I have
called it a dining-room, from its ordinary application to the purposes
of refection and festivity; but it had much more the air of a library,
or study. It was a small comfortable chamber, just large enough to
contain half-a-dozen people, though by management double that number had
been occasionally squeezed into its narrow limits. The walls were
decorated with curious old prints, maps and plans, set in old black
worm-eaten frames, and representing divers personages, places, and
structures connected with London and its history. Over the mantelpiece was stretched Vertue's copy of Ralph Aggas's famous
survey of our "great metropolis," made about the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign, or perhaps a little earlier, when it was scarcely so
great a metropolis as at the present time, and when novelists, gentlemen
of the press, cabmen, omnibus cads, and other illustrious personages
were unborn and undreamed of; when St. Giles's, in lieu of its
mysterious and Dædalian Seven Dials (which should have for their motto
Wordsworth's title, "We are Seven"), consisted of a little cluster of
country houses, surrounded by a grove of elms; when a turreted wall
girded in the City, from Aldgate to Grey Friars; when a pack of
staghounds was kept in Finsbury Fields, and archers and cross-bowmen
haunted the purlieus of the Spital; when he who strolled westward from
Charing Cross (then no misnomer) beheld neither Opera House nor
club-house, but a rustic lane, with a barn at one end, and a goodly
assortment of hay-carts and hay-stacks at the other; when the Thames was
crossed by a single bridge, and that bridge looked like a street, and
the street itself like a row of palaces. On the right of this plan hung
a sketch of Will Somers, jester to Henry VIII., after the picture by
Holbein; on the left an engraving of Geoffrey Hudson, the diminutive
attendant of Henrietta Maria. This niche was devoted to portraits of the
bluff king before mentioned, and his six spouses; that to the melancholy
Charles and his family. Here, the Great Fire of 1666, with its black
profiles of houses, relieved by a sheet of "bloody and malicious" flame,
formed a pleasant contrast to the icy wonders of the Frost Fair, held on
the Thames in 1684, when carriages were driven through the lines of
tents, and an ox was roasted on the water, to the infinite delectation
of the citizens. There Old Saint Paul's (in the words of Victor Hugo,
"one of those Gothic monuments so admirable and so irreparable"), and
which is but ill replaced by the modern "bastard counterpart" of the
glorious fane of St. Peter at Rome, reared its venerable tower (not
dome) and lofty spire to the sky. Next to St. Paul's came the reverend
Abbey of Westminster, taken before it had been disfigured by the towers
added by Wren; and next to the abbey opened the long and raftered vista
of its magnificent neighbouring hall. Several plans and prospects of the
Tower of London, as it appeared at different epochs, occupied a corner
to themselves: then came a long array of taverns, from the Tabard in
Southwark, the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, and the Devil near Temple Bar,
embalmed in the odour of poesy, to the Nag's Head in Cheapside,
notorious for its legend of the consecration of the Protestant bishops
in 1559; there also might you see--

              ----in Billinsgate the Salutation. And the Boar's Head near London Stone,
    The Swan at Dowgate, a tavern well known;
    The Mitre in Cheap, and then the Bull's Head,
    And many like places that make noses red;
    The Boar's Head in Old Fish Street; Three Crowns in the Vintry;
    And, now, of late, Saint Martin's in the Seutree;
    The Windmill in Lothbury; the Ship at th' Exchange;
    King's Head in New Fish Street, where roysters do range;
    The Mermaid in Cornhill; Red Lion in the Strand;
    Three Tuns in Newgate Market; in Old Fish Street the Swan. [1]

[Footnote 1: News from Bartholomew Faire.] Adjoining these places of entertainment were others of a different
description, to wit, the Globe, as it stood when Shakspeare (how
insufferable is Mr. Knight's orthography of this reverend
name--Shaks_pere_!) trod the stage; the king's play-house in Charles
the Second's time; the Bear Garden, with its flag streaming to the wind;
and the Folly, as it once floated in the river, opposite old Somerset
House. Then came the Halls, beginning with Guildhall and ending with Old
Skinner's. Next, the Crosses, from Paul's to Charing; then, the
churches, gateways, hospitals, colleges, prisons, asylums, inns of
court,--in short, for it is needless to particularise further, London
and its thousand recollections rose before you, as you gazed around. Scarcely an old edifice, to which an historical tradition could be
attached (and what old London edifice is destitute of such traditions? ),
was wanting. Nor were the great of old--the spirits, who gave interest
and endurance to these decayed, or decaying structures, wanting. But I
shall not pause to enumerate their portraits, or make out a catalogue as
long as the list of Homer's ships, or the gallery of Mr. Lodge. Sufficient has been said, I trust, to give the reader an idea of the
physiology of the room. Yet stay! I must not omit to point out the
contents of those groaning shelves. In the goodly folios crowded there
are contained the chronicles of Holinshed and Hall; of Grafton, Fabian,
and Stow; of Matthew of Paris, and his namesake of Westminster. Let him
not be terrified at the ponderous size of these admirable old
historians, nor be deterred by the black letter, if he should chance to
open a volume. Their freshness and picturesque details will surprise as
much as they will delight him. From this wealthy mine Shakspeare drew
some of his purest ore. The shelves are crowned by a solitary bust. It
is that of a modern. It is that of a lover of London, and a character
of London. It is DOCTOR JOHNSON. Having completed the survey of the apartment, I shall now proceed to its
occupants. These were five in number--jolly fellows all--seated round a
circular dining-table covered with glasses and decanters, amidst which a
portly magnum of claret, and a deep and capacious china punch-bowl, must
not pass unmentioned. They were in the full flow of fun and
conviviality; enjoying themselves as good fellows always enjoy
themselves at "the season of the year." The port was delectable--old as
Saint Paul's, I was going to say--not quite, however--but just "old
enough"; the claret was nectar, or what is better, it was Lafitte; the
punch was drink for the gods. The jokes of this party would have split
your sides--their laughter would have had the same effect on your ears. Never were heard peals of merriment so hearty and prolonged. You only
wondered how they found time to drink, so quick did each roar follow on
the heels of its predecessor.