Highways and Byways in London

CHAPTER IV
ST. PAUL'S AND ITS PRECINCTS

St. Paul's is the central object of the City. As the typical view of Rome must ever show, not any "purple Caesar's dome," but the violet, all-pervading cupola of St. Peter's,—so, also, must the typical view of London ever show the faint, misty, grey-blue dome of St. Paul's. And St. Paul's is more to us than this. Even to dwellers in the West-End, inexperienced in City life, that guardian spirit of the mother-church, brooding silently over the far-off, dimly-imagined heart of the City, is a vital part—a necessary factor—of London life. The mighty smoke-begrimed cathedral, the monument of Wren's genius, the abiding angel of the City, has it not a place in the inmost affections of every Englishman worthy of the name whether near or far? The shrines of other lands, of other nations, may win his outspoken admiration; St. Paul's has ever his heart. For this, at least, is his inheritance, his very own.

Blue-grey, veiled in mystery when viewed from a distance, St. Paul's, seen from its immediate surroundings, has all the wonder of a dramatic effect. Suddenly, from the glare and bustle of Cheapside, from the tumult of the crowded highway, a gigantic, blackened mass rises in startling completeness immediately overhead, towering with almost night-mare like rapidity ever higher as we advance. Seen behind the tall white buildings and shops of its so-called "churchyard," that hem it in, St. Paul's makes an impression that is indescribably grand. Especially in spring, when the first tender leaves of its surrounding plane-trees interpose their young greenery in delicate labyrinths between the dark, massive walls of the cathedral and the ever hurrying life outside them, should St. Paul's be visited for the first time.

There has from immemorial times been a church here; tradition even suggests a Roman temple on the site. But, though the "spirit" has ever been constant, the "letter" (so to speak), has often changed. At any rate Wren's masterpiece is the third Christian church, dedicated to St. Paul, erected here since early Saxon times. Though Wren's life-work was not rewarded, like Milton's, with "twenty pounds paid in instalments, and a near approach to death on the gallows," yet he, too, had but scant justice in his day. National benefits, even in our own time, are often but ill rewarded. Thwarted, wretchedly paid, suspected, and finally, at great age, and after forty-five years' hard service, deposed from the post he had so long and so ably filled; the "Nestor" of his age, with a spirit worthy of a more enlightened time, betook himself cheerfully to his old study of philosophy, and only once in every year, we are told, indulged his master-passion by having himself carried to St. Paul's to gaze in silence on his life-work.

The highest point of the city would, naturally, from very early times be chosen as the sanctuary; and St. Paul's stands grandly on the top of Ludgate Hill, its western portico almost facing the steep street of that name. That it does not do so more exactly, is due to the haste of the people in rebuilding their houses after the Great Fire; such haste occasioning the reconstruction of the city more on the old lines, than on those of Wren. For the great cathedral took some thirty-five years to complete, and streets grow again more quickly than edifices destined for the monuments of nations. And, before the new church could be begun, the useless ruins of its predecessor had to be removed. The Great Fire had calcined its stones and undermined the safety of its walls. Such, indeed was the devastation of this terrible holocaust, that even to this day, its relics and débris may be traced in distinct thin layers, at certain distances under the soil, all over the area of the City. The ruin can hardly be imagined, even from Pepys's and Evelyn's vivid diaries. Small wonder indeed, that it should be thought by the credulous that the end of the world, the Last Judgment, had truly come. Some, later, held that the "purification" of the old church by fire had been the one thing needed after its desecration in the Commonwealth times to a house of traffic and merchandize, even sometimes to a stable. The church had become a mere promenade; "Paul's Walkers" had been the names given to loungers in the sacred edifice; gallants using it as a place of pastime, beggars as a resting-place, and Inigo Jones's beautiful portico at the west end being all built up with squalid shops. The people were gradually awakening to a sense of these enormities: had cleared out those unholy traffickers;—were, indeed, in process of restoring the church,—when, in 1666, the fire came to complete the purification. Then, when the destruction of the city was complete, the common people with one accord, pronounced it to be the work of the "Popish faction," and not content with the mere verbal condemnation, caused this accusation of incendiarism to be graven deeply on Wren's commemorating monument, a calumny only removed after the lapse of ages.

Old St. Paul's, the second church of that name on this site, had been built in the Conqueror's time; it was a large Gothic building, a vista of noble arches, 700 feet long, with a tall spire, which was subsequently struck by lightning and removed. It had a twelve-bayed nave and a twelve-bayed choir, with a fine wheel-window at the east end, and with two smaller satellites, St. Faith and St. Gregory,—the one inside its very walls,—the other built on to it outside. On being called upon to rebuild from the very foundations, Wren "resolved to reconcile as near as possible the Gothic with a better manner of architecture;" and, without ever having seen St. Peter's, he produced what is really an adaptation of that central Renaissance building of Christianity. It is much smaller: St. Paul's could go easily inside St. Peter's; yet, in the position it occupies, hemmed in by streets and houses, it looks deceptively much bigger. There is a pleasant story told, that in the beginning of its building, Wren sent a workman to fetch from the surrounding débris, a stone wherewith to mark out the centre of the dome; and this happening to be an old gravestone, inscribed "Resurgam," it was held to be a happy omen. (The word "Resurgam," over the north portico, with a phœnix, by Cibber, commemorates this story.) Wren was very careful about the strength of his foundations; "I build for eternity," he said, with the true confidence of genius.

More than two centuries have now elapsed since the first opening of the new St. Paul's for service, and these two centuries have established, as time alone can do, the fame and the genius of Wren. Time here, as ever, has delivered the final verdict. The great cathedral dominates the City, harmonising, ennobling, purifying the serried mass of its surroundings; it is the coping-stone of London's greatness. The verdict of later times has done justice to Wren's judgment, and many of his intentions regarding the details of the edifice, thwarted in his lifetime by ignorant contemporaries, have now been carried out. Thus, the organ has been moved from its former place over the iron-wrought screen between choir and nave, (where it marred the architectural effect of the edifice), to the north-east arch of the choir, the position originally planned for it by Wren; the tall outside railing of the churchyard, which, Wren said, dwarfed the base of the cathedral, has been removed; the mosaics he asked for now incrust, in shining glory, the central dome; and, if the grand "baldacchino" he wanted has not been placed in the choir, there is, instead, a very sumptuous modern reredos. The balustrade that surmounts the main building was not intended by Wren, but insisted on by the Commissioners for the building; and its erection caused Wren to say, not, perhaps, without sly intention: "I never designed a balustrade; but ladies think nothing well without an edging."

This, however, was long ago; Wren sleeps in peace in his cathedral crypt; and there, on the top of Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's stands, blackening ever, year by year, yet gaining immeasurably through that very blackness. It has been said, wittily, that the great church has a special claim to its livery of smoke, for the reason that a great part of the cost of its building was defrayed by a tax on all coals brought into the port of London! And this canopy of solemn black, out of which the dome, lantern, and golden ball emerge at intervals, in silver and gold, becomes it well.

"There cannot," wrote Hawthorne, "be anything else in its way so good in the world as just this effect of St. Paul's in the very heart and densest tumult of London. It is much better than staring white; the edifice would not be nearly so grand without this drapery of black."

The ancient monuments of St. Paul's were nearly altogether destroyed with the old church; Wren's cathedral was inaccessible to any new monuments for some years, the first admitted to it being that of John Howard the philanthropist in 1790. This was followed by many others, chiefly of great warriors, soldiers and sailors; although ecclesiastics also are numerous, and there is a goodly company of painters.

"If Westminster Abbey," said C. R. Leslie, "has its Poets' Corner, so has St. Paul's its Painters' Corner. Sir Joshua Reynolds's statue, by Flaxman, is here, and Reynolds himself lies buried here; and Barry, and Opie, and Lawrence are around him; and, above all, the ashes of the great Van Dyck are in the earth under the cathedral."

Turner now lies next to Reynolds. Yet, as a rule, the great commemorated in St. Paul's are of a different type to those of Westminster. Both churches are the mausoleums of heroes; St. Paul's being, however, by common consent the resting-place of the Militant, Westminster of the Pacific. The statue of Dr. Johnson, under the dome, opposes that of Howard. Though his dust rests in Westminster Abbey, the militant spirit of the Sage well deserves commemoration in St. Paul's. His representation, in the curious art of the time, as a half-clothed muscular athlete, is appropriately supplemented by that of Howard, bare-legged, with Roman toga and tunic. The coincidence of Johnson holding a scroll, and Howard a prison key, has caused the two to be sometimes mistaken by visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul! But not all the monumental vagaries are as innocuous as these. Westminster Abbey does not alone suffer from the bad taste of the Renaissance; a few of the monuments of St. Paul's are alike trials to the eyes as to the faith. The naked warriors in sandals, receiving swords from, or falling into the arms of, smart feminine "Victories,"—lusus naturae with wings protruding from their shoulders,—are, indeed, sad instances of the too rampant eighteenth-century exuberance of fancy. Of the monuments, for instance, to Captains Burgess and Westcott, Allan Cunningham remarks:

"The two naval officers (Westcott and Burgess), are naked, which destroys historic probability; it cannot be a representation of what happened, for no British warriors go naked into battle, or wear sandals or Asiatic mantles.... When churchmen declared themselves satisfied, the ladies thought they might venture to draw near, but the flutter of fans and the averting of faces was prodigious. That Victory, a modest and well-draped dame, should approach an undrest dying man, and crown him with laurel, might be endured—but, how a well-dressed young lady could think of presenting a sword to a naked gentleman went far beyond all their notions of propriety."

Neither is the ugly group of the Bishop of Calcutta, ogre-like in size, apparently confirming two Indian dwarfs, at all calculated to excite any feeling but amusement.

The great cathedral has, nevertheless, also its monumental treasures. Under the third arch on the north of the nave, is the noble monument of the Duke of Wellington, by Alfred Stevens; the aged Duke lying, "like a Scaliger of Verona, deeply sleeping upon a lofty bronze sarcophagus." One thinks of Tennyson's lines:

"Here in streaming London's central roar,
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore."

And near to him, in the north aisle of the nave, under the tattered banners of those old regiments that fell in the Crimea, lies, on a pedestal of Greek cipollino, the recumbent bronze effigy of that recent recruit to the ranks of dead painters, Lord Leighton of Stretton. The monument, worthy of the best traditions of art, is by Brock. The beautiful features of the dead President are composed in a sublime peace; he "is not dead, but sleepeth"; "yet it is visibly a sleep that shall know no ending, till the last day break, and the last shadow flee away." The long robe droops to the feet, the hands that toiled unweariedly for beauty and for immortal art, now lie motionless on the breast. The tattered flags that hang above, have, here, too, their significance,—hanging over one, who in the many-sidedness of his genius and his interests, was in his time one of the pioneers of the Volunteer movement. The Leonardo of his age has here a fitting memorial.

Near to Lord Leighton's fine tomb is that of General Gordon, a bronze monument and effigy by Boehm. He "who at all times, and everywhere, gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to God" is fitly remembered in death. When I last saw this monument, on the hero's breast lay a fresh bunch of violets, on his either side were the symbolic palm branches, and at his feet a wreath of white flowers. Near by is the imposing bronze doorway, the "gate of the tomb," erected to Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister. Of the supporting angels on either side of the plinth, that on the left, especially, is very impressive.

But the bell calls to service, and the rolling organ-tones resound in the blue dome, where Richmond's mosaics glitter like diamonds in the stray gleams of sunshine that glance athwart the abyss. The mosaics, like all innovations in this ungrateful city, have, of course, run the gauntlet of abuse, on the ground of smallness and ineffectiveness; yet the Monreale mosaics, so admired at Palermo, are more or less on the same scale, and are, also, at a considerable height. But it is difficult for contemporaries to judge fairly, and Time, no doubt, here as elsewhere, will kindly do the work of discrimination for us.

In the crypt are the half-destroyed remains of monuments from the older church, with Nelson's sarcophagus, Wren's simple tomb, and many others. But, outside St. Paul's, the sunlight still calls us, and, from the depths of the dim recesses and aisles of the great cathedral, we regain now the brilliant summit of Ludgate Hill, brilliant with the noonday spring sun. Now the sounds of many-sided life invade the repose of death; and a noisy street-organ, playing near Queen Anne's statue, mingles its note strangely with the cathedral's still pealing bells. The pigeons, gay in colour, flit down from their homes in among the blackened garlands, Corinthian capitals, and pediments; it is a strange and a motley scene. And, down at the bottom of the great flight of steps that lead from the western portico, the Twentieth-century visitor will now see a new landmark; for here, cut deeply into the pavement, is the record of the latest great ceremonial function of St. Paul's: Queen Victoria's visit here on the sixtieth anniversary of her reign. Here, on this very spot, surrounded by Archbishops, priests, and people, the royal and aged lady sat in her carriage, paying homage to a Heavenly Throne, and receiving, surely, greater homage than was ever before paid to an earthly one:—

"On a lovely June morning, in the year 1897, a wondrous pageant moved through the enchanted streets of London. Squadron by squadron, and battery by battery, a superb cavalry and artillery went by—the symbol of the fighting strength of the United Kingdom. There went by also troops of mounted men, more carelessly riding and more lightly equipped—those who came from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to give a deeper meaning to the royal triumph; and black-skinned soldiers and yellow, and the fine representatives of the Indian warrior races. Generals and statesmen went by, and a glittering cavalcade of English and Continental princes, and the whole procession was a preparation—for what? A carriage at last, containing a quiet-looking old lady, in dark and simple attire; and at every point where this carriage passed through seven miles of London streets, in rich quarters and poor, a shock of strong emotion shot through the spectators, on pavement and on balcony, at windows and on housetops. They had seen the person in whom not only were vested the ancient kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but who was also at once the symbol and the actual bond of union of the greatest and most diversified of secular empires."[1]

The inscription, cut, with Roman simplicity, into the broad paving-stone, runs thus:

By how many generations,—for how many centuries,—will these words, I wonder, be read,—the distant message of Time from the buried Victorian Era?

Beyond, Queen Anne's statue, in flowing curls and a "sacque" robe, stands, with some dignity, facing busy Ludgate Hill, and surrounded by a circular, prison-like grating. Down towards noisy Fleet Street her gaze wanders; down to where the rumble of many wheels, the sound of many voices, make a distant murmur like the stormy sea, broken, at intervals, by a shriek from that most picturesque of railways, the iron "Bridge of Steam," that, ever and anon, emits a puff of smoke and a red spark into the general "fermenting-vat," the ingulfing vortex of life and energy below. For this is the roaring Niagara of London, the loom of Time, that never ceases, that ever fashions Order out of Disorder, ever, as by a magician's wand, raises system out of chaos. Kings, and even thrones, may "pass to rise no more;" but the busy phœnix-heart of London, like the vestals' fire, must ceaselessly burn; ever fed, ever renewed, ever immortal, ever young.

"Lord Tennyson always delighted in the 'central roar' of London. Whenever he and I (says his son) "went to London, one of the first things we did was to walk to the Strand and Fleet Street. 'Instead of the stuccoed houses in the West End, this is the place where I should like to live,' he would say." He was also fond of looking at London from the bridges over the Thames, and of going into St. Paul's, and into the Abbey. One day in 1842 Fitzgerald records a visit to St. Paul's with him when he said, 'Merely as an enclosed space in a huge city this is very fine,' and when they got out into the open, in the midst of the 'central roar,' 'This is the mind; that is a mood of it.'"—(Tennyson's Life, i. 183.)

Round about St. Paul's are many and labyrinthine lanes and alleys, with no less labyrinthine associations. Some of these alleys are, like Paternoster Row, or St. Paul's Churchyard, by day crowded aortas of human traffic; others, by strange contrast, are silent and still as the grave. London is, as we know, full of unexpected nooks of quiet; and none, in their way, are more sudden and startling than those about St. Paul's. From busy Paternoster Row, with its array of religious book-shops of all denominations,—so crowded, and yet so narrow, that a man on one of its sidewalks can, by stretching, almost grasp the hand of a man on the other (or could perhaps do so, were it not so constantly blocked by multifarious traffic),—from noisy Paternoster Row to the calm of "Amen Court,"—the quadrangle of canons' residences opening out of it,—what a change! Here, in Amen Court, entered by a pleasant, sober red-brick gateway, Canon Liddon's last days were spent; here are quiet, old-fashioned houses looking, in summer, on to green plots and refreshing shrubs. All this seclusion, and yet the very heart of London! Warwick Square, close by, is a haven of another sort; a stony square set round with tall offices; roomy houses, perhaps formerly residential mansions, with here and there an attractively carved antique porch, or other relic of the past. It was under a house in this square, in rebuilding, that various Roman remains were recently found. In Paternoster Row, at the corner of "Chapter-house Court," was, in old days, the "Chapter" Coffee House, where the old medical club of the "Wittenagemot" was held, and where, later, Charlotte and Anne Brontë came on their first visit to London, after the successful publication of Jane Eyre, to make their real personalities known to their publishers, in 1848. Two little lonely, strangely-dressed women they must have seemed!—their only friend the elderly waiter of the establishment, who no doubt, took an interest in such unusual visitors. Yet, what excitement must they not have felt in seeing, for the first time, all that they had read and dreamed of for years! One is reminded of the story of their brother Branwell, that unhappy child of genius and temptation, who, at lonely Haworth Parsonage, knew all "the map of London by heart" without ever having been there, and who could direct any chance stranger who happened, going Londonwards, to put up at the remote Yorkshire inn.

"Panyer Alley," the last entry leading into Newgate Street, commemorates the bakers' basket-makers, or "Panyers," of the fourteenth century. Here, built into the wall of a modern house and nearly obliterated, was, till quite recently, a relief of a boy sitting on a "panyer," with this curious inscription:

"When Ye have sought
The Citty Round
Yet still This is
The Highest Ground
Avgvst the 27
1688."

Close by used to be the tavern called "Dolly's Chop-House," removed in 1883. The views obtained of the Cathedral, down some of these narrow byways, are very striking:

"There is a passage leading from Paternoster Row to St. Paul's Churchyard. It is a slit, through which the Cathedral is seen more grandly than from any other point I can call to mind. It would make a fine dreamy picture, as we saw it one moonlight night, with some belated creatures resting against the walls in the foreground—mere spots set against the base of Wren's mighty work, that, through the narrow opening, seemed to have its cross set against the sky."

The famous open-air pulpit called "Paul's" or "Powle's" Cross—noted for so many eloquent and impassioned harangues from mediæval divines,—for the proclamation of kings,—for the denunciation of traitors,—used to stand at the north-east corner of the churchyard. It was a canopied cross, raised on stone steps; a big elm marked its site until some fifty years back. Open-air services, discontinued after the demolition of "Paul's Cross," were attempted to be revived by Wesley and Whitefield; and, even in our own day, an open-air pulpit is used, in summer, at Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, and largely attended, as any one who passes by Portland Road Station on Sunday afternoon may see for himself. Public confession for crime was also made at "Paul's Cross," and Jane Shore did penance here, as described by Sir Thomas More. East of St. Paul's, where now a line of tall warehouses rises, was, until 1884, St. Paul's School, founded in 1509 by Dean Colet, friend of Erasmus, and now removed to new red brick buildings at Hammersmith; a tablet on one of the warehouses marks its site. The old fashioned Deanery of St. Paul's,—a homely building, not unlike a quiet country rectory, with red tiled sloping roofs, and nearly hidden behind high walls,—is in Dean's Court, just south of the cathedral. Close by it is St. Paul's Choristers' School, built in 1874 by Dean Church.

Returning to the portico of the north transept, it is pleasant to sit awhile in St Paul's Churchyard, where the doves coo and the pigeons flutter. Or if you stand by the iron gate of the enclosure, and raise your eyes to the blackened walls and columns, you will see, above the north porch, an inscription on a tablet, perpetuating the memory of the great builder, "in four words which comprehend his merit and his fame:" "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." (If thou seekest his monument, look around.) "The visitor," says Leigh Hunt, "does look around, and the whole interior of the Cathedral ... seems like a magnificent vault over his single body." And, gazing, in this sense, on the great man's tomb, the burning words of Ecclesiasticus suggest themselves, read by the Bishop of Stepney at the unveiling of Lord Leighton's monument:

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning.... Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions.... All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there lie, which have no memorial ... but ... their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore."

CHAPTER V
THE TOWER

What Londoner has not, from earliest childhood, been acquainted with the Tower? In the Christmas holidays it presented, as a "treat," rival attractions with Madame Tussaud's and the "Zoo." When not presented under the too-informing care of over-zealous pastors and masters,—when not imbibed as too flagrant material for that fly-in-the-ointment, a holiday task,—when not made, in a word, too suggestive of the unpleasant, but necessary paths of learning,—it offered great fascinations to the youthful mind. The warders, in their picturesque "Beefeater" dress, were ever an unfailing joy; the surprise, indeed, with which I first saw one of these mighty beings descend from his pedestal, and deign to hold simple conversation with ordinary mortals, is still fresh in my memory. Then, the towers and dark passages, up which one could run and clatter joyfully, with all the entrancing and horrid possibility of meeting somebody's headless ghost; the attractive thumbscrew, model of the rack, and headsman's mask, all so appealing to the innocent brutality of childhood; the very wooden and highly coloured "Queen Elizabeth", riding in full dress, with a page, to Tilbury Fort; the stiff effigies of the mail-clad soldiers, in rows inside the White Tower,—the live soldiers drilling in the sun-lit square outside;—the inspiring music of the band, the roll of the drum, the flocks of wheeling pigeons; how charming it all was! My first knowledge of Tower history was derived from a Cockney nursemaid, who had, I suspect, strong affinities with the before-mentioned "pretty soldiers" (are not "pretty soldiers," by-the-way, usually the first words that London children learn to lisp?). Tragedies, I knew, were connected with that sun-lit square. Two beautiful ladies, I was told, had had their heads cut off here by their cruel husband, a gentleman called "'Enery the Eighth," (I naturally thought of this "'Enery" as Bluebeard); "because they was that skittish like, and fond of singin' and dancin' on Sundays, which 'e for one never could abear; and so 'e 'ad their 'eds orf, and grass adn't never grown on the place sence." Which fact I identified as true, at least for the time being; though how far grass can grow through paving-stones, is always matter for speculation. And Mary-Anne further went on to relate how she "'ad a friend who knew a young woman who was a 'ousekeeper somewhere here, who 'ad seen 'orrible things in the way of ghostisses, and 'ad the screamin' 'sterrics somethin' awful;—quite reg'ler, too,—after it!"

Yet I myself think that it is a pity to treat the classic Tower on such familiar terms! It should be approached with respect, and not merely introduced as a juvenile appendix to Madame Tussaud's! The charm of the old fortress, as of its immediate surroundings, is, in any case, only realised in maturer years. This has always been the riverside stronghold of London. Tradition, and poetic license, name, indeed, Julius Cæsar as its founder; however that may be, the Romans probably had a fort here, as Saxon Alfred after them. The White Tower, or Keep, raised by William the Conqueror, is built upon a Roman bastion; and Roman relics have been dug up at intervals in its near precincts. Nevertheless, the Roman tradition here is but visionary; the interest of the Tower is bound up with the evolution of the English race. It is the most interesting mediæval monument that we possess, a still vivid piece of English history; a stranded islet of Time, left forgotten by the raging tide of surrounding London.

In the Tower precincts,—if you are careful not to choose a Monday or Saturday, which are free days, for your visit—you may enjoy yourself in your own way and to your heart's content. The warders,—old soldiers,—are pleasant and unobtrusive people, with manners of really wonderful urbanity, considering the very mixed, and generally unwashed, character, of a large portion of their public. The Tower, apart from the charm of its lurid and romantic history, is a picturesque place. In winter, it is somewhat exposed to the elements, and in summer, owing to its proximity to the Temple of the Fisheries, it is perhaps a trifle odoriferous; but on a fine spring or autumn morning,—a spring morning uncursed by east wind, an autumn morning undimmed by river-mist,—you will realise all the beauty, as well as the interest, of the place. Part of its attraction lies in the fact that it is neither a ruin nor a fossil; it is a living place still, and serves for use as well as for show. In old days by turn palace, state prison, inquisition, and "oubliette," it is now a barrack and government arsenal. Its threatening ring of walled towers, witnesses of so many scenes of blood and cruelty, re-echo now to the merry voices of little School-Board boys, playing foot-ball in the drained and levelled moat below; its paved courts and gravelled enclosures still ring to the tramp of soldiers' feet, but soldiers of a newer and a more humane era. In days when men suffered cheerfully for faith's sake, when queens and princes passed naturally to the throne through the blood of their nearest relations, when self-denial, conscience, and uprightness of life were reckoned as crimes, the Tower was the place of doom and death. Here, not only political plotters and state prisoners, guilty of "high treason," were punished, but also children, young men and maidens, playthings of an unkind fate, were condemned, unheard, to an early death. Here, also, at the Restoration, perished, bravely as they had lived, many of the sturdy and loyal followers of a bad cause, who might say, with Macaulay's typical "Jacobite":

"To my true king I offered, free from stain,
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain."

Later, the martyr annals of the Tower were in a measure defiled by the introduction of real and noteworthy criminals, and the imprisonment within its walls of such wretches as the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, the infamous murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury, and the notorious Judge Jeffreys. But the desecration of these is past; the Tower has long ceased to be a State Prison, and the halo of its earlier victims still is paramount there. The very names of certain localities recall their tragedies: "Bloody Tower," commemorating the murder of the young princes, sons of Edward IV., whose bones were found here under a staircase; Traitor's Gate,—the gate of the doomed,—the grim disused archway, with a portcullis, looking towards, and in ancient times opening on to, the river.

The Tower is full of lovely "bits" for the sketcher. The succession of fine old gates that span the entrance-road, and the ring of encircling towers called the "Inner Ward," though necessarily restored in places, have still a fine air of antiquity; which air of antiquity the massive walls, narrow window-slits, and the close-growing mantle of ivy that, in places, adds a welcome note of greenery, do much to maintain. The effect, at any rate, is complete. In the Tower precincts you seem to be really in mediæval London. Just so, you imagine, in all essentials, only still grassy and not quite so shut in by houses, must "Tower Green" have looked on that terrible day so dramatically described by Froude:

"A little before noon, on the 19th of May, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was led down to the green where the young grass and the white daisies of summer were freshly bursting in the sunshine. A little cannon stood loaded on the battlements, the motionless cannoneer was ready with smoking linstock at his side, and when the crawling hand upon the dial of the great Tower clock touched the midday hour, that cannon would tell to London that all was over."

On this same spot, so fatal to youth and beauty, two other young women,—mere girls, indeed,—died; poor silly Katherine Howard, and, later, Lady Jane Grey, a child of eighteen,—the "queen of nine days," a victim of others' offences,—who "went to her death without fear or pain." Neither age nor youth were, indeed, spared in those cruel days; for the grey hairs of the aged Countess of Salisbury, last of the Plantagenets, were here also brought to the same block. This was the private execution spot, reserved for special victims and near relations, in contrast to the public one on Great Tower Hill outside; the exact place is enclosed, and marked by a square patch of darker stone. In the little adjoining chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula—the Prisoners' Chapel,—aptly dedicated to St. Peter-in-the-Chains,—were buried all these poor dishonoured bodies; Queen Anne Boleyn's, so short a time ago so loved, so adulated, thrown carelessly into an old arrow-chest, and flung beneath the altar. This chapel,—which is, by the way, a royal chapel, and therefore under no bishop's jurisdiction,—is very much restored, but it has a few good monuments; and its list of victims, numbered on a brass tablet inside the door, is sufficiently affecting: "In truth," says Macaulay:

"there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Hither have been carried through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts."

"No, I can't say I've ever seen any ghosts," said the affable Warder who showed me the chapel: "though an American family lately, they were so anxious to see Queen Anne Boleyn's ghost, that they went and sat opposite the execution-spot, at all hours, day-and-night; but they must have got disappointed, for I never heard that anything came of it.... Being from America," he added thoughtfully, "I suppose they felt they'd like to see all there was to be seen.... No, ghosts don't trouble us much; we all live in the Towers and round about, and the worst you can say of our lodgin's is that they're a bit draughty-like, in winter and spring, having them slits of winders all round. And then they don't allow you to paper the walls, or stick up a picture nail, or anything to make the place look a bit homely! One does get a bit tired, too," he confessed, "of them dark stone walls, and even of prisoners' inscriptions; but there it is, you mayn't so much as touch 'em, or even cover 'em up.... However," he continued magnanimously, "I own that we're lucky to live in the days we do; our 'eds is our own, at any rate!"

Between Tower Green and the outer moat, on the western side of the gravelled square, are the old-fashioned and comfortable-looking dwelling houses of the Tower officials; the residences of the Governor, the doctor, the Chaplain, &c.; houses mainly of darkened brick,—like the citadel itself,—fitted in between the "Beauchamp" and the "Bell" towers. The greater part of the fortress is, as we have seen, utilised as arsenal, barracks, or private dwellings; and thus, of its many towers, the "White Tower," (the "Keep" of the ancient castle), and the "Beauchamp Tower," are the only ones now viewed by the general public; though other antiquities and places worthy of a visit may, on application to the Governor, be shown to those "really interested." The Beauchamp Tower, though "restored" in 1854 (when all its inscriptions were placed together in one room), is still most interesting. Certainly, the draughts, on a windy day, of that room, go far to suggest the justice of my friend the warder's complaint. And the poor prisoners of old days did not know the modern comfort of "slow-combustion" stoves! Poor creatures! torn by the rack and torture, crushed by long, hopeless imprisonment, with no friend to turn to in their need, they have left us, deeply cut into the prison walls, their most pathetic complaint. Philosophy, on the whole, seems here to have been of the most availing comfort. Like Socrates, the wretched victims tried hard to be stoical. "The most unhappie man in the world," runs one inscription, "is he that is not pacient in adversitie." Then, in old Norman-French: "Tout vient apoient, quy peult attendre." "A passage perillus maketh a port pleasant." It was here, in the Beauchamp Tower, that the five Dudley brothers, sons of the Duke of Northumberland, were imprisoned for their share in the Lady Jane Grey rebellion; here are their pictured emblems and hieroglyphics; also the word "Jane," supposed to have been cut by her husband, Lord Guildford. To the longer victims of the Tower, time must have passed hardly. Was it agony of mind that guided the stroke, or did they find it some solace in their anguish? Poets, philosophers, men of science, all the best and noblest in the land; hours of solace after torture, no doubt, were theirs, given by that good Angel who,

"Brought the wise and great of ancient days
To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone."

Had they books, journals, writing materials? Probably but rarely. There was Raleigh, who spent such a large part of a chequered life in prison here, dying here too at last, and writing his "History" with admirable stoicism, in the face of death. But Lady Jane Grey, imprisoned in the "Brick Tower," had, we know, to inscribe her last message to her sister Katherine, on the blank leaves of her Greek Testament. What vivid, what painful interest would attach to a "Tower" diary, such as Pepys's, in cipher, could one have been written by any of these prisoners!

The wonderful collection of historic armour in the imposing "White Tower" is, even to those who are not connoisseurs on the subject, of great interest and beauty. It is true that there are a great many very narrow and steep stone stairs to be climbed; but in the end you are duly rewarded for your trouble. The ancient chapel of St. John, at the top of the winding stairway, is most strikingly picturesque, and especially so on a sunny day, when the light plays among the bare stone columns. This "most perfect Norman chapel in England" is striking in its unadorned severity of style; and the stilted horseshoe arches of its apse are somewhat like those of St. Bartholomew the Great, at Smithfield. The chapel dates from the year 1078, and has been the scene of many royal pageants and lyings-in-state. The Banqueting Hall adjoins it; here are to be seen, among other curiosities, models of the rack and thumbscrew, and the block used for the execution of old Lord Lovat, with Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock—the last Royalists executed here—in 1745. The hall contains also much armour and many weapons. Above is the "Council Chamber," where King Richard II. abdicated his throne in favour of his cousin Henry Bolingbroke.

"I think men must really have got bigger since these old days," remarked a burly policeman, to whom I was communicating my impressions: "Now, you wouldn't think it, but there's only two suits of armour in the whole place that I could even manage to get on me, that's old Henry VIII.'s, and his brother-in-law what's beside 'im, Charles Brandon, Dook o' Suffolk—you see 'em? over there, in the middle. Not but what they must have been strong too, of their size, to bear all that there weight of steel on 'em. I'd be sorry to do it myself, I know that. It's a wonder they didn't faint, and their poor horses, too!"

One of the most beautiful pieces of armour in the collection is that made for Henry VIII. on his marriage with Katharine of Arragon. It is of German manufacture, with deep and heavy skirts, on the edge of which is a pierced border, with the initials "H" and "K" entwined in a true-love knot. This suit of armour is, further, adorned with elaborate designs, probably from Hans Burgmair or one of his school, from the lives of St. George and St. Barbara, patron saints of England and of armourers. In Stuart times the suits of mail, and armour generally, became less heavy; and vizors and breastplates are often of open-work; most picturesque of all, perhaps, is the dress of the link-bearers of Charles I.'s time. The armour, and arms generally, are kept in a fine state of polish, wonderful to see in a land of fog and river mist. "The soldiers, you see, they have a turn at the spears and things when they want a job; but, of course, the armour, and such as that, is left to two or three people's special business."

There is a certain barbaric splendour about the State vessels and Coronation jewels, commonly called the "Regalia," kept in the "Record" or "Wakefield" Tower. These, like the menagerie formerly exhibited here are separated (and quite as necessarily) from the outer world by strong railings. This shining treasure of gold-plate and precious stones recalls the story of Colonel Blood's famous and nearly successful attempt at robbery, in the time of Charles II., for which he was, somewhat inconsistently, rewarded by a landed estate and "cash down." History is a sad series of injustices, and Colonel Blood's crime was, for reasons of state possibly, suppressed. Certain it is that the kings of England have not always been above stealing, or, at any rate, pledging their own treasure.

If the Tower looks a grim enough fortress now, it must have seemed grimmer still in ancient times, when every murder and cruelty—every crime that blackens the page of English history—took place within its gloomy walls. Surely, in old days, the bloody reputation of the Tower may well have made those shrink and tremble who passed under its doomed gateways! By the "Traitor's Gate," that waterway now disused, but which then opened directly on to the river highway, was brought that living freight of illustrious persons destined here to suffer and to die:

"That gate misnamed, through which before
Went Sidney, Russell, Raleigh, Cranmer, More."

So far, indeed, from being a "traitor's" way, all the valour and chivalry of mediæval England seem, at one time and another, to have passed that dreadful gate. Here, the "Lieutenant" or "Constable" of the Tower, "receipted" the arrival of the yet living bodies of men and women, soon to be bleeding and dismembered corpses.... Such a "receipt," given for the person of the condemned Duke of Monmouth, "the people's darling," is still extant. The "Traitor's Gate" had, moreover, an added horror; for in its walls are certain loopholes, through which the Lieutenant of the Tower could watch, unseen, the prisoner's arrival from his trial at the House of Lord's, and could ascertain, as he ascended the stone steps, whether the fatal Axe of Office, carried in front of him, were reversed or otherwise—reversal signifying death. Here, when Sir Thomas More was being led back to prison with the reversed axe carried before him, his beloved daughter Margaret burst through the guarding soldiers and embraced him, beseeching his blessing—a scene that melted even those stern guards to tears.

Brutal, indeed, were the age and the time. If Plantagenets, Yorkists, and Lancastrians were frankly murderous, Tudors and Stuarts had more refinement of cruelty, dignifying it, more or less, under the name of law. The accession of each fresh sovereign was the signal for arrests, life-long imprisonments, and executions. Favourites, now deposed from favour, paid here the penalty for a few years of feverish greatness; here suffered not only men of unscrupulous self-seeking, but also those whose chief fault was, like Cæsar's, ambition, and who were condemned to answer for it as grievously as Cæsar. Nor did past affliction teach present mercy. The Princess Elizabeth narrowly herself escaped a tragic fate in early youth; yet her former imprisonment in the "Bell" Tower made her scarcely less cruel, in the after-time, to her real or imaginary enemies. Partly in self-defence, partly as a question of faith, partly in revenge, both rivals, and also those suspected of possible rivalry, were effectually suppressed. Even continuation of the hated race of rivals seemed prohibited. Thus, Lady Jane Grey's poor sister, Katherine, was imprisoned till her death for the crime of secret marriage with the Earl of Hertford; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was executed for having aspired to the hand of the Queen of Scots; Lady Arabella Stuart, James I.'s unhappy cousin, having married, "with the love that laughs at privy councils," Sir William Seymour, was caught while escaping with him through Calais Roads, and languished here for four years, till her mind left her, and she died. The elder D'Israeli tells the story:

"What passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be recovered for authentic history; but enough is known, that her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason; and if the duration of her imprisonment (four years) was short, it was only terminated by her death. Some loose effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her papers. In a letter she proposed addressing to Viscount Fenton, to implore for her his Majesty's favour again, she says, 'Good my lord, consider the fault cannot be uncommitted; neither can any more be required of any earthly creature but confession and most humble submission.' In a paragraph she had written, but crossed out, it seems that a present of her work had been refused by the king, and that she had no one about her whom she might trust."

Of the few stories of escapes from the Tower, none is more romantic than that of Lord Nithsdale, saved by his wife's devotion. Failing to obtain a pardon from King George I. she, in her love and despair, bethought herself of a desperate plan. Under the pretence of a last visit, and with the connivance of a faithful servant, she managed to disguise her husband as her Welsh maid, and got him past the Tower sentries into safety; the next morning he would have perished with Lord Derwentwater, "the pride of the North," and the rest of the Scotch Jacobites.

Yet the Tower, even in mediæval times, was not all tragedy; for here, from Henry III.'s era, a royal menagerie was kept,—a menagerie of which the famous "Tower Lions," that existed here up to 1853, were the eventual outcome. (From the Tower Lions comes originally the phrase, "to see the Lions," or the sights, of a place.) The beasts are still commemorated in the Tower by the "Lions' Gate,"—or principal entrance. The Tower Moat, the broad ditch that encircled the building, and added to its mediæval impregnability, was drained in 1843, and its banks are now planted, on the north-east, with a pleasant shrubbery; through which winds a foot-path with comfortable seats and delightful views, much enjoyed and appreciated by the very poor. Thus, the old age of the Tower,—Julius Cæsar's traditional fortress, and the scene of England's darkest national crimes,—is, as often that of Man himself, full of benevolence and serenity. Its brutal youth, its sanguinary middle life, are alike far behind it; and "that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, and troops of friends," it may now look to have. And the long roll of the Tower victims, lying, many of them, in nameless graves, their very bones sometimes uncoffined; these have at any rate, by their death often achieved an immortality greater than any they could ever have gained by their lives. They were, in a sense, as was that old Roman, Marcus Curtius, sacrifices to their country's gods; for by such throes as overthrew them, have all nations reached peace and salvation. "I see," they might, like Sydney Carton, have cried prophetically at the block,

"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time ... gradually making expiation for itself."

Once outside the Tower precincts, all is changed, and you are, again, in the bustle and the din of modern London. "Great Tower Hill," on the rising ground north of the Tower, and close to Mark Lane Station, is hardly an idyllic spot, or one at all suitable to meditation, being generally much invaded by the shouts of draymen and the rumble of van-wheels. Close by, in Trinity Square gardens, marked by a stone, is the spot which for some centuries shared with "Tyburn" the honour, or dishonour, of being the public execution-place; but, while Great Tower Hill was mostly the last bourne of political and state prisoners, Tyburn (the present "Marble Arch"), was reserved for common murderers, robbers, and their like. England, in those days, must have enjoyed rare galas in the way of executions! Of that old rogue, Lord Lovat, beheaded here in 1747, it is recorded, that just before the fatal axe fell, a scaffolding, containing some thousand persons, set there to enjoy the spectacle, collapsed, killing twelve of them; a sight at which, the old man, even at that terrible moment, chuckled merrily, "enjoying, no doubt, the downfall of so many Whigs."

Trinity Square has still a pleasant, old-fashioned air of seclusion; although all around and about it are grimy lanes and warehouses, suggesting the close proximity of wharves and docks. Yet Trinity Square, like Charterhouse Square, is no longer residential; the look of "home," of comfortable family life, about its sober brick houses, is merely a hollow sham; they are mainly offices. Near by is the Royal Mint, "where," so Mark Tapley informed his American friends, "the Queen lives, to take care of all the money." At the end of the big, noisy street called the Minories, leading from the Tower to Aldgate, rises the tall, black, three-storied spire of St. Botolph's Church, built by Dance in 1744, on an old site. This church is hardly beautiful in itself; yet its effect, as seen from the Minories, is good. The jurisdiction of St. Botolph, always a popular London saint, is now extended to the tiny Church of Holy Trinity, in the Minories, a small yellowish building, somewhat like St. Ethelburga in Bishopsgate Street, with the same kind of abbreviated turret. When you have succeeded in finding this church (which is difficult, as it is hidden down a side street off the Minories, and, as usual in London, no single inhabitant appears to know where it is), you then usually find it locked, with a saddening notice to the effect that the keys are in some equally unknown and distant region. Yet you must not despair. Such drawbacks are inseparable from the pursuit of historical antiquities in London. It seems, however, a pity to have recently changed the identity of this small church, thus rendering it still more difficult to find. Originally, it gave its name to the whole district; having belonged to an abbey of "Minoresses," or nuns of the order of St. Clare; the living, and also the name, are amalgamated with that of St. Botolph, Aldgate, which now possesses also its chief claim to fame. For, though the little church still possesses some good monuments, the relic formerly shown here, the dessicated head of a man, said to be the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, is now removed to the larger church. The decapitated head is certainly sufficiently ghastly, with the neck still showing the usual first stroke of the bungling executioner, and the loose teeth, yellow skin, and mouth with "the curve of agony" to which attention is usually drawn. The evidence for the head being that of the Duke of Suffolk rests mainly on the fact that the Church of "Holy Trinity" was the chapel of the Duke of Suffolk's town-house, and the place whither his head would naturally be brought after decapitation on Tower-hill.

At No. 9, Minories, over the shop of one John Owen, nautical instrument-maker, is the figure of the "Little Midshipman," described by Dickens in Dombey and Son. But it is difficult to walk in the Minories; everywhere crates and cranes seem to threaten you, and paper from printing offices bristles from windows on to your devoted head.... This must always have been a noisy quarter. In old days it was famous for its gunsmiths, as witness Congreve's lines:

"The mulcibers who in the Minories sweat,
And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat—"

You leave the Minories without regret, and turn your face again Citywards. The church of All Hallows, Barking (so called from the nuns of old Barking Abbey), is further west, in Great Tower Street, close to the Tower precincts. It is another church that escaped the Great Fire, and it contains the graves of some of the Tower victims. It has also some good monumental brasses, one especially, of fine Flemish workmanship, in the pavement in the centre of the nave. These old City churches are now most of them well served and tended, the Sunday services in some of them being much sought after. They are also probably kept in better repair than in Dickens's time, when, overgrown, dirty, and isolated in the midst of traffic and bustle, they struck the novelist only with their weird desolation,—a desolation as of some sentient and human thing. Thus vividly he described his feelings while attending service in one of them: