The boat passed before Rutland House
and Cecil House, some portion of which had lately been converted into the
Middle Exchange, the haunt of fine ladies and Golconda of gentlewomen
milliners, favourite scene for assignations and intrigues; and so by Durham
House, where in the Protector Seymour's time the Royal Mint had been
established; a house whose stately rooms were haunted by tragic
associations, shadows of Northumberland's niece and victim, hapless Jane
Grey, and of fated Raleigh. Here, too, commerce shouldered aristocracy, and
the New Exchange of King James's time competed with the Middle Exchange
of later date, providing more milliners, perfumers, glovers, barbers, and
toymen, and more opportunity for illicit loves and secret meetings.
Before Angela's eyes those splendid mansions passed like phantom pictures.
The westering sunlight showed golden above the dark Abbey, while she sat
silent, with awe-stricken gaze, looking out upon this widespread city that
lay chastened and afflicted under the hand of an angry God. The beautiful,
gay, proud, and splendid London of the West, the new London of Covent
Garden, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, whose glories her sister's pen
had depicted with such fond enthusiasm, was now deserted by the rabble of
quality who had peopled its palaces, while the old London of the East, the
historic city, was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, a place of lamentations,
a city where men and women rose up in the morning hale and healthy, and at
night-fall were carried away in the dead-cart, to be flung into the pit
where the dead lay shroudless and unhonoured.
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