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The Survey of London, by John Stow Author: John Stow, Contributor: Henry B. Wheatley B00DLAT4BW File Size: 1010 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- london, history, CITY, TRAVEL, Bridges, Gates, TOPOGRAPHY Stow?s Survey of London, from its first publication in 1598, has taken rank as the first authority on the history of London, but this very fame has been the cause of some injury to the unity of the work, owing to the additions of successive editors, whose words have often been quoted as if they were written by the original author, although often referring to occurrences long after Stow?s death. What the reader of to-day wants, is the original work as it left the hands of the veteran antiquary, or as nearly as the change of spelling allows, because this gives him a vivid picture of Elizabethan London--the city in which Shakespeare lived and worked among a multitude of the men and women of those "spacious days," respecting whom we are all eager to learn something more. The Survey is a masterpiece of topographical literature written by a Londoner of ripe experience, who was interested in everything that occurred around him. Stow founded his work upon documents of great value collected by himself, and also upon the splendid series of manuscripts belonging to the city of London, to which he had access as "fee?d chronicler" of the corporation. The great charm of the book to the general reader is to be found in the personal touches by which we are informed of changes and incidents which occurred in Stow?s own experience. Of this special feature several instances have been singled out, such as the boy fetching milk from the farm attached to the abbey of the minoresses, for which he paid one halfpenny for three pints; and the staking out by the tyrannical Thomas Cromwell of part of the gardens of Stow?s father and others in Throgmorton Street to be added to his own garden, which after his execution came into the possession of the Drapers? Company, and are now covered by Throgmorton Avenue. Stow, in his description of the monuments of St. Paul?s, alluding to the burial places of Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Christopher Hatton, says of the latter "under a most sumptuous monument where merry poet writ thus-- "Philip and Francis have no tombe, For great Christopher takes all the roome."   London by Walter Besant : (full image Illustrated) Walter Besant B00KQX56IM File Size: 6263 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- London, history, city, citizens, churches, SAXON, England Where there is so much to speak about, one must exercise care in selection. I have endeavored to avoid as much as possible those points which have already been presented. For instance, the growth of the municipality, the rise of the Guilds and the Companies, the laws of London, the relations of the City to the Sovereign and the State--these things belong to the continuous historian, not to him who draws a picture of a given time. In the latter case it is the effect of law, not its growth, which is important. Thus I have spoken of the pilgrimizing in the time of Henry II.; of the Mysteries of that time; things that belonged to the daily life; rather than to matters of policy, the stubborn tenacity of the City, or the changes that were coming over the conditions of existence and of trade. Again, in Plantagenet London one might have dwelt at length upon the action taken by London in successive civil wars. That, again, belongs to the historian. I have contented myself with sketching the churches and the monasteries, the palaces and the men-at-arms, the merchants and the workmen. Again, in the time of George II., the increase of trade, which then advanced by leaps and bounds, the widening of the world to London enterprise, the part which London took in the conquest of India and the ejection of France from North America belong to history. For my own part I have preferred to show the position, the influence, and the work of the Church at a time generally believed to be the deadest period in the whole history of the Church of England. This done, I have gone on to illustrate the day-by-day life of the citizens, with the prices of things, the management, and the appearance of the City. One thing remains to be said. Mr. Loftie, in his History of London (Stadford), first gave the world a reconstruction of the ground--the terrain--of London and its environs before ever a house was erected or an acre cleared. The first chapter of this book--that on Roman London and After--is chiefly due to a study of this map, and to realizing what that map means when applied to the scanty records of Augusta. This map enabled me to recover the years which followed the retreat of the Romans. I cannot allow this chapter to be called a Theory. It is, I venture to claim for it, nothing less than a Recovery. WALTER BESANT. United University Club: May 2, 1892. PREFACE In the following chapters it has been my endeavor to present pictures of the City of London--instantaneous photographs, showing the streets, the buildings, and the citizens at work and at play. Above all, the citizens: with their daily life in the streets, in the shops, in the churches, and in the houses; the merchant in the quays and on 'Change; the shopkeeper of Cheapside; the priests and the monks and the friars; the shouting of those who sell; the laughter and singing of those who feast and drink; the ringing of the bells; the dragging of the criminal to the pillory; the Riding of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen; the river with its boats and barges; the cheerful sound of pipe and tabor; the stage with its tumblers and its rope-dancers; the 'prentices with their clubs; the evening dance in the streets. I want my pictures to show all these things. The history of London has been undertaken by many writers; the presentment of the city and the people from age to age has never yet, I believe, been attempted. The sources whence one derives the materials for such an attempt are, in the earlier stages, perfectly well known and accessible to all. Chaucer, Froissart, Lydgate, certain volumes of the "Early English Text Society," occur to everybody. But the richest mine, for him who digs after the daily life of the London citizen during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is certainly Riley's great book of Extracts from the City Records. If there is any life or any reality in the three chapters of this book which treat of the Plantagenet period, it is certainly due to Riley. As regards the Tudor period, the wealth of illustration is astonishing. One might as well be writing of the city life of this day, so copious are the materials. But it is not to Shakespeare and the dramatists that we must look for the details so much as to the minor writers, the moralists and satirists, of whom the ordinary world knows nothing. The reign of Charles II. directs one to the Plague and to the Fire. I was fortunate in finding two tracts, one dealing with the plague of 1603, and the other with that of 1625. These, though they are earlier than Charles II., were invaluable, as illustrating the effect of the pestilence in causing an exodus of all who could get away, which took place as much in these earlier years as in 1666. Contemporary tracts on the state of London after the Fire, also happily discovered, proved useful. And when the Plague and the Fire had been dismissed, another extraordinary piece of good fortune put me in possession of certain household accounts which enabled me to present a bourgeois family of the period at home. CONTENTS AFTER THE ROMANS SAXON AND NORMAN PLANTAGENET TUDOR CHARLES THE SECOND GEORGE THE SECOND   The History of London by Walter Besant : (full image Illustrated) Walter Besant B00HXJFF0Q File Size: 3214 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- LONDON, HISTORY, Saxon, Fitzstephen, Pilgrims, Cathedral, Elizabethan 1. THE FOUNDATION OF LONDON. PART I. 'In the year 1108 B.C., Brutus, a descendant of ?neas, who was the son of Venus, came to England with his companions, after the taking of Troy, and founded the City of Troynovant, which is now called London. After a thousand years, during which the City grew and flourished exceedingly, one Lud became its king. He built walls and towers, and, among other things, the famous gate whose name still survives in the street called Ludgate. King Lud was succeeded by his brother Cassivelaunus, in whose time happened the invasion of the Romans under Julius C?sar. Troynovant, or London, then became a Roman city. It was newly fortified by Helena, mother of Constantine the Great.' This is the legend invented or copied by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued to be copied, and perhaps believed, almost to the present day. Having paid this tribute to old tradition, let us relate the true early history of the City, as it can be recovered from such documents as remain, from discoveries made in excavation, from fragments of architecture, and from the lie of the ground. The testimony derived from the lie of the ground is more important than any other, for several reasons. First, an historical document may be false, or inexact; for instance, the invention of a Brutus, son of ?neas, is false and absurd on the face of it. Or a document may be wrongly interpreted. Thus, a fragment of architecture may through ignorance be ascribed to the Roman, when it belongs to the Norman, period--one needs to be a profound student of architecture before an opinion of value can be pronounced upon the age of any monument: or it may be taken to mean something quite apart from the truth, as if a bastion of the old Roman fort, such as has been discovered on Cornhill, should be taken for part of the Roman wall. But the lie of the ground cannot deceive, and, in competent hands, cannot well be misunderstood. If we know the course of streams, the height and position of hills, the run of valleys, the site of marshes, the former extent of forests, the safety of harbours, the existence of fords, we have in our hands a guide-book to history. We can then understand why towns were built in certain positions, why trade sprang up, why invading armies landed at certain places, what course was taken by armies, and why battles have been fought on certain spots. For these things are not the result of chance, they are necessitated by the geographical position of the place, and by the lie of the ground. Why, for instance, is Dover one of the oldest towns in the country? Because it is the nearest landing ground for the continent, and because its hill forms a natural fortress for protecting that landing ground. Why was there a Roman station at Portsmouth? On account of the great and landlocked harbour. Why is Durham an ancient city? Because the steep hill made it almost impregnable. Why is Chester so called? Because it was from very ancient times a fort, or stationary camp (L. castra), against the wild Welsh.   South London by Sir Walter Besant : (full image Illustrated) Author: Sir Walter Besant, Illustrator: Francis S. Walker B00HWQOI3U File Size: 6345 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- LONDON, HISTORY, MONASTERY, ROYAL HOUSES, Greenwich, Palace, PILGRIMS In sending forth this book on 'South London,' the successor to my two preceding books on 'London' and 'Westminster,' I have to explain in this case, as before, that it is not a history, or a chronicle, or a consecutive account of the Borough and her suburbs that I offer, but, as in the other two books, chapters taken here and there from the mass of material which lies ready to hand, and especially chapters which illustrate the most important part of History, namely, the condition, the manners, the customs of the people dwelling in this place, now, like Westminster, a part of London: yet, until two or three hundred years ago, an ancient marsh kept from the overflowing tide by an Embankment, joined to the Dover road by a Causeway, settled and inhabited by two or three Houses of Religious: by half a dozen Palaces of Bishops, Abbots, and great Lords: by a colony of fishermen living on the Embankment from time immemorial, since the Embankment itself was built: and by a street of Inns and shops. I hope that 'South London' will be received with favour equal to that bestowed upon its predecessors. The chief difficulty in writing it has been that of selection from the great treasures which have accumulated about this strange spot. The contents of this volume do not form a tenth part of what might be written on the same plan, and still without including the History Proper of the Borough. I am like the showman in the 'Cries of London'--I pull the strings, and the children peep. Lo! Allectus goes forth to fight and die on Clapham Common: William's men burn the fishermen's cottages: little King Richard, that lovely boy, rides out, all in white and gold, from his Palace at Kennington--saw one ever so gallant a lad? The Bastard of Falconbridge bombards the city: Sir John Fastolfe's man is pressed into Jack Cade's army: the Minters make their last Sanctuary opposite St. George's: the Debtors languish in the King's Bench. There are many pictures in the box--but how many more there are for which no room could be found! I must acknowledge my obligations, first, to the Editor of the Pall Mall Magazine, where half of these chapters first had the honour of appearing, for the wealth of illustration of which he thought them worthy: and next to the artist, Mr. Percy Wadham, who has so faithfully and so cunningly carried out the task committed to him. WALTER BESANT. United University Club: September 1898. THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS I propose to call the series of chapters which are to follow by the general name of 'South London.' Like their predecessors on 'London' and 'Westminster,' they will not attempt, or pretend, to present a continuous history of this region--or, indeed, a history at all: they will endeavour to do for this part of London what their predecessors have already attempted for the Cities of London and Westminster: that is to say, they will present such episodes and incidents, with such characters, as may serve to illustrate the life of the place; the manners and customs of the people; the characteristics of the Borough and its outlying suburbs. So far as history means the march of armies and the clash of armour, we shall here find little history. So far, also, as history means the growth of our liberties, the struggles by which they were won; the apparent decay, or defeat, from time to time, of the spirit of freedom, with its inevitable recovery: the reader and the student may be referred to the pages of a Stubbs or a Freeman--not to my humbler page. Great is the work, and worthy to be held in the highest honour, of those who trace out the irresistible march of national freedom: I cannot join their company; I must be contented with the lowlier, yet somewhat useful, task of showing how the people, my forefathers, lived, and what they thought, and how they sang and feasted and made love and grew old and died.   Medi?val London by William Benham and Charles Welch : (full image Illustrated) William Benham, Charles Welch B00EPRZ9BE File Size: 1702 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- history, LONDON, ENGLAND, SURVEY, THAMES, PALACES, MANSIONS What are the Historical Limits of "Medi?val London?" Derivation of "London" The Roman City Outlying Districts Decay of Ancient London Renewal after the English Conquest was Complete London Christianised King Alfred's London Its Gradual Rise to Supremacy St. Paul's Cathedral William the Conqueror's London London in the days of the Plantagenets. Foundation of Westminster Abbey Rebuilt by Henry III. St. Clement Danes Watling Street The Folkmote Ground Cheapside and its Surroundings The Pageants The Arches Court London Wall, the Gates and Towers City Trees The Religious Houses Monasteries Priories Colleges Hospitals Episcopal Residences London Outskirts Notes of Remarkable Events under the Successive Dynasties Aggas's Map of London, temp. Queen Elizabeth. Medi?val London"it is a perfectly distinct and real subject, though it might be difficult to give exact dates of beginning and end. Historical periods glide in, and run their course, and fade away or take fresh shape. Yet we may venture to approximate, and to say with some confidence that Ancient London changed into Medi?val in the days of King Alfred, and passed into Modern with the accession of the Stuarts. The Great Fire of 1666 made vast changes not only in the city itself, but in the surroundings thereof, but modern London had begun nearly a century before that. London is not mentioned in C?sar's account of Britain, but we know from Tacitus that it existed and was a place of importance. In a lecture of Dean Stanley delivered in Exeter Hall, entitled "The Study of Modern History in London," he follows the etymology accepted in his time, and interprets the name "The City of Ships." That derivation was disproved by Dr. Guest, and the meaning now, so far as I know, universally held by scholars is "The Fortress by the Lake." The "lake," so called, was the river spread out in a wide marsh on the Surrey side, and the "fortress" was a palisaded ground round the neighbourhood of the present Cannon Street Station. When the Romans took possession in the first half of the first century, they fortified it with a tower and a wall. Parts of the Roman wall are still standing; most of it remained in the days of Medi?val London. Substantial fragments of the later wall taken from around Bishopsgate are preserved in the Guildhall Museum. They include portions of handsome Roman buildings and sculptured ornaments. Evidently some, having fallen into decay, were in the course of ages used by medi?val Londoners for the repairs of their walls. CONTENTS A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY. CIVIC RULE. THE THAMES. RELIGIOUS LIFE. THE FORTRESS, PALACES, AND MANSIONS. THE PASSING OF MEDI?VAL LONDON.   An American Girl in London by Sara Jeannette Duncan : (full image Illustrated) Author: Sara Jeannette Duncan, Illustrator: F. H. Townsend B00L02VGN2 File Size: 4508 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- American, Girl, London, LIFE STYLE, fiction, advanture, England I have written this account only secondarily and at the instigation of publishers, for Americans. Primarily, I wrote it for the English people. I composed it in their country; it was suggested by their institutions, and it is addressed to them. You will see, if you read it, that I had reasons for doing this. The reasons are in the first chapter, at the very beginning. As you have not far to look for them, therefore, and as it is quite unnecessary to print a thing twice in the same book, I will not go over them again. The object of this preface is chiefly to draw your attention to the fact that I am not talking to you, dear compatriot, so that you will understand that there is no personal ground for any annoyance you may feel at what I say. Notwithstanding this, one of the Miss Wastgoggles, of Boston, has already taken the trouble to send me a rather severely reproachful letter about my impressions and experiences, in which she says that she would have written hers, if it had ever occurred to her to do so, very differently. I have no doubt that this is true. She also begs me to remember that there are a great many different kinds of girls in America, numbers of whom are brought up "quite as they are in England." It is this remark of hers that makes me quote Miss Wastgoggles. I wish to say in connection with it that, while it is unreasonable to apologize for being only one kind of American girl, I do not pretend to represent the ideas of any more. Mamie Wick. No. 4000 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, November 20, 1890. I AM an American Girl. Therefore, perhaps, you will not be surprised at anything further I may have to say for myself. I have observed, since I came to England, that this statement, made by a third person in connection with any question of my own conduct, is always broadly explanatory. And as my own conduct will naturally enter more or less into this volume, I may as well make it in the beginning, to save complications. It may be necessary at this point to explain further. I know that in England an unmarried person, of my age, is not expected to talk much, especially about herself. This was a little difficult for me to understand at first, as I have always talked a great deal, and, one might say, been encouraged to do it; but I have at length been brought to understand it, and lately I have spoken with becoming infrequency, and chiefly about the Zoo. I find the Zoo to be a subject which is almost certain to be received with approval; and in animal nature there is, fortunately, a good deal of variety. I do not intend, however, in this book, to talk about the Zoo, or anything connected with it, but about the general impressions and experiences I have received in your country; and one of my reasons for departing from approved models of discussion for young ladies and striking out, as it were, into subject-matter on my own account, is that I think you may find it more or less interesting. I have noticed that you are pleased, over here, to bestow rather more attention upon the American Girl than upon any other kind of American that we produce. You have taken the trouble to form opinions about her--I have heard quantities of them. Her behaviour and her bringing-up, her idioms and her 'accent'--above all her 'accent'--have made themes for you, and you have been good enough to discuss them--Mr. James, in your midst, correcting and modifying your impressions--with a good deal of animation, for you. I observe that she is almost the only frivolous subject that ever gets into your newspapers. I have become accustomed to meeting her there, usually at the breakfast-table, dressed in green satin and diamonds. The encounter had quite a shock of novelty for me at first, but that wore off in time; the green satin and diamonds were so invariable.   Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present by Thomas Miller : (full image Illustrated) Thomas Miller B00NPHYZLA File Size: 3384 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- England, London, Ancient, history, Cathedral, Cheapside, Great Britain Ancient London. INSTEAD of wasting words on traditions which few can believe, or filling my pages with accounts of the fabulous kings who are said to have descended from Æneas, and to have reigned in Britain centuries before the Roman Invasion, I shall commence the present work by shewing that the remote past will ever remain a mystery which man is not permitted to penetrate. The following opening to my History of the Anglo-Saxons applies to the "unknown" origin of London--the new Troy of ancient fiction--the Augusta of the Romans--for in it I have described my impression of the unwritten History of the Past: "Almost every historian has set out by regretting how little is known of the early inhabitants of Great Britain and its metropolis--a loss which only the lovers of hoar antiquity deplore, since, from all we can with certainty glean from the pages of contemporary history, we should find but little more to interest us than if we possessed written records of the remotest origin of the Red Indians; for both would alike but be the history of an unlettered and uncivilised race. The same dim obscurity, with scarcely an exception, hangs over the primeval inhabitants of every other country; and if we lift up the mysterious curtain which has so long fallen over and concealed the past, we only obtain glimpses of obscure hieroglyphics; and, from the unmeaning fables of monsters and giants, to which the rudest nations trace their origin, we but glance backward and backward, to find that civilised Rome and classic Greece can produce no better authorities than old undated traditions, teeming with fabulous accounts of heathen gods and goddesses. What we can see of the remote past through the half-darkened twilight of time, is as of a great and unknown sea, on which some solitary ship is afloat, whose course we cannot trace through the shadows which every where deepen around her, nor tell what strange land lies beyond the dim horizon to which she seems bound. The dark night of mystery has for ever settled down upon the early history of our island, and the first dawning which throws the shadow of man upon the scene, reveals a rude hunter clad in the skins of beasts of the chase, whose path is disputed by the maned and shaggy bison, whose rude hut in the forest fastnesses is pitched beside the lair of the hungry wolf, and whose first conquest is the extirpation of these formidable animals. And so, in as few words, might the early history of any other country be written. The shores of Time are thickly strewn with the remains of extinct animals, which, when living, the eye of man never looked upon, as if from the deep sea of Eternity had heaved up one wave, which washed over and blotted out for ever all that was coeval with her silent and ancient reign, leaving a monument upon the confines of this old and obliterated world, for man in a future day to read, on which stands ever engraven the solemn sentence, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: beyond this boundary all is mine!'   Cremorne and the Later London Gardens by Warwick Wroth : (full image Illustrated) Warwick Wroth B00EQ7PT68 File Size: 1088 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- LONDON, Gardens, Zoological, survey, ENGLAND, Chelsea, history The open-air resorts described in this volume lack the romantic associations of the classic pleasure-gardens of the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to impart to Cremorne or the Surrey 'Zoo' the historic dignity of a Vauxhall or a Ranelagh. Yet, if these places are undeserving of the detailed treatment that has been accorded to their prototypes, they may claim at least a brief and modest chronicle, which may seem the more necessary because it has mainly to be constructed, not from books, but from stray handbills and forgotten newspapers. Already, indeed, we are growing accustomed to speak of the nineteenth century as the 'last,' and to recognize that the London of Dickens, and Thackeray--the London of the thirties, the forties, and even of the sixties--had a physiognomy of its own. Such places of resort, for the most part, enjoyed no kind of fashionable vogue; they were frequented (if invidious distinctions must be made) by the lower middle classes and the 'lower orders.' Yet they offer some curious glimpses of manners and modes of recreation which may be worth considering. I have endeavoured to describe some twenty of these places, selecting those which seem, in various ways, to be typical. To the general reader this selection will be enough--though, I trust, not more than enough--but the London topographer who turns to the appendix and the notes will find a quite formidable list of tea-gardens and tavern-gardens, which, if my aim had been to omit nothing, I could have described in greater detail. CONTENTS Preface Cremorne Gardens Manor-House Baths and Gardens, Chelsea Batty's Hippodrome and Soyer's Symposium, Kensington The Hippodrome, Notting Hill The Royal Oak, Bayswater Chalk Farm Eel-Pie (or Sluice) House, Highbury Weston's Retreat, Kentish Town The Mermaid, Hackney The Rosemary Branch, Hoxton Sir Hugh Myddelton's Head, Islington The Panarmonion Gardens, King's Cross The Eagle and Grecian Saloon Albert Saloon and Royal Standard Pleasure-Gardens New Globe Pleasure-Grounds, Mile End Road The Red House, Battersea Brunswick Gardens (or Vauxhall Pleasure-Gardens), Vauxhall Flora Gardens, Camberwell Montpelier Tea-Gardens, Walworth Surrey Zoological Gardens List of Minor London Gardens, Nineteenth Century   Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London by A. St. John Adcock : (full image Illustrated) Author: A. St. John Adcock, Illustrator: Frederick Adcock B00GWPCVDG File Size: 4900 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- London, famous, Goldsmith, Sir Isaac Newton, history, Shakespeare, Wimbledon WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERICK ADCOCK AND 16 PORTRAITS PREFATORY NOTE Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with that man's personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that information here as the complement of my brother's drawings, and to this end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses, or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there, supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have adventured into any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion, it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history andcharacter as would serve to fill in the outline of a man's portrait, giveit a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still be seen in a London street. I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of various volumes of Recollections and Table Talk from which I have drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope's edition of the Poems and Letters of Pope; Austin Dobson's William Hogarth, and H. B. Wheatley's Hogarth's London; Boswell's Johnson, of course, and Forster's Lives of Goldsmith and of Dickens; Gilchrist's Life of Blake; Leslie's and Holmes's Lives of Constable; Arthur B. Chamberlain's George Romney; Lord Houghton's Life and Letters of Keats, and Buxton Forman's Complete Works of John Keats; Leigh Hunt's Autobiography; De Quincey's English Opium Eater; Hogg's and Peacock's Memoirs of Shelley; Carew Hazlitt's Memoirs of Hazlitt; Blackman's Life of Day; Byron's Journals and Letters, and Lewis Bettany's useful compilation from them, The Confessions of Lord Byron; Lockhart's Life of Scott, and Scott's Journal; Talfourd's and Ainger's Lives of Lamb, and Lamb's Letters; Walter Jerrold's Life of Thomas Hood; Cross's Life of George Eliot; Sir William Armstrong's Life of Turner, and Lewis Hind's Turner's Golden Visions; Joseph Knight's Rossetti; Froude's Thomas Carlyle, and W. H. Wylie's Carlyle, The Man and His Books; Allingham's Diary; E. R. and J. Pennell's Life of Whistler; Trollope's Thackeray, and Lady Thackeray Ritchie's prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray's works. A. St. J. A. CONTENTS Some Celebrated Cockneys Shakespeare in London Where Pope stayed at Battersea Hogarth Goldsmith, Reynolds, and some of their Circle Homes and Haunts of Johnson and Boswell Blake and Flaxman A Hampstead Group Round about Soho again A Philosopher, Two Poets, and a Novelist Charles Lamb St. John's Wood and Wimbledon Chelsea Memories Thackeray Dickens Conclusion   Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison / Fifteen Years in Solitude by Austin Biron Bidwell : (full image Illustrated) Austin Biron Bidwell B00LAN35GC File Size: 4411 KB.     BUY NOW Book Description :- fiction, adventure, Travel, Wall Street, London, NEW YORK, LETTERS OF CREDIT FREED A HUMAN WRECK, A WONDERFUL SURVIVAL AND A MORE WONDERFUL RISE IN THE WORLD. TO-DAY HE HAS A NATIONAL REPUTATION AS A WRITER, SPEAKER AND IS CONSIDERED AN AUTHORITY ON ALL SOCIAL PROBLEMS. HE WAS TRIED AT THE OLD BAILEY AND SENTENCED FOR LIFE. CHARGED WITH THE £1,000,000 FORGERY ON THE BANK OF ENGLAND. THIS STORY SHOWS THAT THE EVENTS OF HIS LIFE SURPASS THE IMAGINATIONS OF OUR FAMOUS NOVELISTS, ITS THRILLING SCENES, HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES AND MARVELOUS ADVENTURES ARE NOT A RECORD OF CRIME, BUT ARE PROOFS OF THAT CHAPTER I. HAD THERE BEEN WISDOM THERE? We lived in South Brooklyn, near to old No. 13, the Degraw Street Public School. To that I was sent, and there got all the education I was ever fated to have at any school, except the school of life and experience. I attended for some years, and even now I cannot recall without a smile the absurd incompetency of every one connected with the institution and their utter ignorance of the art of imparting knowledge to children. At home I had picked up that grand art of reading, and went to school to learn the other two R's, with any trifle that I might come across floating around promiscuously. I certainly hope our much-lauded public schools are conducted on better lines now than then; if not, they are frauds from the foundation. The instruction in No. 13 was so lax and radically bad that the whole governing body and the principal ought to have been sent to the penitentiary on the charge of false pretense for drawing their salaries and giving nothing in return. And yet I remember when examination day came, instead of the committee investigating the progress of the pupils, it usually turned into a mere hallelujah chorus upon our "grand public school system." Here is a remarkable fact: I seldom missed a promotion and passed from grade to grade until within two years I found myself in Junior "A," the next to the highest class in the school, just as ignorant as my classmates, and that is saying much. It was all very pitiful. My blood boils even now when I think of the traitors chosen and paid to see me fully equipped and armed to begin the battle of life who left me with phantom weapons which would shiver into fragments at the first shock of conflict.