Round about St. Paul's are many and labyrinthine lanes and alleys, with no less labyrinthine associations. Some of these alleys are, like Paternoster Row, or St. Paul's Churchyard, by day crowded aortas of human traffic; others, by strange contrast, are silent and still as the grave. London is, as we know, full of unexpected nooks of quiet; and none, in their way, are more sudden and startling than those about St. Paul's. From busy Paternoster Row, with its array of religious book-shops of all denominations,—so crowded, and yet so narrow, that a man on one of its sidewalks can, by stretching, almost grasp the hand of a man on the other (or could perhaps do so, were it not so constantly blocked by multifarious traffic),—from noisy Paternoster Row to the calm of "Amen Court,"—the quadrangle of canons' residences opening out of it,—what a change! Here, in Amen Court, entered by a pleasant, sober red-brick gateway, Canon Liddon's last days were spent; here are quiet, old-fashioned houses looking, in summer, on to green plots and refreshing shrubs. All this seclusion, and yet the very heart of London! Warwick Square, close by, is a haven of another sort; a stony square set round with tall offices; roomy houses, perhaps formerly residential mansions, with here and there an attractively carved antique porch, or other relic of the past. It was under a house in this square, in rebuilding, that various Roman remains were recently found. In Paternoster Row, at the corner of "Chapter-house Court," was, in old days, the "Chapter" Coffee House, where the old medical club of the "Wittenagemot" was held, and where, later, Charlotte and Anne Brontë came on their first visit to London, after the successful publication of Jane Eyre, to make their real personalities known to their publishers, in 1848. Two little lonely, strangely-dressed women they must have seemed!—their only friend the elderly waiter of the establishment, who no doubt, took an interest in such unusual visitors. Yet, what excitement must they not have felt in seeing, for the first time, all that they had read and dreamed of for years! One is reminded of the story of their brother Branwell, that unhappy child of genius and temptation, who, at lonely Haworth Parsonage, knew all "the map of London by heart" without ever having been there, and who could direct any chance stranger who happened, going Londonwards, to put up at the remote Yorkshire inn.

"Panyer Alley," the last entry leading into Newgate Street, commemorates the bakers' basket-makers, or "Panyers," of the fourteenth century. Here, built into the wall of a modern house and nearly obliterated, was, till quite recently, a relief of a boy sitting on a "panyer," with this curious inscription:

"When Ye have sought
The Citty Round
Yet still This is
The Highest Ground
Avgvst the 27
1688."

Close by used to be the tavern called "Dolly's Chop-House," removed in 1883. The views obtained of the Cathedral, down some of these narrow byways, are very striking:

"There is a passage leading from Paternoster Row to St. Paul's Churchyard. It is a slit, through which the Cathedral is seen more grandly than from any other point I can call to mind. It would make a fine dreamy picture, as we saw it one moonlight night, with some belated creatures resting against the walls in the foreground—mere spots set against the base of Wren's mighty work, that, through the narrow opening, seemed to have its cross set against the sky."

The famous open-air pulpit called "Paul's" or "Powle's" Cross—noted for so many eloquent and impassioned harangues from mediæval divines,—for the proclamation of kings,—for the denunciation of traitors,—used to stand at the north-east corner of the churchyard. It was a canopied cross, raised on stone steps; a big elm marked its site until some fifty years back. Open-air services, discontinued after the demolition of "Paul's Cross," were attempted to be revived by Wesley and Whitefield; and, even in our own day, an open-air pulpit is used, in summer, at Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, and largely attended, as any one who passes by Portland Road Station on Sunday afternoon may see for himself. Public confession for crime was also made at "Paul's Cross," and Jane Shore did penance here, as described by Sir Thomas More. East of St. Paul's, where now a line of tall warehouses rises, was, until 1884, St. Paul's School, founded in 1509 by Dean Colet, friend of Erasmus, and now removed to new red brick buildings at Hammersmith; a tablet on one of the warehouses marks its site. The old fashioned Deanery of St. Paul's,—a homely building, not unlike a quiet country rectory, with red tiled sloping roofs, and nearly hidden behind high walls,—is in Dean's Court, just south of the cathedral. Close by it is St. Paul's Choristers' School, built in 1874 by Dean Church.

Returning to the portico of the north transept, it is pleasant to sit awhile in St Paul's Churchyard, where the doves coo and the pigeons flutter. Or if you stand by the iron gate of the enclosure, and raise your eyes to the blackened walls and columns, you will see, above the north porch, an inscription on a tablet, perpetuating the memory of the great builder, "in four words which comprehend his merit and his fame:" "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." (If thou seekest his monument, look around.) "The visitor," says Leigh Hunt, "does look around, and the whole interior of the Cathedral ... seems like a magnificent vault over his single body." And, gazing, in this sense, on the great man's tomb, the burning words of Ecclesiasticus suggest themselves, read by the Bishop of Stepney at the unveiling of Lord Leighton's monument:

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning.... Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions.... All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there lie, which have no memorial ... but ... their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore."

CHAPTER V
THE TOWER

Prince Edward: "Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?"
Buckingham: "He did, my gracious lord, begin that place;
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified...."
Richard of York: "What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?...
... I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower."
Gloucester: "Why, what should you fear?"
Richard of York: "Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost:
My grandam told me he was murder'd there."
—King Richard III., Act iii, Scene 1.