into "See, the conquering hero comes!" men, boys, and stray women, on the crowded pavements, shouting "Hurrah!" and the windows and housetops, right and left, bright with elegant ladies, superbly dressed, or adventurous bipeds among the chimneys, all swelled the advancing pomp. How that odd old coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds-for, reader, it was Sir William Curtis! Did ever ovation or triumph of Roman general yield greater enjoyment than this slow-coach airing in a damp winter afternoon ? It was near half-past four o'clock, and it was growing dusk, yet the panels, with their lustrous gilded Cupids and heraldic animals-not to be found in any natural historycame out brilliantly in the waning light. As the ark of copper, plate-glass, and enamel crept slowly up the incline, a luckless sweeper boy (in those days such dwarfed lads were forced to climb chimneys) sidled up to one of the fore-horses, and sought to detach a pink bow from his mane The creature felt his honours diminishing, and turned to snap at Blackee; the sweep screamed-the horse neighed the mob shouted; and Sir William turned on his pivot cushion to learn what the noise meant; and thus we were enabled to gaze on a Lord Mayor's face. In sooth, he was a goodly gentleman, burly, and with three fingers' depth of fat on his portly person, yet every featuro evinced kindliness and benevolence of no common order. He was the poor man's friend, the munificent paymaster of the industrious, the widow and the orphan's constant helper He might be fond of a good dinner and old winewhat then? Are not our tastes similar? I fancy the City state coach has rumbled from Guildhall to Westminster on about 150 November days. Are the years of the Corporation numbered? If a new Civic Reform Bill becomes law, will it be consigned to disuse and dust, and kept as a relic of old London, or broken up as mere worn-out frippery? Alas for the ark of bygone coachmakers! there is sadness in the idea that we may soon see it for the last time! My boyish heart would scarcely beat for awe, when, peeping into its mystic depths, I first descried swordbearers and mace-bearers, velvets, furs, scarlet, and gold chains-such wonderful gold chains!-and the great man himself, full blown, and bowed down under such proud distinctions. Did he ever forget my Lady Mayoress, in her comparatively humble carriage? True, my awe of the spectacle has passed away, and the scene might now rather excite risibility, so I do not hanker after the "show" now, though of course a ticket for the dinner has its value. How many City heroes have rested on those soft, broad cushions! Let me enumerate a few from the accession of George III., 1762:-William Beckford, who dared to reply on an ungracious royal speech, has his rude patriotism commemorated on a monument in Guildhall, and was elected Mayor a second time, 1770. John Wilkes, 1774-5; the audacious tribune of the people; wild, reckless, and profane, yet an accomplished gentleman, who might truly say, "I am the ugliest fellow in England, yet give me half an hour in advance of the smartest beau in Great Britain, and I will undertake to gain the preference of the prettiest woman in the land." Demagogue Sawbridge, 1776. John Boydell, 1791; a liberal encourager of artists, the publisher of a very noble edition of Shakspeare, for the embellishment of which he caused a gallery of original illustrations to be painted. Thomas Skinner, 1795-one of many instances in which determined perseverance has raised a poor, friendless youth to the highest distinction. Sir William Staines, 1800; a wise and upright magistrate. Matthew Wood, 1817; Queen Caroline's patron-sad that royalty should need such patronage. John Atkins, 1819; once a tidewaiter at the Custom House-all honour to him! -high places well earned, by persons of humble origin, become still more ennobled. Robert Waithman, 1824; how dingy the obelisk near his old drapery store looks! Sir John Key, 1830-"Don Key" he was once called -and though twice Mayor, went out of life like an expiring candle-snuff. Sir Francis Graham Moon, 1855; a worthy printseller, long denominated "The Man in the Moon." David Salomons, a gentleman of the Hebrew nation, who so justly acquired the veneration of his fellow. citizens, and by his admirable conduct in the civic chair conduced mainly to the removal of Jewish disabilities; and last, though by no means least, twice Lord Mayor Cubitt, favourite of all. Our list of City grandees might easily be lengthened, for London merchants may well compete in reputation with the proudest magnates of Venice, Genoa, or Amsterdam, in their palmiest ages. Well, those were all tenants-atwill of the civic state coach; they have vacated its luxurious settees for ever, and a few lines in London chronicles is their sole remaining inheritance The coach itself will be laid by soon; either its occupation, like Othello's, will be " 'gone," or Time will drive his scythe through the panels, and make a wreck of its senile splendour. Will not all the gentlemen's carriages, cabs, Hansoms, and bankrupt omnibuses, while they bewail their own fate, mourn for this coach of coaches, this marvel of a vehicle -A 1 among four-wheelers-part and parcel of London town's constitutional glories-the sun of November fogsthe fossil focus of "the light of other days"? 33 OLD MOORFIELDS. WHILE the ancient convent which once occupied the south side of Moorfields, adjoining to London-wall, then a substantial defence to the City, flourished, it was in quite a country situation, opening into and forming a portion of those fair, green, well-wooded acres which for several ages were called Finsbury Fields-the favourite resort of holiday-making citizens, and the scene especially of those manly games of archery which contributed so much to establish the fame of English bowmen over Europe. Cripplegate, immediately adjacent, was jealously guarded, and strangers desiring to pass, even at midday, were closely questioned as to their business; and even apprentices and traders, however well known, were expected to pass in or out at fixed hours. The gate derived its name from the crowd of beggars, halt and maimed, who crowded around it to supplicate alms from passengers, and especially from visitors to the convent. During the wars of the Roses, as York or Lancaster was in the ascendant, a military guard kept this entrance to the City, its vicinity to the Tower making it doubly important. The London of that day was the joint residence of courtiers, soldiers, and merchants. Towards the west, its utmost limit was Old Bourn Bridge, and, eastward, all was rural beyond the White Chapel. The population was walled round, the D metropolis was contained in a dense, unwholesome cluster of wooden tenements, save that a few noble ecclesiastical structures, or palatial residences, dotted the mass of meaner dwellings, at long distances. No doubt butts were often set up in Moorfields for City games; crowds of outlying country-folks mixed with the traders, their wives, and servitors; while from the heavy horn windows of the convent, fair sisters, gazing unseen on the show, might have yearned to re-enter the world they had quitted for ever. When Henry VIII., in his tyrannical cupidity, dissolved the religious societies, on the plea of their ill-government, but in reality that he might appropriate their wealth, he ordained that the convent in Moorfields should be used as a lunatic hospital. This was in 1546. It was rebuilt in 1675, but under the name of Bethlehem Hospital. It continued to be an asylum for the most wretched class of human sufferers up to 1814, when the new and capacious building in St. George's Fields was opened. It was a low, dark, dismal-looking pile, enclosed by heavy gates and walls, and surrounded by mean, squalid houses and shops. “'Tis said, and I believe the tale," that the ravings and shrieks of the unhappy inmates might often be heard by persons outside. Madhouses, in those days, were managed in the worst possible manner, a lunatic being treated like a wild beast, whipped, chained, fed on the coarsest food, confined naked to a bed of straw, and, having once passed the threshold of his prison, seldom or ever returning to the society of his fellow-beings. "All hope abandon he who enters here," the inscription over the entrance of Dante's hell, would have been equally appropriate for these abodes of unmitigated misery. No better proof as to the improvement in modern times of our kindlier feelings can be given than the change as to the treatment of lunatics. The sufferer from diseased |