graphical prints of great interest. The Courts of Law at Guildhall were but mean structures, which were superseded upon the opening of the Courts of Justice in the Strand. The Guildhall School of Music founded March, 1883, in Aldermanbury, is a highly flourishing institution. Opposite the Cheapside end of King Street is Queen Street, leading to Southwark Bridge. Mercers' Hall and Chapel, belonging to the Mercers' Company, the oldest of the city guilds, is at 87 Cheapside, but the entrance to it is in Ironmonger Lane. Thomas à Becket was born in a house then standing on the site of Mercers' Hall. Old Jewry was named from the Jews dwelling there. They were first introduced into England by William Rufus, in whose reign, it is said, the parishes of St. Martin, St. Edward, and St. Aldgate were denominated the New and Old Jewry. They established themselves also in other towns, living separately from the citizens in quarters denominated Jewries, which were exempt from the common law, and were regulated by the King's Justiciary. The Jew was then the money-lender of Europe, and the King found it useful to tolerate him, to allow him to build his own synagogue, and to protect him from popular hatred. Edward I. expelled every Jew from the kingdom, and they were not re-admitted until Cromwell allowed them to return, when they settled in New Jewry in Aldgate-where they live to this day. From this historical fact, it has been argued, but not by any means conclusively, that Shakespeare, though he drew the grand portrait of Shylock, had probably himself never seen a Jew. The Head Office of the City Police is at 26, Old Jewry, E.C. 66 THE POULTRY.-The east end of Cheapside was so named from the poulterers' stalls of the Stocks-market. The Poultry Compter was at one time a prison of some note. Tom Hood was born in the Poultry (1798); his father was one of the firm of Vernor and Hood, publishers of Bloomfield's Poems, &c., at No. 31. Robert Bloomfield, son of a tailor at Honington, in Suffolk, was himself a shoemaker, and worked in a garret in Great Bell Alley, Coleman Street. He composed his 'Farmer's Boy' while at work, and when he obtained time and writing materials, "had nothing to do," as he said, "but to write it down.' "There was a dash of ink in my blood," wrote Tom Hood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn.' In the Poultry were many old taverns of some note. The Hall of the Armourers' Company is in Coleman Street. Grocers' Hall, next 35 in the Poultry, belongs to the Grocers' Company (originally Pepperers, afterwards united to the Apothecaries' Company), which is second on the list of the twelve great companies incorporated by Edward III. Grocers' Hall was used from 1694 to 1734 for the business of the Bank of England. At the end of the Poultry begins the new street called Queen Victoria Street, leading from the Mansion House to Blackfriars Bridge. BUCKLERSBURY, named from Bukerel, its first owner, runs into Walbrook. It used to be noted for grocers' and 170 The Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. apothecaries' shops-scented with savoury herbs or simples. Falstaff speaks of "many of those lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time.” The MANSION HOUSE, the residence of the Lord Mayor during his year of office, was built 1739-41, by Dance, the then city surveyor, at a cost of over £70,000. The principal part of the building is the Egyptian Hall (named so after the Egyptian Hall described by Vitruvius, with which it is said exactly to correspond), decorated with numerous statues by modern artists. The City Police Court is held in one of the rooms of the Mansion House, and here the Lord Mayor, or one of the Aldermen, sits daily. The Lord Mayor's Show, as it is called, is a procession which takes place every 9th of November (Lord Mayor's Day), when the new Lord Mayor succeeds to the dignity, and goes, attended by the Aldermen, Sheriffs and Common Councilmen, with bands of music and with banners flying of all the city guilds, to the Exchequer Court to be sworn in. The cost of the banquet and festivities on Lord Mayor's Day is about £3,500, of which his lordship pays half, and each sheriff one-fourth. The official income of the Lord Mayor is £10,000-twice the income allowed to the Prime Minister, but considerably less than the sum which each Lord Mayor has to spend in order to maintain the credit of the Mansion House for hospitality. Of the onerous nature of his Lordship's duties a lately published well authenticated account furnishes some information. During his year of office a recent Lord Mayor attended 365 times at meetings and committees (= once every day, Sundays included); he was present at 130 public dinners and 85 receptions and balls; he received 36 deputations, made 1100 speeches, paid 20 State visits to churches, presided at 30 meetings of the Courts of Aldermen and Common Council, and attended 18 sittings at the Central Criminal Court. He received during the same period and answered over 5000 letters; and the Lady Mayoress, besides taking part in the above entertainments, was "at home daily for many months at the Mansion House. St. Stephen's, Walbrook, at the back of the Mansion House, is considered to be one of the best works of Sir Christopher Wren, who rebuilt the edifice after the Great Fire. The interior has been specially admired for its well-proportioned cupola and roof, with a circle of light arches springing from column to column. "As you enter the dark vestibule a halo of dazzling light flashes upon the eye through the central aperture of the cupola." There is a fine painting here by West, of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen. There lay buried, it is said, beneath the Church, when the repairs of 1850 took place, as many as 4000 coffins. John Lilburne and Sir John Vanbrugh have memorials here, where they were buried. Amongst the incumbents of St. Stephen's, was Pendleton, the celebrated Vicar of Bray, who stuck to his Vicarage through all the changes of the Revolution |