great graveyard, was really Bone Hill Fields, and Houndsditch a ditch into which dead dogs were often cast. The Minories was originally the Minorites, an order of Poor Clares so named; and Mincing Lane was similarly distorted from the Minchin nuns, who had their convent at St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate. Goswell Street was God’s Well. At Tokenhouse Yard and thereabouts tokens used to be made. A fowl market was in the Poultry. Bread Street and Milk Street were devoted to the sale of those useful commodities. The curiously and picturesquely named Knightrider Street is most significant of all; for through it used to pass in procession the train of knights going to the joust. Rotten Row is said to derive its name from “rotteren” (to muster); but it is more likely to be a slang word expressive of the peculiar composition of the ground. The large family of Ludgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Billingsgate, etc., all, of course, betoken the different City gates which stood in the localities. Billingsgate is said to be named after King Belin; Cripplegate after St. Giles, an abbot said to have written a work on palsy, and also venerated as the patron of lepers. It may be noted that the old statue of Queen Elizabeth which decorated Lud Gate is still to be seen in Fleet Street. Spitalfields was named after St. Mary Spital; Moorfields and Finsbury, or Fensbury, from the marshes; St. Bride, or St. Bridget, gave her name to Bridewell; indeed, a vast number of our streets have some such pious associations. It would take long to go through the full list of derivations; but these specimens will show how interesting and fruitful is the inquiry. The naming of a street requires much tact, and is really a difficult office. Witness the clumsy suggestions and debates when Northumberland and Shaftesbury Avenues were formed. Thames Avenue or Thames Mall would have been better and more picturesque for the first, and Shakespeare Road for the second. The old “Paragons,” “Circuses,” “Crescents,” have a pleasant sound. In compliment to the great prose poet of Cockneydom, we ought surely to have a “Dickens Street,”--a good, sharp, well-sounding, and serviceable name. CHAPTER VII. THE NATIONAL GALLERY. [Illustration]