And yet, curiously enough, it is close by these very crowded thoroughfares of human life and energy, that the most secluded haunts of peace may be found; calm "backwaters," all deserted and forgotten by the flowing stream that runs so near them; tiny spots of unsuspected greenery and ancient stone, absolutely startling in their quiet proximity to the surrounding din and whirl. Though the area of the "City," so-called, is but small, yet it abounds in such peaceful, undreamed-of spots; places where the painter may set up his easel, or even the photographer his camera, without fear of let or hindrance. Secluded bits of ancient churchyard, portions of long-forgotten convent garden, of old wall or bastion, or of antique plane-tree grove; it is such nooks as these that, even more than in Kensington Gardens, suggest Matthew Arnold's lovely lines:
"Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, above the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar."
To see and know the City with any proper appreciation of its interests and beauties, would require many days of wandering and leisured perambulation. In no part of London do things and views come upon the pedestrian with more startling suddenness. Emerging from some narrow and smoky alley, where the house-roofs, perhaps, nearly meet overhead, he may find himself, by some sharp turn of the ways, almost directly under the enormous blackened dome of St. Paul's,—looking, in such close proximity,—and especially if there happen to be any fog about,—of positively incredible size. Or he may find peaceful red-brick rectories, that suggest country villages, adjoining, in all charity, noisy mills and warehouses; or railways and canals, which give forth smoke and steam with amiable impartiality, and intersect streets where fragments of old houses yet linger in picturesque decay; or, again, noisy tram-lines, cutting through mediæval squares, that, once upon a time, were peaceful and residential. Yet, after all, it ill becomes us to murmur at the tram-lines and the railways; we ought rather to be thankful that anything at all of the old time is left us. For, in the City, where things are, and ever must be, chiefly utilitarian, the survival of ancient relics is all the more to be wondered at.
But the time of careless and rash destruction is past. The antiquarian spirit is now fairly in our midst, and mediæval remains are preserved, sometimes even at no slight inconvenience. And when the progress of the world, and of railways, requires certain sites, even then the buildings on these, or their most interesting portions, are, so far as possible, spared and protected from further injury. Thus, when the site of "Sir Paul Pindar's" beautiful old mansion in Bishopsgate Street was required for the enlargements of the Great Eastern Railway Company, its elaborately-carved wooden front was transported bodily to the South Kensington Museum, which it now adorns; and the church tower of the ancient "All Hallows Staining," surviving its demolished nave and choir, still stands, a curiously isolated relic, in the green square of the Clothworkers' Hall; that company being bound over to keep it in order and repair. Similarly, the pains and the great expense incurred in the careful restoration of that old Holborn landmark, Staple Inn, a score or so of years back, are well known. And "Crosby Hall," anciently Crosby Place, that famous Elizabethan mansion commemorated in Shakespeare's Richard III., is now, after much danger and many vicissitudes, utilised for the purposes of a restaurant, which, at least ensures the keeping of it in proper and timely repair. Fifty, even thirty, years ago, ancient monuments were more lightly valued, sometimes even rescued with difficulty from the hands of the destroyer; now, however, the veneration for old landmarks is more widespread. Repairs to old buildings are, to a certain extent, always necessary; for in London, more than anywhere, long neglect means inevitable decay and destruction. And if in certain districts Philistines may yet have their way, if the taste of the builder and restorer is not always faultless, things have at any rate much improved since early Victorian days.
Of the many delightful excursions to be made in and about the City, perhaps that to the ancient priory church of St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, and the neighbouring precincts of the Charterhouse, ranks first. The church is a Norman relic unique in London, a bit of mediævalism, left curiously stranded amid the desolation and destruction of all its compeers. Though St. Bartholomew the Great is easily reached from Newgate Street, being indeed but just beyond the famous hospital of the same name, it is yet difficult to find. Its diminutive and somewhat inadequate red-brick tower is but just visible above the row of houses that divide it from Smithfield, and the modest entrance to its precincts, underneath a mere shop-archway, may easily be missed. The church is, in fact, almost hidden by neighbouring houses. While its main entrance faces Smithfield, the dark, mysterious, densely-inhabited district called "Little Britain" crowds in closely upon it on two sides, and the picturesque alley named "Cloth Fair" abuts against it on another. It is, therefore, difficult to get much of a view of it anywhere from outside; you may, indeed, get close to it, and yet lose your way to it. The ancient priory church has only recently been disentangled from the surrounding factories and buildings, that in the lapse of careless centuries had been suffered to invade it.
Clothfair.
The entrance door from West Smithfield, though insignificant in size, is yet deserving of notice; for it is a pointed Early English arch with dog-tooth ornamentation. Hence, a narrow passage leads through a most quaint churchyard; an old-time burial-ground, a bit of rank and untended greenery, interspersed with decaying and falling gravestones, and hemmed in by the backs of the tottering Cloth Fair houses; ancient lath-and-plaster tenements, crumbling and dirty, their lower timbers bulging, yet most picturesque in their decay. They all appear to be let out in rooms to poor workers; above, patched and ragged articles of clothing are hanging out to dry, while on the ground floor you may see a shoemaker hammering away at his last, or a carpenter at his lathe, his light much intercepted by a big adjacent gravestone, on which a black cat, emblem of witchery, is sitting. The gravestones seem not at all to affect the cheerfulness of the population; perhaps, indeed, as in the case of Mr. Oram, the coffinmaker, these wax the more cheerful because of their gloomy surroundings. The whole scene, nevertheless, is most strangely weird, and reminds one of nothing so much as of that ghoulish churchyard described by Dickens as in "Tom-All-Alone's;" with this exception, that Dickens only saw the sad humanity of such places, and not their undoubted picturesqueness.
Beyond this strange disused burial-ground the church is entered. The history of its foundation is a romantic one. The priory church, with its monastery and hospital, was the direct outcome of a religious vow. In the twelfth century, when the little Norman London of the day was the town of monasteries and church bells likened by Sir Walter Besant to the "Île Sonnante" of Rabelais; in or about 1120, one of King Henry I.'s courtiers, Rahere or Rayer (the spelling of that time is uncertain), went on a pilgrimage to Rome. At Rome he, as people still often do, fell ill of malarial fever, and, as is less common, perhaps nowadays, vowed, if he recovered, to build a hospital for the "recreacion of poure men." Rahere was, says the chronicler, "a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore in his time called the King's minstrel." (Hence, no doubt, he has been called also "the King's jester"; though this appears to be incorrect.) Lively and "pleasant-witted" people are, we know, apt to take sudden conversion hardly; and Rahere was certainly as thorough in his dealings with the devil as was any mediæval saint. In his sickness he had a vision, and in that vision he saw a great beast with four feet and two wings; this beast seized him and carried him to a high place whence he could see "the bottomless pit" and all its horrors. From this very disagreeable position he was delivered by the merciful St. Bartholomew, who thereupon ordered him to go home and build a church in his honour on a site that he should direct, assuring him that he (the saint), would supply the necessary funds. Returning home, Rahere gained the king's consent to the work, which was forthwith begun, and assisted greatly by miraculous agency; such as bright light shining on the roof of the rising edifice, wonderful cures worked there, and all such supernatural revelations. When Rahere died, in the odour of sanctity, and the first prior of his foundation, he left thirteen canons attached to it; which number his successor, Prior Thomas, had raised in 1174 to
