hood, which we have stood with great pleasure to see careering about it of a fine afternoon, when a western wind had swept back the smoke towards the city, and showed the white of the stone steeple piercing up into a blue sky. So much for St. Giles's, whose very name is a nuisance with some. It is dangerous to speak disrespectfully of old districts. Who would suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the metropolis! And yet it is undoubtedly so. The Globe theatre was there, of which Shakspeare himself was the proprietor, and for which he wrote some of his plays. Globe-lane, in which it stood, is still extant, we believe, under that name. It is probable that he lived near it: it is certain that he must have been much there. It is also certain that on the Borough side of the river, then and still called the Bank-side, in the same lodging, having the same wardrobe, and some say with other participations more remarkable, lived Beaumont and Fletcher. In the Borough, also, at St. Saviour's, lie Fletcher and Massinger in one grave; in the same church, under a monument and effigy, lies Chaucer's contemporary, Gower; and from an inn in the Borough, the existence of which is still boasted, and the site pointed out by a picture and inscription, Chaucer sets out his pilgrims and himself on their famous road to Canterbury.

To return over the water, who would expect anything poetical from East Smithfield? Yet there was born the most poetical even of the poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of Bow-bell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. Gray was born in Cornhill; and Milton in Bread-street, Cheapside. The presence of the same great poet and patriot has given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He lived in St. Bride's Church-yard, Fleet-street; in Aldersgatestreet, in Jewin-street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew-close; in Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's-inn-Fields; in Holborn, near Red Lion square; in Scotland-yard; in a house looking to St. James's Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on legislation, and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and metaphysician; and he died in the Artillery-walk, Bunhillfields; and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

Ben Jonson, who was born in "Hartshorne-lane, near Charing-cross," was at one time "master" of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate-street; and is known to have frequented, with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill. Beaumont, writing to him from the country, in an epistle full of jovial wit, says,—

The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent, is
Here our best haymaker: forgive me this:
It is our country style :-In this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.

Methinks the little wit I had, is lost,

Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest

Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters.

What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown

Wit, able enough to justify the town

For three days past,-wit, that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled, and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty;-though but downright fools, mere wise.

The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time, was the Devil tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben Jonson lived also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards lived. It is in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St. Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands upon the Lincoln's-inn garden wall, which looks towards Chancery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his illustrious brick and mortar remaining.

Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stands in the heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young and learned eyes),* lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it was once a monastery of Grey Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Burdett, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the reign of Edward the Fourth, for wishing the horns of a favorite white stag which the king had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward the Second,—

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,

Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate.-GRAY.

Her "mate's" heart was buried with her, and placed upon her bosom a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at school; otherwise, after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at nighttime as we used. Camden, the "nourrice of antiquitie," received part of his education in this school; and here also, not to mention a variety of others, known in the literary world, were bred two of the best and most deep-spirited writers of the present day, whose visits to the cloisters we well remember.

In a palace on the site of Hatton-Garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook-house, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, the "friend of Sir Philip Sidney." In the same street, died, by a voluntary death of poison, that extraordinary person, Thomas Chattertлn,—

The sleepless boy, who perished in his pride.-WORDSWORTH.

He was buried in the grave-yard of the work-house in Shoelane; a circumstance at which one can hardly help feeling a movement of 'ndignation. Yet what could beadles and parish

It has since been unveiled, by an opening in Newgate-street † Coleridge and Lamb.

officers know about such a being? No more than Horace Walpole. In Gray's-inn lived, and in Gray's-inn garden meditated, Lord Bacon. In Southampton-row, Holborn, Cowper was fellow-clerk to an attorney with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow. At one of the Fleet-street corners of Chancery-lane, Cowley, we believe, was born. In Salisbury-court, Fleet-street, was the house of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, the precursor of Spenser, and one of the authors of the first regular English tragedy. On the demolition of this house, part of the ground was occupied by the celebrated theatre built after the Restoration, at which Betterton performed, and of which Sir William Davenant was manager. Lastly, here was the house and printing-office of Richardson. In Bolt-court, not far distant, lived Dr. Johnson, who resided also some time in the Temple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in Boswell.* Congreve died in Surrey-street, in the Strand, at his own house. At the corner of Beaufort-buildings, was Lilly's, the perfumer, at whose house the Tatler was published. In Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, Voltaire lodged while in London, at the sign of the White Peruke. Tavistock-street was then, we believe, the Bond-street of the fashionable world; as Bowstreet was before. The change of Bow-street from fashion to the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of the spirit of the Beggar's Opera. Button's Coffee-house, the resort of the wits of Queen Anne's time, was in Russell-street, near where the Hummums now stand; and in the same street, at the south-west corner of Bow-street, was the tavern where Dryden held regal possession of the arm-chair. The whole of Covent-garden is classic ground, from its association with the dramatic and other wits of the times of Dryden and Pope. Butler lived, perhaps died, in Rose-street, and was buried in Co vent-garden churchyard; where Peter Pindar the other day fol lowed him. In Leicester-square, on the site of Miss Linwood's exhibition and other houses, was the town-mansion of the Syd

The temple must have had many eminent inmates. Among them it is believed was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strength of an old record, to have been fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleetstreet.

neys, Earls of Leicester, the family of Sir Philip and Algernon Sydney. In the same square lived Sir Joshua Reynolds and Hogarth. Dryden lived and died in Gerrard-street, in a house which looked backwards into the garden of Leicester-house. Newton lived in St. Martin's-street, on the south side of the square. Steele lived in Bury-street, St. James's: he furnishes an illustrious precedent for the loungers in St. James's-street, where a scandal-monger of those times delighted to detect Isaac Bickerstaff in the person of Captain Steele, idling before the coffee-houses, and jerking his leg and stick alternately against the pavement. We have mentioned the birth of Ben Jonson near Charing-cross. Spenser died at an inn, where he put up on his arrival from Ireland, in King-street, Westminster,-the same which runs at the back of Parliament-street to the Abbey. Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea. Addison lived and died in Holland-house, Kensington, now the residence of the accomplished nobleman who takes his title from it. In Brook-street, Grosvenor-square, lived Handel; and in Bentinck-street, Manchester-square, Gibbon. We have omitted to mention that De Foe kept a hosier's shop in Cornhill; and that on the site of the present Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, stood the mansion of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare. But what have we not omitted also? No less an illustrious head than the Boar's, in Eastcheap,-the Boar's-head tavern, the scene of Falstaff's revels. We believe the place is still marked out by the sign.* But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's-head? Have we not all been there, time out of mind? And is it not a more real as well as notorious thing to us than the London tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White's, or What's-his-name's, or any other of your contemporary or fleeting taps?

But a line or two, a single sentence in an author of former times, will often give a value to the commonest object. It not only gives us a sense of its duration, but we seem to be looking

It has lately disappeared, in the alterations occasioned by the new London Bridge.