progress of the
restoration will be carefully detailed.

[Illustration: THE OLD WOODEN TEMPLE BAR (_see page 2_).]

Cheapside, famous from the Saxon days, next invites our wandering feet.
The north side remained an open field as late as Edward III.'s reign,
and tournaments were held there. The knights, whose deeds Froissart has
immortalised, broke spears there, in the presence of the Queen and her
ladies, who smiled on their champions from a wooden tower erected across
the street. Afterwards a stone shed was raised for the same sights, and
there Henry VIII., disguised as a yeoman, with a halbert on his
shoulder, came on one occasion to see the great City procession of the
night watch by torchlight on St. John's Eve. Wren afterwards, when he
rebuilt Bow Church, provided a balcony in the tower for the Royal Family
to witness similar pageants. Old Bow Church, we must not forget to
record, was seized in the reign of Richard I. by Longbeard, the
desperate ringleader of a Saxon rising, who was besieged there, and
eventually burned out and put to death. The great Cross of Cheapside
recalls many interesting associations, for it was one of the nine
Eleanor crosses. Regilt for many coronations, it was eventually pulled
down by the Puritans during the civil wars. Then there was the Standard,
near Bow Church, where Wat Tyler and Jack Cade beheaded several
objectionable nobles and citizens; and the great Conduit at the east
end--each with its memorable history. But the great feature of Cheapside
is, after all, Guildhall. This is the hall that Whittington paved and
where Walworth once ruled. In Guildhall Lady Jane Grey and her husband
were tried; here the Jesuit Garnet was arraigned for his share in the
Gunpowder Plot; here it was Charles I. appealed to the Common Council to
arrest Hampden and the other patriots who had fled from his eager claws
into the friendly City; and here, in the spot still sacred to liberty,
the Lords and Parliament declared for the Prince of Orange. To pass this
spot without some salient anecdotes of the various Lord Mayors would be
a disgrace; and the banquets themselves, from that of Whittington, when
he threw Henry V.'s bonds for L60,000 into a spice bonfire, to those in
the present reign, deserve some notice and comment. The curiosities of
Guildhall in themselves are not to be lightly passed over, for they
record many vicissitudes of the great City; and Gog and Magog are
personages of importance only sec