rolls, the clerk wakes up, the Lord Mayor and the
Sheriffs walk forth and get into their coaches, the footmen climb up
behind, the merchants and their families go out next, while all the
people stand in respect to their masters and betters, and those set in
authority over them. Then come out the people themselves, and last of
all the 'prentice boys come clattering down the aisle.

Let us awake. It is Sunday morning again, but the merchants are gone.
The eighteenth century is gone, the church is empty, the parish is
deserted; the streets are silent.

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep;
The river glideth at his own sweet will!
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart to lying still.

A RIVERSIDE PARISH

There are several riverside parishes east of London Bridge, not
counting the ancient towns of Deptford and Greenwich, which formerly
lay beyond London, and could not be reckoned as suburbs. The history
of all these parishes, till the present century, is the same. Once,
south-east and west of London, there stretched a broad marsh covered
with water at every spring-tide; here and there rose islets overgrown
with brambles, the haunt of wild fowl innumerable. In course of time,
the city having grown and stretching out long arms along the bank,
people began to build a broad and strong river-wall to keep out the
floods. This river-wall, which still remains, was gradually extended
until it reached the mouth of the river and ran quite round the low
coast of Essex. To the marshes succeeded a vast level, low-lying,
fertile region affording good pasture, excellent dairy farms, and
gardens of fruit and vegetables. The only inhabitants of this district
were the farmers and the farmhands. So things continued for a thousand
years, while the ships went up the river with wind and tide, and down
the river with wind and tide, and were moored below the Bridge, and
discharged their cargoes into lighters, which landed them on the quays
of London Port, between the Tower and the Bridge. As for the people
who did the work of the Port--the loading and the unloading--those
whom now we call the stevedores, coalers, dockers, lightermen, and
watermen, they lived in the narrow lanes and crowded courts above and
about Thames Street.

When the trade of London Port increased, these courts became more
crowded; some of them overflowed, and a colony outside the walls was
established in St. Katherine