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tablished an angler's shop-nay, within a few doors of it, on the Temple-bar side, I did observe the indicia of an establishment of the kind-the glass-case containing a pike's head-the stuffed perch-the treacherous wooden frogs-the bright many-coloured flies, and the graceful bend of the rod, from which a golden fish contentedly dangled. Should the shade of Piscator revisit this scene of his earthly sojourn, what pleasing recollections must these memorials inspire! We learn from the life of Piscator, that his first residence in London, as a shop-keeper, was in the Royal Burse, built by Sir Thomas Gresham. Here, indeed, Isaak must have found considerable difficulty in turning himself round, for his shop was only seven feet and a half long and five feet wide. Here did he dwell until the year 1624, when he removed to a house" on the North side of Fleet-street, two doors west of the end of Chancery-lane, abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow."-From this description, I presume his house occupied the ground upon which Mr. Thomas's Magazine for bonnets, muffs, shawls, and other lady-like paraphernalia, now stands. Walton is said afterwards to remove to Chancery-lane.*

As I turned my eyes to the left, I observed the portals of the Temple; and the tragical story of all the unmerited sufferings and grievous tortures of some of the most valiant spirits of the world came freshly over my mind. I could not, however, afford time to abandon myself to the indignation which the memory of perverted justice is so apt to inspire; I contented myself therefore with bestowing a hearty malediction on that monster of France, Philip-lebel-"Il mal di Francia"-" il nuovo Pilato"-as Dante very properly calls him, for commencing the persecution of these brave and innocent men, and on our own Edward II. for so pusillanimously following such evil advice and example.

And this is Temple-bar! this is the grand entrance into "our good City of London"-sufficiently shabby too. Here the Whittingtons for the time being, on each royal visit, shut the gate in their sovereign's face, in order to have the pleasure of opening it to him; and upon this arch the head of many a brave and gallant gentleman has been baked in the sun, in expiation of his misguided zeal. The disgusting practice of exposing the mutilated bodies of State criminals-a practice only suited to the meridian skies of Turkey, seems happily on the decline amongst us. Glorious is the reign in which the blood of the subject flows not for State offences. How glorious does this circumstance render the government of Queen Anne. Let us hope that the reign of George IV. may be distinguished by the same merciful celebrity.

But stay! I must not pass the site of the Devil Tavern, which was close to Temple-bar, without bestowing a thought on thee, O rare Ben Jonson. Here, in a chamber dedicated to Apollo, didst thou and thy choice spirits assemble, to taste, at stated periods, the enjoyments of intellectual conviviality! and here didst thou promulge

Chancery-lane is famous for being the birth-place of the unworthy and unfortunate Lord Strafford.

for the government of the society thy famous leges conviviales. Here too did the wits of Queen Anne's day sometimes congregate. "I dined to-day," says Swift, in his Journal to Stella, "with Dr. Garth and Mr. Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple-bar, and Garth treated."-This tavern took its name from the sign which was suspended before it, of St. Dunstan tweaking the nose of the Evil one with a pair of hot tongs. I don't think that even St. George ever performed so valorous an exploit.

On entering the Strand, the first literary recollection that struck me, was the account Dean Swift has left of the accident which he here met with. Let me give the Dean's own words.

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Coming home this evening I broke my shin in the Strand, over a tub of sand, left just in the way. I got home dirty enough, and went straight to bed, where I have been cooking it with gold-beater's skin, and have been peevish enough with Patrick, who was near an hour bringing a rag from next door." I would willingly have been soused over head in a bed of mud, could I but have seen that trip of Jonathan's-it must have been a glorious thing to have beheld the Dean in a passion with the tub of sand. His broken shin was, however, very refractory, and refused to get well. In one of his letters he says, "I walked too much yesterday for a man with a broken shin ;" and again: "This sore shin ruins me in coachhire; it cost me no less than two shillings," &c. &c. At the conclusion of the same letter, we meet with the following elegant passage respecting this accident. "I dined with Sir John Percival, and saw his lady sitting in the bed in the forms of a lying-in woman; and coming home, my sore shin itched, &c. but I am now got to bed, and have put on alum-curd, and it is almost well." I would not have been Patrick, the Dean's valet, while his shin was thus afflicted, no, not even for the brilliant gold-laced hat, the price of which his master stopped in his wages.

What author ever excited such sympathies in the hearts of his countrymen as Shakspeare? The place of his birth, and the scenes of his dramas, are hallowed ground. I need only mention the Boar'shead in Eastcheap, in which such pleasant visions have been created by the genius of Goldsmith and of Washington Irvine. So many of Shakspeare's plays are laid in London, that a geography of them would be really entertaining. Clement's Inn, near the Strand, has a peculiar charm for me-it was once the residence of Justice Shallow! "I was once of Clement's Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet." Who can pass the entrance without remembering how "Jack Falstaff broke Skogan's head at the court-gate when he was a crack not thus high." How, on the same day, the Justice did fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray's Inn. Poor Shallow! Clement's Inn seems to have been to him the "green spot" to which his memory ever reverted with pride and with pleasure. The very name conjured up the recollections of his youthful days, when he heard the chimes at midnight, or lay all night in the Windmill in St. George's-fields. Though the fat knight would insinuate something against the veracity of the Justice," this same starved Justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull-street, and every third word a lie duer paid to the hearer

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than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese paring."

"Ah!” I exclaimed, as I reached the corner of Arundel-street, "am I then walking in the footsteps of the learned Selden ?" Yes, hither that austere scholar bent his willing steps, to examine the famous marbles which had lately arrived from the East, and which then lay in the Arundel-gardens, from whence they afterwards derived their appellation. And with him came his learned companions, Patrick Young (Patricius Junius) the Royal Librarian, and Richard James, who was, "critically seen both in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin." It will be some time ere such a trio shall again pace the flags of the Strand.

As I wandered on, I reached the site of those celebrated literary games which are described in the second book of the Dunciad. The emulous authors

"took their stand

Where the tall May-pole once o'erlook'd the Strand;

But now (so Anne and piety ordain)

A Church collects the saints of Drury-lane."

Who can forget the race between Curll and "huge Lintot ?”

"Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,

With arms expanded Bernard rows his state,
And left-legg'd Jacob seems to emulate."

The Strand, no doubt, would furnish a thousand curious recollections, both historical and literary. Our chief nobility used to reside between it and the Thames, as the names of the various streets yet sufficiently testify. But the skies threatened a shower, and I hastened forward. I could not, however, avoid casting a glance up Lancaster-court, as I passed, where the wise and witty Porson used to pay visits to his brother-in-law, who resided there, and on whom he made the philological epigram, which the Sexagenarian has given on his brother's "taking a medicine of names not a few," which I shall however forbear transcribing. By the by, the Cider-cellar, in Maiden-lane, was a favourite resort with the Professor, after visiting the Dean of Westminster or Bennet Langton. -As the drops now began to descend, I spurred on "my Bayard of ten-toes," as an old writer says, and arriving

"Where branching streets from Charing-cross divide,"

I took refuge in Mr. Colnaghi's print-shop.

R.

($5)

MILK AND HONEY, OR THE LAND OF PROMISE.

LETTER III.

MISS LYDIA BARROW TO MISS KITTY BROWN.

CONTENTS.

"Moving Accidents by Flood"-Neptune enemy to Female Attire-Castle of Otranto-Guy's Hospital-Mrs. Jordan-Mrs. Monsoon's Boarding-schoolLogier's System-Family Pride-Balaam-Monument-yard and JerusalemBonaparte-Hone's Wood-cuts-Major Cartwright and Billy Austin-Ings, the Butcher-His Mode of changing an Administration-Princess in Fleetstreet-Habeas, but not Corpus; and why-Parting Benediction.

OH, Kitty! such bawling, such trampling of decks!
Such tales of sea-monsters, tornadoes, and wrecks!

My puce-colour'd cloak is soak'd through with the rain:
You never would know my green bonnet again;
The silk is all cover'd with spots, and the feather
Flaps down like a lily in boisterous weather:

The lining's not hurt, so I mean to unrip it;

But the surge has quite ruin'd my white-spotted tippet;
And the waves of the ocean, like ill-natured brutes,

Have rotted the fur on my blue leather boots.

In short, what with monsters who haul'd my portmanteau
Ashore, half as big as the man in Otranto;

Grim figures in trowsers, who quiz our noblesse,

And say, when they mean to be certain, they guess;

And inns, where the folks, cheek-by-jowl, close their eyes,

Ten beds in a room, like the patients at Guy's:

I'm like Mrs. Jordan, unable to tell

If I'm dead or alive, Lady Loverule, or Nell!

You and I, arm in arm, ever destined to grapple,

When the school, two by two, walk'd on Sunday to Chapel:
Where I gave a nod to Tom Osborne, and you

A smile to George Hughes, in the opposite pew:

Who in the same keiro-plast play'd the same tunes,
The two aptest scholars, at Mrs. Monsoon's;

Little dreamt of the day when whole mountains should frown
Between Lyddy Barrow and Catherine Brown.

Papa, entre nous, rides a hobby, my dear,
That is rather too high to be canter'd on here:
How strange in a cit! he has taken a pride
In his family-tree, by the grandmother's side,
And thinks all plain Misters should give him a salam,
Ever since his late Majesty dubb'd him Sir Balaam.
He proves his ascent, through the Knight who sold soap
Close to Monument-yard, and is mention'd in Pope,
Up to him who a donkey bestrid in Jerusalem;
Then boasts that our house is as old as Methusalem.
Dick calls this "a rum kind of swell in old dad,"
Who turn'd, as Dick calls it, "a regular Rad"
Ever since fall of trade to a Clapham cot pinn'd us,
And forced us to send back the carriage to Windus.

In vain I cry "Fiddle de dee;" it will fix
In his gizzard, and make him as cross as two sticks.
He now rips up grievances old as Queen Anne,
And lays all the blame on poor Chancellor Van.
He buys Bonapartes enamell'd in bone;

He frames and he glazes the wood-cuts of Hone,
And hangs them supported by Queen Caroline, or
Old Cartwright the Major and Austin the Minor:
Nay, over the mantel-piece what, of all things,
Do you think he had stuck up?-the portrait of Ings,
The Carnaby hero, who meant to "shew fight,"
A bag in his left hand, a knife in his right:
With these he to Cato-street went, being very
Resolved to decapitate Lord Londonderry.

How shocking!-Heaven grant that his Majesty may shun
That method of changing an Administration.

But don't let me lose what I meant to express,
Before I left England I saw a Princess!

She lodges in Fleet-street, next door to Hone's shop-
Two lions that make all the passengers stop.

Papa and "The Ex" think her case very hard;

Says he to me, "Lyddy, we'll both leave a card;
Two Kings are her cousins! girl, hold up your neck;
Depend on it, Lyddy, it's not a bad spec."
Like a dutiful daughter I did depend on it,
Went up to my bed-room to put on my bonnet,
And, as the sun promised a morning of dryness,
I walk'd, without pattens, to wait on her Highness.
A man oped the door, in a coat which, I think,
Was dyed, like the rest of the Family's, pink.
But when Papa ask'd if the Royal Princess

Was at home, and the Chamberlain answer'd him "Yes,"
And civilly told us to walk up together,

A child might have knock'd me down flat with a feather!
Her Highness, sweet soul! made us sit on two chairs,

And let us, at once, into all her affairs.

She told us, her foes held her there by a capias,
She meant, as she told us, to move for her habeas,
But has not--perhaps on account of the corpus,
For her's, entre nous, is as big as a porpus.

She mention'd, with pride, how on last Lord Mayor's-day
Her countenance drew all the people away;

But own'd, while they dubb'd her the general charmer,
It might be because there were no men in armour.

Adieu! royal dame, falsely call'd Mrs. Serres,
For you and your sire are as like as two cherries ;-
Farewell, injured daughter of Poniatowski,
You soon should be let out if I held the house-key!

L. B.

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