_Paving the Streets._—1614. This was an important year in the annals of Smithfield. It passed from its old and normal condition of mud, into a clean and paved enclosure, such as was familiar to many of us before the new market buildings were erected in 1866. Other changes had preceded. It was not until 1608 that the City had obtained a grant of the ground of the late Priory of St. Bartholomew, which had been constituted into a parish after the dissolution. Again, while it had ceased some time before to be the scene of the morning performances of the common hangman—Tyburn (itself afterwards absorbed in May Fair) having succeeded to the distinction; it had still remained the _locus_ of a far more savage form of persecution. The ashes of the last martyr fire had burned out in 1611—the victim being Bartholomew Leggatt, a pious Unitarian, burnt for distrust of the Athanasian and Nicene creeds, by the order of James I. at the sentence of John King, newly-made Bishop of London! _The Drama._—As if more prominently to mark the transition state last indicated, and perchance also as a memento, that in the very place had been enacted (under the patronage of and for the purposes of the Church) the first drama that England had ever seen; and which had step by step progressed from mysteries to miracle plays, thence on to moralities, and was now advancing to the state of taking an independent stand as a National Drama—as if, I say, to commemorate this circumstance with emphasis, “rare Ben Jonson” produced his celebrated comedy of “Bartholomew Fair,” one of the chief features in which is the vivid painting of the characters through whom the satirist portrays the follies of the fair. They are many and various; each one planned to bring into prominence one of the characteristics of the motley gathering. Competent authorities have declared this to be equal to any of the best works of the author. I confess not to have discovered many points for admiration. There are a few good points in it which may be reproduced! A stranger appears in the fair, a Puritan, designated Zealot-of-the-land Busy. He is ordered to be put in the stocks, and says “I do obey thee, the Lion may roar but he cannot bite. I am glad to be thus separated from the _Heathen_ of the Land, and put apart in the Stocks for the holy cause.” Humphrey Wasp inquires who he is. He replies “One that rejoiceth in his affliction, and sitteth here to prophecy the Destruction of _Fairs_, and May-games, Wakes, and Whitson-ales, and doth sigh and groan for the reformation of these abuses.” Lanthorn Leatherhead recounts some of the “motions” (plays) in which he had taken part at this fair. “‘Jerusalem’ was a stately thing, and so was ‘Nineveh,’ and the ‘City of Norwich’ and ‘Sodom and Gomorrah;’ with the rising o’ the Prentices ...; but the ‘Gunpowder-plot,’ there was a get-penny! I have presented that to an eighteen or twenty-pence audience nine times in an afternoon.