In connection with the Fleet, I have omitted to mention one locality, in this immediate neighbourhood, which certainly deserves notice from its associations, namely Laystall Street and Mount Pleasant; for here it was, that a fort to command Gray's Inn Road, was built, when the lines for the protection of the City were formed by order of Parliament in 1643--at the time when it was feared that Prince Rupert was coming to attack it. For nearly, if not quite, a hundred years those lines of defence were partially visible; and, certainly, among others, one was at Mount Pleasant. It is a somewhat curious thing that the names survive. A Laystall meant a dung or dust heap, and, after this artificial mound was utilized for the community its name was euphemised into Mount Pleasant, which it bears to this day. This work of intrenchment was almost impressment, for we can hardly consider that it was voluntary, when we read in a newspaper of 1643, that, by order of the Parliament, "many thousands of men and women (good housekeepers), their children, and servants, went out of the several parishes of London with spades, shovels, pickaxes, and baskets, and drums and colours before them; some of the chief men of every parish marching before them, and so went into the fields, and worked hard all day in digging and making of trenches, from fort to fort, wherebie to intrench the citie round from one end to the other, on this side of the Thames; and late at night the company came back in like manner they went out, and the next day a many more went, and so they continued daily, with such cheerfulnesse that the whole will be finished ere many dayes." And so these works of fortification went on, encouraged by the presence of a member of the Common Council, and some of the Trained Bands (the City Militia of that time) and it was a work in which all classes joined--willingly, or not, I know not--but the latter, probably, as the City of London was generally loyal to its king, although on occasion, the dwellers therein, knew how to hold their own in defence of their prerogatives. But the fear of Prince Rupert, and his familiar spirit--the white poodle dog "Boy" (who was killed, after passing through many a battle-field unscathed, at Marston Moor, July 2, 1644), may possibly have had something to do with it. Of course we know that tailors and shoemakers, are mostly radicals, and socialists in politics, probably on account of their sedentary work, where political discussion is rife, and from their constant inter-association, not mixing much with the outer world; therefore we can scarcely wonder that on the 5th of June, 1643, that some five thousand or six thousand Tailors went out to help intrench the City against the redoubted Prince, and that, afterwards, the shoemakers followed their example. Two thousand porters also helped in the work. Most probably, a moral "shrewd privie nipp" was administered to most people by those then in power, and they were forced into taking an