The cry of "green boughs" to deck the summer parlours, and "green rushes" to strew upon the floors, has long since ceased. The fire-place is no more adorned with bunches of the blossoming hawthorn, branches of sweetbrier, and huge pots filled with the fragrant and trailing honeysuckle: art, with its paper ornaments, has driven away these beautiful products of nature, and the less healthy carpet has carried off the meadow-like smell of the rushes. "Cherry ripe" we occasionally hear, sung out as clear and silvery as when Herrick composed his inimitable little song, though Ben Jonson, by the way, wrote one long before Herrick, on the same subject. "Watercresses," though no longer borne by a nymph, who paused every now and then to throw aside the long hair which fell over her nut-brown and weather-stained cheeks, is a cry we still hear; but the figure that conjured up Sabrina and the "glassy cool translucent wave" has long since departed. Lemons and oranges are cried by the wandering race, whose dark-haired mothers, in ancient days, poured forth their songs in the land of Israel. The primroses and violets of spring are still sold in these streets, but the cry of "Come buy my pretty bow-pots" is now rarely heard. The apple-stall, with its roasted chestnuts, the oyster-stall (a simple trestle), and the pieman who is ever ready to try his luck at pitch-and-toss, still haunt the corners of a few of our obscure streets, as they did in bygone days. The grinder and the tinker, and those who yet follow many a primitive old calling, and who set up their workshops in every open street where they can find a job, have been driven, with their quaint cries, into the suburbs, and the men themselves are but shadows of the jolly tinkers and merry pedlars who figure in our ancient ballad lore. The rattle, and roll, and thunder of our modern vehicles have drowned their old-fashioned cries in the great thoroughfares of Fleet-street and the Strand. But though many of these old cries are heard no more, there is still many a poetical association thrown around this busy neighbourhood. Who has not heard of the May-pole that stood in the Strand, how it was removed by command of the stern protector Cromwell, and how, at the restoration of Charles, a new one was erected, amid the beating of drums and loud-sounding music, and the cheers of assembled thousands, who were weary of the puritanic gloom which had so long hung over merry England? What a buzzing there would be in that neighbourhood on the occasion, while May-garlands hung across the streets, as we have often seen them in our day, in a few out-of-the-way old fashioned towns, where the manners and customs of the people have undergone but little change during the last two centuries. In an old volume printed before the Great Fire of London, entitled, _The Citie's Loyalty displayed_, we find the following account of the May-pole that stood in the Strand.