setter; and Wynkyn de Worde, the famous printer whose sign was the Falcon.

Here, too, along its narrow sidewalks, the unknown Michael Angelo Titmarsh was wont to make his disheartened way from one printing office to another, in his search for a publisher; and here, within walking distance of where I sat perched up in my cab, my imagination in full play, Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray, but a few years later, corrected the proof of the pages which were then making him famous.

These earlier years had been bitter indeed to the young author. He had failed as an attorney; he had been cheated out of his patrimony by a card-sharper; he had given up all hopes of being an artist, and now, at twenty-six years of age, had again started life, this time as an author, and in competition, too, with Dickens who was one year his junior, and who at this time (1837-8) had reached almost the zenith of his reputation.

All this was well known at the time. Macready says, in his Diary: "At Garrick Club where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe, as an artist."

Just as I had followed him the day before into The Cock, and occupied his seat at table, so now I studied the street over which he had dragged his weary steps, wondering, among other things, whether he had stopped, as I had, to measure with his eye the swing and crush of the traffic around him; wondering, too, whether the great dome of St. Paul's, dominating the cavernous gloom of the struggling, dirtbegrimed city, had not brought him, as it did me, a note of

dignity and rest. He loved it, I know, and loved to be beneath its shadow. One day, when Fields was with him, he was mentioning the various sights he had seen, when Thackeray interrupted. "But you haven't seen the greatest one yet," he said. "Go with me to-day to St. Paul's, and hear the charity children sing." So they went, and Mr. Fields noticed that Thackeray had his head bowed, and that his whole frame shook with emotion "as the children of poverty rose to pour out their anthem of praise."

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Thackeray himself tells us about it in one of the lectures on the Georges. "Five-thousand charity children, like nosegays, and with sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world tions, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani, but thinking in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. Non Angli, sed Angeli. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents, as the first note strikes; indeed, one can almost fancy that cherubs are singing." And elsewhere he has written: "To see a hundred boys marshalled in a chapel or old hall; to hear their sweet, fresh voices when they chant, and look in their brave, calm faces; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness."

The surge and crush is, no doubt, greater to-day than it was in Thackeray's time. The millions have pressed closer and the fight for footing has become more acute. But the

great church still retains its unruffled dignity, with that peculiar aloofness from everything around and beneath it, which has characterized it since the day of its birth: the calm, silent dignity of the Sphinx, brooding as it sits, the silent shadowed past an open book, the vivid present an unsolved wonder.

It was this last that I had come to see, and record that uncanny roar and clash that beats against the blackened walls of the very church itself. But where could I find some coign of vantage from which to express it on my canvas?

Evins, as was his habit in difficult situations, solved the problem. Indeed, now I look back upon my experiences, Evins solved most of my problems. We would pull, he suggested, up in front of the Cheshire Cheese about lunch hour, and then both the crowd and Bobby would look upon our wheel-room as a matter of right there being a continuous line of taxies, hansoms, and four-wheelers in front of its narrow slit of an entrance "around one o'clock."

But this time, to my chagrin, the ruse did not work not any longer than it took to set up my easel. "Beg yer pardon, sir, but 'ow long be you thinkin' o' staying 'ere?"

"About two hours, Bobby."

"Well, I don't know, sir. it's a bad time o' the day. stuff, and these 'ere express wagons will be drivin' up. I'll have to move yer furder along mebbe, or back; 'pends on 'ow they come. I'll do me best, sir."

I'll try to keep 'em off, but They do be getting out their

The easel was up now, Evins sharpening charcoals and