Leigh Hunt was of opinion that "one of the best secrets of enjoyment is the art of cultivating pleasant associations," and, with his example before us, we will endeavour to recall some of those that are to be met with on a walk from the Borough to St. James's, from one of the poorest parts of our city to one of the richest. The Borough, dusty, noisy, toil-worn as it is, is yet, he tells us, "the most classical ground in the metropolis." From the "Tabard" inn--now only a memory, though its contemporary, the "George," hard by, gives us some idea of its look in mediæval times--there rode forth, one bright spring morning, "Sir Jeffrey Chaucer" and "nyne and twenty" pilgrims "in a companye ... to wenden on (a) pilgrimage to Caunterbury with ful devout courage." A fellow-poet of Chaucer's, John Gower, lies buried close at hand in Southwark Cathedral, "under a tomb of stone, with his image of stone also over him." He was one of the earliest benefactors of this church, then known as St. Mary Overy, and founded therein a chantry, where masses should be said for the benefit of his soul. Stones in the pavement of the choir likewise commemorate John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and Edmund Shakespeare, who lie in unmarked graves somewhere within the precincts of the cathedral. Not a stone's throw from the Borough is the Bankside, extending from Blackfriars Bridge out beyond Southwark, a mean and dirty thoroughfare, with the grey Thames on one side, and on the other dull houses, grimy warehouses, and gloomy offices. How changed from the semi-rural resort of Elizabethan days, when swans floated on the river, and magnificent barges, laden with gaily dressed nobles and their attendants, were continually passing by! Great must have been the pleasure traffic then, for according to Taylor, "the Water Poet," who plied his trade as waterman and wrote his verses on the Bankside in the early days of Elizabeth's successor, "the number of watermen and those that live and are maintained by them, and by the labour of the oar and scull, between the bridge of Windsor and Gravesend, cannot be fewer than forty thousand; the cause of the greater half of which multitude hath been the players playing on the Bankside." Besides the players, the brilliant band of dramatists who shed lustre on the reign of the maiden Queen frequented it, not only on account of the pleasantness of its situation, but because of the near proximity of the theatres, for the Globe, the Rose, and the Hope all stood on the site now occupied by the brewery of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, while the Swan was not far off. It is a well-authenticated fact that both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson played at the Globe, and patronised the "Falcon" tavern, the name of which still lingers in Falcon Dock and Falcon Wharf, Nos. 79 and 80, Bankside; and while in the meantime they were producing their masterpieces, Chapman, Dekker, and Middleton were at the height