I had secured an eyrie in the top of St. Paul's at an early hour with the aid of a greasy half crown, which I had slipped to an old toothless verger with his silver-tipped wand, and he readily gratified my wish to allow me egress from the Whispering gallery which encircles the interior dome of the Cathedral, to a point where, giddily, I might lean out and look all over the great city. "It's as good as my place is worth, sir," said he, "to let you look out here. A man who was a little light headed from drinking tumbled from this window some years ago, and was broken to pieces on the cobble stones below." The danger did not prevent me from looking long and greedily at the splendid coup d'oeil. [Illustration: THE LONDON STONE.] Far up the river to the left the queerly shaped toy turrets and massive ramparts and quadrangles of the Tower broke through the morning haze in shapely and artistic masses, and at the back of the green spot of grass which surmounts Tower Hill, the square, solid, and substantial looking Mint showed where Her Majesty's sworn servants were already at work employed in making counterfeit presentments of her features for circulation in trade and commerce. The Norman tower and flanking buttresses of St. Saviour's, Southwark, next came in range, followed by the long oval glass roof of the Eastern Railway Terminus, facing Cannon street, where is erected London Stone, upon which Jack Cade sat in triumph before the dirty, noisy, rabble, which had followed his fortunes; and now I can see Guy's Hospital with its hundred windows, the Corinthian Royal Exchange in Cornhill, the massive Guildhall where many a bloated Britisher has fed on the fat of the land; the Mansion House in which the Lord Mayor occasionally does petty offenders the honor of sentencing them to the Bridewell; and now the view enlarges to the southward, and the eye takes in the fine Holborn Viaduct, lately honored by the Queen's presence; Barclay and Perkin's massive caravanserai for the brewing of beer, and the gray stones of St. Sepulchre's where the passing bell is always tolled for the condemned Newgate prisoner just before execution. The square, gray blocks of this fortress of crime gloom in an unpitying way below me, and there now is the court yard of Christ's Hospital with the gowned and bare headed school lads at their morning game of foot ball, and their shouts peal upward, even up as high as the dome of St. Paul's, like the chimes of merry music. The great piles of Somerset house and the Custom House frown down on the busy river, and the sound of the bell of St. Clement Dane's in the Strand, striking six o'clock, mingles with the mighty thunder whirr of the incoming train from Dover, which dashes like a demon over the Charing Cross bridge and into its station. Structure after structure rises on the retina, the Treasury Buildings and Horse Guards in Parliament street, Marlborough House, the British