and after
that, one after the other, many rash Jacobite heads, in 1715 and 1745,
arrived at the same bad eminence. In many a royal procession and many a
City riot, this gate has figured as a halting-place and a point of
defence. The last rebel's head blew down in 1772; and the last spike was
not removed till the beginning of the present century. In the Popish
Plot days of Charles II. vast processions used to come to Temple Bar to
illuminate the supposed statue of Queen Elizabeth, in the south-east
niche (though it probably really represents Anne of Denmark); and at
great bonfires at the Temple gate the frenzied people burned effigies of
the Pope, while thousands of squibs were discharged, with shouts that
frightened the Popish Portuguese Queen, at that time living at Somerset
House, forsaken by her dissolute scapegrace of a husband.

Turning our faces now towards the old black dome that rises like a
half-eclipsed planet over Ludgate Hill, we first pass along Fleet
Street, a locality full to overflowing with ancient memorials, and in
its modern aspect not less interesting. This street has been from time
immemorial the high road for royal processions. Richard II. has passed
along here to St. Paul's, his parti-coloured robes jingling with golden
bells; and Queen Elizabeth, be-ruffled and be-fardingaled, has glanced
at those gable-ends east of St. Dunstan's, as she rode in her cumbrous
plumed coach to thank God at St. Paul's for the scattering and
shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and
twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to
Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obsequious Mayor. William of
Orange and Queen Anne both clattered over these stones to return thanks
for victories over the French; and old George III. honoured the street
when, with his handsome but worthless son, he came to thank God for his
partial restoration from that darker region than the valley of the
shadow of death, insanity. We recall many odd and pleasant figures in
this street; first the old printers who succeeded Caxton, who published
for Shakespeare or who timidly speculated in Milton's epic, that great
product of a sorry age; next, the old bankers, who, at Child's and
Hoare's, laid the foundations of permanent wealth, and from simple City
goldsmiths were gradually transformed to great capitalists. Izaak
Walton, honest shopkeeper and patient angler, eyes us from his latticed
window near C