DEBATING CLUBS AND COGERS'S HALL.
SHOE lane hath a very unromantic sound for a locality. It does not smell of the aristocracy. It hath not even a slight favor of the Landed Gentry, and no one could possibly take the trouble to find armorial bearings or hatchments for Shoe lane. Yet is Shoe lane a most eloquent place, and there is a little old public house there deemed second only in point of fame by the admirers of forensic eloquence who frequent it, to the House of Commons.
The way was long and dreary that Saturday night that I strolled from Long Acre, whose carriage-shops and leather manufacturers' stalls were all closed for the day; and the sultry London fog came down, blinding the pedestrians, as I turned from Lincoln's-Inn-fields into the better-lighted High Holborn, with the glare from its brassy gin-shops and dirty-looking old houses, that seemed all of them as if a good scouring would have done them an incalculable service in the way of a fresher appearance. I thought that Shoe lane was in a very suspicious neighborhood.
Turning to the left through Farringdon Market, a huge square seemingly devoted to the worship of highly odorous vegetables, I came into the narrow Shoe lane, which runs down at its bottom to Fleet street, just below where the gray stone arch of Temple bar bisects the Strand and Fleet street. There is nothing particularly noticeable about this part of Shoe lane.
SHOE LANE.
There is a ham and beef shop, with its layers of cold meat-pies piled on top of each other in the windows; and across the way there is the inevitable gin-shop, with its polished brass fender outside to keep off the boys who have no money to spend in gin, and there are the enticing signs all over the gin-shop telling of the merits of the brown-stout there vended, and the Burton ale and somebody's "entire" malt liquors which the proprietor assures the public are only genuine at his shop.
The lane is narrow here and not more than three or four men could pass abreast, although there are sidewalks to the lane, or rather apologies for sidewalks. This narrow lane is one of the few remaining relics of old London. Below, at the foot of Shoe lane, runs Fleet street—one of the busiest marts in the world, which is ever jammed and blocked with drays, cabs, and vehicles of all descriptions crowding to and fro, in sight of the mighty dome of St. Paul's; and under the pavement of that street, so famous for its publications and shops, the old River Fleet once ran in a dirty, hideous current, until it emptied its garnered filth into the Thames.
Here, opposite Shoe lane, one of the curious old conduits that formerly supplied old London with water might have been seen about the time of the wars of the Roses, when the English nobles were hard at work cutting each other's throats and making and unmaking kings for the want of something better to do. The cistern erected at the point where Shoe lane intersects Fleet street, was counted one of the handsomest in London. Stow—that quaint, old, musty chronicler—says: