erns, so that one has some material with which
to help out one's imagination. But this road we are walking in always
baffles me. It looks so old and yet is, for the most part, so new that
I find it impossible to make a satisfactory picture of its appearance,
say, when Sir Roger de Coverley might have strolled in Gray's Inn
Walks, or farther back, when Francis Bacon had chambers in the Inn."

"I imagine," said I, "that part of the difficulty is in the mixed
character of the neighborhood. Here on the one side, is old Gray's
Inn, not much changed since Bacon's time--his chambers are still to be
seen, I think, over the gateway; and there, on the Clerkenwell side, is
a dense and rather squalid neighborhood which has grown up over a
region partly rural and wholly fugitive in character. Places like
Bagnigge Wells and Hockley in the Hole would not have had many
buildings that were likely to survive; and in the absence of surviving
specimens the imagination hasn't much to work from."

"I daresay you are right," said she. "Certainly, the purlieus of old
Clerkenwell present a very confused picture to me; whereas, in the case
of an old street like, say, Great Ormond Street, one has only to sweep
away the modern buildings and replace them with glorious old houses
like the few that remain, dig up the roadway and pavements and lay down
cobble-stones, plant a few wooden posts, hang up one or two oil-lamps,
and the transformation is complete. And a very delightful
transformation it is."

"Very delightful; which, by the way, is a melancholy thought. For we
ought to be doing better work than our forefathers; whereas what we
actually do is to pull down the old buildings, clap the doorways,
porticoes, paneling, and mantels in our museums, and then run up
something inexpensive and useful and deadly uninteresting in their
place."

My companion looked at me and laughed softly. "For a naturally
cheerful, and even gay young man," said she, "you are most amazingly
pessimistic. The mantle of Jeremiah--if he ever wore one--seems to
have fallen on you, but without in the least impairing your good
spirits excepting in regard to matters architectural."

"I have much to be thankful for," said I. "Am I not taken to the
Museum by a fair lady? And does she not stay me with mummy cases and
comfort me with crockery?"

"Pottery," she corrected; and then as we met a party of grave-looking
women emerging from a side-street, she said: "I suppo