The burial-ground, whose iron grate I
accidentally discovered in a corner of a yard,
had an active, business-like appearance. A
list of very moderate fees, and an attempt to
claim relationship with the famous Barebone
Burial Ground, at Stepney, by calling this the
City Barebone Burial Ground, shewed an eye
wide awake to worldly interest. Peeping
in, I saw, in the midst of a rank garden
full of large sunflowers, and parted off with
a railing from the grave-yard, a little house,
with the word "Office" over the door, and at
the door, a man in faded black and with a
white neck-cloth—obviously the head clerk
if not the manager of the concern. The
grave-yard itself was full of crevices, and was,
in most places, worn quite bare and bald of
grass, with frequent digging up. Nowhere
did I see the faintest trace of care and neatness.
I saw seven graves open; and, at one of them,
a gravedigger—his hands and clothes covered
with clay—talking with a woman who had
brought him bread and butter, and some
tea in a tin bottle. Around the walls,
numbers from one to ninety odd were
painted in white upon a black ground, and
beyond, in every way, the overhanging roofs
of wooden houses close around the dismal
sickly spot.

Pursuing my walk, I passed many more
courts like Leech's Rents; more colonies of
costermongers; more dark and filthy
reproductions of Sun Court. Alleys, where women,
sitting of a row on door-steps, were all stitching
braces; black nooks, where sweeps lived
together and kept stores of soot; noisome
sheds, where butchers, not disposed to
cleanliness, were slaughtering their sheep while
boys looked on with greedy interest.
Afterwards, I passed along a narrow way of
antique gabled houses, having stuccoed fronts;
these, once were the dwellings of a better
class; although there is no pane of glass in all
their leaden-framed windows bigger than my
hand. Now, these houses are let out in single
rooms; their outer doors are gone; they
are filthy and dilapidated. Through one of
the windows I saw, in a great room, some
cobblers at their work; table and stools were
all the furniture; but I noticed behind them
a high mantelpiece, curiously carved. One of
these houses once upon a time was the abode of
old Sir Simon Curll; who, from a poor barber's
apprentice, became Lord Mayor of London and
eke a liveryman of the Wig Maker's Company.
He it was who bequeathed a kilderkin of
ale and a bushel of oaten biscuit, "such as
mariners do eat," to be distributed annually
amongst twelve poor toothless old men and
women (not being Arians), who could repeat
the creed of St. Athanasius; which charitable
bequest the Wig Maker's Company (having
five hundred pounds per annum for that
purpose), with a pious respect for the wishes
of the testator, do, to this day, upon the aforesaid
conditions regularly offer. I wondered
what this place might have been like, in those
days when the builder, bearing in mind the
rule that no sentence can be complete without
a verb, caused the words, "This is Figtree
Row," to be cut in a tablet over one of the
doorways.

I wondered, too, how all that part would
look from the car of a balloon, hovering not far
above the housetops. One or two brighter
spots would strike the eye amidst the dark
jumble of roofs; spots where there are purer
homes, and purer natures, too, if there be
truth in the old proverb which makes
cleanliness and goodness to dwell together. In
one of those clean spots I noticed a poor
mangling-woman's home, her hearthstoned
doorstep, and her tidy room. She might well
have excused herself if she had been dirty,
having to work for that poor crippled boy,
sitting in a chair beside the doorway, and
another younger child within. I stopped to
ask of her my way back into Golden Lane.
The woman, who had not caught my question,
rebuked her child—not the poor cripple—
with "Quiet, Bill! I can't hear my own voice
for you;" and then, turning to me, said, "I
beg your pardon, sir?" I asked again, and
she directed me to "go straight on. Golden
Lane's close by."—"Is the boy ill, ma'am?"—
"No, sir. He's been lame from his birth."—
"How old is he?"—"Fifteen, sir."—"Fifteen!
I thought him younger. Can he walk at all?"
The woman had turned to count some clothes
just taken from the mangle, and the cripple
answered for himself.

"No. I never shall now, sir, as long as I
live." The mother, still counting the clothes,
"Six, seven, eight, nine," stopped, and caught
at his words eagerly, as if great weight were
due to the sufferer's own opinion of himself;
and repeated,

"You think you'll never walk, dear?"

The boy, afraid he had disheartened her,
said, "It will be a long time first, I think,
mother, if I do at all." The woman answered,
"Never mind. He sorts the clothes, and
does many little things for me. He's very
useful to me, sir, though you wouldn't think
it." No, indeed! I should need a mother's
love and tenderness to think that!

Dusk came on while I was loitering about.
There was a strange change in the aspect
of Golden Lane as I issued into it again.
Where, in the hot day-time, I had scarcely
met a soul, I found now crowds of people:
women sitting on the pavement, men smoking,
and standing in groups. At all the beer-
shops and public-houses there were lights
in the windows, and sounds of singing and
dancing. From every hole and corner round
about, the inhabitants seemed to have
crept out into Golden Lane for a pleasant
change.

Threading my way through the crowd until I
found myself once more in a purer atmosphere,
I thought again of the time when all the
neighbourhood was a sweet rural place, and
when the harvest-moon I saw shining down