A sharp walk of a quarter of an hour from St. Paul's would, in that time, take one into the green fields that lay in Islington; and beyond, upon the Waltham road, were the hedges, pikes, and quiet paddocks, through which went galloping--at a little later day--that citizen of "credit and renown," John Gilpin, instead of the clattering suburbs that now stretch nearly all the way between Cheapside and the "Bell" at Edmonton. {103} Of the many bridges which now span the Thames, only two[2] representatives were in existence; the old Westminster was there in its first freshness, and ferrymen quarrelling with it, because it spoiled their carrying trade to Vauxhall and parts adjacent; and the old London Bridge was cumbered by lumbering houses, held up by trusses and cross-beams, while its openings were so low and its piers so many as to make, at certain stages of the tide, furious cascades which drove great wheels geared to cumbrous pumping machinery, to throw up water for the behoof of London citizens. The old Fleet Prison was in existence, and its smudgy stifling air hung over all that low region above which now leap the great arches of the Holborn Viaduct; and round the corner, in the reek and smoke of Fleet Street, half way between the spire of St. Bride's and the spire of St. Clement's Danes--up a grimy court that is, very likely, just as grimy to-day, lived that Leviathan of a man, Dr. Samuel Johnson. {104} _Johnson and Rasselas._ [Sidenote: Rasselas.] He had passed through his green days, and the nights when he strolled supperless about London with that poor wretch of a poet Richard Savage. The school at Edial with its three pupils was well behind him; so was the dining behind the screen at Cave's (the bookseller who presided over the _Gentleman's Magazine_, with St. John's Gate on the cover then, and on the cover now): so was his age of sentiment ended. His wife Tetty had gone the way of all flesh (1752) and he had mourned her truly: in proof of this may be counted the presence under his roof of a certain old lady, Miss Williams, who is peevish, who is tempestuous, who is blind, who tests the tea with her fingers, who _will_ talk, and then again, she _won't_ talk; yet Johnson befriends her, pensions her--when he has money,--sends home sweetbreads from the tavern for her; and when his friends ask why he tolerates this vixen, he gives the soundest reason that he has--"she {105} was a friend of Tetty; she was with poor Tetty when she died!"