They are now quite safe; the people are rough to look at, but they are no longer thieves and cut-throats by calling. Let us take a short, a very short walk about the Desert. Alas! its glories are gone; the place is not even picturesque: Vice, we know, is sometimes picturesque, even in its most hideous mien. Orchard Street has one side pulled down, and the other side presents a squalid, dilapidated appearance in gray brick; it was once a fit entrance for the most wicked part of London. The streets into which it leads--Great St. Anne’s Street, Pye Street, Peter Street, Duck Lane (now St. Matthew Street) are all transformed. Huge barracks of lodging-houses stand over the dark and malodorous courts; the place is now no doubt tolerably virtuous, but the artist turns from it with a shudder. There was a time when these streets were country lanes, having few houses, and no courts; at this time many pleasant, ingenious, and interesting persons lived in this quarter. For example, Herrick the poet and Purcell the musician lived in St. Anne’s Street. But we have already condemned the catalogue of connections. He who seriously studies the streets learns the associations as he goes along. Outside these streets stretched Tothill Fields and Five Fields. These fields were to Westminster much as Smithfield and Moorfields were to the City of London. Anything out of the common could be done in Tothill Fields. To begin with, they were a pleasant place for walking; in the spring they were full of flowers--the cuckoo flower, the marsh mallow, [Illustration: OLD PYE STREET AND THE RAGGED SCHOOL.] the spurge, the willow herb, the wild parsley, are enumerated; they contained ponds and streams; in the streams grew watercress, always a favorite “sallet” of the people; in the ponds there were ducks--the Westminster boys used to hire dogs to worry the ducks; it is not stated who paid for those ducks. On the north side of the Fields was St. James’s Park, with its decoy and Rosamond’s Pond, a rectangular pool lying across what is now Birdcage Walk, opposite the Wellington Barracks. Later on, market gardens were laid out in these low-lying meadows. [Illustration: BLACK DOG ALLEY. WESTMINSTER.] Tournaments were held in the Fields--not the ordinary exercises or displays of the tilt yard, but the grander occasions, as in 1226 at the coronation of Queen Eleanor. Here, in the same reign, but later, the Prior of Beverley entertained the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, the King’s son, and many great Lords, in tents erected on the field.