And Raphael's fair design with judgment charm'd,
Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here
The colour'd prints of Overton appear;
Where statues breath'd the work of Phidias' hands,
A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands;
There Essex's stately pile adorn'd the shore,
There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers's--now no more."

Disraeli, in "Tancred," says: "The Strand is, perhaps, the finest street
in Europe." Charles Lamb said: "I often shed tears in the motley Strand
for fulness of joy at so much life."

The Strand has now become a street of shops instead of a street of
palaces; it has been, but is no more, a fashionable resort; it has been
a place for the lodgings of visitors, and still has many small hotels
and boarding-houses in its riverside lanes; its personal associations
are many, but not so important as those in the City or Westminster; it
is a street of great interest, but its architectural glories have almost
all vanished.

Beginning at the west end, we note on the north side the Golden Cross
Hotel, rebuilt. This is the successor of a famous old coaching inn,
which stood further west. On the south side is Craven Street, formerly
Spur Alley, where once Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7. The site of
Hungerford Market is now covered by the Charing Cross railway-station.
In Charing Cross station-yard is a modern reproduction of the original
Queen Eleanor's Cross. The market was built in 1680, rebuilt in 1831,
and stretched to the river. The name will always be connected with that
of Charles Dickens, and with "David Copperfield." Beside the market was
the suspension bridge constructed by Brunel, opened in 1845, and removed
to make room for the railway-bridge.

On the site of Hungerford Market there stood the "Inn" or House of the
Bishop of Norwich. In 1536 Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, exchanged
his house in Southwark for this place; twenty years later it fell into
the hands of Heath, Archbishop of York, who called it York House, and
in the reign of James I. it became the property of the Crown. Bacon was
born in this house. In 1624 the Duke of Buckingham obtained the house;
he pulled it down, and began to build a large mansion to take its place.
The watergate is the only part of his structure still existing. Cromwell
gave the house to Fairfax, whose daughter married the second Duke of
Buckingham, of the Villiers family. In 1655 Evelyn describes the house
as "much ruined through