OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 25 



sun. A merchant's apprentice was in every sense of the word a 

 menial servant ; he had to work his way up through the commonest 

 drudgery of sweeping out the shop, washing the door-steps, and 

 sundry other offices at which many would rebel in the present day. 

 And when I say the shop, the great merchants were shopkeepers, 

 (witness my former remark about Sir Baptist Hickcs), and yet the 

 same gradations of society were kept up, and the shop was not des- 

 pised by the younger branches of our most illustrious houses. For 

 an idea of the kind of life rather more than two centuries later, we can 

 scarcely have a better illustration than Mr. Pepys' Diary, which was 

 published a few years ago. It is foUy, therefore, to say that the tale 

 of "Whittington is a romance or an improbability, simply because it 

 gives a different picture of life from that which we see in our own 

 day. Nevertheless the same feelings of humanity, the same passions, 

 the same hopes and fears, the same propensities, the same joys and 

 sorrows and struggles and rewards have always accompanied the life 

 of man ; there is the same model of virtue to be imitated and the 

 same example of vice to be avoided. If Whittington arrived at the 

 cross at the foot of Highgate Hill, as it was getting dark, and hesitated 

 to ascend the hill until he had offered up a prayer to the throne of grace 

 for guidance, how gladly would he hail the sound which, under the 

 influence of his present impressions, spoke peace to his mind, and, if 

 they did not actually present to his imagination the words attributed 

 to them, induced him to return with cheerfulness and an eased mind 

 to a toil which roving about in the world would not be likely to im- 

 prove. We read in Stowe's Survey of London that " Bow bell (and I 

 don't find that there was more than one in those days) was usually 

 rung somewhat late, as seemed to the young men, 'prentices and others, 

 in Cheape, i. e. Cheapside. That Curfew was then the signal to leave 

 off work, and these young men thinking it delayed unreasonably late, 

 set up a rhyme against the clerke as followeth : — 



" Gierke of the Bow Bell, 

 With the yellow lockes, 

 For thy late ringing 

 Thy head shall have knockes." 



" Whereto the clerke replying, wrote— 



