Returning towards the river, we find on our left hand, not far from the water itself, the fine old church of St. Saviour's, Southwark (anciently called St. Mary Overies, from its position as to the bridge), which contains a handsome Gothic monument to Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower. The church has been much injured by alterations in recent times, but still presents some beautiful specimens of the Early English style. All that remains of the old church founded in 1208 is in the choir and the Lady Chapel; yet, on the whole, the effect is venerable, and the associations with the church are highly interesting. Among the persons here buried are Edmund Shakespeare, the brother of William; John Fletcher, the fellow-dramatist with Beaumont; Philip Massinger, another dramatic poet; and several persons more or less connected with the theatrical world of Shakespeare's generation.
We are now at the southern extremity of London Bridge--one of the best of Rennie's works, but a very uninteresting structure compared with that which preceded it. Still, it is impossible to pass over this granite causeway without seeing, at any hour of the day, such a spectacle of human life as penetrates both the heart and soul. All bridges are favourable to this kind of observation; for they contract and isolate the great stream of human beings, which for a brief period is incapable of any diversion either to the right or to the left, but is brought sharply and sternly face to face with him who would take note of his fellow-creatures. Moreover, the absence of houses or other buildings at the side of the footpaths brings every figure into relief against the vast, eternal sky, and suggests, in a subtle and almost terrible way, the fragility of the individual, as compared with the infinity above his head. Beneath is the deep, dark river; above are the inscrutable heavens; and between the two are these mites and motes of a vanishing existence, suspended for a time between elements which are stronger than themselves. On London Bridge one sees all the chief varieties of human character, passing on from morn to eve, and often far into the night, with that look of patient endurance, or of half-suppressed suffering, which comes out so strangely when large multitudes of men and women are brought together, without any community of interest, or knowledge of each other's cares. The City man, the lawyer, the clerk, the rugged labourer, the railway servant, the desperately poor, who are evidently on the tramp, either from London to the country, or from the country to London; the lurking thief, the flashy swindler, the Jew with his bag, poor women with their heavy bundles, and heavier faces, and perhaps still heavier hearts; the street Arab on the look-out for stray halfpence, the girls who sell cigar-lights, the meagre seamstresses going to and fro with their work, and, at one season of the year the vast emigration of hop-pickers, making for the fields of Kent--all these are here, together with many other types of character that demand recognition from thoughtful minds. Under certain climatic conditions, the effect is almost phantasmal in its reduplication and variety, its familiar aspects and its mysterious depth of life.