that City orchard. Such were the picturesque features of the London of this period in the streets. How different were the old ordinaries from the quiet chop-houses we now find in every court and alley that runs into Lombard-street! In those days, ten to one you had to fight your man after having finished your dinner; for swash-bucklers abounded in every tavern. Still there were merry doings; and Queen Bess's ruff at last bristled out with anger at the tidings of the quantity of venison those "fat and greasy citizens" consumed, and then the Lord Mayor and aldermen were called upon to interfere. Now merchants whose autographs to a cheque would load the bearer with gold lunch in the neighbouring alleys on their humble chop and steak; and gentlemen worth thousands turn up their cuffs and peel their own potatoes--then hurry off by the train, or omnibus, or steamer, to their snug suburban residences to dinner, except on rare occasions. They no longer retire to the ancient hostels to smoke tobacco, which was sold for its weight in silver, and to purchase which they looked out their newest crowns and shillings to place in the opposite scale. Smoking then was a different thing from "burning" tobacco as we do now; yet there were men in those days who, no doubt, "blew a cloud" with Sir Walter Raleigh and Ben Jonson; and even Shakspeare himself must have sat in the society of these early smokers. How the bankers of England sprang from goldsmiths and lenders of money on plate and other pledges, is already matter of history; and were King John now alive, he would hesitate before he dared to venture on a little dental surgery to fill his exchequer; the bench would get judgment signed a thousand times over with much more pleasure than he affixed his signature to the Great Charter. Even the fiery daughter of Henry VIII. would, under the existing state of things, pause before commanding the citizens to take back the money she had borrowed of them, without interest, in loan for which she demanded seven per cent should be paid, and all their gold and silver [Illustration: LOMBARD-STREET.] plate deposited with her as security for the payment--a most original and profitable way of "paying them back in their own coin." [Illustration: ST. MARY'S WOOLNOTH.]