n
these places--which even in summer are well-like in their cool
impenetrable shade--there is no little business going on, however, for
all round the rusty iron railing which incloses the weed-entangled
graveyard the houses of city merchants seem to crowd and hustle for
space; and, if they had any time for it, the clerks behind those
dust-blinded windows might spend an hour not unprofitably in looking
down upon the decaying monuments of departed citizens and meditating at
once on the uncertainty of human affairs and the benefits of life
assurance.

Amongst the dozen or so of such places illustrating the brick-and-mortar
history of the city none are more suggestive than the church and yard of
St. Simon Swynherde, which, lying in the circumbendibus of a lane named
after the same saint, forms, as it were, a sort of outlying island, upon
whose quiet shores the incautious wayfarer, being sometimes lost or cast
away, can hear the humming surges of the great sea as they boom in the
thoroughfares beyond. There is no alteration in this place from year to
year, except such differences as are brought about by the change of
seasons; no civic improvement troubles its sedate gloom--no adventurous
speculator regards it as a promising site for building blocks of
offices--no railway company casts an evil eye upon its seclusion within
the area formed by the church and the tall dim houses which have
mouldered into uniform neutrality of colour.

Even the march of time seems to have been arrested amidst the decay of
the place, since the bell of the church clock rusted from its bearings
and the index of the old sun-dial fell a prey to accumulated canker. The
spring brings a few green buds and feeble leaves upon the grimy trees;
the summer serves to accumulate the store of dust and torn paper and
shreds of light rubbish which the autumn wind swirls into neglected
corners on the dim evenings when the rain weeps on the blackened windows
and the mist creeps up to the steeple in long ghostly shapes. The winter
brings a frozen cyclone which whistles round and round or gently covers
the graveyard with snow, the unbroken whiteness of which is gradually
spotted and interlaced with sooty flakes, as though the genius of the
place resented the intrusion and would make no further compromise than
half mourning.

The dimmest, darkest, and dirtiest of all the houses round the yard was
that of Richard Dryce & Co., factors and general merchants. It was nev