y steps of the
executioner tramping up the stairs. He had the body of a man who had
been hanged on his back, and entering the room, let it fall on a table. . . .
Sir William Blizard with a scalpel made a small cut over the
breast-bone, and bowed to the executioner. This was, I suppose, the
formal recognition of the purpose for which the body had been delivered.
The rumbling of the cart, the contrast between the stiff figure of Sir
William Blizard in his court dress and the executioner in coarse clothes,
and the thud of each dead body on the table remained in Owen's memory to
the end of his days; and his skill in telling the story has made me
remember it nearly every time that I have walked down Cock Lane."

On 1st March 1711, a piece of literature destined "to be famous as long
as English is read, was published near the end of Duck Lane in Little
Britain." This was the first number of the _Spectator_, and "all London
read it and enjoyed it, from the motto to the end." The author (ii., p.
63) imagines Mr Addison walking down Duck Lane the Wednesday evening
before its appearance, from Mr Buckley's in Little Britain where he had
corrected his last revise.

Sir Norman Moore adds: "For me . . . Duke Street, Little Britain, has
innumerable memories of twenty-one happy years. I lived there as a
student and as house physician, and then as Warden of the College of St
Bartholomew's." He adds that his election as Warden was his first
professional success, which was followed by a place on the permanent
staff of the hospital. It was the home of his early married life, and
here his eldest child was born. He need not have apologised (as he
does); such details will surely please all sympathetic readers.

There is an interest in even the modern inhabitants of Little Britain.
We hear of dealers in gold lace and gold leaf, and also a representative
of that rare genus the teapot-handle maker. These handles could not be
worked on a lathe, and had to be sawn out of the ivory. Dr Moore learned
that in all London there was but one other teapot-handle maker: he felt
what a favour it was when the great man mended a fan for Mrs Moore.

It is pleasant to meet with the well-known lines from Wordsworth's poem
of "Poor Susan":--

"Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside."

I regret to say that our author quotes only to criticise, since he denies
that the mists of Loth