London, an intimate picture . along West Smith-field toward St. Bartholomew-the-Great, no morethan a moderate stones-throw distant. How popu-lar churches must have been in the old days! It iswonderful, though, how well they are kept up evennow, empty though they be. I always mean toadvise people to visit some of these distant Citychurches on Sunday, to see whether they are anyfuller than on week-days. But I always relent. You cross the street known as Little Britain, where Benjamin Franklin mastered his craft as a printer, and for the sake of Franklin I walked the length of it to Aldersgate St
London, an intimate picture . along West Smith-field toward St. Bartholomew-the-Great, no morethan a moderate stones-throw distant. How popu-lar churches must have been in the old days! It iswonderful, though, how well they are kept up evennow, empty though they be. I always mean toadvise people to visit some of these distant Citychurches on Sunday, to see whether they are anyfuller than on week-days. But I always relent. You cross the street known as Little Britain, where Benjamin Franklin mastered his craft as a printer, and for the sake of Franklin I walked the length of it to Aldersgate Street. Useless piety! It is a narrow and shabby thoroughfare given up to petty trades and there is not even a printers shop visible to remind you of Franklin. Near to the corner of this Little Britain and West Smithfield is a tablet to mark the memory that on that spot one Philpot and divers others suffered martyrdom by fire in the sixteenth century, when burning at the stake for conscience sake was so sadly fashionable. [86]. Sentry at Buckingham Palace ST. PAULS TO CHARTERHOUSE If such a tablet existed in Franklins day, how thatshrewd and comfortable philosopher must have re-flected upon the passage of time! In his agecommon sense and reason were the high like burning and quartering Avere nolonger known. Only now and then they did put ahead or two upon the spikes of Temple Bar. Andwe, the present-day philosophers, rejoice that eventhat unseemly custom has vanished from amongst more delay we enter the mean but ancientbit of archway that leads toward St. Bartholomew-the-Great and find ourselves in a fragment of oldestLondon. The fraction of an old, old graveyard liesbefore it and a few Elizabethan-seeming housesoverhang the graveyard on the left, while on theright a tavern called the Coach and Horses, backsalmost into the very church. Once you enter it youare in the middle ages. Norman pillars are visiblycrumbling and peeling, and as much darkne
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1913
