such information as this after reading twenty pages of it? How much, indeed, is it desirable to remember? Why cumber the brain with names and titles which are meaningless to your mind, and can restore for you no more of the past life and the bygone actors than a handful of Helen's dust could restore her beauty?

There is, however, another part of Westminster-a part which concerns us more than Caste Land. It is the part which lies around the ancient precincts of the Abbey. Here we touch Westminster; here we are not on land that belongs to the country, nor among people who belong to the country: we are in Westminster proper-in the streets which cannot even now, when all the former spaces of separation are covered up and built over, be called a part of London or a suburb of London. They are Westminster. These streets possessed, until quite recently, the picturesqueness

that belongs to the aged vagrom man. these days; but one remembers him.

He hardly exists in He was old-age had lent no touch of reverence or dignity; he was clad in manycoloured rags and fluttering duds; he leaned upon a stick; his white locks were the only part of him that presented any appearance of cleanliness; his face was lined and puckered,

his features were

He was

prominent, his eyes were wolfish. admirable-in a pic

ture. Such were the streets, such the houses, of Westminster-that part of the City lying round about the Abbey. Those on the west and south of the Abbey are comparatively new streets. In the excellent map by Richard Newcourt showing London and Westminster in the year 1658 we find Tothill Street completely built; Rochester Row

does not exist; Great St. Peter Street has a few houses, Great College Street none; St. Anne's Street has houses. with gardens. The crowded part of Westminster in the seventeenth century was that narrow area north of New Palace Yard of which King Street was the most important thoroughfare. When we consider that this place was a great centre of trade long before and long after the building of London Bridge; that for six hundred years it was close to the King's House, with all his followers,-huscarles, archers, or body-guard,-we are not surprised that there has always been about these streets the flavour of the tavern- always the smell of casks and pint pots, of stale beer and yesterday's wine. Where there are soldiers there are taverns; there also are the minstrels and the music and the girls. It may also be concluded beyond a doubt that the Sanctuary was a thirsty place. Long after Court and Camp and Sanctuary had left the place the name and fame of Westminster for its taverns and its dens remained. These streets were a byword and a reproach well into the present century. One or two streets there were that claimed for a generation or so a kind of respectability. They were the streets lying between New Palace Yard and Whitehall, such as King Street and Cannon Street, with one or two of later growth-of seventeenth and eighteenth century respectability-such as Petty France, Cowley Street and College Street.

King Street, especially, if one may brave the reproach of cataloguing, is full of history. Here lived Oliver Cromwell: his house is said to have stood on the north side of the Blue Boar's Head, of which the court still remains. Sir Henry Wootton lived here; one of Caxton's successors set up his press in this street. It was formerly, as we have already seen, a picturesque and beautiful street, with its gate at either end, its overhanging gables, and its signs. Half a dozen taverns stood in this street-the Swan, the Dog, the Bell, the Blue Boar's Head, etc. This little strect, now so insignifi

cant, was formerly, we are always, by every writer, called upon to observe, the 'highway' between London and Westminster. But then nobody went by

road who could go by river. The Thames was the highway-not King Street-between London and Westminster by the Thames the Port of London sent its goods to the Court of Westminster or Whitehall; by the river came down country produce for Court and Abbey. There was doubtless some traffic which found its way along King Street; but for communication between Westminster and all other parts of the country except the City and the Strand, we must remember that there

was not only the

river, but the old, old

formerly ran down

from the North to the

marsh at St. James's Park, and began again on the other side of the river; the marsh. was now drained, and the road, no longer a ford, ran across it and formed the most direct entrance to the Court or the Abbey from the North.

We

must remember, again, that nobody walked who could ride; and that nobody rode who could take boat: walking along