, with the
thermometer at nearly 80 degrees in the shade, one needs some enthusiasm
to undertake a tramp for a few hours over the hot and dusty streets of
London, that we may glance at a few of the memorable spots that we have
visited over and over again before. This preliminary tramp is therefore
necessarily limited to visiting the houses where Dickens lived, from the
year 1836 until he finally left it in 1860, on disposing of Tavistock
House, and took up his residence at Gad's Hill Place. In our way we
shall take a few of the places rendered famous in the novels, but it
would require a "knowledge of London" as "extensive and peculiar" as
that of Mr. Weller, and would occupy a week at least, to exhaust the
interest of all these associations.

[Illustration: The Golden Cross.]

Our temporary quarters are at our favourite "Morley's," in Trafalgar
Square, one of those old-fashioned, comfortable hotels of the last
generation, where the guest is still known as "Mr. H.," and not as
"Number 497." And what is very relevant to our present purpose, Morley's
revives associations of the hotels, or "Inns," as they were more
generally called in Charles Dickens's early days. Strolling from
Morley's eastward along the Strand, to which busy thoroughfare there are
numerous references in the works of Dickens, we pass on our left the
Golden Cross Hotel, a great coaching-house half a century ago, from
whence the Pickwickians and Mr. Jingle started, on the 13th of May,
1827, by the "Commodore" coach for Rochester. "The low archway," against
which Mr. Jingle thus prudently cautioned the passengers,--"Heads!
Heads! Take care of your heads!" with the addition of a very tragic
reference to the head of a family, was removed in 1851, and the hotel
has the same appearance now that it presented after that alteration. The
house was a favourite with David Copperfield, who stayed there with his
friend Steerforth on his arrival "outside the Canterbury coach;" and it
was in one of the public rooms here, approached by "a side entrance to
the stable-yard," that the affecting interview took place with his
humble friend Mr. Peggotty, as touchingly recorded in the fortieth
chapter of _David Copperfield_. The two famous "pudding shops" in the
Strand, so minutely described in connection with David's early days,
have of course long been removed:--

"One was in a court close to St. Martin's
Church--at the back of the Church,--which is now