l to Gower Street, where the Dickenses first lived when they came
to London. Gray's Inn Road, near which is Gray's Inn, where Dickens
himself was employed as a lawyer's clerk, and Doughty Street, where, at
No. 48, can still be seen Dickens' house, as a sign-board on the door
announces: "Dickens lived here in 1837." Aldersgate, continued as Goswell
Road, connects with Islington and Whitechapel, and Mile End Road leads to
Essex.

Such were the few main arteries of traffic in Dickens' day, and even unto
the present; the complaint has been that there are not more direct
thoroughfares of a suitable width, both lengthwise and crosswise, to cope
with the immense and cumbersome traffic of 'bus and dray, to say nothing
of carts and cabs.

Nothing is likely to give the stranger a just estimate of the magnitude of
this more than will the observance of the excellent police control of the
cross traffic, when, in some measure, its volume will be apparent.

It would perhaps be impossible in a work such as this that any one
locality could be described with anything like adequate completeness.
Certainly one would not hope to cover the ground entire, where every
division and subdivision partakes severally of widely different
characteristics.

Southwark and the Borough, with its High Street, St. George's Church and
Fields, the old Marshalsea--or the memory of it--"The King's Bench"
Prison, and "Guy's," are something quite different with respect to manners
and customs from Whitechapel or Limehouse.

So, too, are St. Giles' and Pimlico in the west, and Hampstead and
Highgate in North London. Since all of these are dealt with elsewhere, to
a greater or lesser degree, a few comments on the Whitechapel of Dickens'
day must suffice here, and, truth to tell, it has not greatly changed
since that time, save for a periodical cleaning up and broadening of the
main thoroughfare. It is with more or less contempt and disgust that
Whitechapel is commonly recalled to mind. Still, Whitechapel is neither
more nor less disreputable than many other localities sustained by a
similar strata of society. It serves, however, to illustrate the life of
the east end, as contrasted with that of the west of London--the other
pole of the social sphere--and is, moreover, peopled by that class which
Dickens, in a large measure, incorporated into the novels.

In ancient times Northumberland, Throgmorton, and Crosby were noble names
associated therewith. In Dickens'