1 70 London Birds. 



especially favoured with patches of green umbrage, andwhere- 

 ever there is one fine tree or an imposing group of trees, there 

 also will be established what in London is termed a ' ' Sparrow's 

 Chapel." In the garden of the Bank of England are some 

 noble lime trees, and soon after daybreak a sweeter music 

 issues from their leafy branches than the chink of coins which 

 comes afterwards in the penetralia of that august establish- 

 ment. At the corner of Wood Street, where there was once 

 a rookery, there is now a grand -chapel in the tall plane tree 

 there. The trees at the foot of Southwark Bridge (Middlesex 

 side) resound with the chirping of a thousand sparrows, every 

 morning and evening all the year round. There is a small 

 twitter among the plane trees of Bucklersbury, but it is too 

 small to give the place any claim to be called a chapel. Tower 

 Hill is great in sparrows, and the Tower itself is a sort of 

 Cantelo hatching apparatus for the brood of impudent foragers 

 that almost deserve to be described as mice with feathers. 

 But there are two grand sparrow chapels (there may be hun- 

 dreds) : one in Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, where there is a 

 tree that affords a thousand perches for a million chirpers ; 

 the other is a fine old poplar at the northern extremity of 

 Goswell Road, at the junction of Goswell Road and City Road, 

 fifty yards south of the Angel, Islington. At dusk and day- 

 break, these two spots -are like fairyland. The sparrow is no 

 songster unless taught, and then a tolerable musician ; but the 

 untaught melody of the myriads that assemble in these trees 

 for matins and vespers is by its volume^ almost sublime. They 

 seem to come from all quarters at the hour of meeting, as per- 

 tinaciously and as solemnly in garb as Quakers, but the very 

 antipodes of that sect in volubility ; and they literally make 

 the welkin ring spite of the roar and rumble of cabs and 

 omnibuses. Their song is all to one tune, simul et semel; 

 and this they sing With all their might, and, like the great 

 Koenig of brazen memory, the compass is limited to two or 

 three notes. 



One can understand that pigeons and sparrows are at home 

 in London. The fact is, the place is full of food for them. 

 But it is hard to understand why rooks should cling so perti- 

 naciously to their ancient homes. No one ever saw rooks build 

 on housetops. They must have trees. And in a great many of 

 the spots where large trees still remain, there rooks do still 

 congregate. Yet among the rookeries there is no parallel to 

 the misery which is too common a characteristic of those 

 abodes of the outcasts of the human family, which strangely 

 take the same name : no, the rookeries of Gray's Inn and 

 Spring Gardens are agapemones, they are abodes of peace and 

 plenty ; no one hurts the rooks in London ; the only smell of 



