The lads who had waited on each other now brought huge baskets to carry away the fragments of bread, etc., the tables were cleared, and the long white cloths carefully folded, which led on to the last and most interesting part of the exhibition, when each division of the eight hundred passed in its turn before the President. Every two advanced together and made him a low bow, or “bob,” which was carefully returned; each division closed up with the servitors, one carrying the basket on his shoulder, another the knife-box, a third the cloth, while a small monk not unpicturesquely wound up the procession, bearing the two garlanded lights. CHAPTER XXVI. CANONBURY TOWER. The outlying districts of London have each a curiously marked colour and flavour of their own. Thus “the Borough,” the district about Bishopgate Street, the City itself--and Islington, all have a distinct and recognizable air. It would take long to define the elements of each, but the skilled denizen has no difficulty in distinguishing. Islington has a bustling, almost foreign air, and in some sense deserves its epithet “merry.” A little beyond Islington there begins a district of so special and curious a kind as really to have effect on the mind and spirits of the traveller. For here he finds a succession of tame, spiritless villas and terraces, gardens and small squares, not dilapidated, yet all running to seed as it were. There is a general look of monotonous hopelessness that cannot be described. No one seems to be about or doing. There is one compensation--the good, clear, inspiring air. This is felt as we mount those gently-rising hills which lead out of the main road, and land us among the still more saddening squares and abjectly-correct terraces. One of these is Canonbury Road, at the top of which the atmosphere is positively “bracing,” and here--that is, a little way on--we come to a most interesting old memorial, well worthy the long jaunt from the West End. In strange contrast with its associates rises a grim and gaunt old brick tower, solid, massive, and lofty, against whose veteran sides lean some old gabled houses, part of the structure. A thick and friendly coat of ivy covers a goodly proportion of the old body. An antique rail surmounts the top, while a meagre weathercock gives point and finish to the whole. There is a certain majesty and breadth about this venerable relic, which rises here to a great height, wrapped in the dignity of its own desolation. There is always, indeed, a sense of sadness in the spectacle of one of these old brick towers, all scarred and weather-beaten with the storms and batterings of fortune.