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Stratford; and in July, 1605, he gave £440 for a lease of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. When we consider the value of such sums in these days, we can form a good idea of the personal wealth of the prudent dramatist. His will gives the fullest account of his possessions at his decease, and enumerates much that is here mentioned. The sums above named may be multiplied by four, to bring them to an equal value with what they would be worth in our own day.

Having thus completed a survey of Southwark in Shakespeare's time, let us now see what remains at the present day to mark the famous localities of two centuries ago.

Passing across Blackfriars-bridge, the first turning to the left-Holland-street — leads directly to Bankside, and a few yards brings you acquainted with names that belong to the Shakesperian era. The Falcon Glass Works, the Falcon Brewery, and the Falcon Coal Wharf, all perpetuate the name (and the latter place the site) of the Falcon Tavern, the traditional resort of Shakespeare and his dramatic companions, and which was pulled down at the commencement of the present century. It was one of those roomy old inns, with large projecting windows, which have ceased to be seen in modern London. There is a very good engraving of it in Wilkinson's "Londina Illustrata." The names of the streets about the place have a suburban sound-Green-walk, for instance one of the country lanes converted into a dirty street of small houses.

Built into the modern houses, at intervals may be traced the quaint old wooden erections which originally stood in their "garden-plots," jotted over the land like a Dutch village. They are generally about the time of William III, but some may date back to that of Charles II. In Gravel-lane and Guildfordstreet are several; and the pedestrian who will be at the trouble of passing through a dense neighbourhood, where cat's-meat shops, dealers in old rags and bones, and other unsavoury commodities abound, may again trace old names in the Hope" Iron Foundry, and its former importance in such as Ely-place, Essexstreet, &c. The black dolls hung over the doors; and the barbers' poles with their acorn tops, sloping from them; have interest as the last relics of Old London tradesmen's signs. Indeed, with the exception of the dog and porridge-pot for the brazier, the golden arm and hammer for the goldbeater, and the golden fleece for the mercer, these signs may be said to have ceased to exist.

6.

In this neighbourhood, Pye or Pike-gardens mark the locality of the Pike-ponds, which are so carefully distinguished in the old maps, where many a bear was washed; and passing on to Park-street, we observe, nearly opposite Noah's-ark-alley, a very old public-house, "the Smith's Arms," which has often rung to the uproarious mirth of the "roaring boys" who frequented the Bear-garden opposite. But we are now a little too far south; so, returning to the Falcon, we will keep by the Bankside. It is not an attractive walk now, whatever it may have been in the days of Elizabeth. The ground is covered with coal-dust, and the air with gas-smoke; the wharfs and large mercantile establishments give you an idea of wealth, the wretched courts and denselycrowded alleys of dirty and neglected poverty. The most contradictory names are given to these places, as if in jest of their own misery. A dirty dark alley, nearly closed from the light of day by wood-yards and gas-works, is called Love-lane; and another equally dirty and woe-begone passage, near St. Saviour's, is termed Primrose-alley.

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The place is sacred to trade and its dependents, yet old associations remain in old names, and in Cardinal-cap-alley we trace the locality of the Bordellos, or Stews, the licensed property of the Bishop of Winchester. A few steps farther, and "the Globe" Coal Wharf reminds us of the building that gives undying celebrity to this neighbourhood; while the gateway at Shears' factory, bearing the name Bear-garden" at its side, induces a pause. It was here that Allen's bear-garden stood, the racket of which was complained of in Shakespeare's time. The "Bear-garden Wharf," and the public-house having for sign "the White Bear," are also reminiscences of olden time. "The Rose and Bell" has a low archway beside it, leading into Rose-alley, the site of the theatre of that name; but it is now a singularly contradictory name for the place; the grounds and walls of the houses are covered with coal-dust and smoke, the air is heavy with the same, the dull whirr of the factory-wheels, and the oppressive smell of the open drains and gutters, in which neglected children paddle, to amuse themselves, as they sluggishly creep towards the Thames, past the confined habitations of their parents; is both physically and morally depressive. Bred among such filth, brought up to labour in the bad air of the various "works" in the neighbourhood, we need not wonder to meet middle-aged men decrepid, asthmatic, and haggard; flying to spirits, beer, and tobacco, as solaces for the discomfort with

which they are surrounded. "Wealth has its victims-too much takes from too little :" both dwell together on the Bankside.

The site of the Hope Theatre is, as nearly as we can guess, where the Southwark-bridgeroad now runs. Shakespeare's theatre, "the Globe," stood a little beyond where now Barclay and Perkins' brewery is built. Before the approaches to Southwark-bridge were formed, the localities could be much better defined, and "Globe-alley" was in existence; but it has been swept away, and with it the most interesting name of the district.

We have now reached the end of the Bankside the open terrace to the Thames is interrupted by closely-built wharfs. We turn, however, down Clink-street, and soon reach Winchester Wharf, the site of the palatial residence of the Bishops of Winchester, who had a suburban residence here as early as the time of King Stephen, which was progressively enlarged by succeeding prelates, who continued to occupy it till the end of the seventeenth century, when the palace at Southwark was deserted for one at Chelsea. The house and grounds, with its parterres and fountains, have been carefully delineated in Hollar's great view of London. A fire, in August, 1814, destroyed the whole; but a portion of the walls of the Great Hall still remain, and a window, with carved work in the spandrils, may be seen in the open piece of ground opposite the wharf; the party-wall of one of them, by Stoney-street, is formed of the solid walls of the episcopal residence; and a very fine rose window is built in in this way, which the writer of the present notice well remembers,

twenty years ago, when the ruins left by the fire were more extensive and untouched. The wonder is, that the ground has been so long unoccupied.

We now reach the little inlet from the Thames, known as St. Saviour's Wharf. The fine old conventual church is beside it; between it and the church a pointed arch and gate led, but a few years since, to Montague-close, where stood the old house of the Lord Mounteagle, and where tradition affirms he received the famous letter which led to the discovery of the Gunpowder-plot. All is swept away now, and enormous warehouses and wharfs occupy the site. The tower of St. Mary Overy's, or St. Saviour's, looks down now on a very different scene to that which Hollar has so carefully depicted from its summit, where he had frequently and patiently employed himself in delineating the London of his day. Green fields were then in Southwark, and others around the city walls-open country within view : now the close-built, mirky streets are everywhere as far as the eye can reach, and the country beyond them obscured by smoke. The racket of wheels and railway-the dense crowds that throng London-bridge-the busy employment of wharves, warehouses, shops, and market-the anxious and hurried bearing of passers-by, all thinking of the present, and its claims-preclude reflexion here on things of the past; but the thoughtful man, who indulges in retrospection, may find much "food for contemplation" on the Bankside; and the few disjecta membra thrown together in this paper may prove how much can result from an hour's walk in Shakespeare's Southwark.

CHAP. II.

THE LUCKY PENNY.*

BR MRS. S. C. HALL.

THE next morning saw Richard at the bookseller's door, full ten minutes before the appointed time. Around his slender throat was the promised handkerchief; and there was an air of gentility about the lad, though under evident restraint, in his threadbare best clothes. He was neither tall nor large of his age, yet he had outgrown his dress: to look at him when his cloth cap (from which depended a worn tassel, brown with age) was on, you would have thought that his eyes were too large for his

* Continued from page 42.

small, delicate features; but when that was removed, and the pale, full, well-developed brow, shaded by an abundance of light-brown hair, was displayed, then the schoolmaster's son had an air, despite his ill-fitting clothes, his patched shoes, his sunken cheeks, and the cold, mercilessly blue "hankerchief" round his throat, of the highest and most carnest intelligence. What most rendered him different from other boys however, was his frequent habit of uplooking: there was nothing weak or silly in this manner, nor did his eyes wander away from the things around him, as if he heard them not; his large, quick eyes, bright

and grey, were rapid and observant; but it was as if he carried what he saw below to be judged above; his leisure looks were "uplooking," his slight figure was crect, and he never slouched in his gait, or dragged his feet after him, as many lads are apt to do. As he stood at his new master's door, in the grey fog of a London morning, he longed for the door to open; he longed to begin work; he thought the clocks were all wrong; and, though there was hardly a creature moving in the streets except a stray cat or a slip-shod charwoman, he would have it that the entire London population were a set of slug-a-beds, unworthy of the name of Britons; for he had great veneration for Britons, and when he used to write impromptu copies on the broken slate, his favourite sentence was "Rule Britannia."

At last he heard doors opening beneath the area gratings, and in due time the shop-door was unbarred by a not very clean-faced woman, who inquired—

Sorra

"Are you the new boy ?" Richard said he was. "Well," added the woman, looking him over carefully, "when master had a mind to get a new boy, he might have got something with flesh on its bones, and stout arms. a much joy I'll have wid a shrimpeen of a child like you in the house. Sorra a helping hand at the knives, or shoes, or messages, I'll go bail!"

"Indeed, I can do everything you want, and bring you all you wish," said Richard, cheerfully.

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Bring me all I wish!" repeated the Irish servant, in a low, desponding tone. "Oh, then, hear to the presumption of youth! May be, you think I'm like yer mother, and that all my wishes end in a half-pint of beer, or a glass of gin ?"

Richard felt his susceptible blood rush over his face. 66 'My mother," he said, "never took a glass of gin in her life!"

She looked fixedly at him, and gradually her large mouth expanded into a smile. "Yer a better boy than I thought you, though you can't bring me all I wish; you can't bring me my two fine boys back from the withered churchyard; you can't bring me back my strength, my heart, my youth, my gay, bright youth! All I wish! Och, wirrasthue! if I had all I wish, it's not in slavery I'd be in an airee all day, with a poor lone man for a master, that thinks the world and its sunshine is made out of musty books-and newspapers—that I can't get the reading of. Can you read ?"

"Yes."

“Well, if you'll read me a bit of the newsthe raale newspaper, political news—not your po-leece thrash, but the States of Europe-I'll stand yer friend."

Richard followed her down stairs, wondering what interest such a deplorable looking woman could possibly take in the "States of Europe." She told him what to do, concerning knives and shoes and coat-brushing, and left him to do it; but the "all" was so very little, that, in addition to her directions, he made up the fire and swept the hearth; and his habits of order and quickness gave the small, dismal kitchen an air of neatness approaching to comfort, which perhaps it had never before exhibited during the dynasty of "Matty Hayes." It was this good woman's habit always to speak in a tone of injured innocence. She anticipated that everything must go wrong, and she met the evil half-way with a sort of grim exultation. She delighted in contradiction; and would contradict herself, rather than not contradict at all. There was, however, as is usual with her “people,” an under-current of good-nature coursing round her heart, which rendered her speech and action two different and opposite things.

"Master's shoes nor coat aint ready, of course?" she called from the landing. In a moment Richard's light feet flew up the stairs, and he laid them on her bony arms.

"Then I'm sure he's let the fire out, if these are done," she muttered to herself. "There never was a boy that did not undo ten things while he did one!"

When she descended, she looked round, silenced by the change Richard had wrought in the den of a kitchen, and hardly knowing whether she ought to blame or praise.

"I don't mean to pay you for all this fine work," she said; "and there's no breakfast for you-no, nor bit nor sup-it's as much as I can do to manage for us three-master, and I, and

Peter."

"I have had my breakfast, thank you; and as I can do nothing here, I will go up stairs, if you will be so good as to tell me what I can do there."

"Tell you what to do," she repeated. "Are you an apprentice, that you want teaching? A pretty boy, indeed, you are for a place, if you can't take down shutters, and sweep and dust a shop, and clean windows-(I daresay you'll break 'em when the do)—and mop pavement (always do that in frosty weather, like the doctor's boy next door, to break people's legs, and make a job of their precious limbs) and sweep the snow over the slides,

you

that the old people may slider about for your amusement."

Richard felt a choking sensation at his throat, and as usual he flushed, but tried not to look angry.

"There!" she exclaimed, "don't give me any impudence: quick lads are always impudent. I thought how it would be when you were so mighty neat."

During this unsavoury dialogue, and in direct opposition to her declared intention, she was cutting a remarkably thick piece of bread and butter; and having done so, she pushed it to the boy, saying, "There, go to your work now, and don't say you are starved by Matthew Whitelock's housekeeper."

Richard was a peace-loving lad: he saw the storm gathering in Matty's face, and notwithstanding his boasted breakfast (he had slipped back one of the pieces of bread his mother had given him) he could, from any other hands have eaten the bread with great goût; but the hands that fed him from infancy were delicately clean and white, and—it might be the darkness and murkiness of a January morning, but everything, and above all things Matty, looked fearfully dirty-a favourite proverb of his mother's took possession of his mind-

"Cleanliness is next to godliness."

But he loved peace, and he thanked “Matthew Whitelock's housekeeper;" simply repeating, that he had breakfasted. Matty was a resolute woman; she had made up her mind he should eat what she had prepared; and, consequently, laying her massive hands upon his shoulders, she forced him suddenly down upon a chair, from which he as suddenly sprang up as from an air cushion, but not before a most unearthly howl intimated that he had pressed too heavily upon "Peter," a rough, grey terrier, who, in these days, when tangled, ragged dogs, are the fashion, would have been called a "beauty."

"And that's your thanks, Peter, my darlin', for not biting him, to have him scrunch down upon you, as if you war a cat," she exclaimed; then, turning suddenly upon poor Richard, she commanded him to eat at once, and be done with it, and not stand there aggravating her, and murdering her dog.

At first Richard eat with a feeling of disgust; but the bread was good, and he was hungry. Peter seated himself before the lad, rising every second moment on his haunches, and making little twitching movements with

his fore-paws: Richard gave him a piece of the crumb.

"Look at that, now," said Matty; "ye' just give the poor innocent baste the crumb, because ye' don't like it ye'rself."

Richard presented him with a bit of the crisp brown crust.

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See, now, if that brat of a boy ain't trying already to break every tooth in the crature's head, with his crusts."

Richard finished without offering Peter another morsel.

"Well!" ejaculated his tormentor; "if ever I saw such a selfish boy of yer age, and that's speaking volumes, as master says; not to give the brute the last crumb, for good luck; but some has no nature in 'em; and the poor baste bobbing at you, as if you had never scrooged him into a pancake. There, go along, do; and harkee! if you run the window-bars through the glass, you'll have to pay for every pane you break; and mind the trap that's over the cellar but sure you war here before, when I was sick. Ah! I dare say you'll go off in consumption, just as the last boy did it's all along the smell of the old books, and the ile of the papers, to say nothing of the gas. I wonder how master and I live through it; but it won't be for long, I'm certain of that; I'm a poor fading-away crature."

:

As Richard ran up the dark stairs, he could not avoid turning to look at the "fading-away creature." The cheerful blaze of the fire threw her figure into strong light, and her shadow on the wall grew up into the ceiling. She recalled all Richard had ever heard of "ogres" -so gaunt, and strong, and terrible--tremendous people who trouble the world for ever, and never die.

Richard entered the shop with the feeling of a governor going to take the command of a new province. Could it be absolutely real, that he was the appointed messenger to go in and out, backwards and forwards, amongst such a multitude of books! To him, the store seemed more than ever immense. Surely Mr. Whitelock must have added hundreds to his hundreds since he stood upon that threshold to help the poor dying boy. He recalled the feeling of awe with which he regarded that dingy interior; he thought Mr. Whitelock must be the happiest man in the world, not only to live amongst so many books, but to be their absolute owner; he wondered how he could bear to sell them he resolved to count them; and thrilled from head to foot at the new-born pleasure-even in anticipation -that perhaps he might be permitted to

read them. There was a delight! to read every one of the books that filled these shelves! But then came the thought that, however delicious it would be to get all that knowledge into his head, it would do his mother no real good, unless he could put the knowledge so acquired in practice: yes, put it in practice, to make money and means sufficient to keep his mother-his loving, tender, gentle mother-who seemed threatened with a terrible affliction; to keep her from wantfrom cold—from every apprehension of distress. Richard never stood idly to muse: no, he thought. His thoughts were active-strong, too, for a boy of his years; and they came abundantly while he occupied himself with his duties; fine, healthy, earnest thoughts they were sanctified by an unexpressed, yet fervent, prayer to the Almighty, to bless his mother and his own exertions for her happiness.

There is something most holy and beautiful in the attachment between mother and son: it is not always so tender or so enduring as the love between mother and daughter; but when circumstances arise to call forth the affections of a large-hearted, lonely boy towards his mother, there can be no feeling more intense or more devoted.

Again Richard's habits of order increased his usefulness fourfold. He arranged all things in the neatest way, resolving to ask leave to dust the shelves, after the shop was shut; and determined to keep the windows clean; his mother's window was the cleanest in the court, why should not his master's be clean also?

He was finishing his morning's work by mending an old stumpy pen-the last of three belonging to a leaden inkstand-when his mastered entered.

"So, you can mend pens?"

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Yes, sir, I think I can: would you be so good as to try this one?"

He good-naturedly did so, and, as it suited him, he was really pleased; and then told Richard where to find some things, and where to keep others, until it was time to carry out certain library books, and make sundry calls, to inquire after those that had not been returned.

Richard thought it no harm to peep into the books as he went along. The first novel he opened was all about great lords and ladies, and what they did and said, and how they looked and walked, and spent their time; and Richard, when he had read half a page, came to the conclusion that those grand folk must be different in every respect from any human beings he had ever seen. He had resolved to be very quick in his messages; but as he read,

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"I just looked into the book, sir; and I am afraid I did not come as fast as I intended."

"I sent you to carry books, not to read them; and this sort of books would not do you any good, but rather harm."

"Please, sir, I thought I had time enough." "Remember what Poor Richard says, 'that what we call time enough always proves little enough.' Besides, I have a right to your time; it is all you have to give in exchange for my money, and it is as dishonest to squander the one as it would be to squander the other."

"I will never look in a book again, sir, without your leave."

It was perhaps strange that, though the bookseller had seen as much of what is called "the world"-that is, of his own particular "world," with now and then a peep into its higher and lower regions-as most men, and been-as kind-natured men invariably arefrequently deceived, yet he never doubted the integrity of his little messenger's promise, believing he would keep it to the letter; and he turned away without a single additional word of reproof or displeasure; but Richard heard sundry murmurings and grumblings on the stairs-ascending and descending-which convinced him that Matty would not be as easily pacified as her master. The bookseller told him he might go down and have his dinner.

"Your room would be more plasing than your company," said Matty. Without a word he was returning whence he came.

"Where are you going?" she inquired, vehemently.

"You did not wish me to stay."

"But yer master did; he's never contint but when he fills up this bit of a kitchen with tagrag and bobtail; but, no matter-there, cat your dinner."

"Am I always to dine here ?" he said, in a hesitating voice.

"Just like the rest of them! Yer going to find fault with the blessed food-I knew ye' would--I said so to-day. Says I, 'He was too fond of giving his bread to the dogs, to care for his dinner."

The woman's contradictions perplexed the boy so much that he could not speak. Moreover, he felt a sort of self-reproach for eating all that meat, when his mother wanted; this

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