Nor is the "Talbot," as it is now called, the only ancient inn in the Borough. There are others which contain their surrounding galleries, and spacious yards open to the sky. Some years ago we glanced at other portions of this ancient Borough--especially that part called the old Mint. This is now fast disappearing; many of the houses that escaped the fire in 1676 have of late been pulled down. The following is a description which we wrote seven years ago, after visiting the remains of this dilapidated neighbourhood. Stretching from St. George's Church, in the Borough, into the high road which leads to the cast-iron bridge of Southwark, are no end of narrow courts, winding alleys, and ruined houses, which a bold-hearted man would hesitate to thread after dusk. Here stand numbers of houses which are unroofed and uninhabited. Years ago they were doomed to be pulled down, and it was resolved that a wide, open street should be built upon the space they now occupy: years may still roll away before they are removed. There is no place like this in the suburbs of London--no spot that looks so murderous, so melancholy, and so miserable. Many of these houses, besides being old, are very large and lofty. Many of these courts stand just as they did when Cromwell sent out his spies to hunt up and slay the Cavaliers, just as they again were hunted in return, after the Restoration, by the Royalists, who threaded their intricacies, with sword and pistol in hand, in search of the fallen Roundheads. There is a smell of past ages about these ancient courts, like that which arises from decay--a murky closeness--as if the old winds which blew through them in the times of the Civil Wars had become stagnant, and all old things had fallen and died just as they were blown together, and left to perish. So it is now. The timber of these old houses looks bleached and dead; and the very brick-work seems never to have been new. In them you find wide, hollow-sounding, decayed staircases, that lead into great ruinous rooms, whose echoes are only awakened by the shrieking and running of large black-eyed rats, which eat through the solid floors, through the wainscot, and live and die without being startled by a human voice. From the Southwark-bridge Road you may see the roofs of many of these great desolate houses; they are broken and open; and the massy oaken rafters are exposed to the summer sun and the snow of winter. Some of the lower floors are still inhabited; and at the ends of those courts you will see standing, on a fine day, such characters as you will meet with nowhere beside in the neighbourhood of London. Their very dress is peculiar; and they frequent the dark and hidden public-houses which abound in these close alleys,--places where the gas is burning all day long. Excepting the courts behind Long-lane, in Smithfield, we know no spot about London like this, which yet fronts St. George's Church, in the Borough.