"The Man in the Monument replied, 'A Tanner.' "It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument. "The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in the Monument opened a dark little door. When the gentleman and lady had passed out of view, he shut it again, and came slowly back to his chair. "He sat down and laughed. "'They don't know what a many steps there is!' he said. 'It's worth twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!' "The Man in the Monument was a Cynic...." The charge for the Monument is (I may remark _en passant_), now changed from a "tanner" to the humble threepence. (Its summit gallery is now closed in, because of the disagreeable mania for committing suicide from it.) The original inscription on its pedestal, now effaced, was a curious relic of religious intolerance; showing, by its absurd reference to the "horrid plott" of "the Popish factio," the barbarous and primitive state of popular feeling as late as 1681. Wherefore it was that, as Pope said: "... London's Column, pointing to the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies." One must not, however, forget that this attempt to attribute the dire calamity to private malice must have been infinitely comforting to the public mind, that ever, even in our own enlightened day, needs a scapegoat. In still older days, the scapegoats took a more conveniently personal form, and were usually, as we have seen, brought to the block on Great Tower Hill: which was, of course, a much simpler mode of dealing with them. CHAPTER VI SOUTHWARK, OLD AND NEW "The Thames marks the sharp division between what Lord Beaconsfield called 'the two nations.' On one side we have our nearest English approach to architectural magnificence; on the other there is a long perspective of squalid buildings--smoke-begrimed, half-ruinous, and yet not altogether unlovely."--_Magazine of Art_, January, 1884. "Befel, that in that season, on a day In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay, Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with ful devout courage, At night was come into that hostelry Well nine-and-twenty in a company Of sundry folk, by adventure y-fall In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all, That toward Canterbury woulden ride." --_Chaucer: Canterbury Tales._ Near to the fishy and noisy purlieus of the "Monument," London Bridge crosses the river into Southwark.