|It would require a poetical imagination to paint the times when a gallant train of England's chivalry rode from the Tower Royal through Knight-rider Street and Giltspur Street (how significant are the names of these interesting localities, bearing record of their former glory!) to their splendid tournaments in Smithfield,--or proceeding down Long Lane, crossing the Barbican (the Specula or Watch-tower of Romanum Londinium), and skirting that far-famed street * where, in ancient times, dwelt the Fletchers and Bowyers, but which has since become synonymous with poetry-- * In Grub Street resided John Fox, the Martyrologist, and Henry Welby, the English hermit, who, instigated by the ingratitude of a younger brother, shut himself up in his house for forty-four years, without being seen by any human being. Though an unsociable recluse, he was a man of the most exemplary charity. --and poverty,--ambled gaily through daisy-dappled meads to Finsbury Fields, * to enjoy a more extended space for their martial exercises. * In the days of Fitzstephen, Finsbury or Fensbury was one vast lake, and the citizens practised every variety of amusement on the ice. “Some will make a large cake of ice, and, seating one of their companions upon it, they take hold of one's hand, and draw him along. Others place the leg- bones of animals under the soles of their feet, by tying them round their ancles, and then, taking a pole shod with iron into their hands, they push themselves forward with a velocity equal to a bolt discharged from a crossbow.” We learn from an old ballad called “The Life and Death of the Two Ladies of Finsbury that gave Moorfields to the city, for the maidens of London to dry their cloaths,” that Sir John Fines, “a noble gallant knight,” went to Jerusalem to “hunt the Saracen through fire and flood,” but before his departure, he charged his two daughters “unmarried to remain,” till he returned from “blessed Palestine.” The eldest of the two built a “holy cross at 'Bedlam-gate, adjoining to Moorfield and the younger “framed a pleasant well,” where wives and maidens daily came to wash. Old Sir John Fines was slain; but his heart was brought over to England from the Holy Land, and, after “a lamentation of three hundred days,” solemnly buried in the place to which they gave the name of Finesbury. When the maidens died “they gave those pleasant fields unto the London citizens, “Where lovingly both man and wife May take the evening air; And London dames to dry their cloaths May hither still repair!”