Austin Friars, another region in the heart of the City perhaps as interesting as that which I have just described, is, like it, rapidly being transformed. Not long ago it still maintained a distinctive character. Something of monastic calm seemed to linger about the old home and grounds of the begging friars, crowned by part of their church, which since Edward VI.’s time has been handed over to the Dutch congregation of London. Outside, in Broad Street, there was the roar and confusion of a mighty traffic; within the sacred precinct there was peace: wheeled vehicles seldom entered the very foot passengers, I have thought, used to slacken their pace, and relax for a moment the grim, determined look which, as a rule, characterizes the man whose mind is bent on business. Passing round what remains of the old church, one may still see a house--No. 10--which is an excellent example of the real Queen Anne style; to judge from the date on a rainpipe, it was probably completed in the year 1704. The porch has a flight of steps; ascending this, one finds before one a spacious staircase panelled throughout, and especially noticeable on account of its fine painted ceiling, one of the last to be met with in a City mansion. No. 11 forms part of the same block of buildings. Retracing our steps, we see standing back somewhat from the main roadway, to the right of a new passage just opened into what is called, in mockery, Drapers’ Gardens, a tall new structure occupying the site of another old brick mansion the associations of which were very remarkable. The house in question, No. 21, Austin Friars, had been built during the latter part of the seventeenth century, possibly even before the Great Fire, which did not extend so far north; it seems to be marked in Ogilby’s map of 1677. About the early possessors, Richard Young and others, nothing is known of any special interest. In the year 1705 it came into the hands of Herman Olmius, merchant, whose name occurs in the ‘Little London Directory’ for 1677, where he is described as of Angel Alley, Bishopsgate Street Without. He was descended from an ancient family of Arlon, in the duchy of Luxemburg, and was naturalized by Act of Parliament, 29th Charles II. Here he lived and carried on his business, and here, having made and inherited a large fortune, he died in the year 1718. His will shows that he was a member, not of the Dutch congregation of the neighbouring church in Austin Friars, but of the French Church in Threadneedle Street, to which he left £150 for the benefit of the poor. At the time of his death he possessed four other houses in Austin Friars, ‘with yards, gardens, and appurtenances,’ a shop called the Crane in the Poultry, and another with the sign of the Plough in Bucklersbury. He also had much real property in Essex and elsewhere. Herman was the son of Johannes Ludovicus or John Lewis Olmius, and of his wife Margareta Gerverdine. He married Judith, daughter and heiress of John Drigue, who