Collins' Illustrated Guide to London and Neighbourhood. Anonymous

at a million sterling per mile—as witness the South-Eastern and the Chatham and Dover Companies, concerning which we shall have to say more in a future page.

      

[16]

      The seven radii of which we have spoken may be thus briefly described, as a preliminary guide to visitors: 1. Leaving this wonderfully-busy centre by the north, with the Poultry on one hand and the Bank of England on the other, we pass in front of many fine new commercial buildings in Princes and Moorgate Streets; indeed, there is not an old house here, for both are entirely modern streets, penetrating through what used to be a close mass of small streets and alleys. Other fine banking and commercial buildings may be seen stretching along either side in Lothbury and Gresham Streets. Farther towards the north, a visitor would reach the Finsbury Square region, beyond which the establishments are of less important character. 2. If, instead of leaving this centre by the north, he turns north-east, he will pass through Threadneedle Street between the Bank and the Royal Exchange;

next will be found the Stock Exchange, on the left hand; then the Sun Fire Office, and the Bank of London (formerly the Hall of Commerce); on the opposite side the City Bank, Merchant Taylor’s School, and the building that was once the South Sea House; beyond these is the great centre for foreign merchants in Broad Street, Winchester Street, Austin Friars, and the vicinity. 3. If, again, the route be selected due east, there will come into view the famous Cornhill, with its Royal Exchange, its well-stored shops, and its alleys on either side crowded with merchants, brokers, bankers, coffee-houses, and chop-houses; beyond this, Bishopsgate Street branches out on the left, and Gracechurch Street on the right, both full of memorials of commercial London; and farther east still, Leadenhall Street, with new buildings on the site of the late East India House, leads to the Jews’ Quarter around Aldgate and Houndsditch—a strange region, which few visitors to London think of exploring. “Petticoat Lane,” perhaps one of the most extraordinary marts for old clothes, &c., is on the left of Aldgate High Street. It is well worth a visit by connoisseurs of queer life and character, who are able to take care of themselves, and remember to leave their valuables at home. 4. The fourth route from the great city centre leads through Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street—the one the head-quarters of the great banking firms of London; the other exhibiting many commercial buildings of late erection: while Mincing Lane and Mark Lane are the head-quarters for many branches of the foreign, colonial, and corn trades. 5. The fifth route takes the visitor through King William Street to the Monument, Fish Street Hill, Billingsgate, the Corn Exchange, the Custom House, the Thames Subway, the Tower, the Docks, the Thames Tunnel, London Bridge, and a host of interesting places, the proper examination of which would require something more than merely a brief visit to London. Opposite this quarter, on the Surrey side of the river, are numerous shipping wharfs, warehouses, porter breweries, and granaries. The fire that occurred at Cotton’s wharf and depôt and other wharfs near Tooley Street, in June, 1861, illustrated the vast scale on which merchandise is collected in the warehouses and wharfs hereabout. [18] Of the dense mass of streets lying away from the river, and eastward of the city proper, comprising Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, &c., little need be said here; the population is immense, but, excepting the Bethnal Green Museum and Victoria Park, there are few objects interesting; nevertheless the observers of social life in its humbler phases would find much to learn here. 6. The southern route from the great city centre takes the visitor, by the side of the Mansion House, through the new thoroughfare, Queen Victoria Street—referred to at a previous page—to the river-side.

      It will therefore be useful for a stranger to bear in mind, that the best centre of observation in the city is the open spot between the Bank, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange; where more omnibuses assemble than at any other spot in the world; and whence he can ramble in any one of seven different directions, sure of meeting with something illustrative of city life. The 7th route, not yet noticed, we will now follow, as it proceeds towards the West End.

      The great central thoroughfare of Cheapside, which is closely lined with the shops of silversmiths and other wealthy tradesmen, is one of the oldest and most famous streets in the city—intimately associated with the municipal glories of London for centuries past. Many of the houses in Cheapside and Cornhill have lately been rebuilt on a scale of much grandeur. Some small plots of ground in this vicinity have been sold at the rate of nearly one million sterling per acre! On each side of Cheapside, narrow streets diverge into the dense mass behind—Ironmonger Lane, King Street, Milk Street, and Wood Street, on the north; and among others, Queen Street, Bread Street, where Milton was born, and where stood the famous Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and Raleigh, Ben Jonson and his young friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin-dramatists, loved to meet, to enjoy “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” to say nothing of a few flagons of good Canary wine, Bow Lane, and Old ’Change, on the south. The greater part of these back streets, with the lanes adjoining, are occupied by the offices or warehouses of wholesale dealers in cloth, silk, hosiery, lace, &c., and are resorted to by London and country shopkeepers for supplies. Across the north end of King Street stands the Guildhall; and a little west, the City of London School and Goldsmiths’ Hall. At the western end of Cheapside is a statue of the late Sir Robert Peel, by Behnes. Northward of this point, in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, are the buildings of the Post and Telegraph Offices; beyond this the curious old Charter House; and then a line of business streets leading towards Islington. Westward are two streets, parallel with each other, and both too narrow for the trade to be accommodated in them—Newgate Street, celebrated for its Blue Coat Boys and, till the recent removal of the market to Smithfield, for its carcass butchers; and Paternoster Row, still more celebrated for its publishers and booksellers. In Panyer Alley, leading out of Newgate Street, is an old stone bearing the inscription:

      When y^e have sovgh^t the citty rovnd, Yet stil this is the highs^t grovnd.

      Avgvst the 27, 1688. [20]

      At the west end of Newgate Street a turning to the right gives access to the once celebrated Smithfield and St. John’s Gate. South-west of Cheapside stands St. Paul’s Cathedral, that first and greatest of all the landmarks of London. In the immediate vicinity of St. Paul’s, the names of many streets and lanes (Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane, Godliman Street, &c.) give token of their former connection with the religious structure and its clerical attendants. The enclosed churchyard is surrounded by a street closely hemmed in with houses, now chiefly dedicated to trade: those on the south side being mostly wholesale, those on the north retail. An open arched passage on the south side of the churchyard leads to Doctors’ Commons, once the headquarters of the ecclesiastical lawyers.

      Starting from St. Paul’s Churchyard westward, we proceed down Ludgate Street and Ludgate Hill, places named from the old Lud-gate, which once formed one of the entrances to the city ‘within the walls.’ The Old Bailey, on the right, contains the Central Criminal Court and Newgate Prison, noted places in connection with the trial and punishment of criminals. On the left of Ludgate Hill is a maze of narrow streets; among which the chief buildings are the new Ludgate Hill Railway Station, Apothecaries’ Hall, and the printing office of the all-powerful Times newspaper, in Printing-House Square. The printer of the Times, Mr. Goodlake, if applied to by letter, enclosing card of any respectable person, will grant an order to go over it, at 11 o’clock only, when the second edition of “the Thunderer” is going to press. At the bottom of Ludgate Hill we come to the valley in which the once celebrated Fleet River, now only a covered sewer, ran north and south from St. Pancras to Blackfriars, where it entered the Thames. A new street, called Victoria Street, formed by pulling down many poor and dilapidated houses,