“Feb. 22nd. I set forward for my journey to London.” This quaint admixture of scientific research, pleasure-seeking, and superstitious credulity, blended with intellectual enquiry, affords a curious picture of the domestic and professional habits of a physician of the seventeenth century. The father of the writer, the eminent Dr. Thomas Browne, received the order of knighthood from his majesty, King Charles II., on the occasion of his visiting the city in 1671, when he dined in state at the New Hall (St. Andrew’s); the same honour was pressed upon the acceptance of the mayor, who, however, ventured to decline the proffered dignity. In the reign of James II., we find record of Henry, then Duke of Norfolk, riding into the market-place at the head of 300 knights, to declare a free parliament, the mayor and sheriffs meeting him there, and consenting to the act. But the glory of the palace, once the scene of such regal splendour and magnificence, was not of long duration. A dispute between the grandson of the Duke Henry and the mayor of the city, concerning the entrance of some comedians into the city, playing their trumpets, &c. on the way to the palace, caused its owner, Thomas, then Duke, to destroy the greater portion of it, and leave the remainder untenanted; and among divers transmutations of property that characterized the era of Queen Anne, we find the appropriation of its vestiges to the purpose of a workhouse, when those institutions first sprang into existence—a fate shared at the same period by the cloisters of the old Black Friars monastery. The river, that once reflected the gorgeous displays of wealth that glittered upon the margin of its waters, in the palace of the Dukes, now flows darkly and silently on, through crowded thoroughfares and gloomy wharfs, and staiths; corn and coal depots, red brick factories, with their tiers of low window-ranges and tall chimneys, have usurped the place of banquetting halls and palace gardens; a toll bridge adds silence to the gloom, by its prohibitory tax on passers-by, a stillness, oppressive by its sudden contrast to the activity of neighbouring thoroughfares, pervades the whole region round about; and the spot that once was the nucleus of wealth, riches, and grandeur, now seems the very seat and throne of melancholy.