suit of brown, snug bob-wig, cocked hat, black velvet breeches, speckled silk hose, smart paste buckles, and gold-headed cane; his eyes bent downwards, brooding over ancient recollections; holding nought in common with the gossamer throng that flitted about him; and mourning the degeneracy of these latter days, when strings have usurped the place of buckles; queues, wigs, and hoops are out of date; and hair-powder itself, become a thing more for show than use," is only visible in the show-glasses of a barber's shop. What could such a "world without souls" have been to this “Last Man" in a peopled desert?....Yes, the solitude of St. Paul's Churchyard has been the death of him! Dollond, to be sure, might have kept his spirits up a trifle longer; for he, like a staunch veteran, still "seeks no change.' Bowles and Carver, too, are laudably primitive; but, ah! how could he survive the apostacy of his old co-mates, Rundell and Bridge?

"What a falling-off was there, my countrymen !"

"

To displace the pair of comely, well-grown salmon, that, for a century or two, had persisted, with such an exemplary unity of purpose, in sustaining the numerical designation of the antique establishment in their persevering gills, to displace them, I say, for mere fresh-water trout, a sort of piscatorial dandies, was indeed a scaly action; but actually to level the venerable front with the ground, to replace it with stone, in the triple taste of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and, to crown all, complete the vandalism by plate-glass windows in gilt mouldings!-was this a matter for flesh and blood to bear?→ was this a pardonable offence? And could it have been expected, that their old compeer would ever brook such a change? Ah! no.

"There was the weight that pull'd him down!" There was "the respect that made calamity of so long life!"

In Crooked-lane, (what associations does not the very name inspire!) there yet remains a proud relique of what London was, when about a century or two younger. You cannot miss it, though it seems to shrink from its neighbour buildings, as if fearful of contamination. It is an ivory-turner's, of the very oldest school. Disdaining the modern auxiliaries of shop-windows or doors, the achievements of the art court the regards of the passersby, in stoutly fashioned glazed cases, black with the accumulated smoke of at least a century. What an assemblage of antiques! Hornbooks, bonealphabets, wooden-spoons and forks, lemon-squeezers, and punch-stirrers! Alas! literature disdains the aid of the first; and, for the last, punch has clean gone out of fashion. At the back of the shop is a dark retreat, some two yards square, like the inner den of a spider's web. A tall and somewhat stately damsel, rather quaintly attired, and over whose head forty summers, at least, seem to have passed, sits there from morn till eve, watching the advent of customers, whose visits, I fear, are "few and far between," and beguiling the lengthy intervals by the industrious employment of her needle. Strange speculations had occasionally floated in my brain as to all these matters. A thousand fancies had flitted across my imagination, as to whose was the shop, who was the dame, and who the damsel; and determined not to "burst in ignorance," I ventured a small purchase, to obtain the desired information. I was served by the junior lady herself; and truly, a very pleasant and communicative maiden I found her. I say "maiden," for, alack-aday! she owned with a sigh that she was a spinster. She was delighted with my veneration for the "dreary pile," and readily detailed all its history. Certainly, it was very old; she could not say how old; but coeval, at least, with the Monument. Her father, who died eleven years ago, had been a resident there five-and-fifty years. He had served his time in it; and became, in due course, the successor of his master, who had likewise, in his turn, been a very old occupant. It was, even in her father's time, a place of much repute; the first ivory turner's in London. So extensive was their trade, that a large house opposite had been used as a warehouse; and gentlefolk in

their coaches (this was uttered with a smile of infinite complacency) ca ne far and near to purchase their wares. Modern innovation ultimately dethroned its proprietor from this high eminence; but though hints were ever and anon thrown out as to the policy of modernizing his boutique, and his neighbours, right and left, and opposite, evinced symptoms of defection by gradually becoming smitten with the mania of smart shop-windows, nothing could induce him to listen to aught that savoured of change. If folks (he said) would rush headlong to ruin, what was that to him? Why should he follow their example? When he first came to London, there was not a single shop in the city with so superfluous and impertinent an appendage. Then why should he shut out the blessed air of Heaven? For his part, he loved fresh air; ergo, he loved to live in Crooked-lane, and abominated shopwindows. To the visitors, who now and then dropped into his nest to chat with him-incited more by curiosity than business-he was garrulous in its praise. He had lived there, he said, man and boy, upwards of half a century; and, thank Heaven and his own industry, he was pretty warm. He loved his shop; and, with his own free-will, would never leave it till he was borne to his last home. In this wish he was gratified; and his venerable relict, thoroughly imbued with the prejudices of her mate, still maintains, with becoming consistency, the primeval appearance of their ancient domicile. Not that the profits would now defray the board of her four-footed domestics, but she has not the heart to leave it, and cannot abide the removal of a single article attached to it, save those ouly which are made for sale. An hour-glass, which has its prescribed station at one end of the counter, is, I will be bound, held so sacred, that no money could achieve its purchase. I hinted at the changes that must have passed around them; the many new occupants of the neighbouring shops, they must have seen in the long period of their establishment; a truth to which the junior damsel assented with a smile of triumph. But there was one change, she said, more mournful than any; a change that she feared her mamma would never survive. Indeed, it was a doubt whether the anticipation of the event would not produce all the consequences of the reality. This awful circumstance was the rebuilding of London Bridge, and the consequent destruction that awaited Crooked-lane. I was condoling with her on this event, and suggesting that a young lady, like her, should be more modern in her notions, and hail the alteration as a great national improvement,-when I was interrupted by the entrance of a smirking Quaker, of some forty or thereabouts, who evidently came for a flirtation with the fair spinster, incited, doubtless, by the well-known weight of her expectancies. His mode of courtship was curious enough; being oddly interspersed with compliments to the lady, and accounts of his prowess in the newly-revived science of gymnastics; the one idea which seemed to have put all his other faculties to flight. My object being accomplished, I took my leave, considerately recollecting an adage, to the truth of which I readily assented in my own billing-and-cooing days,-that though two may be company, three are none.

The banking-houses of Hoare, Child, and Gosling and Sharpe, (the gosling, doubtless, a lineal descendant from her of the golden eggs) are equally singular mementoes. They remind us of the Old Dorntons and Thorowgoods of a by-gone era; and the Leather Bottle of the first is an object deserving the highest veneration of the antiquary. Much, however, as I admire the good sense, which still preserves the primitive appearance of the establishment, I must quarrel with that obliquity of judgment, which prompted the gilding of that ancient symbol; assuredly, as ill-advised a proceeding, as the modern barbarism, that decreed a similar fate to the Pewter Platter in Gracechurch-street.

A few more edifices of the kind might be adduced; but to revert to the subject of improvements. There is now lying before me a project for levelling that venerable structure, Exeter 'Change, the quondam nursery of aspiring shopkeepers, who here adventured on a moderate territory of some six

feet square, in the hope of ultimately achieving the dominion of a wholesale warehouse. It was here that the renowned Clarke, that prince of hardwaremen, and pink of cutlers, amassed the enormous fortune of 800,000l. by those habits of frugality that clung to him to the last What a delightful lounge, in our school-boy days, to explore the dark profound; to gaze, with longing eyes, on its varied stores, and, by a sort of mental furtiveness, appropriate each tempting article to our own exclusive enjoyment! What a manifestation too of fair dealing, in that pithy sentence,-"The lowest price marked, and no abatement made!" A voucher of integrity, that, but for the simple lack of means, would have tempted us to purchase them all. And are we to lose thee for ever, thou renowned repository of walking-sticks, that are ever stationary; watches, that never go; knives, warranted to be at least as keen as their purchasers; braces, brushes, and battledores, patches, pomatums, wash-balls, and razor-strops? One liege adherent, at least, will shed a tear of regret over thy departed greatness.

But important as all these matters undoubtedly are, who, that has a soul, would hesitate to stay the sacrilegious hand, raised to sweep away those hallowed haunts, where our brightest bards and profoundest philosophers first drew their inspiration? Genius loved to rear her offspring in holes and corners. (Green Arbour-court, oh, Goldsmith! was thy academic grove, and I tremble at its destiny.) Shall they not be deemed sacred? Shall not a nobler feeling preserve them from the reckless ruin that modern refinement would deal out to them? Away, then, all meaner regards! all mockeries of taste! I abjure the classic frenzy, with which I fancied myself inspired. Could we, at a wish, emulate the ædific skill of Greece and Rome, and cause their proud structures to overspread the land,-gained at such a sacrifice, I should deem the purchase dear. No; let us rally round the time-honoured memorials of our ancestors; let us shield them from the spoliation that awaits them; and warring with the whole race of architects, projectors, and surveyors, establish the cause of Old English feeling over foreign taste and modern innovation! Q. Q. Q.

I FRATELLI DELLA MISERICORDIA-THE BROTHERHOOD OF MERCY.

"Elle n'a point cette charité paresseuse des riches, qui paient en argent aux malheureux le droit de rejeter leurs prières, et pour un bienfait imploré ne savent jamais donner que l'aumône."-La Nouvelle Héloise.

Two or three days after my arrival in Pisa, I was talking in the street with an Italian gentleman, when about thirty fellows came round the corner, walking two and two, not soberly as pious folks move in procession, but with stout manly strides, and wearing a disguise of so uncouth a fashion, that the moment they caught my eye I muttered a "God bless me!" and asked who they were. They were clothed in black sackcloth from top to toe, girded round the waist; and the hood not only came over the head, but fell before the face down to the breast, with two small peep-holes for the eyes. Each carried a rosary in his hand, and each at his shoulders bore a black broad-brimmed hat. "Dio mene guardi! ma chi sono questi?" My Italian coolly answered, "La Misericordia." Whether, owing to the word misericordia, or to their sackcloth and rosaries, or both, or what I know not, but without further question I set them down in my mind as penitents on their way to some sort of devotion; and very sorry I was they could not be aghast at their own consciences without wearing so frightful an appearance.

It happened within a week that a house under repair, on the Lung'

Arno, fell down, with the exception of the front wall, on the workmen, who had incautiously disturbed the foundation. I was on the opposite side of the river, ignorant of what had occasioned the noise and the dense cloud of dust, till the wind slowly wafted it away, and the mischief was clear before me. Four were buried in the ruins, and a fifth clung to the wall, with his feet upon the window-sill at the second story, whither he had leaped from the room at the moment of the crash. As soon as the panic would allow any one to act, a long ladder, lying before the house, was raised, and the poor fellow slowly moved from his dangerous situation. As he reached the ground in safety, a loud bell in the city toiled once, then stopped, and tolled again, and I heard the crowd about me say, "Hark! there is the bell of the Misericordia! they will soon be here!" Those in the neighbourhood brought ladders of various sizes, and spades, and pickaxes, to be in readiness. Presently across the bridge came those black peni tents, as I had imagined them, hastening almost at a run, and bearing a litter on their shoulders. The crowd made way for them, and they climbed into the ruins at the back of the house, with the spades and pickaxes. From the moment they came, not a word was spoken; all was hushed, even the sorrowful cries of the relations, waiting for the event. In a short while the Brothers brought out one of the sufferers, insensible and grievously bruised; they placed him in the litter, and bore him to the hospital. By that time a party of soldiers arrived, who kept the crowd back from the front wall, lest that also should fall; while the Brothers, regardless of the danger, still worked on, and indefatigably. I saw three of the buried workmen brought from the ruin and carried to the hospital; the fourth was killed, and they bore away his body on a bier.

After having witnessed this dauntless and persevering conduct on the part of the Brotherhood of Mercy, I was continually making inquiries about them. I was told it was a very ancient institution, first established in Florence; that the Brothers were very numerous in all the Tuscan cities, and that their duty was to be always ready to succour any person in distress. "Are they priests?" "No; only a certain number of priests are permitted to join them." “Then it is not a religious establishment?" "Not at all; and their charity is so gene

ral, that they would render the same assistance to you, a foreigner and a heretic, as to one of their Catholic citizens. They never inquire into creeds; it is enough that a fellow being stands in need of their exertions."

The next time their bell tolled, I hurried from my lodgings to attend them on their errand. They walked very fast, and not a word was spoken. At a sign from their chief, the litter from time to time was changed to different shoulders. I followed them to the further end of the city, on the south side of the Arno, and they stopped before a little chapel, where a poor old woman lay on the steps with her leg broken. The litter, a covered one, was placed on the ground by her side; then, without a word, but with the utmost attention and gentleness, they placed her within it, and immediately it was raised again on their shoulders. One of the Brothers asked her some question in a whisper, and she replied that she felt no pain, but was very faint; upon which the covering of the litter was pulled up higher, and as they bore her to

the hospital, they stopped two or three times at the turnings of the streets, in order to dispose the covering so as to afford her as much air as possible, and at the same time to shelter her from the sun. Such quiet and unaffected benevolence, such a tender regard for the ease and comfort of this poor woman, showed the Brothers to me in another light, and I was rejoiced to see that their kindness was equal to their heroism. They no longer appeared to me so uncouth; and, as I continued to walk near them, it struck me there was a very benignant expression in a pair of eyes seen through their sackcloth masks. I also observed, below their habits, that two of them wore black silk stockings. This rather surprised me; but I learnt that all ranks of persons are enrolled in the Misericordia,-tradesmen, gentlemen, nobles, and the Grand Duke himself.

Not to detain the reader by particularising a variety of circumstances under which, both in Pisa and Florence, I have watched the prompt attendance of the brothers, I proceed to give you a short historical account of the institution. This has been done, and in the highest terms of praise, by the late Professor Pictet, in the "Bibliothèque Universelle" for 1822; and it appears he was the first traveller who considered them worthy of such notice. Upon reference to several Italian works, especially to that of Placido Landini, I am sorry to observe many inaccuracies in the professor's account. I shall therefore follow those writers who have derived their information directly from the archives of the establishment; adding to them what I have learnt through the kindness of several gentlemen, "Capi di Guardia" to the company.

Those who contend we excel our forefathers in humanity and charity, will be surprised to hear that the Compagnia della Misericordia, the most conspicuous, even in the present day, for those virtues, has existed for nearly six hundred years within the walls of Florence. It was established in 1240; and its origin was extremely curious. At that period of the Republic, when the citizens were acquiring immense profits from the manufacture of woollen cloth, the city-porters were numerous, and usually took their stand round the church of the Baptistery, near the Cathedral. In fact, for the most part they lived there; and during the intervals of work, they ate their meals and drank their wine, or played at various games, either on the Piazza, or in the sheds erected for their accommodation. One among them, Piero di Luca Borsi, an old and devout man, was highly scandalized at the cursing and swearing of his companions. Therefore, as their elder, he proposed that he who should hereafter take God's or the Virgin's name in vain, should be mulcted to the amount of a crazia (three farthings); and that the said crazia should be dropped through a small hole into a certain box, so that an end might be put to such vain and sinful conversation. To this the porters agreed, and the difficulty of conquering a bad habit caused the box to be well nigh filled. Piero then reminded them that, for the benefit of their souls, the contents of the box ought to be employed in acts of charity, and made the following proposal: "Let us," said he, "purchase with part of this money six litters, to serve for the six divisions of the city, and let us in turns attend with them. Thus we shall be in readiness to carry to their houses, or to the hospital, all those who may be taken with sudden illness, or who 2 L

Dec.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXXII.