fast, breaking down, turning over, or being turned over by some reckless carman, was something to boast about in those days. The coachman had then need to be a good hand at repairs, and was oftener seen tinkering up his vehicle than mounted on his box, which in time was covered with the hammer-cloth, to conceal the materials and implements which almost every hour were called into use. What a night-journey was in those old unpaved streets may be readily imagined, when it is known that there were not more than a thousand lamps to light the whole City—that these were only kept burning until midnight during one-half of the year, and the remainder of the season were never once lighted. Such was the London we now live in, a hundred years ago. Little link-boys then generally lay in wait at the corner of every street, either ready for a few pence to light the benighted wanderer home, or more probably to lead him astray, and extinguish the light at some dangerous spot, where the thieves he was associated with were in waiting.
Over thousands of troubles and trials rolled the rapid years; then the “Great Fire” broke out, and nearly every ancient landmark was destroyed; and now we have to grope our way through the twilight of dim records and a few rudely executed prints, to catch a glimpse of the old London in which our forefathers lived. This we shall endeavour to do as we thread our way through city and suburb; now glancing at the London of the present day, then turning the eye of the imagination to the ancient metropolis, which Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman have in succession traversed.
The old highway to London is that which the daring sea-kings poetically called “the road of the swans”—the broad bosom of the sea—and then along the majestic river which leads to her grey old fortress, the Tower. But the railroad has ploughed up the country, and this ancient “silver pathway” is abandoned to commerce and pleasure-parties; so rapid is the transit from every point of the coast, that few care to thread the winding river when they can reach London by the railroads almost as direct as “the crow flies.” Such remains of ancient London as fall in our way we shall again glance at; and shall now commence our “Picturesque Sketches of London” by describing the most prominent landmark in the City—St. Paul’s Cathedral, together with a few of the most interesting objects in the neighbourhood.
CHAPTER II.
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL—DOCTORS’ COMMONS—THE OLD CITY STREETS.
No stranger can say that he has seen the vastness of London until he has mounted the hundreds of steps which lead to the Golden Gallery, and looked out upon the outstretched city and suburbs below. It is a sight never to be forgotten; the passengers underneath scarcely appear a foot high, and the omnibuses so diminished, that you fancy you could take one under your arm and walk off with it easily. But it is the immense range of country which the eye commands that astonishes the stranger. Here railroads branch out, there the noble river seems narrowed by distance to an insignificant brook; while weary miles of houses spread out every way, and the largest edifices of the metropolis are dwarfed beneath the lofty height from which you gaze. There are hills before and hills behind: to the right, a dim country, lost in purple haze; to the left, thousands of masts, which look like reeds, while the hulls of the ships seem to have dwindled to the smallness of boats.
Never did that cathedral appear to us more holy than when we visited it last summer during the Anniversary Meeting of the Charity Children; never did the sunbeams which occasionally streamed through the vaulted dome seem so much like the golden ladder on which the “angels of God ascended and descended” in the dream of the patriarch of old, as when they shone for a few moments upon the heads of those thousands of children who were congregated beneath. We seemed to picture Charity herself newly alighted from heaven, and standing in the midst overshadowing them with her white wings, while her angelic smile lighted up the holy fabric, as she stood with her finger pointing to the sky. It was a sight that went home to every heart, and made an Englishman proud of the land of his birth, to know that thousands of those children, who were fatherless and motherless, were watched over and tended by the angel of charity; and that hundreds who waited to do her bidding, with willing hearts and open hands, were assembled in the temple which her overpowering presence then hallowed. Then to know that so vast a multitude formed but a portion of the numbers which English charity clothed, fed, and educated; and that, if all could have been assembled tier above tier, as they then sat, they would have reached to the very summit of the dome itself, extending, as it were, to heaven, and with folded hands and meek supplicating faces seeming to plead in our behalf before the footstool of God.
It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see those thousands of clean and neatly clad children ranged one above another, to the height of
twenty feet, beneath the huge overshadowing dome; to see the girls at the beginning or ending of a prayer (as if touched by the wand of some magician) raise or drop their thousands of snow-white aprons at the self-same instant of time, was like the sudden opening and folding of innumerable wings, which almost made the beholder start, as if he had stepped suddenly upon the threshold of another world. The gaudiest gardens that figure in oriental romance, with all their imaginary colouring, never approached in beauty the rich and variegated hues which that great group of children presented. Here the eye rested upon thousands of little faces that peeped out from the pink trimmings of their neat caps; there the pretty head-gear was ornamented with blue ribands, looking like blue-bells and white lilies blended together; farther on the high range of heads stood like sheeted May-blossoms, while the crimson baise which covered the seats looked in the distance as if the roses of June were peeping in between the openings of the branches. The pale pearled lilac softened into a primrose-coloured border, which was overhung by the darker drapery of the boys, upon whom the shadows of the arches settled. Ever and anon there was a sparkling as of gold and silver, as the light fell upon the glittering badges which numbers of the children wore, or revealed the hundreds of nosegays which they held in their little hands, or wore proudly in their bosoms. High above this vast amphitheatre of youthful heads, the outspreading banners of blue, and crimson, and purple, emblazoned with gold, were ranged, all filled with
“Stains and splendid dyes,