om the preface of "Little Dorrit:"

"I found the outer front courtyard metamorphosed into a butter-shop; and
then I almost gave up every brick for lost.... I then came to Marshalsea
Place; ... and whoever goes here will find his feet on the very
paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea Gaol,--will see its narrow yard to
the right and to the left but very little altered, if at all, except that
the walls were lowered when the place got free."

When the elder Dickens was carried to prison, like Mr. Dorrit, he was
lodged in the top story but one, in the chamber afterward occupied by the
Dorrits, when Charles, it was said, went often (before the family removed
across the river) to visit him, crossing presumably the old picturesque
London Bridge. In "David Copperfield," it is evidently the same edifice
which is disguised as the "King's Bench Prison."

In the immediate neighbourhood of the Marshalsea was St. George's Vestry,
where, on the cushions, with the church register for a pillow, slept
Little Dorrit on the night on which she was shut out of the prison.

Opposite, on High Street, stood until recently the little pie-shop, where
Flora read out her lecture to Little Dorrit. Near by, also, was Mr.
Cripple's dancing academy. (Deliciously Dickenesque--that name.)
Guy's--reminiscent of Bob Sawyer--is but a stone's throw away, as also
Lant Street, where he had his lodgings. Said Sawyer, as he handed his card
to Mr. Pickwick: "There's my lodgings; it's near Guy's, and handy for me,
you know,--a little distance after you've passed St. George's Church;
turns out of High Street on right-hand side the way." Supposedly the same
humble rooms--which looked out upon a pleasant prospect of a
timber-yard--in which lived the Dickens family during the elder Dickens'
imprisonment.

In Horsemonger Lane, which runs out of the High Street, was the
tobacco-shop of Mrs. Chivery. In the High Street, too, was the old "White
Hart" of Sam Weller and even Jack Cade. "The George," "The Spur," "The
Queen's Head," and "The King's Head"--all reminiscent of Dickens--were
also here in the immediate neighbourhood.

Crossing the river northward, one may retrace their steps toward St.
Paul's, near which, a quarter of a century back, might have been seen the
arcaded entrance to Doctors' Commons, an institution described by Sam
Weller, and which, among other functions, formerly kept guard of all the
wills probated in London. The building has since disappeared