Were Thackeray
living now, he would, we fancy, experience emotions very similar to
those of his French _confrere_ should he try to find his beloved "Gray
Friars," which lives enshrined in the most pathetic scene he ever
penned, and is ever and anon coming before us in the pages of his
several stories. It is but a few years since the author of _Vanity
Fair_ passed away, yet already Gray Friars' surroundings are no longer
those with which he was familiar.
Descending Holborn Hill five years ago, you found yourself, when at
the foot of that celebrated thoroughfare, at Snow Hill, just at that
point where the words, "Here he is, father!" struck upon the parental
ears of Mr. Squeers as his son and heir manfully "went for" Smike.
Turning to the left, instead of proceeding up Newgate street, a
circuitous street took you to Smithfield, so long associated with
stakes and steaks. Thence, when half-way through the forest of pens,
you turned sharp off to the left, and then, after another hundred
yards by a turn to the right, found yourself in a long narrow lane,
called Charter-House lane. This brought you presently to some iron
gates admitting you to a quaint and not very mathematical quadrangle,
such as you would never have dreamed of stumbling upon there. This
is Charter-House Square, which, still intensely respectable, was once
eminently fashionable.
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