BELOW CHERRY GARDEN PIER 319 THE GEORGE INN 321 LITTLE DORRIT'S WINDOW IN THE MARSHALSEA 321 ALCOVE FROM OLD LONDON BRIDGE, NOW AT GUY'S 323 THE ENTRANCE GATES TO GUY'S 325 A FORMER ENTRANCE TO ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 327 SOUTH LONDON CHAPTER I THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS I propose to call the series of chapters which are to follow by the general name of 'South London.' Like their predecessors on 'London' and 'Westminster,' they will not attempt, or pretend, to present a continuous history of this region--or, indeed, a history at all: they will endeavour to do for this part of London what their predecessors have already attempted for the Cities of London and Westminster: that is to say, they will present such episodes and incidents, with such characters, as may serve to illustrate the life of the place; the manners and customs of the people; the characteristics of the Borough and its outlying suburbs. So far as history means the march of armies and the clash of armour, we shall here find little history. So far, also, as history means the growth of our liberties, the struggles by which they were won; the apparent decay, or defeat, from time to time, of the spirit of freedom, with its inevitable recovery: the reader and the student may be referred to the pages of a Stubbs or a Freeman--not to my humbler page. Great is the work, and worthy to be held in the highest honour, of those who trace out the irresistible march of national freedom: I cannot join their company; I must be contented with the lowlier, yet somewhat useful, task of showing how the people, my forefathers, lived, and what they thought, and how they sang and feasted and made love and grew old and died.