founded by Sir Thomas Spert, Comptroller of the Navy to Henry VIII., for the encouragement of navigation, the regulation of lighthouses, the providing of efficient pilots, and the general control of naval matters not directly under the Admiralty. A little farther east is the Royal Mint, built by Johnson and Sir R. Smirke. Here the gold and silver of the realm are melted and coined. Sir Isaac Newton and Sir John Herschel were Masters of the Mint, an office abolished in 1870. The streets east of the Tower are the Sailors' Town. The shops are devoted to the sale of sailors' clothing, nautical instruments, and naval stores; the population is made up of sailors, shipbuilders, and fishermen. The Docks connected with the Thames occupy a space of 900 acres. The principal Docks are St. Katherine's Docks, opened 1828; the London Docks, opened 1805; the West India Docks, opened 1802; the East India Docks, opened 1808; the Commercial Docks, opened 1809; and the Victoria Docks, opened 1856. "Lords of the world's great waste, the ocean, we Whole forests send to reign upon the sea."— Waller. Near St. Katherine's, a place which latterly bore the strangely corrupted name of Hangman's Gains, long marked the street which was the asylum of the refugees from Hammes et Guynes, near Calais, after that town was recaptured from the English! Below the London Docks is Wapping, where Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, attempting to escape after the abdication of James II., was taken while he was drinking at the Red Cow, in Hope and Anchor Alley, King Edward's Stairs; he was identified by a scrivener of Wapping, whom he had insulted from the bench, and who recognised the terrible face as he was lolling out of a window, in the dress of a common sailor, and in fancied security. Execution Dock is the place where pirates were hung in chains. Beyond Wapping are the miserable thickly inhabited districts of Shadwell and Limehouse. At Wapping is the entrance of the Thames Tunnel, formed 1825-1843, by Sir Isambard K. Brunel, at an expense of £614,000. This long useless passage under the river, to Rotherhithe, was sold to the East London Railway Company in 1865, and is now a railway tunnel. A number of taverns with riverside landing-places retain their quaint original names, but they are little worth visiting. The "Waterman's Arms" in Limehouse has some remains (1877) of an old brick front towards the street, and the view from its river balcony, with the ancient boatbuilding yards, and timbers green with salt weeds in the foreground, has often been painted. The main thoroughfare of this part of London, which will always be known by its old name of Ratcliffe Highway, though it has been foolishly changed to St. George's Street, obtained unpleasant notoriety from the murders of the Marr family and the Williamsons in 1811, after which, as Macaulay says, "Many can remember the terror which was on every face, the careful barring of doors, the providing of blunderbusses and watchmen's rattles." But those who visit it now will find Ratcliffe Highway a cheerful airy street, without any especial evidence of poverty or crime. No. 179 is the famous "Wild Beast Shop," called Jamrach's, an extraordinary place, where almost any animal may be purchased, from an elephant to a mouse. WE CHAPTER XI. THAMES STREET. E may return from the Tower by the long thoroughfare of Upper and Lower Thames Street, which follows the line of the river, with a history as old as that of the Narrow and dark, Industry has made it one City itself. of the most important streets of London. "Commerce brought into the public walk Here— The busy merchant; the big warehouse built ; Rais'd the strong crane; choak'd up the loaded street Thomson. Thames Street is the very centre of turmoil. From the huge warehouses along the sides, with their chasmlike windows and the enormous cranes which are so great a feature of this part of the City, the rattling of the chains and the creaking of the cords, by which enormous packages are constantly ascending and descending, mingles with uproar from the roadway beneath. Here the hugest waggons, drawn by Titanic dray-horses, and attended by waggoners in smockfrocks, are always lading or discharging their enormous burthens of boxes, barrels, crates, timber, iron, or cork. Wine, fish, and cheese are the chief articles of street traffic "Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits." There are no buildings which recall the days of Chaucer, who, the son of a Thames Street vintner, certainly lived here from 1379 to 1385, but now and then an old brick church breaks the line of warehouses, with the round-headed windows of Charles the Second's time and the stiff garlands of Gibbons, and ever and anon, through a narrow slit in the houses, we have a glimpse of the glistening river and its shipping. But one cannot linger in Thames Street—every one is in a hurry. On the left is The Custom House, built from designs of David Laing, 1814-17, but altered by Sir Robert Smirke. The most productive duties are those on tea, tobacco, wine, and brandy. "There is no Prince in Christendom but is directly a tradesman, though in another way than an ordinary tradesman. For the purpose, I have a man; I bid him lay out twenty shillings in such and such commodities; but I tell him for every shilling he lays out I will have a penny. I trade as well as he. This every Prince does in his Customs."-Selden. There is a delightful walk on the quay in front of the Custom House, with a beautiful view up the river to London Bridge. From hence the peculiarly picturesque boats called Dutch Crawls may be seen to the greatest advantage: they do not go higher than London Bridge. Hither, in one of his fits of despondency, came Cowper the poet, intending to drown himself. "Not knowing where to poison myself, I resolved upon drowning. For that purpose I took a coach, and ordered the man to drive to Tower-wharf, intending to throw myself into the river from the Custom-house quay. I left the coach upon the Tower-wharf, intending never to return to it; but upon coming to the quay, I found the water low, and a porter seated upon some goods there, as if on purpose to prevent me. This passage to the bottomless pit being mercifully shut against me, I returned back to the coach."-Southey's Cowper, i. 124. Close to the Custom House is the famous fish-market of Billingsgate, rebuilt 1876, but picturesque and worth seeing, though ladies will not wish to linger there, the language of Billingsgate having long been notorious. "There stript, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground; Her blunted arms by sophistry are borne, And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn." Pope. The Dunciad. Fuller. "One may term Billingsgate the Esculine gate of London." Geoffry of Monmouth says that the name Billingsgate was derived from Belin, king of the Britons, A.C. 400, having |