expense of King George II., was pulled down in 1830. In the foreground of this view the King is represented returning to his carriage after inspecting his horses

238   Barrack and Old Houses on the site of Trafalgar Square in 1826, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. The view is taken from St. Martin’s Church, looking toward Pall Mall; the building in the distance, to the left, is the College of Physicians 239   Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house, 1826, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 260   Salisbury and Worcester Houses in 1630, from a drawing by Hollar in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge 262   Lyon’s Inn, 1804, from an engraving in Herbert’s History of the Inns of Court 286   Craven House, 1790, from an original drawing in the British Museum 287   Drury Lane Theatre, 1806, from an original drawing by Pugin. This was the third theatre, succeeding Garrick’s. It was built by Henry Holland, opened March 12, 1794, and burnt down Feb. 24, 1809. It was never properly finished on the side toward Catherine Street, where this view was taken 347   Church Lane and Dyot Street, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 349   The Seven Dials, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 386   Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1821, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 387   The Black Jack, Portsmouth Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. This public-house was the resort of the actors from the theatre, and among them Joe Miller, who was buried in the graveyard close by, where the hospital now stands. The house was also frequented by Jack Sheppard, and was sometimes termed “The Jump,” from the circumstance of his having once jumped from one of the first-floor windows to escape from officers of justice 441

 

 

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HAUNTED LONDON.

 

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

One day when Fuseli and Haydon were walking together, they reached the summit of a hill whence they could catch a glimpse of St. Paul’s.

There was the grey dome looming out by fits through rolling drifts of murky smoke. The two little lion-like men stood watching “the sublime canopy that shrouds the city of the world.”[1] Now it spread and seethed like the incense from Moloch’s furnace; now it lifted and thinned into the purer blue, like the waft of some great sacrifice, or settled down to deeper and gloomier grandeur over “the vastness of modern Babylon.” That brown cloud hid a huge ants’ nest teeming with three millions of people. That dome, with its golden coronet and cross, rose like the globe in an emperor’s hand—a type of the civilisation, and power, and Christianity of England.

The hearts of the two men beat faster at the great sight.

“Be George!” said Fuseli, shaking his white hair and stamping his little foot, “be George! sir, it’s like the smoke of the Israelites making bricks for the Egyptians.”

“It is grander, Fuseli,” said Haydon, “for it is the smoke of a people who would have made the Egyptians make bricks for them.”

It is of the multitudinous streets of this more than Egyptian city, their traditions, and their past and present inhabitants, that I would now write. I shall not pass by many houses where any eminent men dwell or dwelt, without some biographical anecdote, some epigram, some illustration; yet I will not stop long at any door, because so many others await me. I have “set down,” I hope, “nought in malice.” Truth I trust has been, and truth alone shall be, my object. I shall stay at Charing Cross to point out the heroism of the dying regicides; I shall pause at Whitehall to narrate some redeeming traits even in the character of a wilful king.

The growth of London, and its conquest of suburb after suburb, has roused the imagination of poets and essayists ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

When James I. forbade the building of fresh houses outside London walls, he little foresaw the time when the City would become almost impassable; when practical men would burrow roads under ground, or make subterranean railways to drain off the choking traffic; when cool-headed people would seriously propose to have flying bridges thrown over the chief thoroughfares; when new manners and customs, new diseases, new follies, new social complications would arise, from the fact of three millions of men silently agreeing to live together on only eleven square miles of land; when fish would cease to inhabit the poisoned river; when the roar of the traffic would render it almost impossible to converse; when, in fact, London would grow too large for comfort, safety, pleasure, or even social intercourse.

It is difficult to select from what centre to commence a pilgrimage. For old Roman London we might start from the Exchange or the Tower; for mediæval London from Chepe or Aldermanbury; for fashionable London from Charing Cross; for