of this charming, tranquil little retreat, devoted to business, with its trees and old graveyard and carvings, its secular air of solitude as you turn in from the noisy street, is singular and pleasing. One or two of the old windows display the old heavy flat sashes, in contrast to the new plate-glass. Going a little to the left we find ourselves in a small square, surrounded by warehouses, old and new, some gloomy and grimed, while we pass on between two miniature churchyards, each displaying a few altar-tombs, and some twig-like trees. A forlorn enough prospect for the clerks busy at the windows. These curious patches of churchyards are raised, like terraces, while a path descends between them. Such strange combinations, common enough in the City, always suggest pictures in Dickens’s stories, and add so great an attraction to his incidents. They make City figures live again in the old courts and lanes; such as those houses of business where we find the Cheeryble Brothers. There still linger on about the City several shops of the old pattern, which also recall the flavour of Dickens’s scenes and characters. There is a sort of pride in preserving these places intact and in their old fashion. Close to the Exchange may be seen a small, obscure-looking confectioner’s, with a sort of bow window filled in with small panes. It seems such a shop as would be found in a sleepy country town--say Dorking. This is the well-known “Birch’s”--a poorish-looking place for entertainment, it might be thought. Yet there is nothing in this assumption. Nowhere in London can you fare more sumptuously or at such varied prices. The little shop has flourished for much more than a hundred years, and its original proprietor became an alderman. The Birch family has disappeared; but “Ring and Brymer” hold sway, artists who contract for all the great City dinners at the Mansion House and elsewhere. [Illustration: OLD DOORWAYS--LAURENCE POUNTNEY HILL.] In Fenchurch Street there is a curious old grocer’s warehouse--Davidson’s--with the low, small-paned windows, bowed out, and running all along in front, while an old-fashioned crane is seen projecting. Overhead the shop displays its sign--three gilded hundredweights: within, the place is low and more old-fashioned. Nearly opposite is another well-gilded tavern sign--a spirited Spread Eagle, as well carved in its way as the well-known “Cock” in Fleet Street, which has the reputation of being Grinling Gibbons’ work. All through the City the wary explorer will still meet with these signs--the most curious of which is the half-moon which projects from a shop in Holywell Street. CHAPTER XX. THE OLD CITY HALLS