With such a guide the old streets and houses long since demolished and being fast demolished every day, revive before us; with them rises the oldfashioned London, its humours, its society of fifty years ago. One of the results of this association is that as we walk through some of these old-world quarters, such as Goswell Street or “Lant Street, Boro’” (where Bob Sawyer gave his party), the whole Pickwick, or rather Dickens flavour seems to pour out, and the figures live again. It is not surprising that this connection between the gifted writer and the old bricks of London should have become a study, and a very engaging study, and in antiquaries’ accounts of the great city it is now become customary to trace the haunts and localities of the places described in his novels. In an unpretending but lively little book Mr. Allbut has undertaken this labour of love, and furnished a very useful little handbook to the Dickens explorer. From this one might profitably glean a few passages. It will be noted what a poetical instinct the great writer had in this respect, and he caught the true “note” as it were of making selection of what was best fitted for his purpose. This power of vividly imprinting the locality on the mind might be illustrated by that dismal gate and alley, “Tom all alone’s,” of which the site only remains in Bedfordbury, just out of Chandos Street, where the huge Peabody Buildings rise, though it has been claimed for other localities. Indeed, close to the upper end of Shaftesbury Avenue there is a strange forlorn alley with a dilapidated tottering old inclosure beyond, which would exactly serve for the original. And in Russell Court, that curious winding passage leading to the pit door of “Old Drury,” we fancy we see the gate of the dismal burial ground on whose steps Lady Deadlock was found. It still looks exactly as in the print, “with houses looking on on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate.” This depressing intramural burial ground has been garnished up into a recreation inclosure, and is but a trifle less gloomy than a cheerful mortuary house built at one side.