,' quod he, 'under 2 pence,
I lyst not yet bestow my almes dede;'
Thus lacking mony I could not spede.

"Then I convayed me into Kent;
For of the law wold I meddle no more
Because no man to me tooke entent,
I dyght me to do as I dyd before.
Now Jesus that in Bethlem was bore,
Save London, and send trew lawyers there mede,
For who so wants mony with them shall not spede."

Again one might quote that old Roxburghe ballad, "The Great Boobee," in
which a country yokel is made to tell how he was made to look foolish when
he resolved to plough no more, but to see the fashions of London:

"Now as I went along the street,
I carried my hat in my hand,
And to every one that I did meet
I bravely bent my band.
Some did laugh, some did scoff,
And some did mock at me,
And some did say I was a woodcock,
And a great Boobee.

"Then I did walk in haste to Paul's,
The steeple for to view,
Because I heard some people say
It should be builded new.
When I got up unto the top,
The city for to see,
It was so high, it made me cry,
Like a great Boobee.

* * * *

"Next day I through Pye-corner past,
The roast meat on the stall
Invited me to take a taste;
My money was but small:
The meat I pickt, the cook me kickt,
As I may tell to thee,
He beat me sore, and made me rore,
Like a great Boobee."

It should be remembered, however, that the great classic of London
every-day life, Gay's "Trivia," with its warnings against every danger of
the street, from chairmen's poles to thimblerigging, from the ingenious
thefts of periwigs to the nuisances caused by dustmen and small coalmen,
from the reckless horseplay of the Mohawks to the bewilderment which may
overtake the stranger confronted by the problem of Seven Dials, was
written for the warning of Londoners themselves. Those were the days when
diamond cut diamond.

In the last fifty years the roving swindler has become rare in the
streets. London now frightens the countryman more by its size than
anything else. And yet the bigger London grows the more it must lose even
this power to intimidate. Its greatest distances, its vast suburban
wildernesses, are seen by him only through a railway carriage window. He
is shot into the centre, and in the centre he remains, where help and
convenience are increased every year. It was different in the old days,
when the countryman ro