An admirable picture of this curious scene has been given by Bishop Earle, in his Microcosmographia, published in 1629.  “Paul’s Walk,” he writes, “is the land’s epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain.  It is more than this—­it is the whole world’s map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, jostling and turning.  It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing could be liker Babel.  The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming, or buzzing, mixed of walking, tongues, and feet:  it is a kind of still roar, or loud whisper.  It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever, but is here stirring and afoot.  It is the synod of all parts politic, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the Parliament.  It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes.  It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here, like the legends of Popery, first coined and stamped in the church.  All inventions are emptied here, and not a few pockets.  The best sign of the Temple in it is that it is the thieves’ sanctuary, who rob more safely in a crowd than a wilderness, while every pillar is a bush to hide them.  It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here.  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.