The prevailing notion of the climacteric years was founded on the same tenet, and thence also we derive the Seven Ages of Man. They were arranged thus: after the first seven months the first teeth come, after the first seven years they give place to others, after the second seven years puberty comes, after the third the fulness of womanhood and manhood.

We say, therefore, to this day in England, when three times seven years are complete, at twenty-one, a person is of age. During the third seven years he has been increasing in height; during the fourth seven years he increases in breadth; during the fifth seven years the man, complete in form, is perfected in vigour; and during the sixth period of seven years retains his powers unabated. In the seventh period of seven years prudence is perfected, and thus during the period expressed by seven times seven man is in his prime. Finally, when we come to ten times seven (at which ends the multiplication by the simple numbers), man has attained the appointed number of his days.

Then, too, we have lately seen discussed the superstition connected with a seventh son, and it is gravely maintained that it takes the seventh son of a seventh son to make a surpassing physician.

Among the Romans, infants who died before the seventh month of their age had not the ordinary rites of sepulture. So now, in some parts of the East, children who die under seven years are not mourned by their parents. But here we must bring this chapter to a close. The instances we have given sufficiently illustrate the widely-prevalent and mysterious significance of the number seven.

LONDINIANA.*

[The Dublin Review, June, 1856.]

In the works mentioned at the foot of this page, the chief memorabilia of the metropolis have been described in a form so concise and popular that a fresh interest has been given to the historical monuments of London, and "the golden haze of memory" has been thrown around many a familiar spot upon the crowded highways of our "murky Babel." Those publications follow a series of works so numerous and comprehensive that the Hand Book was the only form in which anything new could be written on the history and antiquities of the metropolis; and it has been adopted with so much success by the diligent authors to whom we have referred, that the results of life-long research are made accessible to the most casual readers. In these popular notices of London localities we find the present everywhere connected with the past, and see how deeply the London of to-day is founded in a substratum of antiquity enriched by the auriferous sands of Time.

Set in the light of history, the tangible remains of antiquity that stand upon our daily paths receive an unexpected dignity and significance, and arouse our interest, as witnesses of the succession and sway of former races of men. Their monuments become endued with power to bring before our mind the early inhabitants and the various aspects of London, in the successive eras of its history since first the Augustan city rose around the Roman

*1. Hand-Book of London, Past and Present. By Peter Cunningham, F.S.A.

2. Curiosities of London: exhibiting the most rare and remarkable objects of interest in the Metropolis. By John Timbs, F.S.A. London: Bogue.

Prætorium. They enable us to realize a portraiture of London in its successive ages:-of Roman London, growing amidst the rude defences of the British stronghold and surrounded by the spreading waters of the Thames and the primeval forest of the hillsa military colony with its temples and its forum, its bounding wall, its gates and diverging roads; of Saxon Lundenwic, with its clergy and monks, its thanes and merchants, its trading guilds and Witena Gemote assembling amidst the remains of Roman power and surrounded by still uncleared forest; of Norman London, then become a royal city, adorned by many churches and by edifices of feudal strength; of London of the Plantagenets, with its mercantile opulence, its quaintly attired citizens, sumptuary laws, and timber houses; of London of the Tudors, with its peaked gables, carved ceilings and rush-strewed floors, its stately pageants, and its regal crimes; and of London of the Stuarts, with its formal furniture and gay costume, its plays performed in daylight at the Globe Theatre, and its shady suburban roads through country now overspread by Marylebone and Bloomsbury.

With the metropolis as it appeared in each of these by-gone ages, it is curious to compare the London of to-day, still, as of old, mighty in its ships, and world-embracing in its commerce; wondrous and varied in its aspects seen in the blaze of daylight, solemn and suggestive when the vast city lies slumbering in the peace of night; that metropolis, so full of strange contrasts and incongruities, of palatial splendour and obscure poverty, of state liveries and rags, of sumptuous club-houses, and "eating-shops surrounded by hungry poor," of western opulence and eastern squalor. Not less striking are the combinations of the present and the past, which are everywhere presented in our metropolis, from Stepney to Southwark, from Tyburn to the Tower, or the monuments which serve to contrast ancient manners with the institutions of our day. Thus, in the pages which describe the Curiosities of London, we find strangely mingled the Roman camp and Ranelagh Tea-gardens; Domesday book and the Daguerreotype; Doctors' Commons and the Electric Telegraph; Convents and Coffee-houses; medieval Crypts and the Crystal Palace; the Black Friars' monastery and the "Times" printing-office; abbeys and wax-work shows; museums and

monuments; ancient palaces and modern prisons; inns of court and plebeian taverns; mansions of Belgravia and cellars of St. Giles; candle-lighted streets and gas-light companies; Lambeth prelates and Houndsditch Jews!

And where could we find a field so rich in its historical associations—a city so inviting to our retrospective view? Amidst the interminable stream of traffic that crowds its public thoroughfares, where everything seems to be worked at high pressure, the Londoner knows that he may retreat to many a spot, within the city's roar indeed, but still haunted by the spirit of the olden time. Cornhill (as Sir Barnes Newcome remarks) is not exactly the place for sentiment; but here, as on many other thronged highways, there are visible or remembered monuments of the past, which carry back our thoughts as much to the times of the Plantagenets, or even of the Caesars, as to the times of modern rulers; for all who have borne dominion here seem to have set their seal on London, as the Medici have done upon the storied hills of Rome. Unlike Paris of the present day, London has never seemed ambitious to look young; and notwithstanding the sacrifice of many ancient features to the stern exigencies of city "improvements," and to the almost fabulous augmentation of the value of land, some very characteristic buildings of by-gone days are still mingled with modern structures. But in London, as everybody knows, we have not the striking contrast between an ancient capital and a modern city, that we find so emphatically at Rome,-between august remains of a distant antiquity and the structures of a modern time. Very few buildings, even of a mediæval date, stand visibly amongst the abodes of men; yet in London, as in Rome, some remains of every period of its history exist above the ground-grey monuments of the past, that have been "sheltered by the wings of Time." We must excavate, however, to a depth of from eight to fifteen feet below the surface of our crowded thoroughfares, if we seek the elaborate pavements of the luxurious Roman, or the foundation of the Saxon edifices that succeeded to his occupation. The historical monuments of London form, like the English language, a rich composite derived from successive ages. Where buildings themselves have disappeared, names of places preserve some memory of them; and

many of the city churches, though rebuilt in and after the seventeenth century, recal in their dedications, as well the rude piety of Scandinavian sea kings as the sway of Norman princes. Thus, in St. Alphage and St. Alban, St. Botolph and St. Dunstan, St. Pancras and St. Edmund, we are on the footsteps of our Saxon forefathers; St. Clement, St. Magnus, and St. Olave, proclaim the dominion of Scandinavian rulers; while St. Mary and St. Helen, St. George and St. Giles, St. James and St. Leonard, witness the devotion of the Normans, as the Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre recal the times of the crusades. It is true that no gothic spires now rise above the clustering houses; but crypts and other remains of many of these edifices exist, and they carry back our thoughts to the time when more than a hundred churches reared their antique towers and spires above the quaint old city. In this respect, as well as in some other characteristic features, the metropolis of those days, like many ancient English cities, must have presented a great contrast with medieval Paris, as the division into minute parishes never obtained upon the Seine. The city churches are even now set down as eighty-nine in number, and are the survivors or representatives of the one hundred and twenty-two parish churches and thirteen monastic edifices of religion that London contained in the time of the monk Fitz-Stephen-a number which very nearly corresponds with that of the churches and remains of ecclesiastical edifices at this time standing in Cologne, where, by the way, it is said that there were once as many churches as there are days in the year. The diminution in the number of parish churches is not, however, so remarkable in London as in York, Norwich, and some other English cities, in which the number of churches was anciently much greater in proportion to the size and population of the city than in London. The religious edifices that escaped destruction in the fire of London (the most noticeable of which are the Chapel of the Tower, the Church of St. Bartholomew, the Temple Church, the graceful chapel and crypt of St. Etheldreda in Ely Place, and the once stately church of the Austin Friars), show how great was our loss in that calamity. Of the eighty-seven parish churches which, besides St. Paul's Cathedral, were destroyed in the fire, Wren re-built fifty, at the