r call up from
their honoured graves the sacred dead? I know not: and yet, in sooth, I
can never pass Cumberland Gate without a sigh, as I think of the gallant
cavaliers who traversed that road in old time. Pious priests accompanied
their triumphs; their chariots were surrounded by hosts of glittering
javelin-men. As the slave at the car of the Roman conqueror shouted,
"Remember thou art mortal!", before the eyes of the British warrior rode
the undertaker and his coffin, telling him that he too must die! Mark
well the spot! A hundred years ago Albion Street (where comic Power
dwelt, Milesia's darling son)--Albion Street was a desert. The square of
Connaught was without its penultimate, and, strictly speaking, NAUGHT.
The Edgware Road was then a road, 'tis true; with tinkling waggons
passing now and then, and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms.
The ploughman whistled over Nutford Place; down the green solitudes of
Sovereign Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine. Here, then, in
the midst of green fields and sweet air--before ever omnibuses were,
and when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown--here stood
Tyburn: and on the road towards it, perhaps to enjoy the prospect,
stood, in the year 1725, the habitation of Mr. John Hayes.

One fine morning in the year 1725, Mrs. Hayes, who had been abroad
in her best hat and riding-hood; Mr. Hayes, who for a wonder had
accompanied her; and Mrs. Springatt, a lodger, who for a remuneration
had the honour of sharing Mrs. Hayes's friendship and table: all
returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten o'clock, from a
walk which they had taken to Bayswater. Many thousands of people were
likewise seen flocking down the Oxford Road; and you would rather
have thought, from the smartness of their appearance and the pleasure
depicted in their countenances, that they were just issuing from a
sermon, than quitting the ceremony which they had been to attend.

The fact is, that they had just been to see a gentleman hanged,--a
cheap pleasure, which the Hayes family never denied themselves; and they
returned home with a good appetite to breakfast, braced by the walk, and
tickled into hunger, as it were, by the spectacle. I can recollect, when
I was a gyp at Cambridge, that the "men" used to have breakfast-parties
for the very same purpose; and the exhibition of the morning acted
infallibly upon the stomach, and caused the young students to eat with
much voracity.

W