and second floors. One of them is represented in the engraving.

The north front, which faces an inside court, is very remarkable. An elevation, with details, will be found on the opposite page (Plate XIX). The base is composed of rustic work, and the wall above is relieved with pilasters and capitals. The whole of this front is another pleasant specimen of the graceful ease with which the genius of Inigo Jones, for to him I attribute it, could invest ordinary objects with an air of essential beauty. His are no ugly forms, no architectural monstrosities, no platitudes of brick and mortar, depending for their power to please on a wretched mass of meretricious ornament, which in very truth does but reveal their innate worthlessness and despicable hypocrisy, that pretends to be much, but is actually nothing. Nor are his works characterised by an entire forgetfulness of the use for which an edifice is designed, or by a poverty of invention in the employment of details. You may search in vain among his creations for marks conspicuous enough in many other directions, the meagreness alike of design and execution, the manifest impress of a grovelling mind and of a contemptible taste, which is stamped indelibly on every portion, from the stucco plinth to the ridiculous chimney-pots! His structures, on the contrary, attract at once and without effort our admiration and kindly regard; the spirit of grace and beauty seems to brood over them, and they instinctively elicit the spectator's sense of the beautiful and the true. Unfortunately we are in possession of too few of them; and those in the City which can be attributed to him, or which so far breathe his spirit as to exhibit his influence on the minds and works of others, are necessarily confined to a small space. I have accordingly mentioned every one that is known to me as occurring within the limits of our present ramble. His works, with a few exceptions, are fragmentary; but he never drew a line or moulded an ornament without giving unmistakeable evidence of consummate ability and a master-mind. Had he erected or designed nothing save his Banqueting House at Whitehall, or his inimitable Water-Gate at York Stairs, he would have well deserved an immortality of fame. But while Sir Paul Pinder was dying, not more, it is to be feared, of old

age than of a heart broken and bleeding for his country's woes, his accomplished architect, a warm adherent of the same sacred cause, was neglected by the party which each of them was too far advanced in years to be able actively to oppose. The civil wars put a period to his rebuilding of Old St. Paul's, of which, I may remark, his magnificent west front was but the first instalment, and not intended, as some have supposed, for amalgamation with the Gothic structure then existing-an enormity which such a mind and taste as his could never have been capable of imagining. Strange to say, his exquisite designs are to this hour unknown to the majority of architects, though abounding as they do with the loveliest fancies for edifices of all descriptions. He died, old and miserable, June 21, 1652, having lived to see the monarch whom he had served beheaded in front of his own Banqueting House, and almost all his comrades and patrons laid to rest in the grave.

In a room behind the front last described is the chimney-piece represented on the opposite page (Plate XX.). It bears the date 1633, and is a gorgeous specimen of English ornamental work of the earlier half of the seventeenth century.

A few steps further, and our present walk is ended. The irregular outline of the Ward which we have been traversing has carried us far into the heart of the City. Portsoken, Lime Street, Coleman Street, Broad Street, Cornhill, and other Wards have been in turn passed; and, as we cross into Gracechurch Street, we arrive at the termination of our ramble. In that portion of Gracechurch Street which is included in the Ward of Bishopsgate, I am aware of nothing either external or internal which calls for particular notice, as the street has been again and again rebuilt, except perhaps some portions of the Spread Eagle Inn. These, however, present no unusual features, and are in no respect so interesting as those of the ancient hostels to which reference has already been made.

Let me hope that I have not exercised your patience by all this detail, or confused you by taking you through the labyrinth of streets, alleys, and courts, along which our course has progressed, bewildering enough to a stranger, how familiar soever to a constant resident. I am well aware that an itinerary, though

exceeding the results of all other topographical labours in real utility, is not so interesting to the generality of students as contributions of a different kind. Had I, for example, selected some one house, and delineated its changes through various periods, or pursued the fortunes of some one family, and exhibited them as they appeared in successive generations, I could, no doubt, have presented you with something more obviously attractive. But allow me to add, that such an offering would not have been a hundredth part so valuable as the present. An examination of a few books and manuscripts would have furnished the materials, and I should have been saved a considerable amount of unrecognised labour. But it is probable that I should have given you little or nothing which had not been already placed on record, and which had not thus become common property. This was exactly contrary to my desire and aim. It is a rock on which too many archæologists are prone to strike. But instead of this, I have endeavoured to perpetuate the memory of objects as yet unrecorded, and for the most part and by the most of us unknown; objects, too, which in all probability will soon be beyond the reach of such reverent care. I have introduced you to creations, which the very soul of beauty has selected for her home; a beauty not dependent on the presence of merely superadded ornamentation, or on the magnitude of its several proportions, but an essential and positive element of the original design. And, lastly, I have endeavoured to rescue our study from the charge of inutility too frequently brought against it, by showing our need of such appliances as the edifices before us can easily and promptly afford, by looking upon details not only with a theoretical but with a practical eye, and, in our walk among the relics of the past, by keeping full in our view the requirements of the present.

[The Council desire to offer their best acknowledgments to those gentlemen who have liberally furnished the greater number of the engravings which illustrate the foregoing paper. A list of all such donors, with the particulars of their contributions, will be found in the Preface.]