMES M'TURK, ESQ. Most of our readers are familiar with the saloons of the British Museum which are opened to the pubUc. They are at present requested to accompany us into a corner of the buUding frequented by more constant but less numerous visitors. From Montague Place, a short lane, entered by a gate, conducts to the north-east angle of the buUding. Let us pause a moment in the vestibule, and moralise on the contagious influence of a scientific atmosphere. The very doorkeepers, who take your umbrella and great-coat, evince a taste for reading. That fresh looking young man, who sits behind the gate in a wooden box that looks like a dog-house, made for a Newfoundland dog accustomed to walk on his hinder legs, has his newspaper ; and our stout friend within doors here, has his magazine or review. Those cabalistic strokes which he is drawing upon the piece of paper before him, with a pencil, are for the edification of our legislators. In this age all kinds of information are brought to the test of figures. The average number of daily visitors to the Museum is multiplied by the number of days it is open in a year, and the product is the amount of learning the institution diffuses through the nation. The calculation is laid before Pariiament, in order that members may be able to estimate the inteUigence of their constituents. But we are obstructing the entrance : move on. An ascent of one pair of stairs brings us into a short passage, or wide doorway, which connects two spacious, lofty rooms, VOL. 17. ~»- 386 LONDON. which, notwithstanding the party-wall, may be described as one hall, contracted in the middle, and bulging out at both ends like a square hour-glass, or a dandy, when dandies existed, and wore stays. A lane, if we may be alloAved to use so bold a figure of speech, runs from one end of this apartment to the other, and on each side of it are rows of parallel tables. The tables are capacious, — twelve in the western room, and ten in the eastern. The walls are clad with presses containing books ; a gallery runs round each room at mid-height of' the wall. The windows are in the north side, and extend from the gallery to the roof. At the west end of the western apartment is a door, with a kind of low counter across it, through which a glimpse is obtained into a suite of apartments with similar book-clad walls. At the opposite end of the same apartment is, on your right hand as you look to the west, a low table ; on the left, a tall double desk, with double roAvs of folios, like ledgei:s, ranged" along the top of it. At each of the parallel tables above-mentione'd is accommodation for eight persons ; and they are generally occupied by their complement of individuals, surrounded by piles of books, writing away busily and in solemn silence. Within the doorway, across which the low counter stretches, is seated an intelligent, civil- looking person, of middle age ; at the low table, on the right hand, at the opposite end of that aj)artment, is seated a venerable, portly gentleman, with hair of silvery white. Ever and anon one of the busy writers at the tables may be seen to rise, approach the double desk, reach down one of the folios, transcribe something from it on a small scrap of paper, and, after handing the note to the gentleman Avithin the doorway, resume his seat. Another may be seen approaching the venerable gentleman, who, after a short whispered conversation, rises, and, proceeding to the double desk, hands down one of the folios, and appears to explain something. A third betakes himself to a single desk against the wall in the twin apartment, transcribes from a range of folios standing there, and hands his note to a burly senior seated at the end of the second table from the desk. Meanwhile two or more persons, similar in age and appearance to him who sits within the doorway, are passing incessantly backwards and forwards from that receipt of custom, where they receive books, to the tables, where they deposit them. The occupants of the tables are both male and female, the ruder sex predominating. A solemn silence pervades the hall ; there is no conversation to be heard passing betAveen the studious apparitions immersed among their books and papers, seemingly un conscious of the existence of the neighbours with whom they are rubbing shoul ders ; those who have occasion to move about flit with tiptoe, slipshod silence, from place to place ; you might at any time hear a pin drop from one extremity of the space to the other. The suite of apartments into which it has been said a glimpse is obtained over the head of the taker of receipts and giver-out of books must not be passed over in silence. There is something extremely imposing in the idea it impresses of an endless succession of book-walled aisles. Once, in days long gone, we were heralded by a meagre slipshod candidate for some of the lower orders of the priesthood through the vaults of two churches in Cologne, lined, one with the skulls of St. Ursula and her ten thousand virgins, the other with the skulls THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 387 of a whole legion of Roman soldiers, martyred at once for their faith, it was a grisly sight, all those grim grinning receptacles of busy and working intellects which had long deserted them. These book-clad walls, radiant in the light of day, are the very converse of the picture: here are aU the intellects, and more numerous and better intellects, shelled out of their skulls like prawns when beat up into fish-sauce. It is, when on some rare occasion, and by special favour, one gets admitted into this sanctum sanctorum, an impressive and elevating feeling to pace those wide and lofty galleries, and imagine that you are breathing an atmo- , sptiere impregnated with book-learning. Nor is it unedifying, in the pauses of one's scribbling toils, to look up and catch a glimpse of their inmates for in mates they have, both permanent and occasional. The permanent are those ministering spirits who convey the books from their snug resting-places to the ; employe Avhose office it is to distribute them to the neophytes in the double apartment above described — the makers of catalogues and indexes — and the dii majores who control and regulate their motions. The occasional are bright visions of fairy faces — looking at this season radiantly from amid thickets of flowers — whom the ever gallant T may be seen squiring through the Library, and who, as they pass the opening through which we espy them, steal furtive looks of wonderment at the strange assemblage congregated in the apart ment to which the reader has just been introduced, and to which we now recall our wandering thoughts. , This is the Reading-room of the British Museum. Those little billets, hastily scrawled at the double desk, are receipts upon the credit of Avhich any of ithe innumerable volumes which crowd the walls of the mile-long galleries of the Library of this great national institution are delivered to the drawer of that bill on the bank of knowledge, that he may study them. Spells they are of power, ;these little scraps of scrawled paper, to wake the spirits of the wise, and learned, and imaginative, and fantastic of all ages, and force them to converse with the writer — to pour out to him all their varied stores of racy, instructive, or elevating ¦observation. This is the great national school, to which any one can, on the re commendation of some person known to the curators of the precious depot, obtain access day after day, there to pursue his studies free of expense. This is the great national manufactory of books, in which intellectual machines are engaged week after week, month after month throughout the year, and from one year to another, grinding down the matter of old books in order to make new ones. This is the task in which by far the greater part of the busy, silent occupants of the tables are engaged ; and those Avho move about are the ministering servants of this intellectual refectory, who bring to them the raw or manufactured material upon which they are to operate. No disparagement to our industrious brethren —those indefatigable " slaves of the lamp"— Ave never behold them taking their places of a morning, and waiting till their books are brought to them, but we think of so many chickens in a coop waiting to have their corn thrown down to them. " Little," says Lenze, in ' Gotz von Beriichingen,' while the Imperial troops are beleaguering his master's castle, " Uttle did my father, when he begot me, think what worms should feed upon me, or what fowls of heaven should pick my 388 LONDON. bones." When Lord Montagu laid the foundation of his princely abode in the fields rioAV crowded with streets and squares, little did he imagine tBat the halls upon which the best artists of the day had lavished their powers of adornment should become the abode of a museum and library, and that these lifeless tenants, swelling in bulk and variety, should as it were in time burst the narrow walls, and render it necessary to build a wider crust around them. Nay, little did the first founder or founders of the Museum foresee the appending to it of the Port Esquiline we have been describing, through which its digested stores of intel lectual food were to be conveyed backwards, to be spread over the surface of the national mind in order to enrich it. London has at no time — at least, at no time since the art of printing was fairly established within its walls — been without its literary factories. In earlier times they were private establishments : each enterprising printer or publisher had his own establishment. Fielding, after his graceless fashion, has left us a sketch of one of these book-mills : — " Bookwright. Fie upon it, gentlemen ! — what ! not at your pens ? Do you consider, Mr. Quibble, that it is a fortnight since your ' Letter to a Friend in the Country ' was published ? Is it not time for an ' Answer ' to come out ? At this rate, before your ' Answer ' is printed, your ' Letter ' will be forgot. I love to keep a controversy up warm. I have had authors who have writ a pamphlet in the morning, answered it in the afternoon, and answered that again at night. " Quibble. Sir, I will be as expeditious as possible ; but it is harder to write on this side of the question, because it is the wrong side. " Book. Not a jot. So far on the contrary, that I have known some authors choose it as the properest to show their genius. * * * Well, Mr. Dash, have you done that murder yet ? " Dash. Yes, sir, the murder is done : I am only about a few moral reflections to place before it. " Book. Very well : then let me have the ghost finished by this day se'ennight. " Dash. What sort of a ghost would you have this, sir ? The last was a pale one. " Book. Then let this be a bloody one. Mr. Quibble, you may lay by that ' Life ' Avhich you are about, for 1 hear the person is recovered, and write me out proposals for delivering five sheets of Mr. Bailey's 'English Dictionary' every week, till the whole be finished. If you do not knovv the form, you may copy the proposals for printing * Bayle's Dictionary ' in the same manner. The same words will do for both. • • » • * " Scarecrow. I have a translation of Virgil's ' ^neid,' if we can agree about the price, " Book. Why, what price would you have ? " Scare. You shall read it first, otherwise how will you know the value ? " Book. No, no, sir ; I never deal that way : a poem is a poem, and a pamphlet a pamphlet, with me. Give me a good handsome large volume, with a full pro mising title-page at the head of it, printed on a good paper and letter, the whole well bound and gUt, and I'U Avarrant its seUing. You have the common error of THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 389 authors, that people buy books to read. No, no ; books are only bought to fur nish libraries, as pictures and glasses, and beds and chairs, for other rooms. Look ye, sir, I don't like your title-page : however, to oblige a young beginner, I don't care if I do print it at my own expense. " Scare. But pray, sir, at whose expense shall I eat ? " Book. At whose ? Why, at mine, sir, at mine. I am as great a friend to learning as the Dutch are to trade : no one can want bread with me who will earn it ; therefore, sir, if you please to take your seat at my table, here wiU be everything necessary provided for you, — good milk porridge, very often tAvice a-day ; which is good wholesome food, and proper for students. A translator, too, is what I want at present, my last being in Newgate for shoplifting. The rogue had a trick of translating out of the shops as well as the languages. " Scare. But I am afraid I am not qualified for a translator, for I understand no language but my own. " Book. What, and translate Virgil ! " Scare. Alas, I translated him out of Dryden. " Book. Lay by your hat, sir; lay by your hat immediately. Not qualified! — thou art as well versed in thy trade as if thou hadst laboured in my garret these ten years." From one of the publications of the immaculate Lsetitia Pilkington, we learn that Curll sat for the portrait of Bookwright ; and the lady gives an account of an interview in which he alttempted to recruit her for " my garret." Fielding was in a savage humour when he wrote the scenes of which the dialogues just quoted are a part. He has scarcely done justice to the garreteers of his day : neither the men nor their books were so contemptible as he represents them. Ralph was one of these garreteers. To many he may only be known by Pope's distich : — " Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls, Making night hideous : answer him, ye owls." But Ralph was no fool. In Franklin's Memoirs we read hoAV he came to England with the printer's boy, who was to be the founder of a repubUc, to push his way as a wit and poet. " Pope drove that out of his head;" and in Bubb Dod dington 's Memoirs we read how he had made himself necessary to the political leaders of his time by his pamphleteering sldll. Ralph's ' History of England,' though lightly spoken of by the wits and witlings of his day, has risen in esti mation as time effaced the personal prejudice against the author; and it was a " garret " production. Nay, a greater than Ralph— Samuel Johnson — belonged, for long after his first arrival in town (and, indeed, during the whole of his active hterary career), to the " garret " school. His Dictionary is one of that class of Avorks which the 'Annual,' 'Magazine,' and 'Minerva Press' school of Htera- ture look down upon as incompatible with genius. His ' Lives of the Poets ' were undertaken for a bookseUer's speculation— a collective edition of English poets. He was in great-request for prefaces and dedications. What Curil was to Quibble and Scarecrow, Cave was at one time to Samuel Johnson. If our re collection deceive us not, it was Richardson who told how, having praised a paper of the 'Rambler' one day whUe dining with Cave, that publisher said to him 390 LONDON. next morning, "You made a man happy by your praise yesterday." "Hoav soT' " Did you not observe that, while Ave sat at dinner, a plate of victuals Avas sent to some one behind the screen ? — it was the author of the paper we spoke of, who did not like to appear on account of the shabbiness of his dress." " I have much to say in behalf of that same Falstaff," cries the fat Knight, indignant that his play should be broken off by such a trifle as the Sheriff coming to apprehend him for a robbery. And I have much to say in behalf of that re spectable body of book-makers of which it is my boast to be an unworthy mem ber. The history of science and literature has been in general written too much in the spirit in Avhich Sergeant Kite relates the military annals of his country to raw recruits.. The distinguished heroes, the drawers of the great prizes, alone are commemorated. The generals are spoken of as if they had fought and won their battles single-handed : the privates and subaltern officers are passed over in solemn silence. Richard Steele understood true worth better, and immor talised in his ' Tatler ' the heroic letter of a sergeant in the British army in Flanders — where, according to my Uncle Toby's account of it, they swore terribly. When will another Steele arise, to do justice to the toils and destinies obscure of scholars unknown to fame ? Aristotle, Euclid, Homer, Ptolemy, Gibbon, Voltaire, even Shakspere, are the names not so much of individual men, as of encyclopsediacal minds which comprehended and uttered the collective thoughts of themselves, their contem poraries, and predecessors. No one man's strength could have raised them to the pinnacles they attained : the intercommunication of thoughts, by books or oral converse, was necessary to develop their powers. There must be a literary public before a great genius can arise : his Avorks may overshadow all others, but they can only be produced when others have been produced before them, or are producing at the same time. The veriest index-maker has his share in ma turing thoughts, the common property of thinkers, in order that they may in time take their places in the masterpieces which genius alone can put together. The co-operative thinking of society is incessantly going on : the little labours of our contributors to revicAvs and magazines — our compilers of papers for societies literary and scientific — our travellers, experimenters with blowpipes and crucibles, and peepers through telescopes — all who fancy they are doing something very great, while in reality, like Berkeley's " minute philosopher," their labours belong to the category of the infinitely little — are, however trivially, yet honour ably, and even usefully, employed. All their small doings will be turned to good account the next time a Newton or a D'Alembert is born. This was the case with the book-vampers of the days of Curll and Lintot ; and it is much more true of their successors in our own. For a wider public, and an improved literary machinery, have elevated the pro fessional book-maker in the scale of society. He is less tied down to one employer ; there is a steadier and wider market for his wares. So late as the days of Field ing and Johnson, the poor scholar was found in books by the bookseller for whom he compiled ; he Avas bound to work in the shop of the person who provided him Avith tools. But now we find our tools in the public libraries, and bargain with the dealers who pay us best. There is steady work for those who will work ; there THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 391 is competition among employers ; and, with patience, industry, and prudence, there is certainty of success for any one of fair average intellect. And even when the boy's dream of rising to the first distinctions of science or poetry has faded— when the ripe man has learned to estimate his real powers and position— there is something humanising and ennobling in the very humblest walks of literary labour. The intellect is cultivated ; and wherever that is the case, the spirit of the gentleman is more or less developed. This is nowhere more strikingly displayed than in the hall into which we have now led the reader. Bating some waifs and strays who occasionally resort hither (of whom more anon), the inmates of the apartment are professional literati of aU grades. Some " queer enough customers " there are among them, God knows ; for literature is not like the legalised and formalised professions of divinity, law, and medicine, to which men are regularly inducted ; it is a trade which any man may take up at his own hand. Among the " hommes de lettres," that professional decorum and etiquette which is required at the hands of the high-priests of the three black graces cannot well be exacted. They are many of them, like Fal- staff's recruits, picked up in strange out-of-the-way corners. Hitherward drift in our days great part of those who " cannot dig, and to beg are ashamed." The briefless barrister, the clergyman who cannot get a living, the doctor whom no patient will trust, the half-pay midshipman, all betake themselves to some branch of book-making ; and many yet more eccentric adventurers, who have been strangely kicked and buffeted about this rude world, may be seen seeking in this workshop of letters a haven of repose. Here may be seen intelligent and ambitious individuals, who, without the ad vantages of a regular education, have become ambitious of writing as Avell as~ reading, or perhaps (for the disease often takes that form) have learned to suspect that mechanical pursuits are beneath them. One such we remember to have had under our eyes many years ago. Bred a bookbinder, he had a soul above calf-skin. He played the fiddle, had picked up a smattering of French, and aspired to indite " good matter in a song." , By means of the undefinably ramified connections between all the mechanical coadjutors of literature, he scraped acquaintance with one of the respectable class of penny-a-liners, and some of his prose, if not of his verse, found its way into print. After reaching this point, he set up at once as a man of letters or artist, it is impossible to say precisely which. He taught himself grammar and composition, in both of which he was utterly deficient, by comparing his published effusions with the original drafts, which he kept for himself. He eked out the scanty returns of his literary labours by playing on the fiddle, and by giving foreigners instructions in English. At last he fought his way to the editorship of a cheap rechauffe of tales and essays, undertook to print for himself, and having with all his eccentricities an eye to the main chance, saved some little money and got above the world. As he became prosperous, he learned to calculate more soberly upon appearances. His second-hand frock-coat with frogs, his long greasy locks, and feeble attempt at a moustache, gave way to a plain, tidy, unpretending suit and appearance. The dirty minor-theatrical dandy ripened into an irreproachable commonplace man of business. He minds the shop, and'has deserted the reading-room. 392 LONDON, Not so one who might often be seen seated beside him, although they did not appear to be acquaintances — at least, did not recognise each other in public. This lorn turtle — bereft of him who in outward show balanced him as admirably as one cabinet picture of Berghem could another — cannot be said to be regular in his attendance. On the contrary, his " apparitions " are as incalculable as those of a comet. Long and shambling, with redundant carroty locks which might put to the blush those brought to London by Roderick Random, and the whole outer man oscillating between shabby and particularly shabby, he seems only to appear among us when he cannot help it. He stumbles up and down as if the daylight were too strong for him, and he sought to contract himself into invisibility — making more noise than all the rest put together, precisely because he Avishes to make less. He is a mystery — no one has been able to trace or conjecture his haunts. But there are rumours that he only comes here when hard pushed, in order to make as much money by copying MSS. as will enable him to start again in his favourite occtipation of a night-cabman. But much more alarming and portentous wild- fowl than these home-grown raricatures, are some foreign birds which have strayed into this grove of the Muses. They aspire to be taken for gentlemen who do business in the patriot line — "voyageurs pour la maison de Lafayette," as we once-heard a high-spirited Polish emigrant call them, with a most unequivocal curl of his upper lip. Well might he be indignant, for " Polish exile '' is the' name assumed by many among them, who, if ever they left Poland, left it only 'because they thought their itine rant traffic in goose-quills might be carried on to more advantage elsewhere. This class of visitors are birds of passage, and only appear within these precincts during the winter season. In summer, probably, they are akin to the chosen associates of Amiens : — " Under this greenwood tree Who love to lie with me :" but in winter the reading-room of the Museum is an economical cafe, in which they have coals for nothing ; and if they have not succeeded in picking up a stray newspaper (each of them generally brings one in his pocket), why then they can have the fashionable novels to while away their time with ; and, with a humane attention to the wants of these unfortunates, which is beyond praise, there has lately been compiled a special catalogue of the more modern novels and romances. We would not for the world be churlish— far from us be the thought of de barring any student, even of novels and newspapers, from access to the treasures of their favourite lore contained in the Library of the British Museum. But seeing that the hard-working portion of us who haunt the room often find little enough space at the tables, and find difficulty in getting a peep at the catalogues, there is a suggestion to which we Avould with all due deference and respect implore the attention of the trustees. Could not an apartment — there appear to be some unoccupied in the basement storj'^be set apart for the exclusive use of the ncAVspaper and novel readers, foreign and domestic, and the space they now occupy in the Reading-room be left free to the professional litterateurs ? If this hint were acted upon, there are others who might be beneficially relegated THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 393 to the new ward— the juvenile students in the Greek and Latin classes of Uni versity CoUege, who are in the habit of frequenting the Reading-room in order to con their tasks. Perhaps it were too much to expect that each young coUe-ian should be at the expense of purchasing a Schrevelius's Lexicon, and using ft at home ; but if the Museum Library is to be accessible to schoolboys of the lower form, as weU as to students " of a larger growth," it would be desirable to have a separate class-room for them. It is in no spirit of wanton or ill-natured merriment that we have made some of the grotesques of the Reading-room thus prominent, but for the sake of en forcing the remark with which we introduced them on the humanising influence of hterary pursuits. The admission to the Library is, as it ought to be, all but indiscriminate; and many who haunt it, it may be conjectured from vvhat has been said, are not exactly the most poUshed or tractable members of society. [Even young walkers of the hospitals are to be found here.] Yet we hav-e never seen among this motley multitude anything but the most guarded politeness. The poorest, threadbare, ungainly scholar (if he be indeed a scholar) is a gentle man in his feelings : Dominie Sampson had a noble and fine spirit of chivalry in him, and the preponderance of this class in the Reading-room rebukes and keeps in check all contrary dispositions among the rest. If we had a son or ward, whom we wished to make a perfect gentleman — one who combined the noiseless courtesy of the diplomatist with the genuine feeling of which his is too often a mere coun terfeit—we know of no better school to Avhich Ave could send him than the Read ing-room of the British Museum. The " Gentlemen of the Press " — a designation which, in this land of politicians, has come to be synonymous with reporter — are sometimes, we grieve to say it, anything but gentlemen : the custom of poking and prying into every body's business, and of fighting and scuffling for the best seats on public occasions, gives them unamiable habits ; but the purely literary drudge is always a gentleman. Were we inclined to laugh — as has been the custom since the days of Juvenal — at the loutish manners, threadbare cloak, and clouted shoe of the mere man of letters, nowhere could more excellent subjects be found than here. But the joke is stale, and worse, if it be treated merely as a joke — it is heartless. The emotion we feel, on looking at the most uncouth among them, is rarely the light inclination to laugh. That tall, emaciated figure, wrapt in a half-Avorn great coat, with unfathomable skirts — with shoulders destitute of breadth, and boots rivalling those of a Dutch fisherman, each wide enough to contain his narrow shoulders — a human obelisk, tapering upwards from his base — has yet, in his volu minous grey hair and whiskers, in the hat pulled deep over his determined brows, and the grim intentness with which he pores upon the enormous folio before him, a homely dignity which commands respect, and repels levity. On the other hand, that little man, with a remarkably commonplace countenance, who seems inca pable of sitting still or fixing his attention for five minutes consecutively, who is now beckoning Avith " Avreathed smiles " to an acquaintance he has recognised for the first time to-day, anon slipping to the farthest end of the apartment to proffer a pinch to one of the assistants in the library, and again bending over a friend's shoulder to communicate some important nothing to him in a whisper — there is a 394 LONDON. bonhommie about him that can only be liked. He is, with all his fidgetiness, in no man's way : for he moves about noiselessly, he never intrudes when you are busy, nor approaches till he has asked and obtained leave by looks ; and his restlessness is the pure effusion of an excessive craving for friendly, social in tercourse. These are our bookmen, a modest, unpretending race. We knoAV that our j)lace is " below the salt " at the great table of literature, and demean ourselves accordingly. Not so the dealers with MSS. The mere copyists — an indefati gable class — are well enough ; but they who take upon them to blazon forth what has been passed over with neglect by all the world are more aspiring. One could almost fancy that, on the strehgth of the compositions Avhich they from time to time usher into the world having never been printed before, they believed themselves entitled to the full honours of original authorship. So have we seen a portly chaperon at a rout as proud of a young debutante, nowise related to her, as if the pretty creature had been her own flesh and blood : thus have we seen the hen Avhich had hatched a brood of ducklings, puff out her feathers, and cluck and strut, as if she had laid every egg from which the broad-footed waddlers had emerged. They are a strange set, these discoverers and editors of old MSS. ; testy and wayward with all — continually squabbling among thein- selves — the " choleric boys" of our otherwise peaceable establishment, not one of them can by any chance see the slightest merit in another's discoveries, and yet they critically inspect them all, and watch with fidgety eagerness the process of extracting them from musty and mouldering rolls. If a controversy chance to get up between two of them, it is odds but each can tell how many days each has had in hand the volume which contains the MS. about which they are debating, and how many hours and minutes of each day. If we Avere to go farther, and attempt to penetrate below the mere surface — ^if we were, in fancy, as Sterne has taken a captive in his dungeon — to follow some of the more striking of these figures to their humble homes, what revelations of the secret workings of human nature might "we not receive! The diversity of the haunts from which so many repair daily to this place as to a common centre of activity can scarcely be less than that which characterises the frequenters of any other of busy London's marts. The chapters of accidents, of which many have been the heroes before they settled here, might be called the romance of real life, had not that word got into the Annuals, and become hackneyed and unmeaning. The high-minded exile, from less-favoured lands, may be seen here, drawing as much upon his OAvn observation of real life as upon the books piled up before him, while he narrates the revolutionary struggles of the last half-century. He Avho has in vain sought to better his condition in our colonies may be seen seated beside him who has rambled without definite purpose through many lands, "ga thering, like all rolling stones, no moss " — • " an idler in the land. Contented if he might enjoy The things which others understand." The ardent boy, fresh from the University, who yet dreams that all the honours of society may be earned by a bold and aspiring spirit, and who regards the THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 395 drudgery of literature as a rough but brief apprenticeship through which he must pass to fame, is here beside him who has already passed the culminating point of his life, whose day-dreams have faded, and who, if he would not feel his heart wither up, must anchor it upon the young, who are starting on the same career of glad and vague delusion which he has run through. From every clime, from aU professions, you will find some who have drifted down here. Were they, in confidence, to exchange confessions, the scenes through which they have passed would be found varied in the extreme, the characters of those who have passed through them uniform to monotony. "Tush! nothing could have brought a man to this pass but his unkind daughters:" there is but one cause that brings a man to become an habitue of the Reading-room—his unfitness for any active pro fession. The baUad-singer is the type of the whole literary tribe : they amuse the holders of the world's wealth, and have some of the superfluity flung to them for their pains. No man AviU betake himself to such a trade unless he has an irresistible propensity to dream away good part of his time. Such a one may make convulsive efforts and desperate resolves to settle to some honest trade, but ' nature proves too strong for him, and he is sure to come here, or to some similar resort at last. Burns's picture of the musings of his class is exaggerated, but founded in fact : — " Had I to good advice but harkit, I might ere this have led a market. Or strutted in a bank and clerkit My cash account ; But now, half-clad, half-fed, half-sarkit Is a' the amount." " His unkind daughters :" the allusion reminds us of an omission — the fair visitants of the Reading-room. They are not numerous, but they are ominous of a social revolution. It has been the fashion with women of genius to complain of their sex being held in subjection — to assert their right to an entire fellowship and equality with the male monsters. It may be questioned whether they would gain by the exchange. The graceful courtesy and deference paid to Avoman has its root in the belief of her weakness and necessarily subject condition. If, by any change in the opinions and arrangements of society, women Avere able to assert an entire' equality, it is difficult to see how this gallantry could maintain its ground. If Avomen are to co-operate with and rival men in the schools, in the senate, and on the mart, they wUl be treated like men. The Britomarts of chivalry received the homage due to their sex, after they had just been thwacking their worshippers, because they were exceptions ; but the Amazons of classical time got buffet for buffet, because they were the rule. But be this as it may, it cannot be denied that the tendency of society is towards a greater independence in the position of women, and that the change has its advantages. We have that confidence in human nature, audits Creator, that we believe the transition wiU be effected by degrees, to the benefit of all parties, without one sacrifice of what is beautiful and amiable in the relations of the sexes. And it is in the pursuits of art and litera ture that we think we recognise one of the means for asserting the independence of woman, without any sacrifice of the gentler graces of her sex. It is beyond 396 LONDON. question that the habit of seeing ladies publicly engaged in literary pursuits is familiarising the minds of a portion of society to the coming revolution, as the independent habits of thought and action, produced in them by a remunerative profession, is bringing it about. And there can be little doubt that the general polished tone that pervades the inmates of the room is heightened by their presence. It would savour of the school-boy style of composition to attach a romantic or sentimental story to every owner of a pretty face (and pretty faces, and modest ones too, are to be met here as well as elsewhere) that may be seen reading or draAving in the Museum. And our allegiance and fair fealty to all womankind forbids us to take the liberty of smiling at some, with respect to whom less Quixotic persons than ourselves might not be so scrupulous. In the shadowy piece of antiquated virginity, immersed amid Greek MSS. in the corner, we respect the romantic young lady of fifty years ago : she is the incarnation of Narcissa's aunt in ' Roderick Random,' who was a genuine lady, with all her foibles. In her more ancient neighbour, whose cap is even yet worn under an air of pretension, and whose clear carnated complexion is, to say the least, very suspi cious, we admire the triumph of imagination over reality. It is any odds that the folio before her is Sidney's ' Arcadia,' or one of Scudoni's romances, and that she is reading it with all the faith, interest, and self-application of fifteen. Casting a look backwards to see if no other omissions have been made, it ap pears that we have unpardonably overlooked a class of monomaniacs who occa sionally stray hitherward. There is a comely gentleman sitting opposite us, with a smooth open brow : somewhat bald he is, and what hair he has is white. His blue coat and clear metal buttons, and, in short, all his attire, is irreproachably neat and clean. There is a deferential civility in all his movements. His com plexion is clear to boyishness ; the only symptom of the encroaching feebleness of age is a slight, barely perceptible paralytic tremour in his hands. He sits amid a pile of parchments — volumes and rolls — all heraldic. He has spent his life in a government office, and might have retired upon a pension years ago, but he could not live without his accustomed occupation, and it would be difficult to supply his place with one so completely fitted for it by nature and experience. He has but one taste beyond the range of his official duties, and that is heraldic genealogy. He has long practised as an amateur, for the gratification of others, dressing up pedigrees for such of his friends as were ambitious of them. But the disease rarely stops at that stage : he imagines that he has stumbled upon a discovery which will lead to the revival of a dormant peerage in the person of a distant relation, and establish a claim to a landed estate in an English county in his oAvn. With much solicitation he has obtained a fortnight's leave of absence from his office, to pursue his search among the MSS. of the Museum — with much solicitation, for his superiors had a difficult card to play : the old man's heart would have broke had leave been refused, and it is odds but too ready compliance with his request, seeming to imply his services might be dispensed with, Avould have produced the same effect. And there he sits placid and happy, buoyed up with the consciousness that he is indispensable in his office, inspired Avith the anticipation of some unimaginable happiness he is to derive from becoming rich, and escaping from the routine of an office out of which he THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 397 could not live ; shaping out visions of the future, as if he were just starting in life, instead of drawing near its close. There are many as arrant dreamers among us : some shaping out colonial con stitutions, others squaring the circle. Sometimes a speculative ex-landowner may be detected, Avho, having improved away his own acres, is devising methods by which others may foUow his example. But for none of these do we entertain such an entire affection— do we contemplate with such unmixed pleasure as our heraldic friend. It is difficult to decide how we ought to classify another sort of gentlemen who may sometimes be found labouring among us. On the eve of an important par- Uamentary debate, some of the " coUective wisdom " may occasionaUy be seen gathering here like gulls on an inland meadow before a coming storm. That dapper personage, half hidden behind a colossal pile of folios, is not only a Mem ber of the Lower House, but the lucky holder of one of the non-Cabinet appoint ments. He is busy "cramming" for the great debate on India affairs which is to come on in a week or so, and has been emancipated from his desk, where he does no harm, to prepare for the Senate, where the satirically-minded might say he will do no good. He is not the only getter up of a display " for that night only " by a goodly many, though, in general, the cramming practice is gone through in private. May Providence endow the doomed listeners (when the rival wits come to vomit their undigested facts, figures, and arguments against each other"* with patience and powers of endurance adequate to the arduous occasion ! That is no concern of ours, for he will be clever who can catch us hazarding the trial. Our only concern with the " crammers" is, whether to class them with the dreamers above described (and their airy visions of their own importance would almost entitle us to do so), or with the "practical men," who secure their share of the good things of life — and that, after all, is their proper place. A few words are due to the magnificent collection of books — the honeyed hive which attracts so many busy bees. It is easy to cavil, and objections have some times been urged, both to the Library and its management, but it is more easy to find fault than improve. Access can easily be obtained to it by all who really wish to use it ; and a library is no attractive lounge for sight-seers, and ought not to be wasted upon them if it were. After a considerable experience, we can bear testimony to the unwearying activity and unvarying civility of the officials who attend upon the readers. If any thing remains to be wished for, it is that some lacunas in the collection might be fiUed up, and arrangements made for the progressive addition of all new continental works of merit as they appear. The Library, though valuable from its immense extent, has the appearance of having accumulated by accident rather than of having been systematically collected. There are in it some departments of literature unrivalled for completeness ; there are others which are pitiably deficient. The department of Mathematical Science, for example, is very incomplete ; so is that of History. Jurisprudence— both do mestic and foreign, both civil and international— is below contempt. But for these defects -not the managers of the Museum or Library— the nation, or the statesmen who take upon them to speak and act in its name, are responsible. An outlay which to this nation would be trifling would suffice to put the Library 398 LONDON. in a condition of completeness, and to keep it advancing with the advances of literature and science. It is the noblest intellectual monument a great State can erect of its own power and worth. A great national library is the most efficient of universities. The Library of the British Museum has been improved to a degree that will stamp both the people and their rulers with childish vacillation and inconsequence of purpose, if it be not yet further improved. It is the fashion among our public men to talk about national education, and the diffusion of knowledge ; the neglect which this institution has experienced at the hands both of ministers and members of Parliament is little calculated to make such professions regarded as anything more than empty words. Once a year during the sitting of Parliament, a minister may take occasion, when the annual estimate for the Museum is submitted to the House, to brag about the Library, or an opposition member to cavil at the management of it. Both speak with equally imperfect knowledge of the subject ; and after they have said their little say, the theme is shelved again till the same time next year. There is no minister to whose department the Museum and Library properly belong. Had we in this country a Minister of Public Instruction, something might be hoped ; but there is little prospect of John Bull either asking for or consenting to such an un- English novelty. Paulo minora canamus : this is a flight beyond our commission — we return to the little things of our own familiar sphere. It may seem a monotonous life, repairing hither day after day, reading and writing, preparing " copy " and cor recting proofs. But nothing in this world is smooth, philosophers will tell you, unless looked at from a distance or without a microscope. A proper magnifying glass will show a thousand roughnesses on our smooth-seeming surface. A book is wanted in order to complete an article, and the gentleman or (more hopeless case still) the lady, your vis-a-vis, has got hold of it : or a fact or a date is wanting to complete a paper upon Avhich you have been long labouring, and you can neither find nor conjecture any book which contains the information you Avant ; and all the while some merciless publisher, or editor, or sub-editor, or printer's devil is dunning you for copy with imperturbable civility, but unintermitting pertinacity. And, worst of all, a treacherous conscience takes occasion to remind you that if you had been an immaculate steady-going piece of clock-work, you need never have got into the dilemma. Oh hoAv at such a moment the "perturbed spirit'' opens and shuts catalogues, and collects around him books he has no time to con sult, and SAveats intellectual sweat ! — Job was no labourer in the Reading-room of the British Museum, or Satan Avould soon have had him at his mercy ! There are trials worse than ¦ these in reality, though, perhaps, not so hard to bear, seeing that when they beset a man he can throw the blame off his own shoulders and sit in the conscious dignity ot a martyr to an unkind fate. In all countries, we believe, of the habitable globe, the Avord mist or fog is more or less understood ; but nowhere, except perhaps in Amsterdam, does the dark fog-king so love to take up his abode as . in London. He swathes this his own regal seat in winter in his very " dunnest pall." Now when he has thickened the air the city merchant can shut his shutters and light his lamp, the cabman can lead his horse with one hand and hold a link with the other ; but no lights can be allowed in the THE READING ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. '399 rich library of the British Museum for fear of untoward accidents. Almost every other branch of industry can make a shift in these dark days, but the luckless author is extinguished — fog-bound. There may be some still alive who remem ber the great annular eclipse which was visible over great part bf these islands three or four years ago ; and they can scarcely have forgotten the consternation and annoyance excited among the feathered creation by that phenomenon — how rooks, pigeons, poultry, and skylarks, as the day grew darker and darker, hur ried to their roosts, like Cinderella belated at the ball, wondering in their little hearts what could have made the day appear so short. Such and more melan choly yet is the aspect of the Reading'-room when fog sheds its " dim eclipse," its "disastrous twilight," over and through it. First, as the darkness begins to grow palpable, there is a general uneasy flutter, a looking upwards to the win dows, an occasional lifting up of a volume closer to the eye : then some of those whose visions require most sunlight stop, fold their arms, and appear to consider what is now to be done : then, after an interval, some hasty spirits collect and return their books and take their departure. The more hopeful flatter themselves that the dark hour may soon pass over; unwilling to lose a whole day, they linger on. As the room thins the lingerers gather into knots, and a rustling sound of whis pered conversations is heard from many quarters. This and the appearance of clustering masses dimly seen through the embrowned air is soon the only indica tion of life in the room. By and by, all have departed, and the Ubrary assistants are left to solitude and their own meditations. Much sympathy has been throAvn away upon poor gardeners and watermen •' frozen out:' they have, at least, what Ajax prayed for when Jupiter sent a log over xne Greeks — they have broad daylight whereby to see their coming fate. Hut whoever would witness the extreme of human dejectedness, let him contemplate unfortunate authors fogged out. It is a strange thing. Conscience. As we write with a goodly collection of foUos most hypocriticaUy gathered around us, not one of our neighbours can sus pect that " a chiel 's among them takin' notes ;" and yet it seems as if the writers at the same table were edging away their chairs— and as if that black-eyed bru nette, copying a flower, were drawing her bonnet deeper over her brow— and the gaUa'nt Assistant, whose habitual attentions to the fair frequenters of the Read ing-room quaUfy him to be called " the Squire of Dames," were more than half incUned to step this way, and ask us " what we are about." So, in good time, the hand of the clock points to the last minute on the dial at which readers are aUowed to remain. For some quarter of an hour or more, one or another of our feUow-labourers has been throwing down his pen, gathering his manuscript to gether, returning his books, and taking his departure. The assistants in the interior— the fetchers and carriers of books-have been gathering round the opening, through which we catch a glimpse of that region, Uke sailors m the galley, when their task is completed. In the centre of their front hue is a ta,ll figure, slightly bent with a gentle touch of years, clad in a courtly suit of black, the leader and controller of the band. They are gazing Ustlessly at the scribblers, who yet linger, scrawling with redoubled speed as the last minute of their VAie 400 LONDON. limited stay approaches. It, has come, and the tall senior giving the signal to him who sits behind the counter within the doorway, that Lablache of the esta blishment sings aloud, in his deep, meUow bass, with the cadence of a night- watchman of the old school, " All out ! " Whereat most of the loitermg writers start and hurriedly scramble their books together. One or two attempt to finish another line, but the repetition of " AU out !" in quicker time and with a sharper accent, forces even them to pause, and in a minute the room is empty : all its busy occupants " fled, like a dream, until the morrow day." [A PnbUg R«tdlii;!-ioom In 1«16.] RVO OF VOh. 3.V. YALE UNIVERSITY a39002 002217082b YALE 6M 4 ^ f 1 ? r ? 'x.- "14%