Pious priests accompanied their triumphs; their chariots were surrounded by hosts of glittering javelin-men.

As the slave at the car of the Roman conqueror shouted, "Remember thou art mortal!", before the eyes of the British warrior rode the undertaker and his coffin, telling him that he too must die! Mark well the spot! A hundred years ago Albion Street (where comic Power dwelt, Milesia's darling son)--Albion Street was a desert.

The square of Connaught was without its penultimate, and, strictly speaking, NAUGHT.
The Edgware Road was then a road, 'tis true; with tinkling waggons passing now and then, and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms.
The ploughman whistled over Nutford Place; down the green solitudes of Sovereign Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine.

Here, then, in the midst of green fields and sweet air--before ever omnibuses were, and when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown--here stood Tyburn: and on the road towards it, perhaps to enjoy the prospect, stood, in the year 1725, the habitation of Mr.John Hayes.
One fine morning in the year 1725, Mrs.Hayes, who had been abroad in her best hat and riding-hood; Mr.Hayes, who for a wonder had accompanied her; and Mrs.Springatt, a lodger, who for a remuneration had the honour of sharing Mrs.Hayes's friendship and table: all returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten o'clock, from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater.

Many thousands of people were likewise seen flocking down the Oxford Road; and you would rather have thought, from the smartness of their appearance and the pleasure depicted in their countenances, that they were just issuing from a sermon, than quitting the ceremony which they had been to attend.
The fact is, that they had just been to see a gentleman hanged,--a cheap pleasure, which the Hayes family never denied themselves; and they returned home with a good appetite to breakfast, braced by the walk, and tickled into hunger, as it were, by the spectacle.