ers' Hall." To ring the bell requires nearly as acre, yet there is a delicious garden, a courtmuch courage as that of Jack the Giant-killer yard recalling Italy, a splashing fountain, or a when he blew the horn that hung at the giant's noble old tree. This element of surprise, of gate. The beadle, or more often the sub- contrast between the rushing crowd in the beadle,- for the beadle himself is too great to be street outside and the perfect fourteenth-cenlightly disturbed,―appears. You feel instantly tury stillness within the halls of these ancient that you are intruding, that you had no right to guilds, adds much to the pleasure of seeing ring, and that you are in much the position of curious things at which you are not asked to a man who has impertinently rung at the door look. You feel in a few minutes how great a of a private house and asked to see the draw- thing it is to be a merchant tailor or a clothing-room. If you have an introduction,-above worker or a grocer, superlative and unattainall, if you know any one on the court of the able, and you walk round the hall with the company, as its governing body is called, the beadle in a deferential, humble frame of mind. beadle unbends a little and you are admitted. only comparable to the sensation of a pilgrim It is only by frequent allusion to childish who is just about to kiss or has just finished fairy tales that the results of explorations of kissing the toe of his holiness the Pope. the city can be illustrated. You feel like VOL. XXXVII.-2. The halls of nearly all the companies were DOORWAY OF BANQUETING HALL, BREWERS' COMPANY. or splendid piece of plate. The wood-carving in many is superb,- in none finer than in the Brewers' Hall, and the combination of the dark color of old oak with the bright tinctures of painted armorial bearings occurs in endless and always picturesque variety. The quiet self-content and the half-private character of the guilds have prevented a thorough investigation of their history. They themselves feel, as any one who with the feeling of ownership dines often in such halls as theirs must come to feel, that no one but one of themselves could do them justice; that a haberdasher alone could write of haberdashers, a grocer and wherefore about everything, and demanded their money or their lives. The quo warranto was hardly forgotten when more modern attacks began: royal commissions were threatened, and the guilds which had never done harm, and thought that merit enough, were perpetually asked why they did not do good, and those who obviously did good, why they did not do more, by endless practicers of cheap virtue and easy benevolence, and by more reputable and respectable persons who thought their position anomalous and wished to make it less so. Thus assailed from time to time, but so far Farther down on the same side of Cheap- of the days when Kent had a king of its own. side, beyond the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, At the end of the court is the magnificent hall is a block of stone buildings with an ornate of the Grocers' Company. Their records esmodern door decorated in the middle with caped the fire, and few companies have such sculpture. It lies between Ironmonger lane and full means of explaining their history in detail. Old Jewry. This is the property of the mercers, On June 12, 1345, a number of pepperers, one of the richest of the great companies, and as the grocers were then styled, met together here is their hall on the site, as very old Lon- at dinner by agreement at the town mansion don tradition says, of the house of Gilbert, of the Abbot of Bury in St. Mary Axe. They father of Thomas à Becket, for so many centuries talked their common affairs over and agreed the pride of the citizens of London as St. to form themselves into a voluntary associa remain to this day. After their association had been in existence eighty-four years the grocers obtained a charter from the king, in the year 1429, and soon after were given the public duty of inspecting and cleansing all the spices sold in London. King Charles II. became their master, and they always dine on the day of his birth, the 29th of May. At the end of his reign, in 1685, they were nearly destroyed by the tyrannical proceedings under which the king tried to seize their charters and abolish their privileges and those of London and other cities. They just managed to survive the horrors of the quo warranto, as this proceeding was called, and joyfully elected William III. master when he came to the trade, was nearly destroyed by Charles II., and has since steadily increased in riches which by the changes in the nature of commerce have worn away all its medieval functions except the happy one of promoting good-fellowship among men. Not less magnificent than the grocers' is the hall of the drapers in Throgmorton street. The hall was rebuilt in 1881, and, with the great staircase leading to it and the smaller dependent rooms, is in a style of profuse splendor of carving, molding, and gilding, combined with a sort of costly solidity, which without much real artistic beauty produces a picturesque grandeur not unsuited to a society of wealthy merchants and the elaborate and hos throne and made civil liberty once more secure. From his day to our own they have grown richer, while their functions as cleansers and inspectors of spices have slowly become obsolete. Now with much good-fellowship and cheerful hospitality they administer charities, do good in other ways and harm to no one; so that all citizens may heartily join in their grace, "God preserve the Church, the Queen, and the worshipful Company of Grocers! Root and branch, may it flourish forever!" Such, with slight variations in detail, has been the history of the companies. Each began as a voluntary association, received in the fourteenth century or later a charter from the crown, exercised control over its especial pitable feasts that it celebrates. The street in front is filled all day with people making bargains, and on the opposite side is the Stock Exchange, overflowing with shouting, businessdoing stock-brokers. What a contrast between the interiors into which those opposite doors lead! On the Stock Exchange side, business going on at its fastest pace, rushing and crowding; on the grocers' side, within the door a quiet quadrangle such as you would expect to see in a palace at Florence, a gorgeous staircase on one side leading to carved and gilded spacious rooms, empty and deserted most of the daytime, or used by a few worshipful gentlemen quietly transacting charitable affairs, lively only on a feast-day: and beyond this court |