along through Bloomsbury, the name "Great Coram
Street" caught his eye, and he exclaimed with delight: "Why, that's
where Thackeray lived for a time!"

Great Coram Street is little accustomed to create such excitement in the
breast of the passer-by. But to the stranger London is necessarily first
a museum, till he begins to love it as a home, and, in addition to dead
men's associations, begins to people it with memories of his own. When
you have lived awhile in Gray's Inn, you grow to forget that Bacon's
ghost is your fellow-tenant; and it is the kind-hearted provincial who
from time to time lays those flowers on Goldsmith's tomb. When you are
caught in a block on Westminster Bridge, with only five minutes to get
to Waterloo, you forget to say to yourself: "Ah, this is the bridge on
which Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet." You usually say something
quite different.

The mere names of the streets,--how laden with immemorial poetry they
were! "Chancery Lane!" How wonderful! Yet the poor wretch standing
outside the public-house at the corner seemed to derive small
consolation from the fact that he was starving in Chancery Lane.

But to Henry, as yet, London was an extended Westminster Abbey, and
every other street was Poet's Corner. He had hardly patience to
breakfast, so eager was he to be out in the streets; and while he ate,
his eyes were out of the windows all the time, and his ears drinking in
all the London morning sounds like music. At the foot of the street ran
the Thames; he had caught a thrilling glimpse of it as he stepped from
his cab, and had had a childish impulse to rush down to it before
entering his hotel.

At last, free of food and baggage, light of heart, and brimming over
with youth, he stepped into the street. It was but little past eight
o'clock. He had just heard the hour chimed, in various tones of
sweetness and solemnity, from several mellow clocks, evidently hidden
high in the air in his near vicinity. For two or three hours there would
be no editor or publisher to be seen, and meanwhile he had London to
himself. He stepped out into it as into a garden,--a garden of those
old-time flowers in which antiquity has become a perfume full
of pictures.

Yes, there was the Thames! "Sweet Themmes, run softly till I end my
song!" he quoted to himself. Chaucer's, Spenser's, Elizabeth's Thames!

It was a bright morning and the river gleamed to advantage. The tall
tower of Westminster glittered richly