is said of the industrious and ingenious American that he demands to be
"shown things," and if his cicerone is not sufficiently painstaking he
will play the game after his own fashion, which usually results in his
getting into all sorts of unheard-of places, and seeing and learning
things which your native has never suspected to previously have existed.
All honour then to such an indefatigable species of the _genus homo_.

Nothing has the peculiar charm of old houses for the seeker after
knowledge. To see them, and to know them, is to know their
environment,--and so it is with London,--and then, and then only, can one
say truly--in the words of Johnson--that they have "seen and are
astonished."

A great mass of the raw material from which English history is written is
contained in parochial record books and registers, and if this were the
only source available the fund of information concerning the particular
section of mid-London with which Dickens was mostly identified--the
parishes of St. Bride's, St. Mary's-le-Strand, St. Dunstan's, St.
Clement's-Danes, and St. Giles--would furnish a well-nigh inexhaustible
store of old-time lore. For a fact, however, the activities of the
nineteenth century alone, to particularize an era, in the "Highway of
Letters" and the contiguous streets lying round about, have formed the
subject of many a big book quite by itself. When one comes to still
further approximate a date the task is none the less formidable; hence it
were hardly possible to more than limn herein a sort of fleeting itinerary
among the sights and scenes which once existed, and point out where, if
possible, are the differences that exist to-day. Doctor Johnson's "walk
down Fleet Street"--if taken at the present day--would at least be
productive of many surprises, whether pleasant ones or not the reader may
adduce for himself, though doubtless the learned doctor would still chant
the praises of the city--in that voice which we infer was none too
melodious:

_"Oh, in town let me live, then in town let me die,_
_For in truth I can't relish the country; not I."_

Within the last decade certain changes have taken place in this
thoroughfare which might be expected to make it unrecognizable to those of
a former generation who may have known it well. Improvements for the
better, or the worse, have rapidly taken place; until now there is, in
truth, somewhat of an approach to a wide thoroughfare leading from
Westminst