Further west are the quiet precincts of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the most ancient and, on the whole, the most attractive of all, with its famous houses and institutions of a storied past.
While, if not actually to be counted as city squares, they perform in no small degree many of their functions.
Red Lion Square, to the north of Fleet Street, is gloomy enough, and reminiscent of the old "Red Lion" Inn, for long "the largest and best frequented inn in Holborn," and yet more worthily, as being the residence of Milton after his pardon from King Charles.
Soho Square and Golden Square are quiet and charming retreats, away from the bustle of the shoppers of Regent and Oxford Streets, though perhaps melancholy enough to the seeker after real architectural charm and beauty.
It is to Bloomsbury that the heart of the American most fondly turns, whether he takes residence there by reason of its being "so near to the British Museum, you know," or for motives of economy, either of which should be sufficient of itself, likewise commendable.
The museum itself, with its reading-room and collections, is the great attraction, it cannot be denied, of this section of London, and Bloomsbury Square, Torrington Square, Queen's Square, and Mecklenburgh Square, where Dickens lived and wrote much of "Pickwick" in 1837-39, are given over largely to "board-residence" establishments for the visitor, or he who for reasons good and true desires to make his abode in historic old Bloomsbury.
In Dickens' time the region had become the haunt of those who affected science, literature, or art, by reason of the proximity of the British Museum and the newly founded University of London.
The wealthy element, who were not desirous of being classed among the fashionables, were attracted here by its nearness to the open country and Regent's Park. Thus, clustering around Bloomsbury is a whole nucleus of squares; "some comely," says a writer, "some elegant," and all with a middle-class air about them.
Still further west are the aristocratic and exclusive St. James' Square, Berkley, Belgrave, Grosvenor, Manchester, Devonshire, and many more rectangles which are still the possession of the exclusives and pseudo-fashionables. Their histories and their goings-on are lengthy chronicles, and are not within the purpose of this book, hence may be dismissed with mere mention.
The flow of the Thames from west to east through the metropolis has given a general direction to the lines of street; the principal thoroughfares being, in some measure, parallel to the river, with the inferior, or at least shorter, streets branching from them. Intersecting the town lengthwise, or from east to west, are two great leading thoroughfares at a short distance from each other, but gradually diverging at their western extremity. One of these routes begins in the eastern environs, near Blackwall, and extends along Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, the Poultry, Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, and Oxford Street. The other may be considered as starting at London Bridge, and passing up King William Street into Cheapside, at the western end of which it makes a bend round St. Paul's Churchyard; thence proceeds down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing Cross, where it sends a branch off to the left to Whitehall, and another diagonally to the right, up Cockspur Street; this leads forward into Pall Mall, and sends an offshoot up Waterloo Place into Piccadilly, which proceeds westward to Hyde Park Corner. These are the two main lines of the metropolis.