the Restoration the Soldier once more became an Angel and the Citizen returned to the Virgin Mary. But I think that the tavern languished. Cowley Street was not named after the poet, as one would like to believe, but after the village of Cowley, in Middlesex, by Mr. Booth Barton, who built the two streets. There are other associations about these streets; the name of Keats is mentioned. But they belong to the catalogue. It is enough for us to recall the babbling brook which once ran along the roadway here--on this side of the gray stone wall which still stands, the wall of the Monastery. It ran then through the bending reeds and the tall grasses of the marsh, and so out into the silver Thames; the swans came sailing up the brook, and made nests in the low bank of the eyot. The Abbot’s barge was moored close by the gateway, of which a modern successor still stands; and there were drawn up on the bank the boats in which the Abbot’s fishermen went out to catch salmon and sturgeon in the river. Later on they built these quiet houses along one side, something after the Dutch style; and they hung up before their fronts a curtain of green Virginia creeper, but not to hide from the windows the view of the broad lawns, the flower-beds, and the walnut trees of the garden behind the wall. This part of Westminster has always been full of taverns; first for the solace of the men-at-arms, afterward for that of the Members of Parliament. The tavern has always been the national place of recreation and rest; for a time, it is true, the coffee-house displaced it, but only for a time--the tavern came back again to favor. The signs of these inns show the date of their erection. There was the White Hart of Richard II.; the Brown Bear of Warwick; the White Swan of Henry V.; the Old Rose of Henry VII. And there were the more common signs: the Blue Boar, the Salutation, the George, the Green Dragon, The Barley Mow, the Heaven tavern, the Fleece. One of the oldest of these taverns, the Cock, remained with its open court and its galleries till twenty years ago, when it was pulled down to make room for the Aquarium. The rafters and timbers of this tavern were of cedar, and the interior was also adorned with many curious carvings. [Illustration: ORIGINAL SIGN, COCK INN.] More remarkable than the taverns, which we have with us everywhere, were the Almshouses of Westminster. Until they were destroyed they were remarkable for their number, for their endowments, and for the quaint pleasantness and beauty of their appearance. You may now look in vain for the old buildings: they are gone; in their place we have the consolidated almshouses and the consolidated schools.