An Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London; with Anecdotes of their more celebrated Residents. By J. T. Smith, late Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Author of Nollekins and his Times, &c.

What is London? Walk into Lombard Street, and ask the Merchant; he will tell you at once—the Docks and the Custom-House, Lloyd's and the Bank, the Exchange, Royal or Stock. Drive your cab to the Carlton, and learn that it is Pall-mall and the Clubs, St James's and the Parks, Almack's and the Opera. Carry your question and your fee together to legal chambers, and be told that it is Westminster and Chancery Lane, Lincoln's Inn and the Temple. All that remains of mankind, that is not to be numbered in these several categories, will tell you it is a huge agglomeration of houses and shops, churches and theatres, markets and monuments, gas-pipes and paving-stones. Believe none—Yes, believe them all! We make our London, as we make our World, out of what attracts and interests ourselves. Few are they who behold in this vast metropolis a many-paged volume, abounding in instruction, offering to historian and philosopher, poet and antiquary, a luxuriant harvest and never-failing theme. We consider London, with reference to what it is and may become, not to what it has been. The present and the future occupy us to the exclusion of the past. We perambulate the great arteries of the Monster City, from Tyburn to Cornhill, from Whitechapel to the Wellington statue, and our minds receive no impression, save what is directly conveyed through our eyes; we pass, unheeding, a thousand places and objects rich in memories of bygone days, of strange and stirring events—great men long since deceased, and customs now long obsolete. We care not to dive into the narrow lanes and filthy alleys, where, in former centuries, sons of Genius and the Muses dwelt and starved; we seek not the dingy old taverns where the wit of our ancestors sparkled; upon the spot where a hero fell or a martyr perished, we pause not to gaze and to recall the memories of departed virtue and greatness. We are a matter-of-fact generation, too busy in money-getting to speculate upon the past. So crowded has the world become, that there is scarce standing-room; and even the lingering ghosts of olden times are elbowed and jostled aside. It is the triumph of the tangible and positive over the shadowy and poetical.

Things which men will not seek, they often thankfully accept when brought to them in an attractive form and without trouble. Upon this calculation has the book before us been written. It is an attempt to convey, in amusing narrative, the history, ancient, mediÆval, and modern, of the streets and houses of London. For such a work, which necessarily partakes largely of the nature of a compilation, it is obvious that industry is more essential than talent—extensive reading than a brilliant pen. Both of industry and reading Mr Smith makes a respectable display, and therefore we shall not cavil at any minor deficiencies. His subject would have been better treated in a lighter and more detached form; and, in this respect, he might have taken a hint from an existing French work of a similar nature, relating to Paris. But his materials are too sterling and interesting to be spoiled by any slight mistake in the handling. He has accumulated a large mass of information, quotation, and extract; and although few persons may read his book continuously from beginning to end, very many, we are sure, will dip with pleasure and interest into its pages.

West and East would have been no inappropriate title for Mr Smith's twin volumes. In the first, he keeps on the Court side of Temple Bar; the second he devotes to the City. As may be supposed, the former is the more sprightly and piquant chronicle; but the latter does not yield to it in striking records and interesting historical facts. Let us accompany the antiquarian on his first ramble, from Hyde Park Corner to Charing Cross, starting from Apsley House, of which, although scarcely included in the design of his work, as announced on the title-page, he gives, as of various other modern buildings, a concise account.

How few individuals of the human tide that daily flows and ebbs along Piccadilly are aware, that within a century that aristocratic quarter was a most disreputable outlet from London. The ground now covered with ranges of palaces, the snug and select district of May Fair, dear to opulent dowagers and luxurious cÉlibataires, was occupied, but a short hundred years since, by a few detached dwellings in extensive gardens, and by a far larger number of low taverns. Some of these, as the White Horse and Half Moon, have given their names to the streets to which their bowling-greens and skittle-alleys tardily gave way. The Sunday excursions of the lower orders were then more circumscribed than at present; and these Piccadilly publics were much resorted to on the Sabbath, in the manner of a country excursion; for Piccadilly was then the country. "Among the advertisements of sales by auction in the original edition of the Spectator, in folio, published in 1711, the mansion of Streater, jun., is advertised as his country house, being near Bolton Row, in Piccadilly; his town residence was in Gerrard Street, Soho." The taverns nearest to Hyde Park were chiefly patronised by the soldiers, particularly, we are informed, on review days, when they sat in rows upon wooden benches, placed in the street for their accommodation, combing, soaping, and powdering each other's hair. The bad character of the neighbourhood, and perhaps, also, the nuisance of May Fair, which lasted for fifteen days, and was not abolished till 1708, prevented the ground from increasing in value; and accordingly we find that Mr Shepherd, after whom Shepherd's Market was named, offered for sale, as late as the year 1750, his freehold mansion in Curzon Street, and its adjacent gardens, for five hundred pounds. At that price it was subsequently sold. Houses there were, however, in the then despised neighbourhood of Piccadilly, of high value; but it arose from their intrinsic magnificence, which counterbalanced the disadvantages of situation. Evelyn mentions having visited Lord John Berkeley at his stately new house, which was said to have cost thirty thousand pounds, and had a cedar staircase. He greatly commends the gardens, and says that he advised the planting of certain holly-hedges on the terrace. Stratton Street was built on the Berkeley estate, and so named in compliment to the Stratton line of that family. At what is now the south end of Albemarle Street, stood Clarendon House, built, as Bishop Burnet tells us, on a piece of ground granted to Lord Clarendon by Charles II. The Earl wished to have a plain ordinary house, but those he employed preferred erecting a palace, whose total cost amounted to fifty thousand pounds.

"During the war," says the Bishop, "and in the plague year, he had about three hundred men at work, which he thought would have been an acceptable thing, when so many men were kept at work, and so much money, as was duly paid, circulated about. But it had a contrary effect: it raised a great outcry against him." The sale of Dunkirk to the French for four hundred thousand pounds, had taken place only three years before, and was still fresh in men's minds. The odium of this transaction fell chiefly on Lord Clarendon, who was accused of pocketing a share of its profits; and the people gave the name of Dunkirk House to his new mansion. Others called it Holland House, thereby insinuating that it was built with bribes received from the Dutch, with whom this country then waged a disastrous war. In spite of popular outcry, however, the house was completed in 1667, the year of Clarendon's disgrace and banishment. Fifteen years later, after his death, his heir sold the place to the Duke of Albemarle for twenty-five thousand pounds, just half what it cost; and the Duke parted with it for ten thousand more. Finally, it was pulled down to make room for Albemarle and Stafford Streets; of which latter, as appears from old plans of London, the centre of Clarendon House occupied the entire site.

Piccadilly was formerly the headquarters of the makers of leaden figures. The first yard for this worthless description of statues was founded by John Van Nost, one of the numerous train of Dutchmen who followed William III. to England. His establishment soon had imitators and rivals; and, in 1740, there were four of these figure-yards in Piccadilly, all driving a flourishing trade in their leaden lumber. The statues were as large as life, and often painted. "They consisted of Punch, Harlequin, Columbine, and other pantomimical characters; mowers whetting their scythes, haymakers resting on their rakes, gamekeepers in the act of shooting, and Roman soldiers with firelocks; but, above all, that of a kneeling African with a sundial upon his head, found the most extensive sale." Copies from the antique were also there, and had many admirers; but the unsuitableness of the heavy and pliable material was soon discovered, and, after a brief existence, the figure-yards died a natural death.

On the etymology of the word Piccadilly, Mr Smith expends much erudite research, without, as it appears to us, arriving at a very definite or satisfactory conclusion. A pickadill is defined by Blount, in his Glossography, as "the round hem of a garment, or other thing; also a kinde of stiff collar, made in fashion of a band." Hence Mr Smith infers, that the famous ordinary near St James's, which first bore the name of Piccadilly, may have received it because at that time it was the outmost or skirt-house of the suburb. The derivation is ingenious, but rather far-fetched. Another notion is, that a certain Higgin, a tailor, who built the house, had acquired his money by the manufacture of pickadills, then in great vogue. The orthography of the name has varied considerably. Evelyn mentions in his memoirs, that, as one of the commissioners for reforming the buildings and streets of London, he ordered the paving of the road from St James's North, "which was a quagmire," and likewise of the Haymarket about "Pigudello." In the same year, however, 1662, it is found inscribed in tradesmen's tokens as Pickadilla; and this appears to be the most ancient mode of spelling it. In Gerard's Herbal, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, (1596,) the author, talking of the "small wild buglosse," says that this little flower "growes upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla."

Where Bennet and Arlington Streets now stand, was formerly the celebrated mulberry gardens, referred to by Malone as a favourite haunt of Dryden, who loved to eat tarts there with his mistress, Anne Reeve. To the polite ears of the nineteenth century, the very name of a public garden is a sound of horror; and to see the cream of the ton taking their evening lounge at Cremorne, or the "Royal Property," and battening upon mulberry tarts and sweetened wine, would excite as much astonishment as if we read in the Moniteur that the Duchess of Orleans had led a galop at Musard's masquerade. In the easy-going days of the second Charles, things were very different, and a fashionable company was wont to collect at the Mulberry Garden, to sit in its pleasant arbours, and feast upon cheesecakes and syllabubs. The ladies frequently went in masks, which was a great mode at that time, and one often adopted by the court dames to escape detection in the intrigues and mad pranks they so liberally permitted themselves. "In The Humorous Lovers, a comedy written by the Duke of Newcastle,[4] and published in 1677, the third scene of Act I. is in the Mulberry Garden. Baldman observes to Courtly, ''Tis a delicate plump wench; now, a blessing on the hearts of them that were the contrivers of this garden; this wilderness is the prettiest convenient place to woo a widow, Courtly.'" One can hardly fancy a wilderness in the heart of St James's, except of houses; but the one mentioned in the above passage had ceased to exist at the time the play appeared, at least as a place of public resort. Five years previously, the King had granted to Henry Earl of Arlington, "that whole piece or parcel of ground called the Mulberry Gardens, together with eight houses, with their appurtenances thereon," at a rent of twenty shillings per annum. Goring House, in which Mr Secretary Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, resided, was probably one of these eight houses. Two years subsequently to the grant, it was burnt down, and the earl removed to Arlington House, which stood on the site of Buckingham Palace. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, bought the former, pulled it down in 1703, and erected a new mansion, which was sold to the crown by his son, and allotted, in 1775, as a residence for the Queen, instead of Somerset House.

We are glad to learn from Mr Smith, that there is a plan on foot for the removal of the confined, dirty, and unwholesome district between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, now one of the vilest parts of the metropolis, the favourite abode of thieves, beggars, pawnbrokers, and gin-sellers. The streets adjacent to the palace have at no time been of the most spacious or respectable description, although Pimlico is vastly improved from what it was in the days of Ben Jonson, who uses the name to express all that was lowest and most disreputable. In his play of The Alchymist, he says, "Gallants, men and women, and of all sorts, tag-rag and bob-tail, have been seen to flock here in threaves, these ten weeks, as to a second Hoxton or Pimlico." And again, "besides other gallants, oysterwomen, sailors' wives, tobacco-men—another Pimlico." Apropos of the gin-palaces which have replaced the old-fashioned public-houses that abounded some twenty years ago in Westminster, Mr Smith makes a digression on the subject of drunkenness, and quotes some curious particulars from an old treatise, called The London and Country Brewer. "Our drunkenness, as a national vice," says the writer, "takes its date from the restoration of Charles the Second, or a few years later." It may be questioned whether drunkenness was not pretty well established as an English vice long before the period here referred to. We have the authority of various writers, however, for its having greatly increased about the time of the Stuarts' restoration. "A spirit of extravagant joy," says Burnet, in his History of his own Times, "spread over the nation. All ended in entertainments and drunkenness, which overrun the three kingdoms to such a degree, that it very much corrupted all their morals. Under the colour of drinking the King's health, there were great disorders, and much riot every where." This was no unnatural reaction after the stern austerity of the Protectorate. "As to the materials, (of drunkenness,") continues The Brewer, "beer and ale were considerable articles; they went a great way in the work at first, but were far from being sufficient; and then strong waters came into play. The occasion was this: In the Dutch wars it had been observed that the captains of the Hollanders' men-of-war, when they were about to engage with our ships, usually set a hogshead of brandy abroach afore the mast, and bid the men drink sustick, that they might fight lustick; and our poor seamen felt the force of the brandy to their cost. We were not long behind them; but suddenly after the war we began to abound in strong-water shops." Even the chandlers and the barber-surgeons kept stores of spirituous compounds, for the most part of exceeding bad quality, but sweetened and spiced, and temptingly displayed in rows of glass bottles, under Latin names of imposing sound. Aniseed-water was the favourite dram; until the French, finding out the newly-acquired taste of their old enemies, deluged the English markets with brandy, which was recommended by the physicians, and soon acquired universal popularity. It was sold about the streets in small measures, at a halfpenny and a penny each; and the consumption was prodigious, until a war broke out with France, when the supply of course stopped, and the poor were compelled to return to their aqua vitÆ and aqua mirabilis, or, better than either, to the ale-glass. When speaking of the royal cockpit at Whitehall, Mr Smith tells us of "Admiral M'Bride, a brave sailor of the old school, who constantly kept game-cocks on board his ship, and on the morning of an action, endeavoured, and that successfully, to animate his men by the spectacle of a cock-fight between decks." This, if not a very humane expedient, according to modern notions, was at any rate an improvement upon Dutch courage, with which British seamen of the present day would scorn to fortify themselves.

St James's Park, originally a swamp, was first inclosed by Harry the Eighth, but little was done towards its improvement and embellishment until after the Restoration. It was within its precincts, that in July 1626 Lord Conway assembled the numerous and troublesome French retinue of Queen Henrietta Maria, and communicated to them the king's pleasure that they should immediately quit the country. The legion of hungry foreigners, including several priests and a boy bishop, scarcely of age, had hoped long to fatten upon English soil, and they received their dismissal with furious outcry and loud remonstrance. Their royal mistress also was greatly incensed, and broke several panes of glass with her fists, in no very queenly style. But Charles for once was resolute; the Frenchmen had, to use his own expressions, so dallied with his patience, and so highly affronted him, that he could no longer endure it. They found, however, all sorts of pretexts to delay their departure, claiming wages and perquisites which were not due, and alleging that they had debts in London, and could not go away till these were discharged. L'Estrange, in his Life of Charles I., and D'Israeli in his Commentaries, gives many curious particulars of the proceedings of this troop of bloodsuckers. Under pretence of perquisites, they pillaged the queen's wardrobe and jewel-case, not leaving her even a change of linen. The king accorded them a reasonable delay for their preparations, but at last he lost all patience, as will be seen by the following characteristic letter to the Duke of Buckingham, dated from Oaking, the 7th of August 1626:

"Steenie,—I have received your letter by Dic Greame, (Sir Richard Graham.) This is my answer: I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair means, (but stike not long in disputing,) otherways force them away, dryving them away lyke so manie wilde beastes, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R."

Thereupon the debts of the obnoxious French were paid, their claims, both just and unjust, satisfied, presents given to some of them, and they set out for Dover, nearly forty coaches full. "As Madame St George, whose vivacity is always described as extremely French, was stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English courtier, who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the boat. The man died on the spot, but no further notice appears to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the English courtier."

The Stuarts were commonly plagued with the foreign attendants of their wives. When Charles the Second's spouse, Catherine of Braganza, arrived in England, she was escorted by a train of Portuguese ladies, who highly disgusted the king and his court, less, however, by their Papistry and greediness, than by their surpassing ugliness and obstinate adherence to the fashions of their country. "Six frights," says Anthony Hamilton in his memoirs of Count Grammont, "who called themselves maids of honour, and a duenna, another monster, who took the title of governess to these extraordinary beauties. Among the men were Francisco de Melo, and one Tauravedez, who called himself Don Pedro Francisco Correo de Silva, extremely handsome, but a greater fool than all the Portuguese put together; he was more vain of his names than his person; but the Duke of Buckingham, a still greater fool than he, though more addicted to raillery, gave him the name of Peter of the Wood. He was so enraged at this, that, after many fruitless complaints and ineffectual menaces, poor Pedro de Silva was obliged to leave England; while the happy duke kept possession of a Portuguese nymph more hideous than the queen's maids of honour, whom he had taken from him, as well as two of his names. Besides these, there were six chaplains, four bakers, a Jew perfumer, and a certain officer, probably without an office, who called himself her highness's barber." Evelyn also tells us, that "the queen arrived with a train of Portuguese ladies in their monstrous fardingals or guard-infantas, their complexions olivader, and sufficiently unagreeable;" and Lord Clarendon talks of "a numerous family of men and women, that were sent from Portugal"—the women "old and ugly and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and a liberal education; and they desired, and indeed had conspired so far to possess the queen herself, that she should neither learn the English language, nor use their habit, nor depart from the manners and fashions of her own country in any particulars." Although the Infanta herself was by no means ill-looking, her charms did not come up to those of the flattered portrait which her mother, the old Queen of Portugal, had sent to Charles; and it is possible that the selection of plain women for her retinue had been intentional, that their ugliness might serve as a foil to her moderate amount of beauty. After a short time, however, the majority of these uncomely Lusitanians were sent back to their native country.

To return to Mr Smith and St James's Park. After his Restoration, Charles the Second, who, as worthy Thomas Blount says in his Boscobel, had been hunted to and fro like a "partridge upon the mountains," became very casanier, decidedly stay-at-home, in his habits, and cared little to absent himself from London and its vicinity. He had had buffeting and wandering enough in his youth, and, on ascending the throne of his unfortunate father, he thought of little besides making himself comfortable in his capital, careless of expense, which, even in his greatest need, he seems never to have calculated. He planted the avenues of the park, made a canal and an aviary for rare birds, which gave the name to Bird-Cage Walk. Amongst other freaks, and to provide for a witty Frenchman who amused him, he erected Duck Island into a government. Charles de St Denis, seigneur of St Evremond, who had been banished from France for a satire on Cardinal Mazarine, was the first and, it is believed, the last governor. He drew the salary attached to the appointment, which was certainly a more lucrative than honourable one for a man of his talents and reputation. According to Evelyn, Charles stored the park with "numerous flocks of fowle. There were also deer of several countries—white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, as elk, red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea grates, Arabian sheep," &c. In the Mall, also made by him, Charles played at ball and took his daily walk. "Here," says Colley Cibber, "Charles was often seen amid crowds of spectators, feeding his ducks and playing with his dogs, affable even with the meanest of his subjects." Mr Smith regrets the diminished affability and less accessible mood of sovereigns of the nineteenth century, although he admits that the populace of France and England are at the present day too rude for it to be advisable that kings and queens should walk amongst them with the easy familiarity of the second Charles. Of that there can be very little doubt. Even Charles, whose dislike of ceremony and restraint, and love of gossip and new faces, were cause, at least as much as any desire for popularity, that he thus mingled with the mob, occasionally experienced the disagreeables of his undignified manner of life. Aubrey the credulous, Mr Smith tells us, relates in his Miscellanies the following anecdote of an incident that occurred in the Park. "Avise Evans had a fungous nose, and said that it was revealed to him that the king's hand would cure him: and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St James's Park, he kissed the king's hand, and rubbed his nose with it, which disturbed the king, but cured him." It was whilst walking on the Mall that the pretended Popish plot of Oates and Bedloe was announced to Charles. "On the 12th of August 1678," says Hume, "one Kirby, a chemist, accosted the king as he was walking in the Park. 'Sir,' said he, 'keep within the company; your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk.' Being asked the reason of these strange speeches, he said that two men, called Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot the king, and Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison him." Charles, unlike his grandfather, the timid James, was little apprehensive of assassination, and, when sauntering in the Park, preferred the society of two or three intimates to the attendance of a retinue. On one occasion, however, as a biographer has recorded, an impudent barber startled him from his usual happy insouciance. Accustomed to chat familiarly with his good-humoured master, the chin-scraper ventured to observe, whilst operating upon that of the king, that he considered no officer of the court had a more important trust than himself. "Why so, friend?" inquired the king. "Why," replied the barber, "I could cut your majesty's throat whenever I chose." Charles started up in consternation, swore that the very thought was treason, and the indiscreet man of razors was deprived of his delicate charge.

In the Daily Post for October 31st, 1728, is an order of the Board of Green Cloth for clearing St James's Park of the shoe-cleaners and other vagrants, and sending them to the House of Correction. This reminds us of what has often excited our surprise, the absence from the streets of London of an humble but very useful class of professionals, who abound in many continental towns, in all French ones of any size. Abundant ingenuity is displayed in London in the discovery and invention of strange and out-of-the-way employments. Men convert themselves into "animated sandwiches" by back and breastplates of board, encase themselves in gigantic bottles to set forth the merits of some famed specific or potent elixir, or walk about with advertisements printed on their coats, peripatetic fly-sheets, extolling the comfort and economy of halfpenny steamers, and of omnibuses at a penny a mile. Some sweep crossings, others hold horses; but none of the vast number of needy industrials who strain their wits to devise new means of obtaining their daily ration and nightly shelter, have as yet taken pattern by the French dÉcrotteur and German stiefel-wichser, and provided themselves for stock in trade with a three-legged stool, a brace of brushes, and a bottle of blacking. No one has been at Paris without finding the great convenience of the ateliers de dÉcrottage which abound in the passages and in the more frequented of the streets, where, for three or four sous, the lounger who has had boots and trousers bemired by rapid cab or lumbering diligence, is brushed and polished with unparalleled rapidity and dexterity. But a very moderate capital is required for the establishment of these temples of cleanliness, and we recommend the subject to the consideration of decayed railway "stags."

"Duke Street Chapel, with a flight of steps leading to the Park, formed originally a wing of the mansion of the notorious Judge Jeffries. The house was built by him, and James the Second, as a mark of especial favour, allowed him to make an entry to the Park by the steps alluded to. The son of Jeffries inhabited it for a short time." It was this son and successor of the infamous Jeffries, who, with a party of rakes and debauchees, mohocks as they were at that time called, insulted the remains of the poet Dryden, and the grief of his widow. They happened to pass through Gerrard Street, Soho, when Dryden's remains were about to be conveyed from his house, No. 43, in that street, to Westminster Abbey. Although it was in the daytime, Jeffries was drunk; he swore that Dryden should not be buried in so shabby a manner, (eighteen mourning coaches waited to form the procession,) and that he would see due honour done to his remains. After frightening Lady Elizabeth, who was ill in bed, into a fainting fit, these aristocratic ruffians stopped the funeral, and sent the body to an undertaker in Cheapside. The bishop waited several hours in Westminster Abbey, and at last went away. When Jeffries became sober, he had forgotten all about the matter, and refused to have any thing to do with the interment. The corpse lay unburied for three weeks. At last the benevolent Dr Garth had it taken to the College of Physicians, got up a subscription for the expenses of the funeral, and followed the body to Westminster Abbey. The poet's son challenged Jeffries, but Jeffries showed the white feather, and, to avoid personal chastisement, kept carefully out of the way for three years, when Charles Dryden was drowned near Windsor.

Mr Smith is most indulgent to the blunders and blockheadism of our modern architects and monument-makers, far too much so, indeed, when he speaks approvingly of Trafalgar Square and its handsome fountains, and without positive disapprobation of the vile collection of clumsy buildings and ill-executed ornament defacing that site. There has been a deal of ink spilt upon this subject, and we have no intention of adding to the quantity, especially as there is no chance that any flow of fluid, however unlimited, shall blot out the square and its absurdities. But we defy any Englishman, with the smallest pretensions to taste, to pass Charing Cross without feelings of shame and disgust at the mismanagement and ignorance there manifest. Such an accumulation of clumsiness was surely never before witnessed. The wretched National Gallery with its absurd dome, crushed beneath the tall and symmetrical proportions of St Martin's portico, overtopped even by the private dwelling-houses in its vicinity; the dirty, ill-devised, and worse-executed fountains, with their would-be-gracefully curved basins, the steps and parapets, which give the whole place the appearance of an exaggerated child's toy. Well may foreigners shrug their shoulders, and smile at the public buildings of the great capital of Britain. A fatality attends all our efforts in that way. In regard to architecture and ornament, we pay more and are worse served than any body else. So habituated are we to failure in this respect, that when a public building is completed, scaffolding removed, and a fair view obtained, we wonder and exult if it is found free from glaring defects, and in no way particularly obnoxious to censure. As to its proving a thing to be proud of, to be gazed at and admired, and to be spoken of out of England, or even in England, after the fuss and ceremony of its inauguration is over, we never dream of such a thing. The negative merit of having avoided the ridiculous and the grotesque, is subject for satisfaction, almost for pride. Assuredly we love not to exalt other countries at the expense of our own, to draw invidious comparisons between things English and things foreign. But the difference between public buildings of modern erection in London and in Paris is so immense, that it can escape no one. Take, for instance, the Paris Bourse and the London Exchange. The former, it has been objected, is out of character; a Greek temple is no fitting rendezvous for the sons of commerce; a less classic fane were more appropriate for the discussion of exchanges, for sales of cotton and muscovado. The objection, according to us, is flimsy and absurd, and must have originated with some Vandalic and prejudiced booby, with whom consistency was a monomania. Nevertheless we will, for argument's sake, admit its validity. Is that a reason that the traders and capitalists of London should meet in a building which, for heaviness and exaggerated solidity, rivals a South American Inquisition? Do the Barings and the Rothschilds anticipate an attack upon their strong boxes, and intend to stand a siege within the massive walls of the Royal Exchange? Assuredly the narrow doorways may easily be defended; for a time, at least, the ponderous walls will mock the cannonade. The curse of heaviness is upon our architects. There is total want of grace, and lightness, and airiness in all their works. Behold our new Senate House! Do its florid beauties and overdone decorations, unsparingly as they have been lavished, and convenient as they will doubtless be found as receptacles for bird's nests, contrast favourably with the elegant and dignified simplicity of the Chamber of Deputies? The two, it will be said, cannot be assimilated: the vast difference of size precludes a comparison. We reply, that the buildings are for the same purpose; but were they not, proportion at least should be observed. The Parliament House is far too low for its length. Want of elevation is the common fault, both in the ideas and in the productions of our architects.

Are we more successful in statues than in buildings? Mr Smith has some sensible remarks on this score. Speaking of the equestrian statue of George III. in Cockspur Street, he says, that "critics object to the cocked hat and tie-wig in the royal figure; but, some ages hence, these abused parts will be the most valuable in the whole statue. It may very reasonably be asked, why an English gentleman should be represented in the dress of a Roman tribune? Let the man appear, even in a statue, in his habit as he lived; and whatever we may say, posterity will be grateful to us. We should like to know exactly the ordinary walking-dress of CÆsar or Brutus, and how they wore their hair; and we should not complain if they had cocked hats or periwigs, if we knew them to be exact copies of nature." It is certain that modern physiognomy rarely harmonises with ancient costume. What is to be said of the aspect of the "first gentleman of Europe," wrapped in his horsecloth, and astride on his bare-backed steed, in the aforesaid Square of Trafalgar? Assuredly nothing in commendation. There are portraits of Napoleon in classic drapery, and, even with his classically correct countenance, he looks a very ordinary, under-sized Roman. But, in his grey capote and small cocked hat, the characteristic is preserved, and we at once think of, and wonder at, the hero of Austerlitz and Marengo.

Leicester Square, as Mr Smith justly observes, has more the appearance of the Grande Place of some continental city than of a London square. The headquarters and chief rendezvous of aliens, especially of Frenchmen, it bears numerous and unmistakeable marks of its foreign occupancy. French hotels and restaurants replace taverns and chop-houses. French names are seen above shops; promises of French, German, and Spanish conversation, are read in the windows; and grimy-visaged, hirsute individuals, in plaited pantaloons and garments of eccentric cut, saunter, cigar in mouth, over the shabby pavement. It is curious to remark the different tone and station taken by English in Paris and French in London. In the former capital, nothing is too good for the intruding islanders. In the best and most expensive season, they throng thither, and strut about like lords of the soil, perfectly at home, and careless of the opinions of the people amongst whom they have condescended to come. The best houses are for their use; the most expensive shops are favoured with their custom; and if occasionally tormented by a troublesome consciousness of paying dearly for their importance, they easily console themselves by a malediction on the French voleurs, who thus take advantage of their long purses and open hands. How different is it with the Frenchman in London! He comes over, for the most part, at the dullest time of the year, in the autumn, when the town is foggy, and dreary, and empty; when the Parks are deserted, shutters shut, the theatres dull, and exhibitions closed. He has certain vague apprehensions of the tremendous expense entailed by a visit to the English capital. To avoid this, he makes a toil of a pleasure; wearies himself with economical calculations; and creeps into some inferior hotel or dull lodging-house, tempted by low prices and foreign announcements. We find French deputies abiding in Cranbourn Street, and counts contenting themselves with a garret at Pagliano's. Thence they perambulate westwards; and ignorant, or not choosing to remember, that London is out of town, and that they have selected the very worst possible season to visit it, they greatly marvel at the paucity of equipages, at the abundance of omnibuses and hack-cabs, and the scarcity of sunbeams; and return home to inform their friends that London is a ville monstre, with spacious streets, small houses, few amusements; very great, but very gloomy; and where the nearest approach to sunshine resembles the twinkling of a rushlight through a plate of blue earthenware.

"The foreign appearance of Leicester Square is not of recent growth. It seems to have been the favourite resort of strangers and exiles ever since the place was built. Maitland, who wrote more than a hundred years ago, describing the parish of St Anne's, in which it is situate, says—'The fields in these parts being but lately converted into buildings, I have not discovered any thing of great antiquity in this parish. Many parts of it so greatly abound with French, that it is an easy matter for a stranger to imagine himself in France.'"

Sydney Alley is named after the Earls of Leicester, who had their town-house on the north side of the square, where Leicester Place has since been opened. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., occupied, for some years, this residence of the Sydneys. She also inhabited a house in Drury Place, where Craven Street now stands, which was built for her by Lord Craven. It was called Bohemia House for many years afterwards, and at last became a tavern, at the sign of the Queen of Bohemia. "The Earl of Craven was thought to have been privately married to the queen, a woman of great sweetness of temper and amiability of manners—a universal favourite both in this country and Bohemia, where her gentleness acquired her the title of 'The Queen of Hearts.' By right of their descent from her, the House of Hanover ascended the throne of this kingdom." Lord Craven was the eldest son of Sir William Craven, lord-mayor of London in 1611. He fought under Gustavus Adolphus with great distinction, and returned to England at the Restoration, when Charles II. made him viscount and earl. He commanded a regiment of the guards until within three or four years of his death, which occurred in 1697, at the advanced age of eighty-five. "He was an excellent soldier," says the advertisement of his decease in No. 301 of the Postman, "and served in the wars under Palsgrave of the Rhine, and also under the great Gustavus Adolphus, where he performed sundry warlike exploits to admiration; and, in a word, he was then in great renowne."

However indifferently Leicester Square may at present be inhabited, and notwithstanding its long-standing reputation as a foreign colony, it has been the chosen abode of many distinguished men. Hogarth and Reynolds lived and died there. Hogarth's house is now part of the SabloniÈre Hotel. Sir Joshua's was on the opposite side of the square; and both of them, especially the latter, were much resorted to by the wits and wise men of the day. Johnson, Boswell, and, at times, Goldsmith, were constant visitors to Reynolds. John Hunter, the anatomist, lived next-door to Hogarth's house; and in 1725, Lords North and Grey, and Arthur Onslow, the Speaker, also inhabited this square. Leicester House, where the Queen of Bohemia lived, is called by Pennant the "pouting-place of princes." George II. retired thither when he quarrelled with his father; and his son Frederick, the father of George III., did the same thing for the same reason. Whilst Prince Frederick and the Princess of Wales lived there, they received the wedding visit of the Hon. John Spencer, ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, and of his bride, Miss Poyntz. Contrary to established etiquette, the bridal party went to visit the Prince before paying their respects to the King. They came in two carriages and a sedan chair; the latter, which was lined with white satin, contained the bride, and was preceded by a black page, and followed by three footmen in splendid liveries. The diamonds presented to Mr Spencer, on occasion of his marriage, by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, were worth one hundred thousand pounds. The bridegroom's shoe-buckles alone cost thirty thousand pounds. An old gentleman, born more than a century ago, from whom Mr Smith obtained some of these particulars, informed him, that about that time the neighbourhood was so thinly built, that when the heads of two men, executed for participation in the Scotch rebellion, were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields with a telescope, to give the boys a sight of them for a penny a-piece.

A house in Leicester Fields was the scene of some of the eccentricities of that semi-civilised hero, Peter the Great of Russia. It belonged to the Earl of Aylesbury, and was inhabited, during the Czar's visit to this country, by the Marquis of Carmarthen, who gave a grand ball there, on the 2d April 1698, in honour of the imperial stranger. The Marquis was Peter's particular chum and boon companion, and the Czar preferred his society to all the gaieties and visitors that beset him during his residence in England. Peter was very shy of strangers, and when William the Third gave him a magnificent entertainment at St James's, he would not mix with the company, but begged to be put into a cupboard, whence he could see without being seen. He drank tremendously, and made Lord Carmathen do the same. Hot brandy, seasoned with pepper, was his favourite drink. Something strong he certainly required to digest his diet of train-oil and raw meats. On one occasion, when staying in Leicester Fields with the Marquis, he is said to have drunk a pint of brandy and a bottle of sherry before dinner, and eight bottles of sack after it, and then to have gone to the play, seemingly no whit the worse. He lodged in York Buildings, in a house overlooking the river, supposed by some to be that at the left-hand corner of Buckingham Street. A house in Norfolk Street also had the honour of sheltering him. "On Monday night," says No. 411 of the Postman "the Czar of Muscovy arrived from Holland, and went directly to the house prepared for him in Norfolk Street." His principal amusement was being rowed on the Thames between London and Deptford; and at last, in order to live quietly and avoid the hosts of visitors who poured in upon him, he took Admiral Benbow's house at the latter place. It stood on the ground now occupied by the Victualling Office, and was the property of the well-known John Evelyn.

"Horne Tooke," says Mr Smith, "in his Diversions of Purley, derives the word Charing from the Saxon Charan, to turn; and the situation of the original village, on the bend or turning of the Thames, gives probability to this etymology." Every body knows that Charing, now so central a point, was once a little hamlet on the rural high-road between London and Westminster, and that the "Cross" was added to it by Edward the First, who, when escorting his wife's remains from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey, erected one at each place where the beloved corpse rested. The first cross, which was of wood, and probably of rude enough manufacture, gave way to one of stone, designed by Cavalini. About the middle of the seventeenth century, that period of puritanical intolerance, this was removed by order of the Commons' House, an order which the royalists took care to ridicule by song and lampoon. According to Lilly the astrologer and quack, the workmen were three months pulling it down, and some of the stones were used for the pavement before Whitehall. Others were made into knife-handles, and Lilly saw some of them which were polished and looked like marble. Those were days in which kingly memorials found as little favour as popish emblems; and after the death of Charles the First, the statue that now stands at Charing Cross, and which had been cast by Le Sueur in 1633 for the Earl of Arundel, was sold and ordered to be broken up. It was bought by one Rivet, a brazier, who, instead of breaking, buried it. This did not prevent the ingenious mechanic from making a large and immediate profit by the effigy of the martyred monarch; for he melted down old brass into knife and fork-handles, and sold them as proceeding from the King's statue. Roundheads and cavaliers all flocked to buy; the former desiring a trophy of their triumph, the latter eager to possess a memento of their lamented sovereign. In 1678, £70,000 was voted by Parliament for the obsequies of Charles I., and for a monument to his memory, and with a portion of this sum, how large a one is not known, the statue was repurchased.

The historian of the streets and houses of a great and ancient city, has, in many ways, a most difficult task to perform. Not only must he read much, observe closely, and diligently inquire, display ingenuity in deduction and judgment in selection, but he must be steadfast to resist temptation. For, assuredly, to the lover of antiquarian and historical lore, the temptation is immense, whilst culling materials from quaint old diaries, black-letter pamphlets, and venerable newspapers, to expatiate and extract at a length wholly inconsistent with the necessary limits of his work. Some writers are at pains to dilate their matter—his chief care must be to compress. What would fairly fill a sheet must be packed into a page—the pith and substance of a volume must be squeezed into a chapter. The diligent compiler should not be slightly considered by the creative and aspiring genius. Like the bee, he forms his small, rich store, from the fragrance of a thousand flowers—adopting the sweet, rejecting the nauseous and insipid. Nor must he dwell too long on any pet and particular blossom, lest what would please in due proportion should cloy by too large an admixture. To vary the metaphor, the writer of such a work as this Antiquarian Ramble, should be a sort of literary Soyer, mixing his materials so skilfully that the flavour of each is preserved, whilst not one unduly predominates. He must not prance off on a hobby, whether architectural, historical, social, or romantic, but relieve his cattle and his readers by jumping lightly and frequently from one saddle to another.

How many books might be written upon the themes briefly glanced at in Mr Smith's book! Let us take, for instance, the places of public executions in London. Charing Cross was for centuries one of them, and its pillory was the most illustrious amongst the many that formerly graced the capital—illustrious by reason of the remarkable evil-doers who underwent ignominy in its wooden and unfriendly embrace. The notorious Titus Oates, and Parsons, the chief contriver of the Cock-Lane Ghost, were exposed in it. To the rough treatment which, in former days, sometimes succeeded exposure in the pillory, the following paragraph, from the Daily Advertiser of the 11th June 1731, abundantly testifies:—"Yesterday Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, stood on the pillory for the space of one hour; after which he was seated in an elbow-chair, and the common hangman cut both his ears off with an incision knife, and showed them to the spectators, afterwards delivered them to Mr Watson, a sheriff's officer; then slit both his nostrils with a pair of scissors, and sear'd them with a hot iron, pursuant to his sentence. He had a surgeon to attend him to the pillory, who immediately applied things necessary to prevent the effusion of blood. He underwent it all with undaunted courage; afterwards went to the Ship tavern at Charing Cross, where he stayed some time; then was carried to the King's Bench Prison, to be confined there for life. During the time he was on the pillory he laughed, and denied the fact to the last." Petty punishments these, although barbarous enough, inflicted for paltry crimes upon mean malefactors. Criminals of a far higher grade had, previously to that, paid the penalty of their offences at the Cross of Charing. Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, was there hung, as were Scrope, Jones, Harrison, and others of the king-killers. Long had been their impunity; but vengeance at last overtook them. To the end they showed the stern fanatical resolution of Oliver's iron followers. "Where is your Good Old Cause?" cried a scoffer to Harrison, as he was led to the scaffold. "Here!" he replied, clapping hand on breast; "I go to seal it with my blood." At the foot of the ladder, which he approached with undaunted mien, his limbs were observed to tremble, and some amongst the mob made a mockery of this weakness. "I judge," said Harrison, "that some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you NO! but it is by reason of much blood that I have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves." And he spoke further, and told the populace how he gloried in that he had done, and how, had he ten thousand lives, he would cheerfully lay them down in the same cause. "After he was hanged, a horrible scene took place. In conformity to the barbarous sentence then, and for many years afterwards, executed upon persons convicted of treason, he was cut down alive and stripped, his belly was cut open, his bowels taken out and burned before his eyes. Harrison, in the madness of his agony, rose up wildly, it is said, and gave the executioner a box on the ear, and then fell down insensible. It was the last effort of matter over mind, and for the time it conquered." The other regicides died with the same firmness and contempt of death. "Their grave and graceful demeanour," says the account in the state trials, "accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the spectators." So much so, and so strong was the sympathy excited, that the government gave orders that no more of them should be executed in the heart of London. Accordingly the remainder suffered at Tyburn.

Upon the old Westminster market-place a most barbarous event occurred in the time of that tyrannical, acetous old virgin, Queen Bess, who assuredly owes her renown and the sort of halo of respect that surrounds her memory, far less to any good qualities of her own, than to the galaxy of great men who flourished during her reign. The glory that encircles her brow is formed of such stars as Cecil, Burleigh and Bacon, Drake and Raleigh, Spencer, Shakspeare, and Sydney. Touching this barbarity, however, enacted by order of good Queen Bess. At the mature age of forty-eight, her majesty took it into her very ordinary-looking old head to negotiate a marriage with the Duke of Anjou. Commissioners came from France to discuss the interesting subject, and were entertained by pageants and tournaments, in which Elizabeth enacted the Queen of Beauty; and subsequently the duke came over himself, as a private gentleman, to pay his court to the last of the Tudors. The duke being a papist, the proposed alliance was very unpopular in England, and one John Stubbs, a barrister of Lincoln's-Inn, wrote a pamphlet against it, entitled, "The Discoverye of a gaping gulphe, whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns, by letting her Majestye see the sin and punishment thereof." Certain expressions in this imprudent publication greatly angered the Queen; Stubbs and his servant, Page, were brought to trial, and condemned to lose their right hands. This cruel and unusual sentence was carried into effect on the market-place at Westminster, and witnessed by Camden, who gives an account of it. Both sufferers behaved with great fortitude and courage. Their hands were cut off with a butcher's cleaver and mallet, and as soon as Stubbs had lost his, he pulled off his cap with his left, waved it in the air, and cried—"God save the Queen!" He then fainted away. It took two blows to sever Page's hand, but he flinched not, and pointing to the block where it lay, he exclaimed—"I have left there the hand of a true Englishman!" And so he went from the scaffold, says the account, "stoutlie and with great courage."

Amongst spots of sanguinary notoriety, Smithfield, of course, stands prominent. The majority of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons burned for heresy during Mary's short reign, suffered there; and here also, upon two occasions, the horrible punishment of boiling to death, formerly inflicted on poisoners, was witnessed. In France this was the punishment of coiners, and there is still a street at Paris known as the Rue de l'EchaudÉ. In Stow's Annals it is recorded, that on the fifth of April 1531, "one Richard Rose, a cook, was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning of divers persons, to the number of sixteen or more." Two only of the sixteen died, but the others were never restored to health. If any thing could reconcile us to torture, as a punishment to be inflicted by man on his offending brother, it is such a crime as this.

If the punishments of our ancestors were cruel, if trials were sometimes over hasty, and small offences often too severely chastised, on the other hand, culprits formerly had facilities of escape now refused to them. The right of sanctuary was enjoyed by various districts and buildings in London. Pennant and many other writers have stigmatised this practice as absurd; Mr Smith defends it upon very reasonable grounds. "In times when every man went armed, when feuds were of hourly occurrence in the streets, when the age had not yet learned the true superiority of right over might, and when private revenge too often usurped the functions of justice, it was essential that there should be places whither the homicide might flee, and find refuge and protection until the violence of angry passions had subsided, and there was a chance of a fair trial for him." Not all sanctuaries, however, gave protection to the murderer, at least in later times. Whitefriars, for instance, once a refuge for all criminals, except traitors, afforded shelter, after the fifteenth century, to debtors only. In 1697 this sanctuary was abolished entirely, at the same time with a dozen others. It is not well ascertained how it acquired the slang name of Alsatia, which is first found in a play of Shadwell's, The Squire of Alsatia. Immortalised by the genius of Scott, no sanctuary will longer be remembered than Whitefriars. It was one of the largest; many others of the privileged districts being limited to a court or alley, a few houses or a church. Thus Ram Alley and Mitre Court in Fleet Street, and Baldwin's Gardens in Gray's Inn Lane, were amongst these refugees of roguery and crime. Whitefriars was much resorted to by poets and players, dancing and fencing masters, and persons of the like vagabond and uncertain professions. The poets and players were attracted by the vicinity of the theatre in Dorset Gardens, built after the fire of London, by Sir Christopher Wren, upon the site of Dorset House, the residence of the Sackvilles. Here Sir William Davenant's company of comedians—the Duke of York's servants, as they were called—performed for a considerable time. It appears, however, that even before the great fire, there was a theatre in that neighbourhood. Malone, in his Prologomena to Shakspeare, quotes a memorandum from the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels to King Charles I. It runs thus:—"I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th of February 1634, to the Marshalsey, for lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the players in Salisbury Court, to represent a Flamen, a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission and acknowledgement of his faults, I released him the 17th of February 1634."

The ancient sanctuary at Westminster is of historical and Shaksperian celebrity, as the place where Elizabeth Grey, Queen of Edward the Fourth, took refuge, when Warwick the king-maker marched to London to dethrone her husband, and set Henry the Sixth on the throne. It was a stone church, built in the form of a cross, and so strongly, that its demolition, in 1750, was a matter of great difficulty. The precinct of St Martin's-le-Grand was also sanctuary. Many curious particulars respecting it are to be found in Kempe's Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church, or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of St Martin's-le-Grand, London, published in 1825. In the reign of Henry the Fifth, this right of sanctuary gave rise to a great dispute between the Dean of St Martin's and the city authorities. "A soldier, confined in Newgate, was on his way to Guildhall, in charge of an officer of the city, when on passing the south gate of St Martin's, opposite to Newgate Street, five of his comrades rushed out of Panyer Alley, with daggers drawn, rescued him, and fled with him to the holy ground." The sheriff had the sanctuary forced, and sent rescued and rescuers to Newgate. The Dean of St Martin's, indignant at this violation of privilege, complained to the king, who ordered the prisoners to be liberated. Thereat the citizens, ever sticklers for their rights, demurred, and at last it was made a Star-Chamber matter. The dean pleaded his own cause, and that right skilfully and wittily. He denied that the chapel of St Martin's formed any part of the city of London, as claimed by the corporation; quoted a statute of Edward III. constituting St Martin's and Westminster Abbey places of privilege for treason, felony, and debt; and mentioned the curious fact, that "when the King's justices held their sittings in St Martin's Gate, for the trial of prisoners for treason or felony, the accused were placed before them, on the other side of the street, and carefully guarded from advancing forward; for if they ever passed the water-channel which divided the middle of the street, they might claim the saving franchise of the sacred precinct, and the proceedings against them would be immediately annulled." The dean also expressed his wonder that the citizens of London should be the men to impugn his church's liberties, since more than three hundred worshipful members of the corporation had within a few years been glad to claim its privilege. The Star-Chamber decided against the city, and the prisoners were restored to sanctuary. The Savoy was another sanctuary; and it was the custom of the inhabitants to tar and feather those who ventured to follow their debtors thither.

In the theatrical district of London, Mr Smith lingers long and fondly; for there each house, almost every brick, is rich in reminiscences, not only of players and playhouses, but of wits, poets, and artists. In the burial-ground of St Paul's, Covent-Garden, repose not a few of those who in their lifetime inhabited or frequented the neighbourhood. There lies the author of Hudibras. "Mr Longueville, of the Temple, Butler's steady friend, and who mainly supported him in his latter days, when the ungrateful Stuart upon the throne, whose cause he had so greatly served, had deserted him, was anxious to have buried the poet in Westminster Abbey. He solicited for that purpose the contributions of those wealthy persons, his friends, whom he had heard speak admiringly of Butler's genius, and respectfully of his character, but none would contribute, although he offered to head the list with a considerable sum." So poor Butler was buried in Covent-Garden, privately but decently. He is in good company. Sir Peter Lely, the painter of dames, the man who seemed created on purpose to limn the languishing and voluptuous beauties of Charles the Second's court, is also buried in St Paul's; as are also Wycherley and Southerne, the dramatists; Haines and Macklin, the comedians; Arne, the musician; Strange, the engraver; and Walcot, alias Peter Pindar. Sir Peter Lely lived in Covent-Garden, in very great style. "The original name of the family was Vandervaes; but Sir Peter's father, a gallant fellow, and an officer in the army, having been born at a perfumer's shop, the sign of the Lily, was commonly known by the name of Captain Lily, a name which his son thought to be more euphonious to English ears than Vandervaes, and which he retained when he settled here, slightly altering the spelling." Wycherley, a dandy and a courtier, as well as an author, had lodgings in Bow Street, where Charles II. once visited him when he was ill, and gave him five hundred pounds to go a journey to the south of France for the benefit of his health. When he afterwards married the Countess of Drogheda, a young, rich, and beautiful widow, she went to live with him in Bow Street. She was very jealous, and when he went over to the "Cock" tavern, opposite to his house, he was obliged to make the drawer open the windows, that his lady might see there was no woman in the company. This "Cock" tavern was the great resort of the rakes and mohocks of that day; of Buckhurst, Sedley, Killigrew, and others of the same kidney. In fact, Bow Street was then the Bond Street of London; and the "Cock," its "Long's" or "Clarendon." Dryden, in an epilogue, talks of the "Bow Street beaux," and several contemporary writers have similar allusions. Like most places where the rich congregate, this fashionable quarter was a fine field for the ingenuity of pick-pockets, and especially of wig and sword-stealers, a class of thieves that appeared with full-bottomed periwigs and silver-hilted rapiers. In those days, to keep a man's head decently covered, cost nearly as much as it now does to fill his belly and clothe his back. Wigs were sometimes of the value of forty or fifty pounds. Ten or fifteen pounds was an exceeding "low figure" for these modish incumbrances. Out of respect to such costly head-dress, hats were never put on, but carried under the arm. The wig-stealers could demand no more. Mr Smith quotes a passage from Gay, describing their manoeuvres:—

Will's coffeehouse was in Bow Street, and "being the grand resort of wits and critics, it is not surprising," says Mr Smith, "that it should become also the headquarters of envy, slander, and detraction." There was then a lack of printed vehicles for the venting of the evil passions of rival literati; lampoons were circulated in manuscript, and read at Will's. As the acknowledgment of the authorship might sometimes have had disagreeable consequences for the author, a fellow of the name of Julian, who styled himself "Secretary to the Muses," became the mouthpiece of libeller and satirist. He read aloud in the coffee-room the pasquinades that were brought to him, and distributed written copies to all who desired them. Concerning this base fellow, Sir Walter Scott gives some curious particulars in his edition of Dryden's works. There is no record of cudgelings bestowed upon Julian, though it is presumed that he did not escape them. "He is described," says Malone, "as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel." Dryden was a great sufferer from these violent and slanderous attacks—a sufferer, indeed, in more senses than one; for, besides being himself made the subject of venomous lampoons, he was suspected unjustly of having written one, and was waylaid and beaten on his way from Will's to his house in Gerrard Street. A reward of fifty pounds was offered for the apprehension of his assailants, but they remained undiscovered. Lord Rochester was their employer: Lord Mulgrave the real author of the libel.

In James Street, Covent-Garden, where Garrick lodged, there resided, from 1714 to 1720, a mysterious lady, who excited great interest and curiosity. Malcolm, in his Anecdotes of London during the Eighteenth Century, gives some account of her. She was middle-sized, dark-haired, beautiful and accomplished, and apparently between thirty and forty years old. She was wealthy, and possessed very valuable jewels. Her death was sudden, and occurred after a masquerade, where she said she had conversed with the King. It was remembered that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne; but after that Queen's death, she lived in obscurity. "She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct; adding, that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recommendation. It seems likely enough that she was connected in some way with the Stuart family, and with their pretensions to the throne."

Dr Arne was born in King Street. His father, an honest upholsterer, at the sign of the "Two Crowns and Cushions," is said to have been the original of Murphy's farce of The Upholsterer. He did not countenance his son's musical propensities; and young Arne had to get up in the night, and practise by stealth on a muffled spinet. The first intimation received by the worthy mattress-maker of his son's proficiency in music, was one evening at a concert, where he quite unexpectedly saw him officiating as leader of the orchestra.

Voltaire, when in England, after his release from the Bastille, whither he had been sent for libel, lodged in Maiden Lane, at the White Peruke, a wigmaker's shop. When walking out, he was often annoyed by the mob, who beheld, in his spare person, polite manners, and satirical countenance, the personification of their notion of a Frenchman. "One day he was beset by so great a crowd that he was forced to shelter himself against a doorway, where, mounting the steps, he made a flaming speech in English in praise of the magnanimity of the English nation, and their love of freedom. With this the people were so delighted, that their jeers were turned into applauses, and he was carried in triumph to Maiden Lane on the shoulders of the mob." From which temporary elevation the arch-scoffer doubtless looked down upon his dupes with glee, suppressed, but immeasurable.

Quitting the abodes of wit and the drama for those of legal learning, we pass from Covent-Garden to Lincoln's Inn Fields, through Great Queen Street, in the Stuarts' day one of the most fashionable in London. Here dwelt Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and here he wrote the greater part of his treatise De Veritate, concerning the publication of which he believed himself, according to his own marvellous account, to have had a special revelation from heaven. A strange weakness, or rather madness, on the part of a man who disbelieved, or at least doubted, of general revelation. For himself, he thought an exception possible. Insanity alone could explain and excuse such illogical vanity. Near to this singular enthusiast lived Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose next-door neighbour and friend was Radcliffe the physician. "Kneller," says Horace Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, "was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his gardens; but Radcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up the door. Radcliffe replied peevishly, "Tell him he may do any thing with it but paint it." "And I," answered Godfrey, "can take any thing from him but his physic." Pope and Gay were frequent visitors at the painter's studio. At the wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, Ben Jonson is by some asserted to have laboured as a bricklayer. "He helped," says Fuller, "in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." Aubrey tells the same story, which is discredited by Mr Gifford, who denies that the poet ever was a bricklayer. Lord William Russell was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, it being, Pennant tells us, the nearest open space from Newgate, where he was confined.

Passing through Duke Street, where Benjamin Franklin lodged, when working as a journeyman printer in the adjacent Great Wyld Street, into Clare Market, the scene of Orator Henley's holdings-forth, we thence, by Drury-Lane, the residence of Nell Gwynne and Nan Clarges before they became respectively the King's mistress and a Duke's wife, get back to the Strand and move Citywards. But to refer, although merely nominally, to one half the subjects of interest met with on the way, and suggested by Mr Smith, would be to write an index, not a review. Here, therefore, we pause, believing that enough has been said to convince the reader of the vast amount of information and amusement derivable from the bricks and stones of London, and able to recommend to him, should he himself set out on a street pilgrimage, an excellent guide and companion in the Antiquarian Ramble.