hancery Lane; and close by we see the child Cowley reading
the "Fairy Queen" in a window-seat, and already feeling in himself the
inspiration of his later years. The lesser celebrities of later times
call to us as we pass. Garrick's friend Hardham, of the snuff-shop; and
that busy, vain demagogue, Alderman Waithman, whom Cobbett abused
because he was not zealous enough for poor hunted Queen Caroline. Then
there is the shop where barometers were first sold, the great
watchmakers, Tompion and Pinchbeck, to chronicle, and the two churches
to notice. St. Dunstan's is interesting for its early preachers, the
good Romaine and the pious Baxter; and St. Bride's has anecdotes and
legends of its own, and a peal of bells which have in their time excited
as much admiration as those giant hammermen at the old St. Dunstan's
clock, which are now in Regent's Park. The newspaper offices, too,
furnish many curious illustrations of the progress of that great organ
of modern civilisation, the press. At the "Devil" we meet Ben Jonson and
his club; and at John Murray's old shop we stop to see Byron lunging
with his stick at favourite volumes on the shelves, to the bookseller's
great but concealed annoyance. Nor do we forget to sketch Dr. Johnson at
Temple Bar, bantered by his fellow Jacobite, Goldsmith, about the
warning heads upon the gate; at Child's bank pausing to observe the
dinnerless authors returning downcast at the rejection of brilliant but
fruitless proposals; or stopping with Boswell, one hand upon a street
post, to shake the night air with his Cyclopean laughter. Varied as the
colours in a kaleidoscope are the figures that will meet us in these
perambulations; mutable as an opal are the feelings they arouse. To the
man of facts they furnish facts; to the man of imagination,
quick-changing fancies; to the man of science, curious memoranda; to the
historian, bright-worded details, that vivify old pictures now often dim
in tone; to the man of the world, traits of manners; to the general
thinker, aspects of feelings and of passions which expand the knowledge
of human nature; for all these many-coloured stones are joined by the
one golden string of London's history.

But if Fleet Street itself is rich in associations, its side streets,
north and south, are yet richer. Here anecdote and story are clustered
in even closer compass. In these side binns lies hid the choicest wine,
for when Fleet Street had, long since, become two vast rows