t he
once saw there his contemptuous critic, Dr. Johnson, shambling along the
sidewalk, and murmured to a companion, "Here comes Ursa Major." For true
lovers of literature "Ursus Major" walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day
than any living man.

A good leading thread of literary research might be profitably followed by
the student who should trace the footsteps of all the poets, dead and
gone, that have held, in England, the office of laureate. John Kay was
laureate in the reign of King Edward the Fourth; Andrew Bernard in that of
King Henry the Seventh; John Skelton in that of King Henry the Eighth, and
Edmund Spenser in that of Queen Elizabeth. Since then the succession has
included the names of Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir
William Devenant, John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe,
Lawrence Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry
James Pye, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson. Most
of those bards were intimately associated with London, and several of them
are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, because so many storied names are
written upon gravestones that the explorer of the old churches of London
finds in them so rich a harvest of instructive association and elevating
thought. Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself
comparatively alone, in rambles of this kind. I went one morning into St.
Martin's,--once "in-the-fields," now at the busy center of the city,--and
found there only a pew-opener, preparing for the service, and an organist,
practising music. It is a beautiful structure, with graceful spire and
with columns of weather-beaten, gray stone, curiously stained with streaks
of black, and it is almost as famous for theatrical names as St. Paul's,
Covent Garden, or St. George's, Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes. There,
in a vault beneath the church, was buried the bewitching, generous Nell
Gwynn; there is the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother
Horace,--who was buried at Tunbridge Wells,--of "The Rejected Addresses";
there rests Richard Yates, the original "Sir Oliver Surface"; and there
were laid the ashes of the romantic Mrs. Centlivre, and of George
Farquhar, whom neither youth, genius, patient labor, nor sterling
achievement could save from a life of misfortune and an untimely, piteous
death. A cheerier association of this church is with the poet Thomas
Moore, who was there married. At St. Giles's-i