London and Elsewhere."

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 4

London and Elsewhere."

By Thomas Purnell,

Empty London. Anecdotes touching the doings of the late great sea-serpent have not yet been oir. ciliated ', bat another joke, usually expected at the same season of the year, ie in full currency. It is already affirmed that Lon don ia- empty. It is pretended that the cities, liberties, precincts, boroughs, and townships which constitute the metropolis, and contain at this moment over four million souls, are without inhabitants. The fiction was, doubtless, invented by men who hold, like a well-known wit held, that London is bounded on the South by Pall Mall, on the North by Piccadilly, on the East by the Haymarket, and on the Weat by St. James's Street. The grim joke is directed against those who are unable to take holiday out of town at this time of year, and so keenly is the jett felt, that many families and individuals pretend to be away while they are still at home. Of the remaining community there are, of course, vast numbers would who gladly leave London for the furthermost ends of the earth, bad they the means and opportunity. But there are also vast numherß with both meana and oppor« tunity who have no deeire to go beyond the bounds of the metropolis. With them London is itself a holiday which never satiates. They look upon ' London as the best place in summer and the only place in winter. From choice they remain here all the year round. These are the genuine Cockneys.

Famous Cooltneys. The term Cockney is often applied contemptuously to one who is London-born. But the object of the satire may console himself with the reflection that some of the meet illustrious personages that figure in our history were also Cockneys, Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Loid Chatham, Horace Walpole, Charles James Fox, Chaucer, Speuser, Ben Jonson, Milton, Cowley (Bon( 8on of a grocer in Fleet Street), Pope{BonofalinendraperinLombardStre6t), poets, historians, novelists, musicians, Gray (eon of a linen-draper in Cornhill), Daniel Defoe (son of a butcher in St. Giles's, Cripplegate), and Lord Byron, are some few of the many immortals who first saw the light in London. Theii again, there are the illustrious dead occupying its soil. At Westminster, for instance, the man who remains in town against his will, equally with him who stays from choice, may, in a sense, be 6aid to have Edward the Confeepor for a companion. This spnt of earth, with its Kings and Queene, stateeraen, divines, jutiets, and philosophers— our Englieh Carapo Santo — holds more famous men than any other on the globo. Here every port of hero-worshipper has a ehrino. But the Abbey is not a monopolist of the illustrious dead Far and near in Cockayne i here are fanes which contain all that remains of come Englishmen whoae name posterity has not lee die. Near by the Abbay, in St. Margaret's, lies Sir Walter Raleigh : Gower,the poet, is in St. Saviour's, Southwark ; Kit Marlowe found a grave in Deptford Old Church ; Bunyan and Defoo are in BunhiU Fields ; Sterne was placed in Bayswater burial ground, whence, it is i-a'id, the body waa stolen for dissecting purposes. Here, too, Picton was laid till a place for him was tound alongside of Kelson and Wellington in St. Paul's. Fletchsr, separate in death fiom Beaumont — who is in the Abbey— lies in St Saviour's, Southwark. Goldsmith i s . in the ground of the Temple Church.

The Sights of the Tower. Vie passed up the winding ytaire, at the foot of whica the bones ot the " murdered P'inces" we:e found, and «iw thousands of rifles ; then we examined the &oiie3 of suite of unnour "assigned, for the pako of chronology," to pome king or knight, but 11 none are known to have boon worn by th<"> peipona to whom they are a-si^ned, except in a very feu instances"."' The instruments oftortmo - thuoibikins.or thutnbsciewb, rho iron collar of torment, " fallen irotn the Spmiurd in I,"5SS,'' the cloak on which General Wolfe died befoie Quebec, the " cravat," an iron instrumenMoi couhning fit once thy head, hands, and feet — weio all exhioited and explained to v->, and 1 felt the axe and laid my neck on the blork. In thi« building one feels oneself in the Towpr, and wuuld not bo surpiised to hear " Off with a. head or two !" We did not linger. All I hoaul of the equestiian ligures in armour, the rifles, the Oriental arm?, the intere-ting remains of early gunneiy. vas put out of my head by tho remark of tho warder in presence of some French helmets exhibited. The younv Prince Imperial of Fiance hid a short time bofoie been take., aiouud a.-^ wo woie, and upon reaching tiioo helmett, winch were Cri{»tuied at \\\iterlco, exhibited devp emotion to his? upon which the warder, with pardonabiO provarieition, described them a?> acquirtd in the East Indies "I could, not fell him, sir, they were taken fiom the enctu}," he eaid, as we turned to leave,

Famous London Streets. A glance at the hittory of London in the handbooks will show that, were we to maik each houpe wherein eminent pert-c * have lived, the number of tablet? would have to bo £t ri ater than tnteht at first bo fuppo^ed. Flcet-btreet and Cheaywde would have a goodly number. Keats? v. roto his ?onnet on Chapman* " Homer " in the eecond floor of No. 71 Chearjiide ; Sir Thoma9 More was born in Milk-street, and Milton in Bread-street, Cheap^ide ; Dr. Johnson completed his dictionary in the garret cf No. 17 Gough Square, Fleet-street, and died at No. S Bolt Court. Gold»mirh, who lived for nome timo in Wine OlHce Court, died at 2 Brick Court Temple. Locke dates the dedication of his " E-suy on the Human Uuder-natifliofr " from Dorset Court. If we go Weet or E^-t of Temple Bar we shall find mementoes of departed greatne&s crowding before us Peter the Great lived on the site of the la?t house on the West side of Buckingham Street, Strand; in Hartsborne Lane, just by, Bon Joneon first saw the light. Further on, in '24 Arlington Street, Piccadily, Horace Walpole was born. Were the practice observed, to which allusion baa be«n modn, a slab would have to be let into Cavaudtth Square, as the birthplace of Byron Another would have to be placed on r»o. 42 Gerrard Btreet, Soho, to mark ifc a^ the death-place of John Dryden. In No 25 of the same street Edmund Burke lived for some time. Sterne died at 41 Old Bond Street. Durirur the struggle for Catholic Emancipation Daniel O'Connell stayed in 20 Bury ritreofc ; in 27 of the pame street Tom Moore resided ; and in 37, the poet Crabbe. Gibbon composed his defence of the *' Decline and Fail " at No. 7 Manchester Street ; Byron, who spent hia short married life at 139 Piccadilly, wrote hie " Lara " in tho room of tbe Albany 2a, facing Saville Ro<v. Sir Isaac Newton made aeveral interesting discoveries at his residence in St. Martin Street, Leicester Square, where hia observatory was till lace)y to be seen at the top of the house. This square x« noced also for having been the residence of Sir Joshua Reynolds on the West side, aud ot Hogavth on the East.

Ferlls of Hansom Cabs, I never could agree with my Lord

Beaconefield's description- or our hansom cab as the gondola of London. In one point there is the greatest difference ' conceivable between them; Accidents do not happen to gondolas, while the traveller in a hansom is liable to wore perils than could befall any skiff, pinnace, wherry, outrigger, coracle, felucca, junk, or cook-boat that ever glided into the wafer. Street *coi> dents in London are more numerous than casualties at sea. I regularly study the returns, then tabulate them, giving especial attention to the destruction caused by hansom cabs. Thus I allot a column respectively to accidents occasioned by drop* ping of a wheel, by the fracture of an axle, by collision with another vehicle, by fright ot a horse, and by the fare dropping out. In this way I arrive, by the doctrine of probabilities, at an accurate notion of the degree and kind of danger to which, as an habitual rider in a hansom cab, I am liable. Nobody must suppose that, knowing the peril, I brave it lightly. lam never happy in a hansom cab. In the day-time, and by selecting a quiet horse with a steady driver, I leßEen my nervousness. But the thought that an accident may be occasioned by the restive horse or unsteady driver of another vehicle does not inspire me with confidence. At night one does not get the opportunity of choosing. With a flare of the lamp in his own face, a man jumps into a cab without seeing the face of his pilot. So far as he knows, it might be the ghost of Jehu or Mephisto himself that he has hired. Not even that remote sort of relationship between two men who have looked into each other's eves exists between him and the muffled figure in whose hands are the reins and— the life of bis passenger.