Threading our way to Bishopsgate Street, we find the churchyard of St Botolph, through which a public footway leads to a neighbouring street. The ground, right and left, is tastefully laid out as a garden with pretty shrubs and trees, the effect being pleasing and agreeable, especially in summer. Nearly opposite is the ancient church of St Ethelburga, hidden behind the houses, with a small confined space at the back, in which are fine trees. Two or three more trees are found in a small inclosure in the vicinity at the back of this church. Close by is also the curious and interesting church of St Helen, Bishopsgate, and in the ground round it are four ill-looking, scraggy trees.
Returning southward, and reaching Cornhill, we find a little burial-ground in the rear of the fine church of St Michael, Cornhill, neatly laid out, and planted with three small trees. Close by is another large church, St Peter-upon-Cornhill, with its small confined churchyard, also neatly laid out, and planted with two small unhealthy-looking trees.
Taking our way westward, we pass Christ’s Hospital in Newgate Street. The boys’ playground is a large open paved courtyard, destitute of grass, trees, or shrubs; but in the private gardens in the rear, trees, shrubs, and flowers are to be found, having a pleasant appearance. A little way beyond, we find St Andrew’s, Holborn, and in the open churchyard surrounding the church are many trees, but not much cultivation. Passing through the quaint old gateway, we find ourselves in the interior of Staple Inn, Holborn, with its Hall and gardens. The latter are neatly laid out with grass, shrubs, and trees, and carefully kept, affording a quiet retreat from the noise and racket of Holborn during the bright days of summer.
In conclusion, it may perhaps be worthy of remark that nearly all the places referred to are very small indeed, mere ‘garden nooks;’ some are churchyards surrounding churches; and for these reasons, apparently, none of them are open for the use of the public as places of recreation, except the cultivated churchyards of St Paul’s Cathedral, and St Botolph, Aldersgate, close by; and the squares of Finsbury, Trinity, and Charterhouse, which are open to the immediate residents. St Botolph, Bishopsgate, has, as already stated, a footway through its prettily laid out churchyard.
It is at least remarkable how trees will suddenly appear in the City in the most out-of-the-way corners, where a green leaf would be about the last thing looked for; yet such is the case, as it has already been shown. There are two sickly, scraggy, young trees in a little court, up a narrow dirty lane, on the south side of St Paul’s Cathedral, and at Stationers’ Hall, where no one would dream of looking for vegetation; and two or three more in Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, an inn devoted to law and lawyers. The peculiar character of ‘City trees,’ in nearly all cases, is that they are lanky, thin, and generally poor and unhealthy looking. It is rare, indeed, to find a tall, well-grown tree in any of these odd nooks and corners of the old City; perhaps the three finest in size and height are two plane-trees in front of a private house—now used as offices—in Queen Street, Cheapside; and the well-known single tree at the corner of Wood Street, Cheapside; but these instances are few and far between.
TREASURE TROVE.
A STORY IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.
Saint Quinians—that quaint little town which nestles in a valley close by the cruel, tumbling North Sea—looked forward, sixty years ago, to market-day as the one weekly break in the monotony of its existence, just as it does now. On Wednesdays, Saint Quinians became the centre to which active life converged from a score of villages and hamlets that regarded it as their metropolis. Wednesday was a point in the calendar upon which hinged all arrangements, and by which all events were calculated: people met upon Wednesday who never saw each other at any other time; and the news of Wednesday was the latest obtainable by many folk even at an epoch when forty coaches left London every evening. And if Saint Quinians’ shopkeepers looked forward to Wednesday as their busy day—if the farmers looked forward to it as the link which bound them with the outer world—if the local youth saved up their money and their spirits, and let them both out on Wednesday, Bertha West, who lived with her father in a solitary house on the shore, some four miles from the town, looked forward to it as the day when she met her sweetheart, Harry Symonds, and spent the happiest hours of her week. Every Wednesday, Harry Symonds met her at the old South Gate—the only one remaining to tell of days when Saint Quinians was a port of some fame, and contributed its quota of ships and men to the national navy—and if she was prevented from coming, a very miserable week was in store for the young man, as John West, the father of Bertha, did not approve of the attachment, for the rather selfish reason, that if his daughter married, he was left alone in the world.
They had been sweethearting in this semi-clandestine manner for more than a year, and Harry Symonds was beginning to face mentally the awkward problem of what was to be done, should the old man persist in his opposition to the match. Not only this; but the young man was aware that the pretty girl whom he had learned to regard as his own inalienable private property was the object of very marked attention on the part of a certain Jasper Rodley, a youth who bore no very high character in the town, who had suddenly disappeared from it for three years, and had as unexpectedly returned; and although Harry trusted Bertha implicitly, he thought that a settlement of affairs would be an advisable step. And so when, one bright spring Wednesday morning, he met the girl coming with her market baskets on her arm along the path over the sandhills, she observed that his face was serious, and very naturally jumped at the conclusion that something was wrong.
‘Why, Harry,’ she exclaimed, ‘there’s a face for a lover to make who sees his sweetheart only once a week! There’s nothing wrong, is there?’