St. Alban's Church, as far as we are aware, contains the remains of no very remarkable persons. Stow, indeed, has supplied us with a long list of monuments, the whole of which were probably destroyed by the great fire; but in vain do we search for a name to which any interest is attached. One inscription, however, deserves to be transcribed for its quaintness :

"Hic jacet Tom Shorthose,

Sine tomb, sine sheets, sine riches;
Qui vixit sine gown,

Sine cloak, sine shirt, sine breeches."

In glancing round St. Alban's Church may be observed, in a curious brass frame attached to the pulpit, one of those quaint-looking hour-glasses which were formerly used to remind the preacher "how the hour passeth away," and the amount of time which he had to spare for the edification of his hearers. The hour-glass in question curiously illustrates the following entries in an old churchwarden's book, belonging to St. Catherine Cree, Leadenhall Street. The date of the first entry is 1564:-" Paid for an hour-glass, that hangeth by the pulpit, when the preacher doth make a sermon, that he may know how the hour passeth away-one shilling;" and again, among the bequests in 1616, "an hour-glass, with a frame to stand in."

Running parallel with Wood Street is Aldermanbury, so called from the Court of Aldermen having held here their BERRY, or Court, of which the ruins were still visible in the time of Stow. Here is the church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, erected by Wren in 1677, after the destruction of the old church by the fire of London. The spot awakens many interesting associations. Here, on the 12th of November, 1656, Milton was married to his second wife, Catherine

Woodcock, who died the same year; hence the celebrated nonconformist divine, Edmund Calamy, was ejected in 1662, after having held the living for twenty-three years, and here he lies buried; here also were interred Heminge and Condell, the fellow actors of Shakspeare, and the first editors of his immortal plays; and in a vault on the north side of the communion table rest the remains of the infamous Judge Jeffreys, whose body was removed hither from the chapel in the Tower in 1698. Lord Campbell informs us, that when the church was repaired in 1810, the coffin was found still fresh, with the once dreaded words, "Lord Chancellor Jeffreys" engraved on the lid.

On the opposite side of London Wall are Whitecross Street and Redcross Street, two ancient streets, which derive their names, the one from a white, and the other from a red cross which severally stood on the site of each. In the latter street was the London residence of the mitred Abbots of Ramsey, which afterwards falling into the hands of Sir Drue Drury, obtained the name of Drury-house. In Goldsmith's Rents, behind Redcross Street-" where were large gardens and handsome houses"-lived the famous scholar and schoolmaster, Thomas Farnaby. The son of a carpenter in London, he commenced life by connecting his fortunes with those of a Jesuit whom he accompanied to Spain, but disliking the discipline of the order of Jesus, he returned to England, shortly after which he sailed with Sir Francis Drake on the last voyage which he made to the West Indies. His next occupation was as a common soldier, in which capacity he served for some time in the Netherlands, but returning to England in great distress, he contrived to establish a school at Martock, in Somersetshire, under the name of Bainrafe, the anagram of Farnabie. From this place he

subsequently removed to London, where the reputation of his school increased so rapidly that it speedily numbered three hundred scholars. He was a staunch royalist, and during the time that the Parliament was in the ascendant, an unguarded speech which he made, that "one King was better than five hundred," led to his committal to prison. It was proposed to transport him to the Plantations, but owing to powerful interest and the exertions of his friends, he escaped with an imprisonment in Ely House, Holborn. He regained his liberty in 1646, but enjoyed it only a short time; his death taking place on the 12th of June in the following year.

Wood Street and Whitecross Street are said to have been the last streets in London in which the houses were distinguished by signs. They were removed about the year 1773.

Redcross Street leads us into Jewin Street, long the site of a burying-place of the Jews, from which circumstance it took the name of Jewyn, or Jews' Garden-" Gardinum vocatum. Jewyn Garden." The fact is rather a remarkable one that it continued the only place in England in which the Jews were permitted to bury their dead till the year 1177, when " after a long suit to the King and Parliament at Oxford"-special burial-places were assigned them in the different quarters which they inhabited. "This plot of ground," writes Stow, "remained to the said Jews till the time of their final banishment out of England, and is now turned into fair garden-plots and summer-houses for pleasure."

In one of these "summer-houses for pleasure," in Jewin Street, lived at one time John Milton. Here he took up his abode shortly after the Restoration, and here he continued to reside till the breaking out of the great plague, when he

retired to Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire. In Jewin Street, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, and here he is said to have written a great part of his immortal poem, “Paradise Lost.” In the Silver Street Sunday Schools in Jewin Street is preserved John Bunyan's pulpit.

From Jewin Street let us pass into Aldersgate Street, which derives its name from one of the gates of the City, so called, according to Stow, from its antiquity; it having been one of the older, or original gates. The old gate was taken down and rebuilt in 1617. The new gate was considerably injured by the great fire, but having been repaired and beautified, remained standing till the year 1761, when it was demolished, and its materials sold. At the Restoration of Charles the Second many of the heads of the regicides were exposed on this gate.

Aldersgate Street, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, contained a greater number of the houses of the old nobility than perhaps any other street in the metropolis. Here, on the west side, stood another of the London residences of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland, and close by, where Bulland-Mouth Street now stands, was the mansion of the Percies, Earls of Northumberland. Westmoreland Buildings still point out the site of the residence of the Nevilles. Here, too, breathed her last, in 1621, "at her house in Aldersgate Street," Mary Countess of Pembroke:

On the east side of Aldersgate Street, No. 35 to 38, still stands Shaftesbury House, built by Inigo Jones. It was originally the residence of the Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, from whom it passed into the hands of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, the turbulent statesman of the reign of Charles the Second, and the "Achitophel" of Dryden's poem:

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"For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ;
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.”

It was at his house in Aldersgate Street, after Lord Shaftesbury's final dismissal from office, that he took up his abode for the purpose of fomenting discontent among the citizens of London, with whom he was at one time so popular, that it was his boast that he could raise a body of ten thousand men by merely holding up his finger. Charles the Second once playfully observed to him :-" My Lord, I believe you are the wickedest man in my dominions.""For a subject, Sir," was the Earl's witty reply, "I believe I am." Almost opposite to Shaftesbury House stood Petre House, successively the residence of the Petre family in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; of Henry Pierrepoint, Marquis of Dorchester, in the days of the Commonwealth; and subsequently the episcopal residence of the Bishops of London after the destruction of their palace in St. Paul's Churchyard by the great fire. During the Commonwealth Petre House was for some time used as a prison; one of its inmates at this time having been the eminent engraver, William Faithorne, who was confined here after he had been made a prisoner by the Parliamentary forces at the surrender of Basing House. In 1688, when the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen Anne, fled at night from her father's palace at Whitehall, and placed herself under the protection of Bishop Compton, it was to his house in Aldersgate Street that the Bishop carried her in a hackney-coach, and here she passed the night.