a great snowball the mass of information that time
and our predecessors have accumulated, and reduce it to some shape and
form. Old London is passing away even as we dip our pen in the ink, and
we would fain erect quickly our itinerant photographic machine, and
secure some views of it before it passes. Roman London, Saxon London,
Norman London, Elizabethan London, Stuart London, Queen Anne's London,
we shall in turn rifle to fill our museum, on whose shelves the Roman
lamp and the vessel full of tears will stand side by side with Vanessas'
fan; the sword-knot of Rochester by the note-book of Goldsmith. The
history of London is an epitome of the history of England. Few great men
indeed that England has produced but have some associations that connect
them with London. To be able to recall these associations in a London
walk is a pleasure perpetually renewing, and to all intents
inexhaustible.

Let us, then, at once, without longer halting at the gate, seize the
pilgrim staff and start upon our voyage of discovery, through a
dreamland that will be now Goldsmith's, now Gower's, now Shakespeare's,
now Pope's, London. In Cannon Street, by the old central milestone of
London, grave Romans will meet us and talk of Caesar and his legions. In
Fleet Street we shall come upon Chaucer beating the malapert Franciscan
friar; at Temple Bar, stare upwards at the ghastly Jacobite heads. In
Smithfield we shall meet Froissart's knights riding to the tournament;
in the Strand see the misguided Earl of Essex defending his house
against Queen Elizabeth's troops, who are turning towards him the cannon
on the roof of St. Clement's church.

But let us first, rather than glance at scattered pictures in a gallery
which is so full of them, measure out, as it were, our future walks,
briefly glancing at the special doors where we shall billet our readers.
The brief summary will serve to broadly epitomise the subject, and will
prove the ceaseless variety of interest which it involves.

We have selected Temple Bar, that old gateway, as a point of departure,
because it is the centre, as near as can be, of historical London, and
is in itself full of interest. We begin with it as a rude wooden
building, which, after the Great Fire, Wren turned into the present arch
of stone, with a room above, where Messrs. Childs, the bankers, store
their books and archives. The trunk of one of the Rye House
conspirators, in Charles II.'s time, first adorned the Bar;