. Shakespeare's England . aware of the oppressive sense of tragedies thathave been acted and misery that has been endured inits dusky streets and melancholy houses. They do noterr who say that the spiritual life of man leaves itsinfluence in the physical objects by which he is sur-rounded. Night-walks in London will teach you that,if they teach you nothing else. I went more than onceinto Brooke Street, Holborn, and traced the desolatefootsteps of poor Thomas Chatterton to the scene of hisself-murder and agonised, pathetic, deplorable is more than a century (1770), since that marvellou
. Shakespeare's England . aware of the oppressive sense of tragedies thathave been acted and misery that has been endured inits dusky streets and melancholy houses. They do noterr who say that the spiritual life of man leaves itsinfluence in the physical objects by which he is sur-rounded. Night-walks in London will teach you that,if they teach you nothing else. I went more than onceinto Brooke Street, Holborn, and traced the desolatefootsteps of poor Thomas Chatterton to the scene of hisself-murder and agonised, pathetic, deplorable is more than a century (1770), since that marvellousboy was driven to suicide by neglect, hunger, anddespair. They are tearing down the houses on oneside of Brooke Street now (1877); it is doubtful whichhouse was No. 4, in the attic of which Chatterton died,and doubtful whether it remains: his grave — a paupersgrave, that was made in a workhouse burial-ground, inShoe Lane, long since obliterated — is unknown ; but hispresence hovers about that region; his strange and. IX LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 93 touching story tinges its commonness with the mysticalmoonlight of romance; and his name is blended with itfor ever. On another night I walked from St. JamessPalace to Whitehall (the York Place of Cardinal Wol-sey), and viewed the ground that Charles the P^irst musthave traversed, on his way to the scaffold. The storyof the slaughter of that king, always sorrowful toremember, is very grievous to consider, when yourealise, upon the actual scene of his ordeal and death,his exalted fortitude and his bitter agony. It seemedas if I could almost hear his voice, as it sounded onthat fateful morning, asking that his body might bemore warmly clad, lest, in the cold January air, heshould shiver, and so, before the eyes of his enemies,should seem to be trembling with fear. The Puritans,having brought that poor man to the place of execution,kept him in suspense from early morning till after twooclock in the day, while they debated over a pro
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