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LONDON STREETS. 



No. I. 



WHITEHALL Wolsey Anne Boleyn Wyatt Henry the Eighth-- 

 Elizabeth The Stuarts NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE Hotspur, &c. 

 GERHARD STREET Savage Johnson Countess of Macclesfield 

 SOHO SQUARE Monmouth Harriet Wentworth ST. GILES St. 

 Egidius The plague of 1665 IMPROVEMENTS Influence on Health 

 and Morals, &c. 



WE had lately staying with us, on a somewhat lengthy visit, an 

 old college friend, who had come to us to shake off his library dust, 

 and to renew an intimacy formed in the sunny hours of early man- 

 hood. Though nearly a stranger in London, and a man whose life 

 had passed almost in cloistral solitude, he surprised us by his erratic 

 propensities, seldom failing to make his conge immediately after our 

 early breakfast, and rarely showing himself again till preparations 

 were making for our six o'clock dinner. As he was on what is 

 called a friendly visit, and as his absence was on the whole a con- 

 venience, our habits being sedentary, we did not for a time notice his 

 diurnal disappearance. 



He however, we suppose by way of apology, one day over his 

 wine, mentioned it, observing, 



" I dare say you wonder what becomes of me day after day ? 

 You must know I am in love with the streets of London." 



" There our tastes differ toto ccelo. I never traverse any of its 

 crowded thoroughfares without being wearied and fatigued to death 

 by their eternal bustle : what, in Heaven's name, do you find so very 

 enchanting, as to lead you to spend all your time in gazing at them ?" 



" Oh, they are full of architectural beauties and historical asso- 

 ciations. I would rather traverse the streets of London than the 

 streets of Rome, and the more especially as modern taste is defacing 

 or destroying all the monumental glories of our gallant forefathers." 



" Architectural beauties ! Oh, you Visigoth ! you worse than 

 Vandal ! London full of architectural beauties ! " 



" Yes, London is full of architectural beauties : remember I do 

 not speak as an architect, for I know nothing of the art/' 



" Well, that disclaimer certainly helps you out of your dilemma. 

 Had you said that London was full of architectural meanness, I 

 could have understood you. What Englishmen fantastically enough 

 call comfort, with the crowding of an immense population into a 

 limited space, where all must find habitations of some sort, has made 

 London streets little else but long lines of brick walls, pierced with 

 parallel rows of doors and windows ; whilst the barbarous taste dis- 

 played in many buildings of great pretensions, which ought to serve 

 as redeeming points, makes the whole place a monstrous deformity. 

 As to the historical memories linked with many ' reliquiae ' of by- 

 gone ages, a man, with Stow under his arm, might doubtless amuse 



