their weddings, birthdays, and other occasions of rejoicing, with masques
and interludes; the king, queen, and court frequently performing in those
represented in the royal palaces, and all the nobility being actors in
their old private houses. Alas!

What's gone and what's past help
Should be past grief.

Dryden sung

Support the stage,
Which so declines that shortly we may see
Players and plays reduced to second infancy!

--What would he sing in these times!

Among the numerous memoranda of the topography of this interesting
district, we find that the well-known iron foundry of Messrs. Bradley, now
occupies the site of a Bear-garden. The Falcon public-house adjoining the
foundry of that name, was once the most considerable inn in the county of
Surrey, the adjoining foundry being anciently a part of it: and it is said
that very near the Falcon was once a mill for the grinding of corn, for
the Priory of St. Mary Overy.

To conclude. The accompanying Cuts are copied from one of a series of
prints illustrative of the antiquities of the metropolis, published by
Messrs. Boydell, in the year 1818.


[1] Hist. and Antiq. St. Saviour, Southwark, 1795.