sunrise or after sunset. The Gate-house was a prison for offenders in general. Here Colonel Lovelace, the poet, was confined, as were many of the royalists in the time of Cromwell. The last relic of the building was removed a few years since; it was a portion of the old wall with an ancient pointed arch; it stood at the entrance to the Dean's Yard, where the way is now to the schools.

The Little Sanctuary included that portion of ground opposite St. Margaret's Church where now stands the sessions-house, the hospital, and mews. It consisted, as lately as 1806, of a cluster of streets with gabled overhanging old plastered houses, partially decayed, and exhibiting their timber framework in a tottering condition. Upon pulling them down, the original gates leading to the Sanctuary were discovered, which then formed the entrance to a narrow way that received the appellation of Thieving Lane,' so given, probably, because down that lane felons were led to the old Gate-house prison; but the inhabitants may have occasioned the bestowal of the title upon the street they inhabited, for it is recorded as being haunted by the worst of characters, and a harbour for filth and pestilence.

Το

The Almonry recently was literally worse than it can be represented. Prepared as we were for all that was vile and revolting in its miserable inhabitants, we were not,―could not, be prepared for all we there saw. say that it was the St. Giles's of the west end, is saying nothing; its dark and unclean streets were the abodes of infamy. Those who, impelled by a holy wish to save from sin, visited it by day, crept cautiously along, shrinking from the haggard faces or thievish hands, that found refuge there when they could find it nowhere else. The impure district, called by a name so redolent of charity, consisted of a cluster of small streets, buried as it were between the greater thoroughfares of Westminster; which, however, had no direct communication with them but by narrow alleys and courts still narrower, several of them being mere doorways that formed dark passages in the close and murky streets, whose dim and shattered windows let the cold blast in, and the fumes and voices of maddening and most degrading dissipation out. Ragged and blear-eyed children, serving to show how hideously sin can deform even a child, peered at, and cursed us as we passed. Rushing like a pestilence, from beneath an antique doorway, came a woman intoxicated,

followed by a still more intoxicated man, brandishing a broom, with which he had not power to strike; some of their neighbours,' in their savage pleasure at the chase, expressed their satisfaction by loud oaths and shouting; and a costermonger, while loading his poor donkey from a cellar with more wood than a horse ought to carry, assured a heap of moving blacknessa sweep, we believe-who was half drowning kittens in a broken crock taking them out to see if they were dead, and then putting them in again,

Caxton's House.

not heeding that their tailless mother expressed her agony by every means in her power, -'that he'd leave the place next week no one could

stand it.' Having made our way from this open den, we fell to conversing with ourselves as to why our righteous folk did not purify what was in the very olden time, a district sacred to deeds of love and holiness; and at last we got into Little Dean Street, by which, we afterwards learned, we might have reached Caxton's house without so much annoyance as we had experienced, and which, truth to say, somewhat

damped our antiquarian ardour, for the time; for the day was dark, and the miserable people we encountered, darker still.

Much of this unwholesome district has since our visit been removed; a new street, of great width, is opened through its densest lanes. The squalid inhabitants have passed, we hope, to healthier localities. We now continue to describe the place as it was before the alterations and when the house called Caxton's was standing.

Passing down Little Dean Street, the distance of some dozen houses,

the lane suddenly widened, as if it were aware that, bad as it was, it contained something worth looking at; and so it did, for there stood the remarkable house here engraved :-a timber and plaster erection, of three stories in height, the last story having a wooden balcony resting on the projecting windows below, with doors leading on to it ;-which has been traditionally called the house of William Caxton. Its antiquity cannot be safely ascribed to so early a date as the period when our printer lived, but it may have stood upon the site, or have been altered from the original

structure.

The Roxburghe Club did themselves much honour when they erected a monument to this hero of letters, in the church where he lies buried,St. Margaret's, Westminster.

But England has not yet discharged its duty to its great citizen-its mighty benefactor: surely it is high time that a monument worthy of his fame, and of his country, should perpetuate the memory of one to whom England owes so large a debt of gratitude.

SHAFTESBURY HOUSE.

HAFTESBURY HOUSE in the Fulham Road -with the certainty of its having been inhabited by the author of the Characteristics,' and the interesting tradition (a tradition only) that Locke wrote some of his Essays in a summer-house in its garden-is now occupied by upwards of 400 of the aged and infant poor of St. George's parish. An Act of Parliament, passed in the year 1787, pronounces it to be in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, as long as it is

appropriated to its present use,' and renders it exempt from all dues and rates, upon the payment of 31. 3s. annually to the rector, and 67. 13s. 4d. to the parish of Chelsea,' so, at least, Faulkner tells us, and we generally find him correct. The lodge at the entrance, as you see, is peculiar; the gate being of old wrought iron. The porter permitted us to pass in; and, while he sought the master, we had leisure to look around us. The stone steps are of old times, they are wide, and much worn; a low wall flanks either side, and on the right, downwards, are steps of narrower dimensions leading to the underground apartments. When we entered, we perceived that the hall is paneled in, so as to form a passage; but this is a modern innovation; there can be no doubt of its having been in Lord Shaftesbury's

time a good-sized hall: the banisters and supporters of the very handsome staircase are in admirable preservation, delicately, rather than richly carved

in oak, and not at all injured; the stairs are also of oak. What remains of the old house is chopped up, as it were, into small apartments; but there are rich and varied indications of the light of other days' to illumine. the whole over several of the doors are strips of paintings, which, as well as can be seen through thick varnish, are the productions of no feeble pencil. With a little trouble these old paintings can be made out; but they would seem bitter mockeries, occupied as the house at present is; and yet

one of the inmates said, 'She liked to look up at that bit of picture, when she was sick a-bed; it took away the notion of a workhouse.' might be made a teacher even here.

Surely Art

Some of the rooms retain an antique air. That named the Chancellor's Closet,' is the most original and characteristic, and is delineated in our engraving (on the succeeding page). A painting, over the fire-place, executed on panel, represents a group of classic ruins and statues in the taste of the time of William the Third. The panel paintings in the other rooms are pastoral scenes; one over the chimney of the parlour is a Dutchlooking landscape with cattle, very like a copy of Berghem; others represent