"NOT WITHOUT HONOUR"

one may feel in approaching the Parthenon or the
Cathedral of Chartres. At no time was it possible
to escape that sense of awe as in communion with
sacred perfection, but one day in especial I remember
when most distinctly the glory of that revelation fell
upon me as I was passing almost casually on my way
to my home in Whitechapel.

Going down Aldersgate, I turned to the right into
Jewin Street, which leads by a short passage into St.
Giles's, Cripplegate, and its churchyard, where in a
corner still stands an ancient bastion or watchtower
or barbican of the great wall that once surrounded
the City for limitation and defence. In Jewin Street
itself the heavy offices and warehouses vanished, and
in their place appeared a row of small Tudor houses
just outside the City walls, through which one could
pass either by a gate or perhaps by a tunnel running
under the wall where the narrow passage into St.
Giles's now leads. Behind the houses were largish
gardens reaching out into the Moor or Moorfields,
a desolate and unwholesome wilderness, much used
as a place of settlement by the unfortunate families
whose homes in the City were burnt by the Fire of
1666. The Tudor houses, though outside the walls,
were too close to the City to be called suburban, but
they had the advantage of access to open country to
the north through the fen of Finsbury towards the
village of Islington. In one of those houses John
Milton was living in 1663, a year or so before his
third marriage and removal to Artillery Row by
Bunhill Fields.

It was June, and the noble figure, dressed in simple
black but for a broad white collar, was being led
along through St. MartinVle-Grand and part of
Aldersgate. His eyes, brilliant still though sightless^

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