Letter 4.
London.
Dear Charley:—
Does it not seem strange that I am here in London? I can hardly tell what to write about first. I stand at the door of our hotel and look at the crowds in the streets, and then at old King Charles, at Charing Cross, directly across the road, and when I think that this is the old city where Wat Tyler figured, and Whittington was lord mayor, and Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, and where the Tower is still to be seen, I am half beside myself, and want to do nothing but roam about for a good month to come. I have read so much concerning London, that I am pretty sure I know more about it than many of the boys who have heard Bow Church bells all their lives. We left Liverpool for Birmingham, where we passed an afternoon and evening in the family of a manufacturer very pleasantly, and at ten o'clock took the express mail train for London. We are staying at a hotel called the Golden Cross, Charing Cross. We have our breakfast in the coffee-room, and then dine as it suits our convenience as to place and hour. We spent one day in riding about the city, and I think we got quite an idea of the great streets.
The Strand is a very fine business street, perhaps a mile long. It widens in one part, and has two churches in the middle of it, and a narrow street seems built inside it at one place, as nasty, dirty a lane as I ever saw, called Hollowell Street. I was very much delighted at the end of the Strand to see old Temple Bar, which is the entrance to the city proper, and which divides Fleet Street from the Strand. It is a noble archway, with small side arches for foot passengers. The head of many a poor fellow, and the quarters of men called traitors, have been fastened over this gateway in former times.
Dr. Johnson was once walking in Westminster Abbey with Goldsmith, and as they were looking at the Poet's Corner, Johnson said to his friend,—
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."
When they had walked on to Temple Bar, Goldsmith stopped Johnson, and pointed to the heads of Fletcher and Townley, hanging above, and slyly remarked,—