The corporation of London must have made this change after a very heavy dinner. Grub-street, however, has been always famous for very light ones; and if Milton did verily inhabit here, in her day, it is not surprising that Mary Powell bewailed her maiden life, and ran away into Oxfordshire. But enough of him and her. My reader will be more gratified to learn that on crossing to Southwark, I had no difficulty in discovering the mean and narrow entrance to an old-fashioned court, over which is still legible, the following inscription—“This is the inne where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay, in their journey to Canterbury, Anno 1383.” It was “the Tabard” then, and it is, by some strange corruption, “the Talbot” now. Here then was that charmed spot, from which went forth those devotees of St. Thomas-à-Becket, who talked so merrily, and often so well; and whose quaint portraiture as it has been preserved by genius, so embalms the peculiarities of thought, of manners, and of language, which characterized our English forefathers, in that marvellous age, when Wycliffe in prose, and Chaucer in poetry, laid the foundation of our Anglo-Saxon Literature, and scattered many goodly seeds of a reformation in religion. I was entranced by the associations of the place, for it is yet an Old English Inn, and looks as if it might still be the identical hostelry, built as it is around the inn-yard, with galleries, and ancient windows, and odd devices. It is but a halting-place for wagoners and countrymen; but, in spite of myself, I could not resist the temptation to enter its humble door, and order a little something, for Chaucer’s sake, to refresh a wayfarer. But, to resume my rambles, behold me, by various crooks and turns, visiting Houndsditch and Billingsgate, and St. Ethelburga’s, and St. Helen’s. This St. Helen, by-the-way, is the mother of Constantine, and a part of London wall she built herself; so that, from England to “stubborn Jewry,” her architecture is her monument. I surveyed what is left of Crosby Hall; visited “the old lady in Threadneedle-street,” otherwise called the Bank of England; and, returning, heard the stupendous bells of Bow in their full harmony. That day was the festival of “the Sons of the Clergy.” I arrived at St. Paul’s in time to see the procession entering the great western door; the Archbishop, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Mayor, with other worshipful civic dignitaries, making its most conspicuous part. I lingered without the choir, till the services were quite advanced, and again had an opportunity of enjoying the effect of the distant service, and the rich reverberations of the dome. CHAPTER XVI. _London Society._