The mind that can reverence historic associations needs no explanation of the charm that such associations possess. There are streets and houses in London which, for pilgrims of this class, are haunted with memories and hallowed with an imperishable light--that not even the dreary commonness of everyday life can quench or dim. Almost every great author in English literature has here left behind him some personal trace, some relic that brings us at once into his living presence. In the time of Shakespeare,--of whom it may be noted that wherever you find him at all you find him in select and elegant neighbourhoods,--St. Helen's parish was a secluded and peaceful quarter of the town; and there the poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre in Blackfriars, in which he is known to have owned a share. It is said that he dwelt at number 134 Aldersgate Street (the house has been demolished), and in that region,--amid all the din of traffic and all the strange adjuncts of a new age,--those who love him are in his company. Milton was born in a court adjacent to Bread Street, Cheapside, and the explorer comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's churchyard,--where the poet Lovelace was buried,--and at the house which is now No. 19 York Street, Westminster (in later times occupied by Bentham and by Hazlitt), and in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When secretary to Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, where now is the headquarters of the London police. His last home was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, but the visitor to that spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks. Walking through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget Edmund Spenser, who died there, in grief and destitution, a victim to the same inhuman spirit of Irish ruffianism that is still disgracing humanity and troubling the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben Jonson's terse record of that calamity: "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Jonson himself is closely and charmingly associated with places that may still be seen. He passed his boyhood near Charing Cross--having been born in Hartshorn Lane, now Northumberland Street--and went to the parish school of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; and those who roam around Lincoln's Inn will call to mind that this great poet helped to build it--a trowel in one hand and Horace in the other. His residence, in his days of fame, was just outside of Temple Bar--but all that neighbourhood is new at the present time.