All the way as it were from Tyburn Tree that was, and the Marble Arch that is, to Charing Cross and the Hay Market.

This were not to mention casual sojourns along Piccadilly and the Strand.
In childhood I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the mystery of London.

Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy; Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans and the Dolly Vardens consorted.
Alike in winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it, and those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially its tatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild the Great.

Inevitably I sought their haunts--and they were not all gone in those days; the Bull-and-Gate in Holborn, whither Mr.Tom Jones repaired on his arrival in town, and the White Hart Tavern, where Mr.Pickwick fell in with Mr.Sam Weller; the regions about Leicester Fields and Russell Square sacred to the memory of Captain Booth and the lovely Amelia and Becky Sharp; where Garrick drank tea with Dr.Johnson and Henry Esmond tippled with Sir Richard Steele.
There was yet a Pump Court, and many places along Oxford Street where Mantalini and De Quincy loitered: and Covent Garden and Drury Lane.
Evans' Coffee House, or shall I say the Cave of Harmony, and The Cock and the Cheshire Cheese were near at hand for refreshment in the agreeable society of Daniel Defoe and Joseph Addison, with Oliver Goldsmith and Dick Swiveller and Colonel Newcome to clink ghostly glasses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke.

In short I knew London when it was still Old London--the knowledge of Temple Bar and Cheapside--before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of the builder had got in their nefarious work.
III Not long after we began our sojourn in London, I recurred--by chance, I am ashamed to say--to Mrs.Scott's letter of introduction to her brother.