eir mayors, aldermen, and turbulent citizens. We have shown
their buildings, and spoken of their revolts against injustice. Yet,
after all, Time has destroyed many pieces of that old puzzle, and who
can dive into oblivion and recover them? The long rows of gable ends,
the abbey archways, the old guild rooms, the knightly chambers, no magic
can restore to us in perfect combination. While certain spots can be
etched with exactitude by the pen, on vast tracts no image rises. A
dimmed and imperfect picture it remains, we must confess, even to the
most vivid imagination. How the small details of City life worked in
those days we shall never know. We may reproduce Edward III.'s London on
the stage, or in poems; but, after all, and at the best, it will be
conjecture.

But of many of those people who paced in Watling Street, or who rode up
Cornhill, we have imperishable pictures, true to the life, and
rich-coloured as Titian's, by Chaucer, in those "Canterbury Tales" he is
supposed to have written about 1385 (Richard II.), in advanced life, and
in his peaceful retirement at Woodstock. The pilgrims he paints in his
immortal bundle of tales are no ideal creatures, but such real flesh and
blood as Shakespeare drew and Hogarth engraved. He drew the people of
his age as genius most delights to do; and the fame he gained arose
chiefly from the fidelity of the figures with which he filled, his
wonderful portrait-gallery.

We, therefore, in Chaucer's knight, are introduced to just such old
warriors as might any day, in the reign of Edward III., be met in Bow
Lane or Friday Street, riding to pay his devoirs to some noble of Thames
Street, to solicit a regiment, or to claim redress for a wrong by force
of arms. The great bell of Bow may have struck the hour of noon as the
man who rode into Pagan Alexandria, under the banner of the Christian
King of Cyprus, and who had broken a spear against the Moors at the
siege of Granada, rides by on his strong but not showy charger. He
wears, you see, a fustian gipon, which is stained with the rust of his
armour. There is no plume in his helmet, no gold upon his belt, for he
is just come from Anatolia, where he has smitten off many a turbaned
head, and to-morrow will start to thank God for his safe return at the
shrine of St. Thomas in Kent. In sooth it needs only a glance at him to
see that he is "a very perfect gentle knight," meek as a maid, and
trusty as his own sword.

That trusty young bache