Colchester, which skirted London without actually entering the city. There at the King's gate is now waiting a tramcar, yellow, and not lovely in its aspect, but commodious enough; and presently we start, whistling and jingling, along the Theobalds Road, which has borne that name ever since the Jameses and Charleses jogged along this way to Theobalds or Newmarket. On the left we catch a glimpse of the vista of Lamb's Conduit Street, with Captain Coram on his pedestal, and the solid, sober frontage of the Foundling Hospital terminating the view. And on the other side next moment we look over the garden wall of Gray's Inn, a quiet, sunny spot, where children are playing on the grass and nursemaids resting on the benches, with here and there a gray-headed old man, and a gardener or two sweeping up the dead leaves. Then a quick glance in the opposite direction gives us a glimpse of a little opening called the King's Mews, which is also an historic spot; for up to the reign of Henry the Eighth here were the mews for the King's hawks and the stables of the King's horses. These were destroyed by fire in Harry's reign, and the whole establishment was removed to Charing Cross. But somebody's horses are still there, with rows of little, old-fashioned stables, and dwellings over them; and horses have champed and clanked at their mangers, and grooms have gone on hissing at their work, and the clatter of stable buckets and harness has gone on, doubtless, hereabouts ever since the days of the Tudors. Jockey fields, again, recorded on an obsolete wall-tablet, recalls the once horsey character of the neighbourhood. From these antiquities we quickly emerge into a quarter of the newest-Holborn Town Hall and Gray's Inn Road. Ab, what a transformation of the once familiar shabby old Gray's Inn Lane. There is nothing to suggest the cinder heap at the top, which was cleared away, they say, to help the rebuilding of Moscow; or the little hucksters' shops and shy little newspaper shops. Instead of all this we have a fine wide street, with handsome, business-like erections on either hand. After a moment's delay in the busy cross traffic of the Gray's Inn Road, the tram sweeps along the new and broad Clerkenwell Road, before which the old tangle of lanes and rookeries has vanished into space. In vain we recall the memories of little Oliver Twist, with his armful of books; of Nancy, jingling her keys and bewailing the loss of her little brother; or of Fagin lurking ronnd the corner; or of the Artful lounging along the kerb. For the whole character of the region is altered. Yet the names of Great and Little Saffron Hill still strike the eye as familiar, and are still the residence of a populous Italian colony, and the headquarters of the great organ-grinding business; while an almost obliterated tablet on a brewery wall recalls the fact that Liquorpond Street-not unknown in the brawling annals of the Restoration-once existed here. Now we have the gloomy valley of the Fleet, emphasized by Farringdon Street and the Underground Railway, with wreaths of steam and the rumble of trains issuing from the bowels of the earth. Here is the Clerkenwell Sessions House, placed on what is really the noblest site in all London, with the prison van waiting at the side door. Next we have a glimpse of the old gate of the Knights of St. John, one of the last relics of Tudor London, with its associations with good old Sylvanus Urban and ponderous Samuel Johnson. The roof of the tram affords us a pleasant peep, over a high blank wall, of the roofs and pinnacles of the old Charterhouse, and of the trees in the old playground once known as the Wilderness, with Wilderness Row looking straight over at the high blank wall aforesaid. Here was the "Pardon burial ground, devoted to criminals and vagrants, for whose souls masses were said by the Carthusian Friars. The shouts and laughter of boys at play may still be heard, for the Merchant Taylors have taken the place of the Charterhouse scholars, and one may think of the venerable bedesmen in their long cloaks, and of Colonel Newcome among them, when suddenly the scene changes and we are stuck in the middle of the bustling carrefour, where Goswell Street intersects our course, which suggests Mr. Pickwick, who lodged there with Mrs. Bardell. Now we are in Old Street-really old—for we are still on the track of the Roman road, and this little bit of it probably owes its continued existence to a colony of artificers who built their huts along its site. From ancient days, hereabouts, has been the chief seat of the London artificer. These streets, teeming with life, are vivid also with industry. The home and the workshop go together. Workers in gold and silver; the makers of the thousand odds and ends necessary to civilised existence here do chiefly congregate. Great is Old Street, full of a dull, careworn, yet hopeful struggle for existence. How the streets swarm with children when the mid-day bell gives the signal for their release from school! They are the masters now of all, as they bustle round full of importance on their manifold errands. Boldly against the street line stands out the dark façade of the great lunatic asylum of St. Luke's, with gloomy windows half blocked up, and some covered with massive gratings; yet with glimpses here and there of the efforts made to brighten up the ancient madhouse into something less suggestive of iron chains and strait waistcoats. Opposite, again, opens out Bunhill Row, where Milton spent his last years, and that leads past the "Campo Santo of the Dissenters." The City Road forms another great carrefour, where the din and whirl of traffic is great: the tramp, tramp of the crowds that come and go; the jingling of tramcars; the rattle of omnibuses; the roar of great waggons. A brass band in the distance adds to the confusion of sounds. Yet close by, in quiet retirement, we have John Wesley's original chapel, built among the fields, the house that he lived in, and his last resting-place. Another crossing shows Hoxton High Street on one side and the Curtain Road on the other -a curtain which hides the site of the earliest of our theatres. Here would be a fit spot for a memorial of Kit Marlowe; a fit inscription for which would be the verses that summarise his history: A poet was he of repute, And wrote full many a play. Now strutting in a silken suite, Then begging by the waye. He had also a player beene Upon the Curtain stage; But brake his leg in one rude scene When in his early age. About here the great industry is cabinetmaking. The traffic is in chests of drawers, in wardrobes, in overmantels. The most elaborate pieces may be seen in course of construction in little back shops. The furniture of a palace, of an hotel, of a fourroomed cottage-all is one to Old Street. Only send your carts and horses and there is the furniture ready for you. Modestlooking shops will take your order for a dozen of drawing-room suites, without turning a hair in the way of astonishment. Old Street works also for exportation, and does not fear the foreigner on his own ground. Now the line of thoroughfare we have followed so far shows signs of ending alto gether in a strange kind of arcade of small shops and old-fashioned houses devoted to the bird-fancying interest. Narrow ways and gloomy streets lead into the heart of dense, obscure quarters, where industry and unremitting toil are housed in wretched, crowded streets, while there the burglar finds a home, the escaped convict a refuge, and the assassin an obscure retreat from the pursuit of justice. With this we are suddenly upon Shoreditch, with a fine Town Hall at the corner, placarded with announcements of concerts, and exhibitions, and temperance meetings a centre of light and leading in all this maze of population. The tramcar rumbles quickly on, choosing its own track among a labyrinth of lines converging and diverging at the crossways, and away we go past Columbia Market, where a cluster of model lodginghouses rise conspicuously from among the general level of lowly roofs. On one side we have Bethnal Green, on the other Hoxton, with Kingsland beyond-a dense mass of houses, with hardly an architectural feature to distinguish one block of buildings from another. Here we have poverty, innumerable children, smears of small dwelling-houses, with here and there pleasant, old-fashioned almshouses; gasworks and factories form conspicuous features of the scene, chapels and missionhalls are scattered here and there; but everything is of the same dull, leaden hue, everything rabbed, and worn, and smeary. But there is a change as we rumble into Mare Street, Hackney. For here is a street which has a character of its own to maintain. Mare Street is Hackney just as Upper Street is Islington, King Street Hammersmith, or High Street the Borough. It has had its great houses, its mansions, its villas, but these have come and gone, but Mare Street was there before them, and still remains to carry on the business. It is not exactly like any other street you may have known; that is all you can say; for the points of difference elude description. Something of the ancient spirit of Hackney shows itself in the numerous chapels that are aligned on the street. An older Hackney, too, shows here and there in fragments of grand old red-brick houses peering over the smart shop fronts of the modern period, and carved doorways and latticed windows are elbowed out of the way by rows of recent buildings. Other great streets may boast of long vistas of grand architectural effect; but period. But Hackney is also high and the charm of Mare Street, which may dry, and by position should be one of jostle with them all for length, is its the healthiest suburbs of London, and, curving, winding nature. Straighten it indeed, Clapton, which is still higher and out, and the effect might seem insig- drier, represents health and wealth most nificant; but as each succeeding curve conspicuously. may reveal something more imposing than the last, expectation and curiosity are kept up, even if, eventually, they are left unsatisfied. Anyhow, there is a modern Town Hall of quite a grand appearance, with a space of green round about it, studded with shrubs and flower-beds, and beyond that there is a railway bridge which spans the road, but makes no effort towards the beautiful. Yet the bridge forms a kind of portal which introduces us into Hackney proper, for just beyond, a turn of the street reveals the grey old church-tower, worn and aged-looking, and quite of the country build, suggestive of the green fields and the dignified rural neighbourhood which once surrounded it. There are many pathways through the churchyard, which is crowded with respectable and even dignified monuments of the dead, and this churchyard has held some noble dust. For a time it was the burial-place of the Percys of Northumberland. Here, too, lies the last of the long line of De Veres, Earls of Oxford. Among the records of the dead the grey church-tower stands in a lonely, melancholy manner, itself only a monument of the past, for the church attached to it was pulled down in the last century, and a mausoleum of a dull funereal character contains the bones of the illustrious dead who had long found a resting-place within the sacred enclosure. A pathway among the tombs leads to the ugly but roomy church of the eighteenth century, of which you can only say that it makes no pretence to beauty and boasts only of its so many sittings. But there is a handsome space of award all round with seats, where a few weary, careworn people are resting in the sunshine. What a pleasant, breezy place is Clapton Common, with a pond in the middle, where ducks are swimming, and where some girls, who seem to have inherited the comeliness characteristic of the neighbourhood, are amusing the big St. Bernard by their futile efforts to throw a stick beyond the reach of his powers of wading! Big, tall, old-fashioned, redbrick houses surround the common, and what a fine view there must be from the upper windows of those that command a view of the still essentially noble valley of the Lea! From the common there are glimpses where the roads dip down steeply towards the vale; hazy distances, the gleam of hills and forests in their purple fastnesses, the wide stretch of marsh and pasture radiantly green, and all charming and suggestive, but only snatched here and there by glimpses. The sight suggests a wish to reach the green valley that opens so invitingly, and on the way back to Hackney Church, behold a little omnibus appears labelled for Lea Bridge, with just one place vacant alongside the driver. That is no longer vacant now, and away we rattle down devious streets, and then across a green flat intersected with paths, and diversified by tall chimneys, factories, and works of various descriptions. How many years ago is it since Lea Bridge was a favourite and quiet spot, with an inn that was an angler's resort, with a placid reach of the river winding past? Well, there are taverns still, and boats to let by Lea Bridge; and the river still takes its graceful curve round the clump of aspens that still rustle and whisper in the faint breath of the autumnal breeze. On the further side of Lea Bridge a All round stand old-fashioned, roomy, tramcar is waiting that suggests further red-brick houses, which suggest the exploration. Twopence to the Forest! academies for which Hackney was once so famous--those girls' schools with their galaxy of pretty maidens, which made such a show in the old parish church, that Mr. Samuel Pepys was fain to devote a Sunday to the sight. Great, too, was Hackney as a nursery of Nonconformist divines, of a school almost as high, and certainly as dry, as the most orthodox episcopal brand of the Who would not seek the Forest when there is a chance, for twopence ? So we roll quietly along through the green fields. It is a little Dutchland hereabouts, gardens and nursery-grounds mixed up with mills and factories; here cattle feeding, and there tea-gardens with lamps and summer-houses, and little winding walks, but with a touch of melancholy in the falling leaves, and the announcement of the last entertainment of the season. The way is pleasant enough among Everywhere, too, rows of houses are the scattered houses of Leyton, with old springing up, and dotted about among weather-boarded tenements tumbling to the fields. pieces among new, smart buildings of the present age. Then the tram-line ceases We jog along till we reach an important crossway with an important public-anong a network of railway-lines, and an house at the corner, which gives its name omnibus is waiting to carry us on for the to the little settlement, where shops same fare. But this time we may conclude have sprung up. and which anybody will that we have drawn a blank from the repoint out as "Baker's Arms"; and here volving wheel, for we are soon in the midst there is a cross service of buses and trams, of smoke and smother, and presently dive for this is Hoe Street, with a railway down a narrow street accompanied by a station at one end of it, and quite a little procession of some hundreds of workmen, crowd is waiting for one vehicle or the who are moving solidly for the gates of the other. railway works. The hundreds swell to thousands before we are through the press, for we have arrived at Stratford-atte-Bow, which is a very fair representation of a Midland manufacturing town. But Strat But we pursue our way through a pleasant country, where the soil seems to grow houses so thickly that they are springing up even in streets or rows like so many cabbages or scarlet runners. Some of ford Broadway is worth a visit, with a these new streets are pleasant enough, green and some stately old-fashioned houses, with red-tiled roofs and eighteenth-century an immense church of handsome proporgables, but more are of the ordinary yellow tions, a town hall, from the balcony of variety of small dwellings. Here and which a brass band is just now flaring a there an old manor house or mansion general invitation to visit the Fruit and stands among its own dishevelled grounds, Flower Show which is for the benefit with windows broken and a huge board to of the West Ham Hospital, which, as is announce the place for sale as ripe" generally known, is a most excellent and for building sites-ripe and ready to fall beneficent institution, serving a neighbouris the gloomy old barrack. Now we are hood where accidents are rife, and where at Whips Cross, a name that suggests horn there is ever-increasing need of hospital and hounds and the merry days of the accommodation among a vast Vast working Epping hunt. Here are more shops with population. But the promenade side of mixed announcements for the benefit of the Broadway is devoted to handsome passers-by: "Soda and milk," "Horses shops. There is the broad roadway with taken in to graze," "Stop here for a good its traffic of all kinds, and where trams cup of tea," "The best pull-up for carmen." arrive and depart incessantly. Smart Beyond the houses the forest opens out, young officers of merchant ships may be starting with a noble three-cornered green, seen hereabouts with their sweethearts, where cows are grazing-a scene worthy of revelling among the excellent pastry for Cuyp, as the sun breaks out warmly from which Stratford Broadway ought to be the clouds and illumines everything with famous. Country people, too, resort to a rich golden glow. Finally the car stops the shops and make a promenade of the in the midst of a pleasant forest scene, as broad footway. It is the emporium and wild as you please, with plashy swamps mart of the great region of docks, gasand rough glades, and ancient trees branch-works, and marshy flats, and of the solidly ing against the sky, with everywhere paths populated regions of West Ham and Stratand tracks, along which people tramp, and ford itself. There is nothing so bright and are constantly turning up, as if for a rendez-stirring anywhere round about for miles vous of forest outlaws. Hence we might as Stratford Broadway-the glow of its ramble through wild forest for six or seven miles, although it would be found thin at places, with daylight showing through its sides, and the inevitable rows of new villas rather spoiling the illusion. But our business is with the town and not with the forest, and the same tramcar trundles us back to Hoe Street, where another tram is waiting to carry us in a different direction. nightly illumination shines far out at sea in the imagination of the sailor homeward bound; and the toiler in the dull workshop or by the glaring furnace has the thought in his mind, before the week is half through, of Saturday night in the Broadway with the sweetheart or wife as the case may be. But beyond this human nature will no farther go. The cosmorama must close for the day, or the brain of the observer will become mixed with an inextricable confusion. Else there is Bow on the homeward journey, and Mile End, and ever-varied Whitechapel. But these are all familiar enough, and they leave no distinct impression except as deepening the sense of the immensity of London lite, the heights and depths of which no traveller can hope effectually to explore. THE CAREER OF TOWN COUNCILLOR. I ONCE heard a very respectable wholesale grocer exhorting his little son to follow the paths of rectitude, not so much for their own sake-though I doubt not he loved virtue in the abstract-as for the sake of the proud position of Mayor and Alderman which he might thereby attain. The boy, a bare-legged little mortal, with elegant fringe to his white unmentionables, stood open-mouthed to attention. "You are an Alderman, ain't you, pa?" asked the child. "Yes, George, of course I am." The boy was then seized with a paroxysm of dancing. "Oh, those lovely dinners! those lovely dinners!" he cried, over and over again. "Yes, pa, I'll be an Alderman," he said by-and-by, when he had calmed a little. He remembered the unctuous descriptions that his papa had given to his mamma of the various feasts at which he had been called upon to be present in his official capacity. I dare say the little boy is already on the Town Council, with his thoughts and affections still dinnerward. It is the easiest thing in the world to distinguish a Town Councillor from an ordinary citizen. He carries his head high, of course; but that is by no means all. There is a briskness and a sense of power about his movements quite unmistakeable, as he strides up the main street of the town. He looks at the police, the roads and gutters, and much else, as if he had them all under his sole charge. The people touch their hats to him, and he smiles complacently as he nods back. He is a great man, no matter if only in a small way. Perhaps he is stopped half-a-dozen times in the course of his walk up a single brief thoroughfare. If he has the time to spare, there's nothing he likes better than a genial little gossip in the open air. How he throws his head back and roars at a joke! If any other man were to laugh half as loud in the public street he would gaze at him, and then look about for a policeman in order that he might give him in charge as drunk and disorderly. Then he puts his broad hand on his interlocutor's shoulder in so fatherly a way. "My dear sir," he begins, if he has any particular information to impart; after which he whispers, with such a flourish of hands, and tantalising uplifting and drooping of the eyebrows, that the half-score of citizens at their doors are two-thirds crazy with unsated desire to know what is in the wind. For aught they can tell, it may be the beginning of a new tax. Surely they have an interest in that. However, they are kept aloof from the secret, to their extreme disgust. The Town Councillor loves to make a parade of mystery. He looks grave and omniscient when he is only discussing the price of eggs. Of course his importance reaches the very highest possible degree when one fine autumn day he receives a deputation of his brother Councillors, and consents to put on the mantle of Mayor for the ensuing year. You should hear him tell his wife of the satisfaction he feels in this honour. It is the one thing he has lived for. He is the happiest man on earth; almost too happy, indeed, considering that the borough taxes are already at seven-andsixpence in the pound, and there are a hundred more inmates of the workhouse than there were a year ago. Yet he cannot help it; for the time all thought of others is out of him; he can think only of himself as supreme magistrate of the town. If only his poor mother could see him in his robes! But there, she has been dead these twenty years, and so it is impossible, unless she looks down from heaven upon him for the purpose. How his worship swells with honest pride as he proceeds in state to the parish church on the Sunday after his election! The townspeople by thousands are in the streets and squares on the way. He could wish it were not Sunday, that they might be under no restraint in the matter of cheers, which they cannot fail to wish to pour forth upon him. Still, it is no small triumph to see their faces. Some he recognises with peculiar sensations. Yonder sullen fellow by a lamp-post, dressed in ill-kempt clothes, with a red nose and |