f Parliament, is
Church Street, running to the river, where Copperfield and Peggotty
followed Martha, bent upon throwing herself into the flood.

In Dickens' time, that glorious thoroughfare, known of all present-day
visitors to London, the Victoria Embankment, was in a way non-existent. In
the forties there was some agitation for a new thoroughfare leading
between the western and the eastern cities. Two there were already, one
along Holborn, though the later improvement of the Holborn Viaduct more
than trebled its efficiency, and the other, the "Royal Route,"--since the
court gave up its annual state pageant by river,--_via_ the Strand, Fleet
Street, and Ludgate Hill.

As originally projected, the "Embankment" was to be but a mere causeway,
or dyke, running parallel to the shore of the river from Westminster
Bridge to Blackfriars, "with ornamental junctions at Hungerford and
Waterloo Bridges."

Whatever the virtues of such a plan may have been, practically or
artistically, it was ultimately changed in favour of a solid filling which
should extend from the fore-shore to somewhat approximating the original
river-banks. This left the famous "Stairs" far inland, as stand York
Stairs and Essex Stairs to-day.

The result has been that, while it has narrowed the river itself, it has
made possible an ample roadway through the heart of a great city, the peer
of which does not exist elsewhere. It is to be feared, though, that it is
hardly appreciated. The London cabby appears to be fascinated with the
glare and intricacy of the Strand, and mostly the drivers of brewers'
drays and parcel delivery vans the same. The result is that, but for a few
earnest folk who are really desirous of getting to their destination
quickly, it is hardly made use of to anything like the extent which it
ought.

The Thames in London proper was, in 1850, crossed by but six bridges.
Blackfriars Railway Bridge, Charing Cross Railway Bridge, and the Tower
Bridge did not come into the _ensemble_ till later, though the two former
were built during Dickens' lifetime.

Westminster Bridge, from whence the Embankment starts, was the second
erected across the Thames. It appears that attempts were made to obtain
another bridge over the Thames besides that known as "London Bridge," in
the several reigns of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I. and II., and George
I.; but it was not until the year 1736 that Parliament authorized the
building of a second bridge, nam