ting fire to it, they draw the smoke
into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils, like
funnels," and so on; conscientious explanations which a German tourist of
our own times might think it superfluous to offer to his compatriots.

It is also instructive to read that the light-fingered gentry of the
metropolis were nearly as adroit in their calling as they are at present,
after three additional centuries of development for their delicate craft;
for the learned Tobias Salander, the travelling companion of Paul
Hentzner, finding himself at a Lord Mayor's Show, was eased of his purse,
containing nine crowns, as skilfully as the feat could have been done by
the best pickpocket of the nineteenth century, much to that learned
person's discomfiture.

Into such an England and among such English the Netherland envoys had now
been despatched on their most important errand.

After twice putting back, through stress of weather, the commissioners,
early in July, arrived at London, and were "lodged and very worshipfully
appointed at charges of her Majesty in the Clothworkers' Hall in
Pynchon-lane, near Tower-street." About the Tower and its faubourgs the
buildings were stated to be as elegant as they were in the city itself,
although this was hardly very extravagant commendation. From this
district a single street led along the river's strand to Westminster,
where were the old and new palaces, the famous hall and abbey, the
Parliament chambers, and the bridge to Southwark, built of stone, with
twenty arches, sixty feet high, and with rows of shops and
dwelling-houses on both its sides. Thence, along the broad and beautiful
river, were dotted here and there many stately mansions and villas,
residences of bishops and nobles, extending farther and farther west as
the city melted rapidly into the country. London itself was a town lying
high upon a hill--the hill of Lud--and consisted of a coil of narrow,
tortuous, unseemly streets, each with a black, noisome rivulet running
through its centre, and with rows of three-storied, leaden-roofed houses,
built of timber-work filled in with lime, with many gables, and with the
upper stories overhanging and darkening the basements. There were one
hundred and twenty-one churches, small and large, the most conspicuous of
which was the Cathedral. Old Saint Paul's was not a very magnificent
edifice--but it was an extremely large one, for it was seven hundred and
twenty feet l