in a day long dead, precisely as hop vines may have flung their
pale green bells over cottage paling, for both are far outside the old
city limits; but to-day they are simply the narrowest of passages
between the grimiest of buildings, given over to trade in its most
sordid form, with never a green leaf even to recall the country
hedgerows long since only memory.

It is a matter of no surprise, then, to find that Covent Garden holds no
hint of its past save in name, though from the noisy Strand one has
passed into so many sheltered, quiet nooks unknown to nine tenths of the
hurrying throng in that great artery of London, that one half expects to
see the green trees and the box-bordered alleys of the old garden where
the monks once walked. Far back in the very beginning of the thirteenth
century it was the convent garden of Westminster, and its choice fruits
and flowers rejoiced the soul of the growers, who planted and pruned
with small thought of what the centuries were to bring. Through all
chances and changes it remained a garden up to 1621, when much of the
original ground had been swallowed up by royal grants, and one duke and
another had built his town-house amid the spreading trees; for this
"amorous and herbivorous parish," as Sidney Smith calls it, was one of
the most fashionable quarters of London. The Stuart kings and their
courts delighted in it, and the square was filled with houses designed
by Inigo Jones, the north and east side of the market having an arcade
called the "Portico Walk," but soon changed to the name which it has
long borne,--the "Piazza." The market went on behind these pillars, but
year by year, as London grew, pushed itself toward the centre of the
square, till now not a foot of vacant space remains. At one of its
stalls may still be found an ancient marketman, whose name, Anthony
Piazza, is a memory of a parish custom which named after this favorite
walk many of the foundling children born in the parish.

There is nothing more curious in all London than the transformations
known to this once quiet spot. Drury Lane is close at hand, and Covent
Garden Theatre is as well known as the market itself. The convent has
become a play-house. "Monks and nuns turn actors and actresses. The
garden, formal and quiet, where a salad was cut for a lady abbess, and
flowers were gathered to adorn images, becomes a market, noisy and full
of life, distributing its thousands of fruits and flowers to a vicious