nd shapeless children sprawling in its mud, and one or
two drunken men propped against its walls. Thus, were there an official
nomenclator of streets, he might be tempted to reject such names as in
themselves signify anything beautiful. But his main principle would be
to bestow whatever name first occurred to him, in order that he might
save time for thinking about something that really mattered.

I have yet to fulfil the second part of my promise: show the futility
of trying to commemorate a hero by making a street his namesake. By
implication I have done this already. But, for the benefit of the less
nimble among my readers, let me be explicit. Who, passing through the
Cromwell Road, ever thinks of Cromwell, except by accident? What
journalist ever thinks of Wellington in Wellington Street? In
Marlborough Street, what policeman remembers Marlborough? In St.
James's Street, has any one ever fancied he saw the ghost of a pilgrim
wrapped in a cloak, leaning on a staff? Other ghosts are there in
plenty. The phantom chariot of Lord Petersham dashes down the slope
nightly. Nightly Mr. Ball Hughes appears in the bow-window of White's.
At cock-crow Charles James Fox still emerges from Brooks's. Such men as
these were indigenous to the street. Nothing will ever lay their ghosts
there. But the ghost of St. James--what should it do in that galley?...
Of all the streets that have been named after famous men, I know but
one whose namesake is suggested by it. In Regent Street you do
sometimes think of the Regent; and that is not because the street is
named after him, but because it was conceived by him, and was designed
and built under his auspices, and is redolent of his character and his
time. When a national hero is to be commemorated by a street, he must
be allowed to design the street himself. The mere plastering-up of his
name is no mnemonic.

ON SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY

My florist has standing orders to deliver early on the morning of this
day a chaplet of laurel. With it in my hand, I reach by a step-ladder
the nobly arched embrasure that is above my central book-case, and
crown there the marble brow of him whose name is the especial glory of
our literature--of all literature. The greater part of the morning is
spent by me in contemplation of that brow, and in silent meditation.
And, year by year, always there intrudes itself into this meditation
the hope that Shakespeare's name will, one day, be swept into oblivion.