What I write is most true . . . . . I have a whole booke of cases lying by me, which if I should sette foorth, some grave aus (within the hearing of Bow Bell) would be out of charity with me.
NASH.
IN the tre of the great City of London lies a small neighborhood, sisting of a cluster of narrow streets and courts, of very venerable and debilitated houses, which goes by the name of LITTLE BRITAIN. Christ Church School and St.
Bartholomews Hospital bound it on the west; Smith?eld and Long Lane on the north; Aldersgate Street, like an arm of the sea, divides it from the eastern part of the city; whilst the yawning gulf of Bull-and-Mouth Street separates it from Butcher Lane and the regions of e. Over this little territory, thus bounded and desighe great dome of St. Pauls, swelling above the intervening houses of Paternoster Row, Amen er, and Ave-Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly prote.
This quarter derives its appellation from having been, in aimes, the residence of the Dukes of Brittany. As London increased, however, rank and fashion rolled off to the west, and trade, creeping on at their heels, took possession of their deserted abodes. For some time Little Britain became the great mart of learning, and eopled by the busy and proli?c race of booksellers: these also gradually deserted it, and, emigrating beyond the great strait of e Street, settled down in Paternoster Row and St. Pauls Churchyard, where they tio increase and multiply even at the present day.
But, though thus fallen into dee, Little Britain still bears traces of its former splendor. There are several houses ready to tumble down, the fronts of which are magly enriched with old oaken carvings of hideous faces, unknown birds, beasts, and ?shes, and fruits and ?owers which it would perplex a naturalist to classify. There are also, in Aldersgate Street, certain remains of what were once spacious and lordly family mansions, but which have in latter days been subdivided into several tes. Here may often be found the family of a petty tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing among the relics of antiquated ?nery i rambling time-stained apartments with fretted ceilings, gilded ices, and enormous marble ?replaces. The lanes and courts also tain many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, but, like your small a gentry, sturdily maintaining their claims to equal antiquity.
These have their gable ends to the street, great bow windows with diamond panes set in lead, grotesque carvings, and low arched doorways.*
* It is evident that the author of this iing unication has included, in his general title of Little Britain, man of those little lanes and courts that belong immediately to Cloth Fair.
In this most venerable and sheltered little have I passed several quiet years of existence, fortably lodged in the sed ?oor of one of the smallest but oldest edi?ces. My sitting-room is an old wainscoted chamber, with small panels a off with a miscellaneous array of furniture. I have a particular respect for three or fh-backed, claw-footed chairs, covered with tarnished brocade, which bear the marks of having seeer days, and have doubtless ?gured in some of the old palaces of Little Britain. They seem to me to keep together and to look down with sn pt upon their leathern-bottomed neighbors, as I have seen decayed gentry carry a high head among the plebeian society with which they were reduced to associate. The whole front