MORE QUEER-THINGS ABOUT LONDON. By Charles G. Harper. (Cecil Palmer.
7s. 6cL ) Those who enjoyed Mr. Harper's Queer Things About London will' certainly enjoy More Queer 27iings. The second book is quite as good as the first. It is, however, entirely intended for Londoners. file talks of London as a mistress rather than as a hostess. His stories, his descriptions, his bits of information are offered to intimates and are not in the nature of an introduction. Some delightful half hours are in store for any man or woman who is willing to spend them under the direction of a gossiping guide. Set him or her go to some of the churches spared by the Fire of London, for instance to St. Olave's Church in Seething Lane (" Our own church," as Pepys calls it). The visitor sees it now 'very much as Samuel saw it, as he delighted Himself with -staring at the beautiful -ladies in the congregation, -or listened with .critical delight to the sermons. lie will also see a very beautiful face—in stone. The bust which Pepys caused to be .put up to the memory of his wife shows- the • " poor wretch to have been a very charming young woman (she died at twenty-nine)--so fascinating as to make one wonder why Pepys looked about him at other ladies while he had her beside him in the flesh. Some of Mr. Harper's most entertaining pages are delioted to John Stow, the chronicler of London. Mlle Elizabethan public was -not very- kind to him. They read his works, but they let him drift into abject poverty and even -beg in the streets foemOney to pay's pub- lisher and defray the expenses of his researches. He gave up a good tailor's business " By Aldgate Pump " to devote his time to writing, and perhaps many ` City men " of the day thought him a fool for his pains. His monument is worth a visit in the Church of St. Andrew-Undershaft, though its artistic merit would not appear to be very great, and it does not bring before us the honest and knowing man"
whom a contemporary describes as "- leana of body-and face, his eyes small and crystalline, of a pleasant and cheerful countenance." Anyone who sets out, as we all do upon occasion, to show children round St. Paul's should give a glance at Mr. Harper's pages before he starts. He will find the wonders of-old St.' Paul's shadowed 'forth for him. -lie will see a vision of a spire towering above the cross of the present dome and catch a glimpse cf Sir Christopher Wren in tears because his original plan had been modified by an advisory committee. Even ardent lovers of London know, as a rule, little of the history. of St. James's Palace. It has only given its name to royal decrees since 1697, when the Palace of Whitehall was destroyed by fire. It came into being, however, much earlier in 1532, when Henry VIII. purchased a Lepers' Hospital which had stood here and .which was founded before the Conquest. The Green Park and St.- James' Park were, of course, until comparatively ,recent years, royal enclosures, and even after the public was admitted —as late, indeed, as 1845—no person in working clothes and no one carrying a _parcel was allowed ;within their gates. No outward change which has taken place in London during the last eighty years is greater.than the change of mind which has rendered such a regulation, unthinkable.
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