an days, as does the latter at the
present time. Many of these old tavern signs are to be seen to-day in the
museum at the Guild Hall.

The actual changes of street names are equally curious, when one attempts
to follow the connection, which, for a fact, mostly cannot be done. Thus
they stand in their modified form, either as an improvement or debasement.
Hog Lane, St. Giles, is now Crown Street; Grub Street is now gloriously
named Milton Street, and Shoreditch Lane becomes Worship Street.

The matter of street lighting is ever one which appeals to the visitor to
a strange city. Curious customs there be, even to-day, in the city of
London, which have come down from the age which knew not the gas-jet or
the electric globe.

In Dickens' time, it is confident to say that the "linkman" was not the
_rara avis_ that he is to-day, though evidences are still to be noted in
residential Mayfair and Belgravia, and even elsewhere, of the
appurtenances of his trade, referring to the torch-extinguishers which
were attached outside the doorways of the more pretentious houses.

As an established trade, link-carrying has been extinct for nearly a
century, but the many extinguishers still to be seen indicate that the
custom died but slowly from the days when the sturdy Briton,--

_"Round as a globe and liquored every chink,_
_Goodly and great, sailed behind his link."_

--_Dryden._

The first street lighted with gas was Pall Mall, in 1807, and oil was
solely used in many streets and squares as late as 1860.

The old London watchman--the progenitor of the modern policeman--used to
cry out, "Light! Light! hang out your light." Later came enclosed glass
lamps or globes, replacing the candles of a former day. These endured
variously, as is noted, until very near the time when electric refulgence
was beginning to make itself known. On the whole, until recently, London
could not have been an exceedingly well-lighted metropolis, and even now
there is many a dark court and alley, which would form in itself a fitting
haunt for many a lower-class ruffian of the type Dickens was wont to
depict.

The mortality among the old inns of Holborn has been very high of late,
and still they vanish. "The Black Bull," known well to Dickens, is the
last to come under sentence. Its sign, a veritable bull of Bashan,
sculptured in black and gold, has been familiar to all who go down to the
City in omnibuses. Until recently the old courtyard of th