has

The Embankment swept away not a few traces of Old London, and has completely altered the river front along that part which, during Tudor and Stuart times, was the site of great mansions and pleasure gardens. Standing upon the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge, it is hard to picture the time when New Bridge and Farringdon Streets were occupied by the Fleet River, up which vessels of considerable size could sail; when Baynard's Castle stood somewhere near what is now St. Paul's Station; when the eastern bank of the Fleet was steep declivity, crowned by the medieval wall of London; and when, instead. of the great dome, the lofty spire of old St. Paul's seemed to pierce the clouds. And a stroll along the Embankment is now full of interest. On the left is the great water-way busy with small shipping of different kinds, while in the distance are seen the towers and warehouses of Southwark and Lambeth. On the right we pass a succession of handsome buildings. Here stands the new Sion Collegea fine building-opened in 1886 to replace the old structure in London Wall. It is a meetingplace and centre for City clergymen, is possessed of considerable charitable funds, and also contains a very fine library, rich in early English Bibles. Near this stands another handsome

edifice, the new home of the old City of London School. Then come, still going westward, the Temple, the offices of the London School Board, Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge, the splendid institutions, hotels, and buildings which cluster about the Savoy, the gardens just to the east of Charing Cross Railway, backed by the fine old gateway of York House and the Adelphi; while towering aloft upon the river front, in grim solitariness

and with an air of absolute

incongruity with its surroundings, stands that huge granite obelisk, the work of Thothmes III., upon which in all probability the eye of Moses has often rested, but which needs a clearer atmosphere than London's to enable the passer-by to make out the hieroglyphics which, though carved three thousand years ago, are still in many parts bold and sharp.

Passing beneath the railway bridge, one of four of the same kind, practically useful, but artistically disfiguring to the river, and leaving on our right the magnificent piles of building belonging respectively to the Hôtel Métropole and the National Liberal Club, we see before us Westminster Bridge, flanked at the northern end by the Houses of Parliament and the great Clock Tower, and at the southern by the seven huge

blocks of buildings belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital.

Beyond this point for some distance the southern shore of the Thames is embanked, and further westward, in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, on the northern side again.

The open spaces afforded by the Embankment have been utilised for the perpetuation of the memory of famous men, by the erection here of their statues. London is not yet very rich in works of art of this class, a

considerable portion of those already in existence being remarkable rather for the absence of the sculptor's genius. Those on the Embankment are among the most recent, and are artistically among the best. They represent men of very different gifts, and of widely varying views upon the best ways of securing human progress. Near the Temple Station stands John Stuart Mill; in front of the Savoy are statues to Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday-schools, and to Robert Burns; near the foot of Northumberland Avenue is Sir James Outram, the Indian general, and still further west is the one we engrave, William Tyndale, translator and martyr, 'the Apostle of England,' the man who gave the English nation their English Bible, and who has left upon it for all time the impress of his own heroic spirit-that spirit which enabled him, after eleven years of exile, danger, and toil, to meet the martyr's death at Vilvorde, near Brussels, with the prayer upon his lips, Lord, open the King of England's eyes!'

Returning to the Mansion House, and taking the other and even more frequented route to the West, we pass at almost every step old historic sites, buildings that have played a great part in London's history, and the busy centres of a commerce which has reached a scale and magnitude never before approached in the world's history.

We enter first the continuation of Cheapside known as the Poultry. Cheapside and its approaches in the old Saxon days were occupied mainly by the caterers for domestic needs. The old occupations have ages ago named the different streets-Bread Street, Milk Street, Ironmonger Lane, the Poultry, &c. The Chepe, or open market, stood in olden times near the western or Paternoster Row end. On the right hand is the street known as Old Jewry, the district where those functionaries so useful to many of our early Norman and Plantagenet monarchs, the Jew money-lenders, lived. Hence they were expelled by Edward I. under circumstances of great hardship, and when allowed to return during the rule of Oliver Cromwell they returned not to this part, but to the region about Aldgate and Houndsditch, where to this day they congregate in great numbers. In Ironmonger Lane is the entrance to Mercers' Hall and Chapel, the home of one of the twelve great City companies, and occupying the site of the house where one of the most famous men of the twelfth century, viz., Thomas à Becket, was born. King Street and Queen Street have been widened and improved of recent years; and, in fact, the great majority of the houses in Cheapside itself have been pulled down, and replaced by the handsome structures which now line both sides of the roadway. King Street leads to the municipal centre of London, the ancient Guildhall, fully described in a subsequent chapter.

A little further westward we see towering aloft Wren's masterpiece in the way of steeples, the high spire of Bow Church. The church of course dates only from the close of the seventeenth century, the ancient building that had for many centuries occupied the site having been destroyed in

the Great Fire.

The name is said to have originated from the fact that it was the first church in London built upon stone arches, and was hence known as St. Mary de Arcubus, or St. Mary le-Bow. The ecclesiastical court in early times held its sittings in this church, and was hence known as the Court of Arches. The bells of the church used to ring the curfew, and by them the hour for shutting up the shops in and around Cheapside was regulated. This not being done quite so promptly as the lively apprentices, so well sketched in Sir Walter Scott's Fortunes of Nigel, desired,

they are said to have remonstrated with the clerk in verse:

'Clerk of the Bow bell with the yellow lockes,

For thy late ringing thy head shall have knocks;'

to whom, likewise in verse, the ready clerk discreetly responds,

'Children of Chepe, hold you all still,
You shall have Bow bell rung at your
will.'

Legend will have it that it was these bells which Dick Whittington heard on Highgate Hill, entreating him to return, that he might enjoy the dignity of being Lord Mayor thrice. This dignity he certainly did enjoy; but the research of modern times has discredited the old story so dear to the youth of Britain, just as it has refused to give further credence to the fact that Thomas à Becket's mother ever wandered through Cheapside calling out the only English word she knew, the name of her lover, who afterwards became the father of the great archbishop. It is to the bells of this church that popular custom assigns the duty of deciding the area of true Londoners. To be born within sound of Bow bells stamps the fortunate being as a cockney beyond all dispute. Affixed to the wall of Bow Church is the tablet that formerly belonged to the Church of Allhallows, Bread Street, demolished in 1877. It contains Dryden's lines, commemorative of the fact that John Milton was born in Bread Street