An Antiquarian Ramble in the streets of London; with anecdotes of their more celebrated residents ... Edited by C. Mackay

Front matter

AN ANTIQUARIAN RAMBLE IN THE STREETS OF LONDON, WITH ANECDOTES OF THEIR MORE CELEBRATED RESIDENTS. BY JOHN THOMAS SMITH, LATE KEEPER OF THE PRINTS AND DRAWINGS IN THE BRITISH MDSEUM; A0THOR OF " NOLLEKENS AND HIS TIMES," AND " A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY " EDITED BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, in ©ratnart> to $« iKajrrtj). 1846. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. FAGB From Hyde Park Corner to Charing Cross ... 4 Prom Charing Cross to Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, and the Houses of Parliament . . 1 37 i From Charing Cross to Waterloo Bridge . . . 223 From Waterloo Bridge to Temple Bar . . IN THE STREETS OF LONDON. The great Poet has said that the contemplative mau can find "sermons in stones and good in everything." The averment has never been disputed ; all the world admits its truth, and it is only brought forward here that we may claim for London stones more capabilities of instruction than stones in general afford.

To the contemplative man who walks over the wide-extending leagues of pavement of this busy city, and who remembers something of the history of each street as he passes it. what a vast amount of amusement and instruction is spread out ! As he loiters along, to all the world apparently an idle and unconcerned spectator, how his fancy may be charmed, his sensibility awakened, his emulation excited, and his patriotism warmed by the recollection, that here in this alley lived a poet ; here in this lane a great man died in want and sorrow ; here in this street VOL. I. B another great man surmounted difficulties, that to weaker minds would have been insurmountable ; and hero in this square lived the friend of his country and of his kind, whose name is a household word of love and admiration. To the man who strolls through London in this spirit, the great city becomes, indeed, a world of itself, and he may travel over it with more delight and instruction than many gather in the whole of Europe, over which they arc whirled in their post-chaises, remembering nothing but that they have gone over a certain number of leagues, and seen a certain number of capital cities, and returning home again with the same quantity of ideas with which they set out.

The inhabitant of this great city, who looks a little deeper than the surface of things, need never lack amusement in his idle hours. He has only to extend his map before him, and consider the various tribes and nations that inhabit his little world, and then take a journey among them, and study the difference of their manners, appearance, mode of life, and even language, and he will be surprised at the immense variety. Th< is scarcely more difference betwixt Englishmen and Frenchmen than there is betwixt the inhabitants of St. James's and Whitechapel, St. Giles's and Spitalfields, Islington and Gravel Lane : and then the history of those various regions — their separate laws, religions, characteristics, occupations, amusements : — why, it is like studying the geography of a continent ! What a fearful romance is a great city !