and Earl-street, beyond the mere mention of Apothecaries’ Hall, which stands in the Broadway, that unites with Water-lane, and which was built soon after the Fire of London. There is a portrait of James I., and a statue of Delware, at whose intercession James granted a charter of incorporation. The controversy between this Company and the College of Physicians called forth Garth’s poem entitled “The Dispensary,” which was very popular at that period, and is still worthy of perusal.
The Times Office, in Printing-house-square, is the great lion of this neighbourhood; and the same spot was occupied by the king’s printers at least as far back as the reign of Charles II. A description of this mighty lever of the “fourth estate” does not come within the compass of our light pages.
Neither St. Andrew’s-hill nor Addle-hill requires much notice, though the former contains one of Wren’s churches, called St. Andrew by the Wardrobe; also a beautiful monument to the Rev. W. Romaine. Paul’s Chain and Bennet-hill bring us back again to St. Paul’s; and here our readers will consider that we make a fair start eastward, with the intention of describing the principal objects of interest that lie between the nearest great thoroughfare and the river on the south side of the way, while a few of the principal objects in the streets on the north will arrest our attention as we return on our journey westward.
Paul’s Chain took its name from the chain thrown across the road during the time of Divine service; a duty now performed by policemen, who, although they do not bar up the way, caution the drivers to go on slowly during service-time.
We have now arrived at Doctors’ Commons, and our engraving over-leaf represents the Prerogative Court, one of the chambers in which the wills of the dead are deposited. Through those doors many a beating and anxious heart enters to return disappointed, or half delirious with delight, through dreaming of the many pleasures which riches will procure. What thousands of human beings, fluttering between hope and fear, have passed through the shadow of that arched gateway which opens into St. Paul’s Churchyard; many to repass the possessors of riches, but never again to find that sweet sleep which hard-handed industry brought, and which moderate competency had never before heaved a sigh for! Legacies left, which proved a curse instead of a comfort, by arousing ambitious thoughts to soar amid airy speculations, where hundreds of captivating bubbles floated, tinged with the richest hues, until all in a moment burst, and left but a naked desolation behind—a hideous barrenness—never seen while those painted vapours danced before the eye. Wealth, over which Care ever after kept watch with sleepless eyes and furrowed brow, uncertain into which stream of enjoyment he should launch with his freight, and so pondered until old age and then death came, and instead of the castle he had so long contemplated purchasing, he was installed without a tear into the narrow coffin, and borne without a sigh to the grave. Others, again, raised from enduring and patient poverty to undreamed-of comfort, because he who would not have advanced them a shilling, would it have saved them from starvation and death, was now powerless; his greatest agony, when he passed away, being the thought that he could not carry his unforgiving vengeance beyond the grave; that he had not power to disinherit the child whom he spurned and hated. We have gazed on those dark-bound volumes in the Prerogative Will-Office, and thought that if the dead were permitted to return again, what ghastly forms would enter that room, shrieking aloud names once beloved, and blotting out for ever such as they had in their blind passion inserted. One stroke of the pen, and she who sits weeping and plying her needle in one of the neighbouring attics (her children crying around her for bread) might have been trailing the roses around the trellised porch of some beautiful cottage, while they were playing on the green lawn, strangers to sorrow and hunger.
Let us pause for a few moments and examine the attitudes and countenances of those who are perusing the wills. See how that woman’s hand shakes as she turns over the leaves; look at the working of the muscles of that young man’s face; behold the play of light over the wrinkled features of that old lady; see how she clasps her hands together and is looking upward; and you may tell what each has discovered as clearly as if you knew them, had stood beside them, and had read every line which they have been reading. That low sound, falling on the ear like the faint dropping of the summer rain on the leaves, is caused by the tears shed by that pale young lady in deep mourning; they fall quicker and quicker on the pages, and she rests her head on her hand, for she can no longer see to read through those blinding tears. The old objects of a once happy home are floating before the eye of her imagination; it may be that they are all there enumerated; that she has in fancy been passing from room to room, looking into the mirror that threw back her image in happy childhood, leaning from the window where stood the box of mignonette which she watered in the dewy morning, while her shadow fell upon the sunshine which slept on the chamber-floor. Old faces and old voices have again been before and around her; and she weeps not at finding that she is forgotten, but because those she so fondly loved are either no more or far away, and refuse to countenance her for marrying the object of her love, a man rejected by all her family only
because he was poor. In that great mustering-ground beyond the grave, who would not rather occupy the place of that sufferer than stand ranged amid the ranks of those who have thus neglected her? Contrast her deportment with that of the young man at the end of the desk; his fists are clenched, the nails of his fingers are embedded in the palms of his hands, his teeth set, his eyebrows knit; he strikes his hat as he places it on his head, closes the door with a loud slam, and curses the memory of a dead man, because he has left a reckless spendthrift just enough to live on all his life without working, yet so bequeathed it that he can but draw a given sum monthly. He is savage because he cannot have the whole legacy at once in his possession. If he could, he would be likely enough to squander it all away in a single night at some notorious gambling-house.
On another countenance you behold utter amazement slowly changing into the expression of contempt, disgust; and at last it settles down into black and sullen hatred. She, whose features have in a few moments undergone so many sudden alterations, finds that all her deeply-laid schemes and subtle plans have been of no avail, but that the poor relative, whose character she was ever disparaging in the eyes of the old man, and whom she kept from his bedside by the falsehoods she uttered to both, is now the possessor of all his riches. She is gnawing the end of her glove through sheer vexation: all he has left her is a book, an old volume, entitled, The Value of true Sincerity. The hypocrite is justly rebuked in his last will and testament. She departs burning red through shame and anger, and would give the world could she but leave her conscience behind her.
Watch that old man tottering on the very verge of the grave, and with hardly strength enough to lift the volume which he so eagerly scans: although he could already bury himself in gold, and leave the yellow lucre piled high above his narrow bed, he still covets more. He who has neither appetite nor taste for any rational enjoyment, who is compelled to sit up half the night because he cannot rest, is still eager to increase his riches. For what? the love of money alone. If he lends it, he never considers for what object; it may be good or evil, that concerns him not; all he looks to is the security, and the interest he is to receive on his capital: it may be to bring waste lands into cultivation, to aid a poor and industrious people; but one per cent more, and he would supply any armed tyrant with funds to destroy the whole peaceful populace, to leave their homes a mass of burning ruins, and the furrows of their fields running red with blood.
Here is the last Will and Testament of the immortal Shakspeare; the very handwriting of the mighty bard “who was not for an age, but for all time.” On that document his far-seeing eyes looked, on that page his hand rested; the same hand which obeyed the influence of his high-piled thoughts while he drew Hamlet, and Lear, and Macbeth, Desdemona, Ophelia, Perdita, and Imogen, held the pen which traced the very lines we now look upon. But for such old home-touches as these, we should almost doubt whether that god-like spirit ever descended to the common duties of this hard work-a-day world. But here we find him
“Not too bright or good