is a sight
which may have inspired many a City apprentice, and spurred him onward to
become an 'honourable of the land;' it is, moreover, the very type of this
'red-letter day' in the City; and, costly as it is, with its
disappearance, even portly aldermen will vanish into thin air.

"The foremost group shows the lord mayor seated in the coach, attended by
his chaplain, and the sword and mace-bearers, the former carrying--which
has to be held outside the coach, be it observed; its stature is too great
for it to find shelter inside--the pearl sword presented to the City by
Queen Elizabeth, upon opening the Royal Exchange; the latter supporting
the great gold mace given by Charles I. The coach is attended by the lord
mayor's beadles in their gold-laced cloaks, and carrying small maces.

"Onward are seen the other leading features of the procession; the crowd
is truly dense, for at this point is the great crush of the day; 'the
Hill' is thronged, and the City police require all their good temper to
'keep the line.' The scene is exciting, and the good-humoured crowd
presents many grotesque points for those who delight in studies of
character. Altogether, the scene is as joyous, if rather gaudy, picture of
a civic holiday as the times could present."

Perhaps the greatest topographical change in the London of Dickens' day
was the opening, on November 6, 1869, of the Holborn Viaduct. This
improvement was nothing short of the actual demolition and reconstruction
of a whole district, formerly either squalid, over-blocked, and
dilapidated in some parts, or oversteep and dangerous to traffic in
others. But a short time before that same Holborn Valley was one of the
most heartbreaking impediments to horse traffic in London, with a gradient
on one side of one in eighteen, while opposite it was one in twenty. Thus
everything on wheels, and every foot-passenger entering the City by the
Holborn route, had to descend twenty-six feet to the Valley of the Fleet,
and then ascend a like number to Newgate. The new Viaduct levelled all
this, and made the journey far easier than that by Ludgate Hill.

The greatest architectural work which took shape in London during Dickens'
day was the construction of the new Houses of Parliament.

Associated intimately with Dickens' first steps to success were the old
buildings, which were burned in 1834. Here he received his first regular
journalistic employment, as reporter for the _True Sun_, an even