The sign of "the King's Head" at Hackney was changed to "Cromwell's Head" under the Commonwealth, for which its landlord was whipped and pilloried at the Restoration, and afterwards called his inn "King Charles's Head."

Returning down Bishopsgate, on the left is Houndsditch, a relic, in its name, of the old foss which encircled the city, formerly a natural receptacle for dead dogs, whose filth the street was intended to remedy. Richard of Cirencester says that the body of Edric, the murderer of Edmund Ironsides, was thrown into Houndsditch. His crime had raised Canute to the throne, but when he came to claim his promised reward-the highest position in the city-the Danish king replied, "I like the treason, but hate the traitor behead this fellow, and, as he claims my promise, place his head on the highest pinnacle of the Tower." Edric was then scorched to death with flaming torches, his head raised on the highest point of the Tower, and his body thrown to the hounds of Houndsditch.

This is the Jews' quarter-silent on Saturdays, busy on Sundays. Hounds ditch has long been a street famous for its brokers. In his "Every Man in his Humour " Ben Jonson speaks of a Houndsditch man as "one of the devil's near kinsmen, a broker;" and Beaumont and Fletcher allude to the brokers of Dogsditch

"More knavery and usury,

And foolery, and trickery, than Dogsditch."

Cutler Street, on the left, is the ancient centre for the cutlers.

Duke's Place, Houndsditch, occupies the site of Christ Church Priory, founded in 1108 by Queen Maude. It was granted at the Dissolution to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor. His daughter married Thomas, Duke of Norfolk (whence the name), and was wont to ride hither

In Bevis Marks.

through the city with one hundred horsemen in livery, preceded by four heralds. Holbein died in the Duke's house.

Behind Houndsditch on the right runs Bevis Marks Bury's Marks), from the town-house of the Abbots of Bury

St. Edmunds, afterwards "granted to Thomas Heneage the father, and Sir Thomas Heneage the son." *

On the north side of this street, before the Dissolution, stood the Hospital of the Brotherhood of St. Augustine Papey. Here the sign of the tavern of The Blue Pig, only very recently removed, was a strange instance of the endurance of the sign of "the Blue Boar," the crest of Richard III., who, as Duke of Gloucester, resided close by in Crosby Hall.

• Maitland, ii. 782.

CHAPTER IX.

IN THE HEART OF THE CITY.

HE labyrinthine but most busy streets which form the

THE

centre of the City of London to the south of the Royal Exchange are filled with objects of interest, though of minor interest, amid which it will be difficult to thread our way, and impossible to keep up any continuous connection of associations. The houses, which have looked down upon so many generations of toilers, are often curious in themselves. The City churches for the most part are dying a slow death; their congregations have ebbed and will never flow back. Very few are worth visiting for their own sakes, yet almost every one contains some tomb or other fragment which gives it a historic interest. Dickens vividly describes their general aspect and the kind of thoughts which are awakened by attending a service in one of these queer old churches.

"There is a pale heap of books in the corner of every pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such a fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of the music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family. And who were they? Jane Comport must have married young Dowgate, and come into the family that way. Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when

he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the flyleaf. If Jane were fond of young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here ? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success as was expected.

"The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then find to my astonishment that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as death it is! Not only in the cold damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ and half choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him.

"In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little farther down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually turned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.

“The dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the Master of the old Company, on which it drips. His