Roundabout Papers

ent British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,1 who founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a-days

mely and cheerful image: and, from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of S

le buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester”— but, oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the “Lives of

hern gate, the iron road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling battlemen

it. There are shops with no customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There’s nobody at the book-shop. “If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,” says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o’clock, “you can have the money.” There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the Pro

ble walls were not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the different denominations can’t quarrel? Why, seven or e

ourse of our sober walks we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobble-dehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a little book, which my lad held up to his face, and

General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First’s head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d’If cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best myself — novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing)— cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I have r

ut, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of “Antar” or the “Arabian Nights?” I was once present when a young ge

! and do you kn

at kind of thing,” sa

ural, healthy appetites, love sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrup

ysicians in England said to me only yesterday, “I have just read So-and-So for the second time” (naming one of Jones’s exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are

e rightful earl — when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelist’s same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps

ar away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales; far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ——‘s tales, or ——‘s, after the hot day’s march; far away in li

or of the “Tower of London” devour romances? does the dashing “Harry Lorrequer” delight in “Plain or Ringlets” or “Sponge’s Sporting Tour?” Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days, “Darnley,” and “Richelieu,” and “Delorme,”2 relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the “Three Musqueteers?” Does the accomplished author of the “Caxtons” read the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, and which for my part, t

was appointed her Majesty’s Consul-General in Venice, the only city in Europe wh

thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the “Fox”3 was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic Night: that account of China4 is told by the man of all the empire

nklin. (From the Private Journ

he Outer Barbarians.

eers.” By Sir

e passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously compared to jellies — here are two (one perhaps not entirely saccharine,

dower” and “Fra

on that memorable “First day out,” when there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on