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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LONDON DOCKS—OUTER BASIN.
LONDON DOCKS—OUTER BASIN.

CHAPTER VII.

WHITECHAPEL, AND THE OLD REMAINS IN BISHOPSGATE-STREET.

HITHERTO our course has been eastward; we must now turn our faces towards the west, and describe a few of the objects which lie on our right hand, as we retrace our steps, and journey to where the sun sets. To the point from whence we started at the commencement of our work (the foot of Blackfriars Bridge) we shall find but little to detain us; for the Bank and Exchange are too commercial for our pages, as we have not undertaken to write a Guide-Book, and fear that we have already dwelt too minutely on many of the uninteresting portions of the City which we have already described. But, up to the Tower, the neighbourhood we have gone over lies like a mere edging on the great skirt of London, compared to the labyrinths of streets that spread north and west—to say nothing of the Surrey side of the Thames. A mere glance at the map of London appals us. We shall therefore select a picturesque object here and there after having quitted the city, just as fancy guides the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How much for these, Mo’?” inquired the purchaser.

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

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

“Vell, den, three-halfpence!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE FOUR SWANS’ INN YARD.
THE FOUR SWANS’ INN YARD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.

GUILDHALL AND THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOW.

ALTHOUGH Guildhall was seriously scarred by the Great Fire, and but little more left than the crypt and bare walls that had witnessed its ancient splendour, we are still enabled, through old records and time-honoured chronicles, to obtain glimpses of the pageants and processions which, nearly four centuries ago, were held within those grey old walls. Of the ancient hall, erected in 1411, I have met with no satisfactory description; nor does it appear that any of our kings dined in Guildhall before the time of Charles I., when, on November 25, 1641, the ill-starred monarch partook of the hospitality of the Lord Mayor. I have before mentioned that James I. dined privately with Sir John Watts, the Lord Mayor in 1607, and was afterwards made free of the Clothworkers’ Company; but I do not find that he ever visited Guildhall, or that on any occasion royalty was entertained there until on the above-named day in 1641. But before describing the entertainment given to King Charles I., we will give our own account of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in November 1850.

To us, who from our boyish days have been dreamers “by the shores of old romance,” there was something startling in witnessing (for the first time) the splendid banquet in Guildhall. In sitting down amongst the guests within the very walls where Buckingham harangued the old citizens in favour of making Gloster king, and for which the latter rewarded him by chopping off his head; to know that those echoes had been broken by the gentle voice of Anne Askew, when she boldly declared her creed, and was for her sincerity sent by the Defender of the Faith to the stake; that there Throgmorton nobly defended himself, and that, in those “evil days,” a jury of strong-souled citizens were daring enough to acquit him;—while these thoughts passed through our minds, we looked upon the monument of Beckford, who (it is said) bearded the king upon his throne; then glanced at that of Nelson, who died in the service of his country; and fancied that, if they were fronted by the statues of Charles and Cromwell, the history of English liberty might be read at a look.

Although the roof of this ancient hall is all but gone, and the fire which destroyed thousands of homes, nearly two centuries ago, has licked those time-honoured walls with its flaming tongue, they still stand, like giant oaks which bolt and blaze have blackened, venerable in their ruins—grey and weather-beaten landmarks, that point out the spot where the battle of English liberty has many a time been fought and won. To us there is something emblematical of England in this blending of the past with the present—in recalling the days when

Although the deep braying of the trumpets proclaimed a feast instead of a fray, the sound was in keeping with the scene. The “bruised arms hung up for monuments,” overshadowed by banners, told that they need no longer be worn by a nation who could stop the progress of an army by refusing to sign a cheque. Picturesque as the old smoky cressets, and chain-dropped lamps, and iron sconces may have been, we preferred the thousands of gas-jets which ran like cords of golden light along the tracery of the architecture, though they did reveal the modern flat roof and the unsightly upper windows. The rude drinking-horns, and oaken peg-cups, and wooden trenchers were well replaced by the glittering glass and ornamental china which graced every table. And romantic as it may have been to have carved a baron of beef with the dagger which, a day or two before, had cut a Christian throat, we preferred the modern instruments, which had been polished like silver by the “patent knife-cleaner;” and thought that the mace looked better as an ornament than if wielded by so brave a mayor as Sir William Walworth, who, if old records tell the truth, killed Wat Tyler for burning down the stews his lordship owned by the Bankside in Southwark. All these, and a hundred other “old-world memories,” floated around us while seated at the banquet in that ancient City hall.

The gorgeous star in the west window made the eye ache while looking on its brilliancy, and harmonised well with the Prince of Wales’s plumes, which overhung the ranged shields at the opposite end of the building, above the baronial daïs. The massy chandeliers (high overhead), though rich in colours as the gaudy plumage of the humming-bird, had a dull and diapered look; and, in our eyes, appeared somewhat too heavy—a waste of beauty placed beyond the reach of vision. The galleries over the doorways filled with the musicians and singers, pleasantly recalled the days when the minstrel struck his harp, and chanted his heroic strains, before the “beauty and the chivalry” of bygone years.

Then came the procession around the hall, as the gorgeously-clad trumpeters heralded the way, and went with stately march “sounding” to the banquet. Judges, with solemn countenances, rendered more grave and imposing by their large flowing wigs, stalked by in scarlet dresses; ministers, whose thoughts seemed far away, as if concocting some state despatch with as many meanings as there were turnings in Fair Rosamond’s labyrinth; brave sailor-looking men, bronzed by sun and wind, who rolled in their gait as if treading the decks of the war-ship they commanded in a stormy sea; soldiers, who would never run, though a bomb-shell exploded at their feet; city lieutenants, who had shed no other blood than that of the grape, though they had bravely stood before many a “Kentish fire;” clergymen, with classic countenances, who glanced on the tables as they passed, as if, amid their spiritual avocations, they had still time to turn their eyes “upon the good things of this world;” finely-clad young gentlemen, who marched along with a swing and a swagger, as if they thought that “the eyes of all Europe were upon them.” Old men, who had grown grey over eating Guildhall dinners, and, like the war-horse in Job, exclaimed “Ha, ha!” as they smelt the turtle afar off; beautiful ladies, “mincing in their gait,” and looking down with modest eyes, while the light from the jewels they wore trembled on their snow-white necks like moonbeams on the ripple of a river, as they passed with noiseless step; then came the richly-dressed servants, with elevated heads, seeming to say—