the pomp of our prelates, and how busy they were, as they yet are, to get peace and unity in the world, and saw things whereof I defer to speak at this time, and understood at the last not only that there was no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England. The statue of Queen Elizabeth, here preserved, formerly adorned Ludgate, and survived unscathed the Great Fire.

Passing the New Law Courts on the one hand, and the Temple on the other, to both of which we shall return later on, not passing through the old gates of Temple Bar, for the sufficient reason that it now adorns the entrance to Sir Henry Meux's house in Hertfordshire, and being hindered, if the traffic in Fleet Street is in its normal crowded condition, by the hideous obstruction which the Corporation have put up to mark the site of the old Bar, we enter upon the Strand, which recalls the time when it once was the strand of the Thames, either open country or pleasuregardens attached to great mansions. Here again a volume would be necessary to recount but briefly the associations indicated by almost every name we meet-Holywell, St. Clement's Danes, Norfolk Street, the Savoy, Essex Street, Burleigh Street, Somerset House, the Adelphi, etc. At every turn we are reminded of men and deeds from the times of John of Gaunt down to the present. Through Southampton Street Covent Garden is reached, and here at an hour far too early in the morning to come by omnibus, one of the sights of London can be enjoyed, viz., the life and bustle and beauty of the far-famed fruit and flower market. 'On Tuesdays,

Thursdays, and Saturdays, its especial market days, Covent Garden should be visited. It is one of the prettiest sights of London, and it is difficult to say whether the porch given up to flowers, or the avenue devoted to fruit, is most radiant in freshness and colour. How many London London painters, unable to go farther afield, have come hither with profit to study effects of colour, which piles of fruit give as nothing else can.'1

Thackeray, who knew this region well, and who was a frequenter of the noted Bedford Tavern in his early life, has sketched this whole region with all his skill and life: The two great national theatres on one side, a churchyard full of mouldy but undying celebrities on the other, a fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote or history, an arcade often more gloomy and deserted than a cathedral aisle, a rich cluster of brown old taverns one of them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many actors long since silent, who scowl and smile once more from the canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers-a something in the air which breathes of old books, old painters, and old authors; a place beyond all other places one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight; a crystal palace-the representative of the present-which presses in timidly from a corner upon many things of the past; a squat building with a

1 Walks in London, by A. J. C. Hare, i. 50.

E

hundred columns and chapel-looking front, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables; a common centre into which

Nature showers her choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the narrow thoroughfares; a population that never seems

to sleep, and that does all in its power to prevent others sleeping; a place where the very latest suppers and the earliest breakfasts jostle each other over the footways.'

But space warns us that we must bring these preliminary excursions to a close. We cannot dwell upon Trafalgar Square with its Nelson Monument, Landseer lions, and National Gallery, upon Whitehall with its palace and government offices, upon Pall Mall with its clubs, upon Piccadilly with its ceaseless streams of carriages and its long list of famous houses. But no one can wander over the area we have thus briefly indicated without gaining among his first impressions of London some notion of its complexity and almost infinite variety. The student of human nature finds a fascination ever fresh and ever strengthened by familiarity in watching the myriad faces that hurry past him at Hyde Park Corner, Regent's Circus, Cheapside, or London Bridge. Here he sees London life in the exhaustless variety of its great and normal streams. In five minutes at any one of these points the gamut of human existence may be run up and down. Faces that indicate high social station, mental culture, resolute determination, and business concentration on the part of the men, beauty and luxury, not unfrequently, on the part of the women, flit past side by side with faces that bear the look of loneliness engendered by the heedless crowd around, unacquainted with, and caring nothing for the individual burden, anxiety, sorrow, or joy; faces upon which poverty, hardship, and social wrong have left their indelible impress; faces bearing upon them the mark of vice, flaunting and prosperous, to be followed perhaps the moment after by faces which haunt the keen observer like some ghastly dream, and which tell of a soul utterly engrossed in doing wickedness. And no one can habitually tread these London streets without asking himself often and seriously what will be, what can be, the ultimate issue of all this energy in action, of all this varying love and hatred, prosperity and adversity, success manifested by almost extravagant gladness, and failure writing despair in ineffaceable characters upon the brow. Whither are they all tending, and what master do they serve? So hard and reckless oftentimes does the spirit of selfishness seem, so absorbed is each man in his own affairs, to the seemingly total exclusion of the claims of others, so strong are the forces of evil, and so unblushing their outward manifestation, so heart-breaking the evidences of suffering and ruin wrought by lust and drink and the fierce struggle for life, that the heart is sometimes ready to fail, ready to relinquish the seemingly hopeless fight. Well is it for us at such times to be able to hold fast the belief that God is over all, and cares for all, and loves all that His mercy in Christ Jesus can avail for even the most vicious and degraded and despairing-and that in the wilds of London, seemingly so far away from all that is good and pure, ready and willing to overcome by His love and mercy the selfishness and heartlessness and crime of man, God is ever near, yearning to deliver men

and women from the bondage of sin and evil habit, the strength and refuge of the many who in the midst of London are striving not only 'to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,' but also to keep themselves unspotted from the world.'

Again, the phenomena of life in London vary much within the compass of the twenty-four hours. Billingsgate and Covent Garden and Smithfield Market

are all alive at five in the morning, preparing for the feeding and adornment of the great city; for nearly twelve hours of the twentyfour, Cornhill, the Bank, Queen Victoria Street-in short, the whole area technically known as the City-is as empty as during the rest of the day it is crowded with highpressure life. You may wander in the early morning or afternoon on a fine day-and notwithstanding all that is said about London weather it has many fine daysthrough Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, or through Regent's Park, and fancy yourself hundreds of miles away from the fashion and too obtrusive life

of Regent Street, or from the ceaseless roar of the Strand.

And to the careful observer the atmospheric changes are a source of charm. London under a pea-soup fog is not a cheerful sight, and the experience one which the resident would gladly part with for ever. Still, as an American once remarked to the writer when commiserating him upon having to endure the visitation, 'This is one of the sights of London, and I'm real glad to have seen it.' Nevertheless the great and frequent atmospheric variations