These streets possessed, until quite recently, the picturesqueness that belongs to the aged vagrom man. He hardly exists in these days; but one remembers him. He was old--age had lent no touch of reverence or dignity; he was clad in many-colored rags and fluttering duds; he leaned upon a stick; his white locks were the only part of him that presented any appearance of cleanliness; his face was lined and puckered, his features were weatherbeaten and prominent, his eyes were wolfish. He was admirable--in a picture. Such were the streets, such the houses, of Westminster--that part of the City lying round about the Abbey. Those on the west and south of the Abbey are comparatively new streets. In the excellent map by Richard Newcourt showing London and Westminster in the year 1658, we find Tothill Street completely built; Rochester Row does not exist; Great St. Peter Street has a few houses, Great College Street none; St. Anne’s Street has houses with gardens. The crowded part of Westminster in the seventeenth century was that narrow area north of New Palace Yard, of which King Street was the most important thoroughfare. When we consider that this place was a great center of trade long before and long after the building of London Bridge; that for six hundred years it was close to the King’s House, with all his followers, huscarles, archers, or bodyguard--we are not surprised that there has always been about these streets the flavor of the tavern--always the smell of casks and pint pots, of stale beer and yesterday’s wine. Where there are soldiers there are taverns; there also are the minstrels and the music and the girls. It may also be concluded beyond a doubt that the Sanctuary was a thirsty place. Long after Court and Camp and Sanctuary had left the place the name and fame of Westminster for its taverns and its dens remained. These streets were a byword and a reproach well into the present century. One or two streets there were that claimed for a generation or so a kind of respectability. They were the streets lying between New Palace Yard and Whitehall, such as King Street, and Cannon Street, with one or two of later growth,--of seventeenth and eighteenth century respectability,--such as Petty France, Cowley Street, and College Street.