THE CITY PARLIAMENT.

I READ much in dusty folios. I think much
of old kings and their subjects, dead and
gone. I like to picture in my chamber the
domestic life of mummies as they used to be,
when they could walk about, and eat and drink,
and kiss. Sometimes I have blundered through
Cheapside, jostled by the crowd, and while I
might be staring at the window of a music-
shop, with my eyes fastened about the
Bloomer painted on a polka, my head has
been with Hathôr, who was the Egyptian
Venus, and my whole mind busy in the ruins
of her temple, near the village of Bedrechein.
Over London Bridge, perhaps, I have dreamed
that I was walking in the date wood which
now covers the ground where Memphis stood.
Passing Bucklersbury— sacred grove of cooks
— my fixed gaze on the placard appended
to the breast of a hungry-looking man, may
have induced that individual to suppose that
I was counting to myself the cost of roast beef,
potatoes, cabbage, and a pint of ale, preliminary
to an acceptance of his public invitation to
dine cheaply at Marrowfat's, while I was only
conscious to myself of gazing at the statue of
Sesostris, thirty-four and a half feet high, with
its face flat on the ground, and wanting a great
portion of its legs.

I do not look at names upon street-
corners, I take no heed of turnings, yet, in
the Roman Catacombs, I read every
inscription. I have also copied writing from
Etruscan tombs, and I have made rubbings
in this country of a vast number of
monumental brasses. I walked one day last
winter in Cheapside — there was no
"me-thought" about it— I had been walking
through one half of huge London, through
the very substance of the nut, until I reached
the City, which lies like a maggot in the
centre. I knew the City by the noise and
dirt of its close thoroughfares, and by the
thumbed look of its shops. I had been jostling
my way for two hours through a huge
population, with large heaps of wealth piled up on
either side of the great human current.
Unconsciously I became tossed by some eddy out
of the full roar of the tide into the quietness
of a small creek, which is named King Street,
Cheapside. I know it, for it is become my
Yarrow. I then visited it first, and I have
since revisited the spot. Of a few impressions
left upon my memory by these two visits, it
is my desire now to present copies to the
public generally, but particularly to my
brother antiquarians.

At the time when I first drifted into King
Street, I was reading an old book in modern
Latin, Cardan's Confession of his Life. He
was a man much hustled in the world three
centuries ago, and I was so greatly interested
in his narrative that I walked on without
perceiving the direction I had taken (my
desire was to go to Hackney), until I had
fairly walked into the hall of an old building,
which stood in the way of any farther
progress. The change from open air to roof, the
presence of antiquity, the frowns of two
sublime idols, who reared in a corner of the hall
their lofty fronts, caused me to close my book,
and look with reverence about me. A person,
in reply to my inquiry, informed me that the
temple in which I stood was called Guildhall,
| and that the colossal idols, gorgeously coloured,
and far superior in breadth of feature to the
effeminate productions of Canova,
Thorwaldsen, or Baily, were named Gog and
Magog. Steps, leading through a suite of
smaller antechambers, led to the recesses of
the temple, and with a bold step I set forward
to explore its inmost mysteries.

A venerable man in scarlet clothing stood
in the third chamber, and pointed to a door,
by which I entered to ascend a little flight
of steps and reach a gallery. A humming
and a drumming filled the air: a humming
as of men, a drumming as upon a table
with a hammer, and a monotonous cry
of order, like the cry of Imaum from the
Mosque. From the gallery I looked out
upon a full concourse of the initiated, who
assemble in the recesses of the Temple of
Gog. Since there were a few men near me
in the gallery, who had apparently
accomplished the same adventure which I had
myself brought to so fortunate an issue, of
one of them I asked: "What place is this, and
what may be the meaning of this humming
and this drumming?" "Sir," he replied,
"this is the House of Common Councilmen—
the City Parliament— and members are now
forwarding a bill through its first and second
stages."

This, then, was that great Corporation of