In Leadenhall Street at the St. Mary Axe corner, the turreted church of St. Andrew Undershaft takes its name from the fact that in olden times there stood before it, towering above its height, a tall shaft. The church, built in 1520, is almost five hundred years old. To this day the passer-by wonders at the big rings of iron set in its wall. In these rings the shaft or Maypole rested after the May-day sports were over. In the reign of Edward VI. the Maypole was burned, because a preacher at Paul's Cross had told the people they had made an idol of it by naming their parish church "under the shaft." The tomb of John Stow, author of the "Survey of London," is still to be seen here. Stow was a tailor, and his book is thought to be the most important work on London ever written. His efforts were not regarded in his lifetime, and being in great poverty when he was 80 years old, he applied to James I. for aid, receiving only a license to beg for a living--which he did. He died in 1605. The buildings of the East India Company were to be found where Lime Street touches Leadenhall at the northeast corner. There Charles Lamb, the essayist and critic, worked. He entered the accountants' office of the company and worked each day at his desk for thirty years until he was retired on a pension. He has said that he found recreation in his writings, and that his true works were to be found in the hundreds of folios he had filled for the East India Company and that were filed away in their archives. The East India was a commercial company of renown, which came into existence in 1599 having its main offices here where had been the home of Lord Craven. The building was restored many times, and finally removed in 1862. There is nothing to be seen of an historic old church in narrow Cornhill Street, so hemmed in is it, except a tower above the roofs topped by a windvane in the shape of a great key. Yet this church of St. Peter's, which has been here since 1681, is most interesting, for the claim is set up that it stands on the earliest consecrated ground in England. In the vestry a tablet tells of how it was "originally founded in 179 A. D. by Lucius, the first Christian King of this land, then called Britaine." The house where Thomas Gray, the writer of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," was born, used to be where the building numbered 41 Cornhill now stands. A carved doorway of quaint design, between two shop windows, and a tower above the housetops, are all that may be seen of the church of St. Michael's in narrow Cornhill. This church was built by Wren when he was 90 years old. FOUR BY WAY OF THE TOWER AND LONDON BRIDGE