horseback, and having the diversion beforehand, of hunting the hare the ladies following in wagons, to partake in the sport and all assembling afterwards in the true spirit of corporation enjoyments, at a good dinner.* Like the Arabian fountains in the Alhambra, too, these conduits were made to promote moral instruction, by short sentences inscribed on them. We annex one or two specimens :

Upon the Conduit in Grateous (Gracechurch) Street. " Let money be a slave to thee, Yet keep his service if you can ;

For if thy purse no money have, Thy person is but half a man." On that in Cornwall (Cornhill). "Bread, earned with honest, lab'ring hands, Tastes better than fruite of ill-gotte lands."

" A man without mercy, of mercy shall misse, And he shall have mercy, that merciful is." On that in Cheapside. " Life is a debt which at that day, The poorest hath enough to pay." The whole supply of these conduits was soon found insufficient and, moreover, ;

they furnished, not any of them, water within the houses. The desire of this convenience, and of a more abundant supply, led in 1581, the 23d of Queen Elizabeth, to a grant by the Lord Mayor and Commonalty, of a lease for 500 years, to a Dutchman named Peter Morice, who undertook, by machinery constructed under the first arch of London Bridge, to force water above its level, into a reservoir that should distribute it into the upper parts of the adjoining houses. This was the origin of the London Bridge Water * Stowe ; Survey of London.