"From Westminster to London Bridge was a favourite trip. There was plenty to see. The fine Strand-side houses were always pointed out--Northumberland House, York House, Baynard's Castle, the scene of the secret interview between the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, was singled out, between Paul's Wharf and Puddle Dock. Next to the Temple, and between it and Whitefriars, was the region known as Alsatia. Here safe from every document but the writ of the Lord Chief Justice and the Lords of the Privy Council, in dark dwellings, with subterranean passages, narrow streets, and trap-doors that led to the Thames, dwelt all the rascaldom of the time--men who had been 'horned' or outlawed, bankrupts, coiners, thieves, cheaters at dice and cards, duellists, homicides, and foreign bravoes, ready to do any desperate deed. At night the contents of this kingdom of villany were sprayed out over London, to the bewilderment of good-natured Dogberries, and country gentlemen, making their first visit to town. "Still further down the river was the famous London Bridge. It consisted of twenty arches; its roadway was sixty feet from the river; and the length of the bridge from end to end was 926 feet. "It was one of the wonders that strangers never ceased to admire. Its many shops were occupied by pin nacres, just beginning to feel the competition with the Netherland pin-makers, and the tower at its Southwark end was adorned with three hundred heads, stuck on poles, like gigantic pins, memorials of treachery and heresy. "The roar of the river through the arches was almost deafening. 'The noise at London Bridge is nothing near her,' says one of the characters in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson & Co., must have crossed the bridge many a time on their visits to the City, to 'gather humours of men daily,' as Aubrey quaintly expresses it." The name of Ben Jonson reminds us that in _The Silent Woman_,--one of the most popular of his Comedies,--we have presented to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found of the characteristic noises, and street-cries of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their resemblances and their differences with the roar which the great Babel _now_ "sends through all her gates." We propose, therefore, to put before our readers this passage of Jonson's comedy; and then, classifying what he describes, illustrate our fine old dramatic painter of manners by references to other writers, and by the results of our own observation. [Illustration]