hawthorn-buds, that come like
women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time;
I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservedst it."
(_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iii. sc. 3.)

The apothecaries' street is also mentioned in _Westward Ho!_ that
dangerous play that brought Ben Jonson into trouble:--

"_Mrs. Tenterhook._ Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me two ounces of
preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he
weighs it."

And Ben Johnson, in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, says:--

"Nor have my title-leaf on post or walls,
Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man,
Who scarce can spell th' hard names, whose knight less can.
If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well."

That good old Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, also alludes to the
herbalists' street in his wonderful "Religio Medico:"--"I know," says
he, "most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet
methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had
scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MANSION HOUSE.

The Palace of the Lord Mayor--The old Stocks' Market--A Notable
Statue of Charles II.--The Mansion House described--The Egyptian
Hall--Works of Art in the Mansion House--The Election of the Lord
Mayor--Lord Mayor's Day--The Duties of a Lord Mayor--Days of the
Year on which the Lord Mayor holds High State--The Patronage of the
Lord Mayor--His Powers--The Lieutenancy of the City of London--The
Conservancy of the Thames and Medway--The Lord Mayor's Advisers--The
Mansion House Household and Expenditure--Theodore Hook--Lord Mayor
Scropps--The Lord Mayor's Insignia--The State Barge--The _Maria
Wood_.

The Lord Mayors in old times often dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Old
Jewry; but in 1739 Lord Mayor Perry laid the first stone of the present
dull and stately Mansion House, and Sir Crisp Gascoigne, 1753, was the
first Lord Mayor that resided in it. The architect, Dance, selected the
Greek style for the City palace.

The present palace of the Lord Mayor stands on the site of the old
Stocks' Market, built for the sale of fish and flesh by Henry Walis,
mayor in the 10th year of the reign of Edward I. Before this time a pair
of stocks had stood