and those of Australia and America. For the telegraph has so linked together the ends of the earth, that the daily events of London are flashed each evening all over the civilised earth, and into these numerous offices, all in the full swing of work when most people are preparing for bed, come pouring the latest items of intelligence and business from India, Africa, Australia, America-in short, from wherever the telegraph wire has penetrated, accompanied as it invariably is by our own correspondent.'

The part of the district between Ludgate Hill and the River Thames nearest the river is known as Blackfriars, so called from a Dominican monastery of the Black Friars, founded here in the thirteenth century. The church of the monastery was occasionally used for parliaments. Owing to the belief, common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that 'to be buried in the habit of the Order was a sure preservative against the attacks of the devil,' a large number of persons of high rank were buried in the church attached to the monastery. The heart of Eleanor, wife of Edward I., was kept here. Here also after his execution the body of the Earl of Worcester, the enlightened patron of William Caxton, was buried. Several parliaments met here, including that presided over by Sir Thomas More as Speaker, known from the place as the Black Parliament, held in 1529. Here also on June 21 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio pronounced the divorce between Henry VIII. and Katherine of Aragon. Here also a few months later parliament passed that sentence of præmunire which placed not only Wolsey, but the whole Church in England in the king's power.

To the north of the Circus, and partly upon the site now occupied by the Memorial Hall, stood the old Fleet Prison. This was demolished in 1846, and the Hall was erected in memory of the fact that in this prison during the Tudor and Stuart reigns many suffered for liberty of conscience. Bishop Hooper was imprisoned here in 1555, and many of the victims of the Star Chamber. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries it became a prison for debtors. Like its neighbour Newgate, it was burnt in 1780, but was immediately rebuilt. Readers of the Pickwick Papers will remember how many scenes of that famous book are laid here. The whole region between Ludgate Circus and Temple Bar, on both sides of Fleet Street, abounds with associations and memories upon which many volumes have been written. To the west of St. Bride's Church and Salisbury Square so called because here formerly stood the town house of that bishop-is Whitefriars, the Alsatia of The Fortunes of Nigel. Like the other districts of London which possessed the privilege of sanctuary, this also speedily became the refuge of criminals. and bad characters of every kind.

To the east of Alsatia, and appropriately close at hand, stood the prison of Bridewell, demolished about 1863, but still commemorated in the name Bridewell Place, where now stand the offices of that most useful and

A CROWDED CROSSING.

deserving institution the London City Mission. Bridewell was founded by Edward VI. as a refuge for deserted children, then became a reformatory, and lastly a prison noted for all the savagery common in the prisons of the last century. Here formerly stood the old palace of Bridewell, and here Henry VIII. first publicly intimated his doubts about the legality of his marriage with his first wife. The name Bridewell commemorates the fact that in ancient days a well stood here. In the churchyard of St. Bride's Milton lived for some years; John Cardmaker, vicar of St. Bride's, was burnt at Smithfield in Mary's reign; and within the church are buried Samuel Richardson and Wynkyn de Worde, the colleague and successor of Caxton.

JOHNSON READING THE MS. OF THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.'

One feature of this district is the number of little courts and lanes running north and south from the main street, and each famous in its way. Dr. Johnson passed most of his literary life in this region. At No. 17, Gough Square, he wrote his Dictionary and much of the Rambler and Idler; at No. 7, Johnson Court, he lived from 1765 until 1766; and at 8, Bolt Court, in December, 1784, he died. At No. 6, Wine Office Court, Goldsmith lived, and the Cheshire Cheese, the tavern which both frequented, still exists. It was in Wine Office Court that the Vicar of Wakefield was written. In Crane Court stood formerly the mansion in which from 1710 to 1782 the Royal

Society held its meetings, and there Sir Isaac Newton presided over its assemblies. The house was burnt in 1877, and rebuilt in 1880. Fetter Lane has been a great centre of Free Church life in London. No. 32 is the old Moravian Chapel, which escaped the Great Fire, whose pulpit was occupied by Richard Baxter during the years

1672-1682, and to whose society for a time John Wesley belonged. Whitefield and Count Zinzendorf were also often here. No. 95 is the old Fetter Lane Congregational Church. Higher up is the splendid building known as the Record Office, built during the years 1851-1856. Here the priceless MSS. and documents previously kept in St. John's Chapel in the Tower, the Chapter House at Westminster, and other places, have all been brought together, and so arranged as to be easily accessible to the student. Here amid other treasures is preserved William the Conqueror's famous Domesday Book. In Falcon Court stood Wynkyn de Worde's printing office.

Between Fetter Lane, so called because of the faitors or beggars who frequented it, and Chancery Lane, stands the Church of St. Dunstan in the West, a late church dating from 1831. The old church, which stood upon the same site, except that it came thirty feet further into the roadway, was the building in which William Tyndale preached during that year (1523-1524) he spent in London, and marked the course of the world, and heard our praters (I would say preachers), how they boasted themselves of their high authority; and beheld