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 manypaged 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.

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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. 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.

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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. 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

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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 skirthouse 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 manu

facture 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,* 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 publichouses 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-ofwar, 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. Aniseedwater was the favourite dram; until the French, finding out the newlyacquired 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 gamecocks 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,

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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

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