WITH STOW Let us climb the steps that lead to the City Wall at the Tower postern, and make a circuit by means of the Wall. We walk on the five-foot way designed for the archers. It is grass-grown between the stones. On the battlements the wall-flower grows luxuriously with the green fumitory and the red flowers of the kiss-me-quick. Looking over the Wall we perceive that the ditch is nearly filled up: all kinds of rubbish have been shot into it; there are small ponds of water here and there, and on the opposite bank are gardens in patches and what we call allotments. “Alas!” says our guide, who continually laments the past, “I remember when the ditch was full, and when the boys came to bathe in it and were sometimes drowned in it. Then fish abounded and men angled from the bank.” We begin our walk. “I remember,” our guide goes on, talking while he leads the way, “running along the Wall when I was a boy, nearly sixty years ago. It was a favourite pastime to run from gate to gate. That was before the suppression of the Religious.” He sighed—Was he then regretting that event? “All the Houses were standing then. One thought they would stand for ever. Yet the axe was already laid to the tree: there was internal decay and external contempt, though we boys knew nothing of it. The friars in vain searched the boxes put up for them in the shops: no one would give them alms; if they went into a house, no one would give them so much as a crust of bread; there were but fifteen left in Grey Friars, and they were selling their vessels of silver and gold when they were called upon to surrender. But still their churches made a brave show. All day long the bells were ringing—’twas a city of bells. They rang from cathedral and parish church; from monastery and nunnery; from college of priests and from chapel and from spital. They rang for festivals and fasts; for pageants and ridings; for births and deaths; for marriages and funerals; for the election of City officers; for the King’s birthday; for the day and the hour; they rang in the baby; they rang out the passing soul; they rang merrily in honour of the bride; they rang for work to begin and for work to cease; the streets echoed the ringing of bells all day long; for miles round London you could hear with the singing of the larks the ringing of the bells.