LONDON AT DAYBREAK.

had just done such good service to the king.

"They were met by the royal parent. Ah, son,' said the princess, when she saw him, 'what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day!' The king answered and said, 'Certainly, madam, I know it well; but now rejoyce and thank God, for I have this day recovered mine heritage and the realm of England, which I had near hand lost.""

Under the roof of St. Lawrence, Jewry, the sculptured semblance of Tillotson finds place near the pulpit, from whence, ere his talents had secured a mitre, he gave forth some of the finest of his sermons. St. James's, Garlick Hithe, with its projecting clock, and carved figure of its patron saint, sustains the memory of Richard Lions, beheaded in Cheapside by Wat Tyler, and boasts the mention made of it by Addison in the "Spectator." But our rapid pace forbids delay upon each tower and spire, and if the glance the steam-boat allows be thought too hasty or indistinct, or should such foretaste incline the gazer to more complete acquaintance—should he wish to see the great city and its churches in the best light, let him see it at the hour when its beauty, so seen, drew from Wordsworth the best sonnet in our language-the sonnet to London, as viewed from one of her bridges soon after daybreak. Westminster Bridge was the scene of Wordsworth's inspiration; commend we our reader to Blackfriars, whence, and whence only, may he see St. Paul's in all her beauty. Standing on the side up the stream, over the third arch, when the sun is just throwing his first rays aslant over the yet sleeping city, undimmed, unchequered by the smoky canopy which the idle chimneys will ere long create; he will feel with the poet of the lakes,- "Earth has not anything to shew more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty :

This city now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep.
The river glideth at its own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still!"

THE GLOBE THEATRE-THE TABARD.

But for us, just now, the city is all life and energy. Around
us, as we approach London Bridge, we have the scene and stir
of busy commerce; crowded wharfs, with huge cranes still drawing
more rich cargoes into their dark recesses; barges floating by,
laden almost to sinking with the produce of the country up and
down the stream; while rapidly we near the central spot, where
"Lofty trade

Gives audience to the world; the strand around
Close swarms with busy crowds of many a realm,

What bales! what wealth! what industry! what fleets!"

Speeding upon our way, let us give one glance to the Surrey bank of the river. All along the portion we have yet passed, the line of wharfs has only here and there been varied by a building more important than a large factory or a shot-tower, until we near Southwark Bridge, almost the first structure of the kind in which iron took the place of stone. Metal for bridges has often since been employed, but few of those who profit by the change know that iron was first suggested for the purpose by the notorious Thomas Paine, the political writer, whose book, "The Rights of Man," was burned in England by the common hangman, at the very time our Gallic neighbours were electing him Deputy for Calais to the National Convention of France. As we approach the iron bridge, we have on our right hand Bankside, where "Paris Garden," in the days of Ben Jonson, invited the citizens of London to partake its amusements. There also were the Bear Gardens, which Stowe describes as places where were kept "bears, bulls, and other beasts to be bayed; as also mastiffs in several kennels, nourished to bait them. These bears and other beasts are there baited in plots of ground, scaffolded about, for the beholders to stand safe." Almost in a line with the present roadway to the bridge stood the Globe Theatre, the scene of Shakspere's first acquaintance with the sock and buskin―the place where he is said to have borne a link to light an audience to the stage he was destined to purify, enlighten, and immortalise.

Leaving the iron bridge behind us, we approach the noble church of St. Mary Overy, more modernly known as St. Saviour's, where Gower lies buried; and, although the houses place it beyond eye-shot, we are now near the Tabard-Chaucer's Tabard --with its narrow dilapidated gateway and tottering galleries,

GOWER-MASSINGER-LONDON'S FIRST BRIDGE.

from whence the poet and his pilgrims started on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas-à-Becket, at Canterbury.

"Befel, that in that season, on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout courage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine-and-twenty in a company
Of sundry folk, by adventure y fall
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,
That toward Canterbury woulden ride.

:- -the Globe Theatre stood

Southwark is thus classic ground there; Shakspere himself lived in Chink Street; Chaucer linked the Tabard to his Canterbury Pilgrimage; and Gower (one of the fathers of English literature) left his bones to rest near the Ladye Chapel. The ashes of another poet there repose, with no further record save the parish register, which tells us that in March, 1639, was buried-Philip Massinger, a stranger! Shakspere, Chaucer, Massinger, and Gower! names sufficient surely to gain for Southwark a cherished corner in memory, were her wharfs ten thousand times more dingy, or her lanes even yet more tortuously obscure.

The church of St. Mary Overy stands at the foot of London Bridge; its depth below the modern pathway, shewing the level of the older structure, whose narrow arches for many centuries afforded the citizens the only pathway across the stream. Let us learn, in the words of Stowe, the history of St. Mary Overy, and of London's first bridge.

"A ferry being kept in the place where now the bridge is builded, at length the ferryman and his wife deceasing, left the same ferry to their only daughter, a maiden named Mary, which, with the goods left her by her parents, as also with the profits rising of the said ferry, builded an house of sisters in place where now standeth the east part of St. Mary Overy's church, above the quire, where she was buried, unto which house she gave the oversight and profits of the ferry. But afterwards the said house of sisters being converted into a college of priests, the priests builded the bridge of timber, as all other the great bridges of this land were, and from time to time kept the same in good reparations; till at length, considering the great charges that

THE MONUMENT.

were bestowed in the repairing the same, there was, by aid of the citizens and others, a bridge builded with stone."

"Ease her! stop her! half turn asta-a-arn!" brings our trimsteamer to, alongside another of the floating barge-built "piers," where a perfect crowd of passengers hustle each other who shall be first aboard, as though there was not room for all, and as if every opportunity should be taken to thrust each individual self forward, and push everybody else behind. The pier is now thronged; and this happens not at this particular half-hour only, but at each of the numerous starting times during the day. Upon one summer Sunday, no less than twenty thousand persons embarked and disembarked at this same Old Shades Pier; besides the many thousands who, on the same day, used the neighbouring landingplaces. A notion of the vastness of London might be gleaned from this one fact alone-from this evidence of what the whole must be, when tens of thousands thus, day by day, pour forth, searching only for amusement.

London Bridge, now full before us, is sentinelled by two handsome buildings; in the finest of the two, we recognise the Hall of the Fishmongers' Company, one of those palazzi built to display the wealth and hold the dinner tables of the rich citizens. Above rises the spire of St. Magnus church, on Fish Street Hill, and higher still the Monument soars, a memento of that great fire which destroyed (as the inscription, in scholarly Latin, tells us) "eighty-nine churches, the city gates, the Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries, a vast number of stately edifices, thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling houses, four hundred streets. Of twenty-six wards it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt. The ruins of the city were four hundred and thirty-six acres-from the Tower, by the Thames side, to the Temple Church, and from the northeast gate, along the city wall, to Holborn Bridge."

"Go ahead!" is again the signal for our departure from the wharf, and already have we left the last of the bridges behind us. That cluster of smacks on our left marks Billingsgate, renowned alike for oysters and for eloquence; and next to it we see the Custom House, with its long, but not over-handsome architectural front, and broad esplanade. Now before us is the Tower of London, with

its memories and associations of early times and struggles-its history as a fortress, a palace, and a prison-its records of the daring, the wise, the virtuous, and the unfortunate, who have found lodging within its walls, and too often a death-place within its shadow. A host of names and memories tenant the spot. Wallace, the Scottish patriot, here confined; Sir Walter Raleigh, talented, adventurous, yet rash, who, during his imprisonment in the White Tower wrote his "History of the World:" the crook-backed Richard, with his helpless nephews; Clarence drowned in the malmsey butt; good Sir Thomas More and the chivalrous Earl of Surrey, two of the victims of a ruthless king; Lady Jane Grey, and her young husband; Jack Cade's lawless mob, and their slaughter of Lord Say and Sele; bloody Mary, and the "virgin queen." Near where that sentry's bright bayonet glitters in the sunshine, you may see a stone arch under the esplanade. That is the water way to Traitor's Gate, through which offenders against the Crown were conveyed to the Tower, seldom to them other than a gate of death. A boat, securely guarded, almost unnoticed, and beyond the reach of mob or rescue, bore the prisoner swiftly down the stream. Once under the shadow of that arch, the huge gates opened to receive the victim; and as they closed again upon him, the world and hope were alike shut out. Beyond the gate, a flight of stone steps was washed by the tide; and, stepping ashore, the offender was within the fortress, and readily consigned to