Shades and Echoes of Old London

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.comwww.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: thousand things which most people find interesting now and then ? We are at an utter loss to fancy his conversation with his family and friends. It was not magniloquent, for he had no affectation; but surely he spake with on air of grandeur which made folks feel that he and they were not walking on the same level. Not solely to intellectual pre-eminence do we attribute the production of this feeling?for one can fancy Shakespeare as genial enough, making his inferiors of a distant class feel themselves at home by his fireside at Stratford. Peculiar habits had from some causes, constitutional, or educational, or circumstantial, withdrawn our classic poet and republican philosopher far away from the beaten and crowded walks of human kind, and made him what Wordsworth has so truly described, a star which dwelt apart. II. EICHARD BAXTER. One day, filled with thoughts of olden times, we went down to Whitehall?the stately-looking Whitehall?the palace of so many English kings?with that fine relic of Iijigo Jones' architecture, the banqueting house, still standing, with the memory of something far different from revelry connected with it. The edifice spread out, and other buildings rose around it; and in the street, altogether changed, there stood Holbein's gateway, with its eight medallions. People were going in and coming out, some of them with doublets of silk and collars of pointed lace, wide boots rufHed with lawn, and short mantles thrown over the shoulders, while their heads were crowned with broad-leafed Spanish beavers. Therewere also men in armour with leather jackets, and people of a very staid appearance with Genevan cloaks and lofty wide-brimmed hats. We fancied we saw one of them walking with a youth, about eighteen years of age, rather sickly looking, with a wonderf...