The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news.

Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; but thirstier men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap.

Of all such places it is least haunted by hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk here, he could not." Decker, moreover, terms Paul's Walk, or the "Mediterranean Isle," in his "Gull's Hornbook"-- "the only gallery wherein the pictures of all your true fashionate and complimental gulls are, and ought to be, hung up." After giving circumstantial directions for the manner of entering the walk, he proceeds thus: "Bend your course directly in the middle line that the whole body of the church may appear to be yours, where in view of all, you may publish your suit in what manner you affect most, either with the slide of your cloak from the one shoulder or the other." He then recommends the gull, after four or five turns in the nave, to betake himself to some of the semsters' shops the new tobacco office, or the booksellers' stalls, "where, if you cannot read, exercise your smoke, and inquire who has written against the divine weed." Such, or something like it, was Paul's Walk at the period of this history.
The grocer, who had not quitted his post, remained a silent and sorrowful spectator of the scene.

Despite his anxiety, he could not help moralizing upon it, and it furnished him with abundant food for reflection.

As to Rochester and his companions, they mingled with the crowd--though the earl kept a wary eye on the door--chatted with the prettiest damsels--listened to the newsmongers, and broke their fast at the stall of a vendor of provisions, who supplied them with tolerable viands, and a bottle of excellent Rhenish.