When I go up that quiet cloistered court, running up like a little secure haven from the stormy ocean of Fleet Street, and see the doctor's gnarled bust on the bracket above his old hat, I sometimes think the very wainscot must still be impregnated with the fumes of his seething punch-bowl. WASHINGTON IRVING. My Bosom's Lord declares that it is more of a smell than a street; but there is not a journalist of any literary pretension in Britain who does not regard Fleet Street as the Mecca of his craft, and instinctively turn his face towards it when he has occasion to say his prayers. It is the focus, the magnetic centre, and very heart of London's Fairyland--the Capital of the Territory of Brick and Mortar Romance. Its enchanted courts are the inner sanctuary of Haunted London. It is the most astonishing sensation to step out of the hum and moan and fret of the rushing and turbulent City's most bustling and roaring street, into the absolute, cloistered stillness of, for instance, the Temple; where, within fifty yards of Fleet Street, you may stand by Oliver Goldsmith's grave and hear no sound save the cooing of pigeons and the splashing of a fountain. Fleet Street's air is the quintessence of English History. From the Plague and the Fire to the Jubilee Procession, everything has passed here. All the literary eminence of the day comes to do business here. These paving-stones have felt the weight of George R. Sims, Clement Scott, Bernard Shaw, and the Poet Craig. It is the world's main artery, the centre of the Empire's nervous system, the brain and soul of England. Be that as it may, I am conscious of an increase in my stature since I became a part of Fleet Street--a stretching of my boots since I began to walk in the footsteps of Swift, Steele, Pope, Goldsmith, Johnson, and all the other giants whose seething punch-bowls have impregnated the wainscot of the neighbouring taverns. [Illustration: A BARBER'S SHOP IN 1492.] The chief of the ghosts, of course, is the burly lexicographer--the man with the inky ruffles, the dirty large hands, the shabby brown coat, and shrivelled wig. Methinks I see him now, clinging to his door in dingy Bolt Court, and waking the midnight echoes with his Cyclopean laughter, as he listens to a parting from fluent Burke or snuffy Gibbon. There were no footpaths in Fleet Street in those days; spouts projected the rain-water in streams from the house-tops, and there were no umbrellas. The swinging of broad signs in high winds would sometimes bring down a wall--an accident which killed, on one occasion, in Fleet Street, "two young ladies, a cobbler, and the king's jeweller." And yet the daintiest and prettiest of women came tripping down Fleet Street, and up the narrow court, to see the blustering, pompous Lichfield bear; unless, indeed, Miss Burney, witty Mrs. Montague, charming Miss Reynolds, and shrewd Miss Piozzi only called to caress Hodge, the doctor's cat.