the affair to his nephew, says that the drama "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the Order with their Georges and Garters, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like." The new theatre was much handsomer than the old, and provided with a roof of tile, so that the discharge of ordnance should not again produce such disastrous consequences. The house was pulled down in 1644, by which time Puritanical opinions had gained so much ground amongst the London population that theatres were no longer the prosperous undertakings they had been in more careless and light-hearted days. From the Bankside to the High Street of Southwark is no great distance; but it takes us backward from the time of Shakespeare to the time of Chaucer. The "Tabard" Inn stood in that ancient thoroughfare, and, until recently, some old, decrepit buildings flanked the back yard of this hostelry, which, though probably not coeval with Chaucer, were at any rate antique enough to suggest his period. The Borough High Street, being the main road into the south-eastern parts of England, was from an early date celebrated for its roomy hostelries, some of which still remain in all their picturesque amplitude, with external galleries, overhanging roofs, carved timber, dusky passages, and cavernous doorways. None, however, could boast such an association as that which throws its halo round the "Tabard." We are not, of course, to suppose that Chaucer's immortal poem is an exact record of anything that happened on some given occasion; but it is more than probable that Chaucer performed the pilgrimage to Canterbury, "the holy, blissful martyr for to seek," and that, with his companions, he started from the "Tabard" in the High Street. It is also conceivable that these pious excursionists often beguiled the way by telling stories; and it is thoroughly in accordance with the manners of the time that some of the stories should be of a very questionable tendency. Pilgrimages, after a while, became a form of dissipation with which the religious sentiment was but slightly associated. As early as the fourth Christian century, Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, dissuaded his flock from joining pilgrimages, because of the low moral tone frequently developed amongst the travellers. In the ninth century, Englishwomen had a particularly bad name for the gallantries they carried on under pretence of devotion; and in the fourteenth century, when Chaucer wrote, the matter had doubtless become still worse. One of the results of this perversion, however, was that people distinguished by every variety of character were drawn together by the common object of adoration at some famous shrine. Chaucer was thus presented with the finest possible opportunity for the exercise of those powers of observation and of portraiture in which he was hardly inferior to Shakespeare himself. Hence a poem