ever did before or since, brought out the absurdities of

artificial life,

"Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image,"

and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning! His intentions were less profound than his impulses ; that is to say, he sometimes had an avowed commonplace in view, as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, while the execution of it was full of much higher things and profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a wit on canvass, it was he. To take one instance alone, his spider's web over the poor's box is a union of remote ideas, coalescing but too perfectly.

*

Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built upon till towards the restoration of Charles II. It took its name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses and of Leicester Place.

"It was for a short time," says Pennant, "the residence of Elizabeth, daughter of James I., the titular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life. It has been tenanted for a great number of years. It was successively the pouting-place of princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it finished his days."

"Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, "stood, in 1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept here his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign of Charles II., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, opposite the end of

* For masterly criticisms on Hogarth, see the Works of Charles Lamb,' vol. ii. p. 88., and the 'Picture Galleries of England,' p. 181

Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose of a ridinghouse; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the parish of St. James's."*

But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester fields is in St. Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which was occupied by the great Newton.

Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church. Statue of Charles I.

- Execution of Regicides.— Ben Jonson. — Wallingford House, now the Admiralty. - Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Walter Scott's Account of him. - Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death. Charles's Horse a Satirist. - Locket's Ordinary. - Sir George Etherege. - Prior and his Uncle's Tavern. Thomson. Spring Gardens. Mrs. Centlivre. - Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c., formerly Hedge Lane. The Wits and the Bailiffs. - Suffolk Street. - Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh. — Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occasioned. Scotland Yard. - Pleasant Advertisement. - Beau Fielding and his Eccentricities. - Vanbrugh. — Desperate Adventure of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

N the reign of Edward I., on the country road from London to Westminster, stood the hamlet of Charing; a rustic spot, containing a few houses, and the last cross set up by that Prince in honour of the restingplaces of his wife's body on its way to interment in the Abbey. The Cross was

originally of wood, but afterwards of stone. -The reader may see it in the old map of London by Aggas. He will there observe, that towards the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, Charing Cross was united with London on the Strand side, and at little intervals with Whitehall; but Spring Gardens was then and long after what its name implies; and, in the reign of Charles II., Hedge lane (now Whitcomb Street) and the Haymarket were still real lanes and passages into the fields. In Elizabeth's time, you might set out from the site of the present Pall-mall, and, leaving St. Giles in the Fields on the right hand, walk all the way to Hampstead without encountering perhaps a dwelling-place. Lovers plucked

THE VILLAGE OF CHARING, FROM AGGAS'S MAP.

flowers in Cranbourne Alley, and took moonlight walks in St. James's market.

On this spot, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, is to be found the fullest "tide of human existence" in the metropolis. We know not how that may be at present when the tide is so full everywhere; but Charing Cross has long been something the reverse of a rural village, and is now exhibiting one of the newest and grandest evidences of an improving metropolis. By way of north front, the Mews (formerly the mews of the King's falcons) has given way to a sorry palace for the Fine Arts; on the west is a handsome edifice including the new college of Physicians; on the east St. Martin's church has obtained its long desired opening: and in the midst of these buildings and of the Strand-end is a new square, named after the greatest of our naval victories, adorned with a column surmounted by their hero, and disgraced by a couple of shabby fountains Here also is an equestrian statue of George the Fourth. What for?

"In the reign of Henry VIII.," says Pennant, "speaking of St. Martin's, "a small church was built here at the King's expense, by reason of the poverty of the parishioners, who possibly were at that period very poor. In 1607 it was enlarged because of the increase of buildings. In 1721 it was found necessary to take the whole down, and in five years from that time this magnificent temple was completed at the expense of near thirty-seven thousand pounds. This is the best performance of Gibbs, the architect of the Ratcliffe Library. The steeple is far the most elegant of any of that style which I named the pepper-box; and with which (I beg pardon of the good people of Glasgow) I marked their boasted steeple of St. Andrew."*

Our lively biographer seems chiefly to admire the steeple of this church. The Corinthian portico, we believe, is the usual object of praise. Both of them may deserve praise separately; nor, indeed, will their size and situation allow them to be regarded with indifference in conjunction; but the elevation of the steeple on the neck of the church, or without any apparent or proper base to rest upon, is a fault not to be denied ; and Mr. Pennant perhaps would not have been in the wrong, had he found an ill name for steeples in general, as well as for the species which he "peppered." Steeples, however noble, and porticoes, however Greek, can never truly coalesce. The finest steeple with a portico to it is but an excrescence and an anomaly, a horn growing out of the church's neck. The Italians felt this absurdity so much, that they have often made a separate building of the steeple, converting it into a beautiful tower aloof from the church, as in the instances of the famous Hanging Tower in Pisa, and the Campanile in Florence. Suppose a shaft like the Monument, in a space near St. Martin's church, and the church itself a proper building with a portico, like St.

* Page 143.