of the ground stands a great printing office.  As the gate was open I walked in.  At the back of the printing office is a flagged court or yard.  In the court the boys—­it was the dinner hour—­were leaping and running.  Not one of them knows now that he is running and jumping over the bones of his ancestors.  It is clean forgotten that here was a great churchyard.  Another great burying ground long since built over lay at the back of Botolph’s Lane in Thames Street.  That is built over and forgotten.  There is another where lies the dust of the marvellous boy Chatterton.  I am due that of the thousands who every day seek this spot not one can tell or remember that it was once a burying ground.  On this spot the paupers of the parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, were buried—­Chatterton, that poor young pauper! with them.  And it is now a market, Farringdon Market—­close to Farringdon Street—­opposite the site of the Old Fleet Prison whence came so many of the bodies which now lie beneath these flags.

Or, a pilgrim may consider the City with special reference to the great Houses which formerly stood within its walls.  There were palaces in the City—­King Athelstan had one; King Richard II. lived for a time in the City; Richard III. lived here; Henry V. had a house here.  Of the great nobles, the Beaumonts, Scropes, Arundells, Bigods all had houses.  The names of Worcester House, Buckingham House, Hereford House, suggest the great Lords who formerly lived here.  And the names of Crosby Hall, Basinghall, Gresham House, College Hill, recall the merchants who built themselves palaces and entertained kings.

Again, there are the City Companies and their Halls.  Very few visitors ever make the round of the Halls:  yet they are most curious, and contain treasures great and various.  It is not always easy to see these treasures, but the conscientious pilgrim, who, by the way, must not seek entrance into these Halls on the Sunday morning, will persevere until he has managed to see them all.

As for the sights of the City—­the things which Baedeker enumerates, and which foreign and country visitors run to see—­the Tower, the Monument, the Guildhall, the Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, the Mint, St. Paul’s, and the rest, I say nothing, because the pilgrim does not waste his Sunday morning over things to be seen as well on any other day.  But there are some things to be seen every day which are best approached on Sunday, by reason of the peace which prevails and a certain solemnity in the air.  I would, for instance, choose to visit the Charter House on a Sunday morning, I would sit with the Pensioners in their quiet chapel, and I would stroll about the peaceful courts of that holy place, venerable not only for its history but for the broken and ruined lives—­often ruined only in purse, but rich in honour and in noble record—­of the fifty bedesmen or pensioners who rest there in the evening of their days.  And quite apart from its associations, I know no more beautiful place in the City or anywhere else than the ancient Charter House.