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 man

œuvres :

"Nor is thy flaxen wig with safety

worn:

High on the shoulder, in a basket borne, Lurks the sly boy, whose hand, to rapine bred,

Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."

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 attacksa 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 sudwhere she said she had conversed den, and occurred after a masquerade, 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 mattressmaker 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 archscoffer 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.

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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 DruryLane, 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.

AFTER the reduction of Bouchain, Marlborough was anxious to commence without delay the siege of Quesnoy, the capture of which would, in that quarter, have entirely broken through the French barrier. He vigorously stimulated his own government accordingly, as well as that at the Hague, to prepare the necessary supplies and magazines, and expressed a sanguine hope that the capture of this last stronghold would be the means of bringing about the grand object of his ambition, and a general peace.* * The ministry, to appearance, went with alacrity into his projects, and every thing bore the aspect of another great success closing the campaign with honour, and probably leading to a glorious and lasting peace. Mr Secretary St John, in particular, wrote in the warmest style of cordiality, approving the project in his own name as well as in that of the Queen, and reiterating the assurances that the strongest representations had been made to the Dutch, with a view to their hearty concurrence. But all this was a mere cover to conceal what the Tories had really been doing to overturn Marlborough, and abandon the main objects of the war. Unknown to him, the secret negotiation with the French Cabinet, through Torcy and the British ministers, through the agency of Mesnager, had been making rapid progress. No representations were made to the Dutch, who were fully in the secret of the pending negotiation, about providing supplies; and on the 27th September, preliminaries of peace, on the basis of the seven

articles proposed by Louis, were signed by Mesnager on the part of France, and by the two English secretaries of state, in virtue of a special warrant from the Queen.†

The conditions of these preliminaries, which were afterwards embodied in the Treaty of Utrecht, were the acknowledgement of the Queen's title to the throne, and the Protestant succession, by Louis; an engagement to take all just and reasonable measures that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united on the same head, the providing a sufficient barrier to the Dutch, the empire, and the house of Austria; and the demolition of Dunkirk, or a proper equivalent. But the crown of Spain was left to the Duke of Anjou, and no provision whatever made to exclude a Bourbon prince from succeeding to it. Thus the main object of the contest-the excluding the Bourbon family from the throne of Spain, was abandoned and at the close of the most important, successful, and glorious war ever waged by England, terms were agreed to, which left to France advantages which could scarcely have been hoped by the Cabinet of Versailles as the fruit of a long series of victories.

Marlborough felt deeply this clandestine negotiation, which not only deprived him of the main object for which, during his great career, he had been contending, but evinced a duplicity and want of confidence on the part of his own government at its close, which was a melancholy return for such inappreciable public services.‡ But it was of no avail; the secession

of England proved, as he had foreseen from the outset, a deathblow to the confederacy. Finding that nothing more was to be done, either at the head of the army, or in direction of the negotiations, he returned home by the Brille, after putting his army into winter-quarters, and landed at Greenwich on the 17th November. Though well aware of the private envy, as well as political hostility of which he was the object, he did nothing that could lower or compromise his high character and lofty position; but in an interview with the Queen, fully expressed his opinion on the impolicy of the course which ministers were now adopting.* He adopted the same manly course in the noble speech which he made in his place in Parliament, in the debate on the address. Ministers had put into the royal speech the unworthy expression-" I am glad to tell you, that notwithstanding the arts of those who delight in war, both place and time are appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace." Lord Anglesea followed this up, by declaring, in the course of the debate, that the country might have enjoyed the blessing of peace soon after the battle of Ramilies, if it had not been deferred by some person whose interest it was to prolong the war.

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Rising upon this, with inexpressible dignity, and turning to where the Queen sat, Marlborough said, I appeal to the Queen, whether I did not constantly, while I was plenipotentiary, give her Majesty and her Council an account of all the propositions which were made; and whether I did not desire instruction for my conduct on this subject. I can declare with a good conscience, in the presence of her Majesty, of this illustrious assembly, and of God himself, who is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear to render account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe, honour

able, and lasting peace, and was very far from wishing to prolong the war for my own private advantage, as several libels and discourses have most falsely insinuated. My great age, and my numerous fatigues in war, make me ardently wish for the power to enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity. As to other matters, I have not the least inducement, on any account, to desire the continuance of the war for my own interest, since my services have been so generously rewarded by her Majesty and her parliament; but I think myself obliged to make such an acknowledgment to her Majesty and my country, that I am always ready to serve them, whenever my duty may require, to obtain an honourable and lasting peace. Yet I can by no means acquiesce in the measures that have been taken to enter into a negotiation of peace with France, upon the foot of some pretended preliminaries, which are now circulated; since my opinion is the same as that of most of the Allies, that to leave Spain and the West Indies to the House of Bourbon, will be the entire ruin of Europe, which I have with all fidelity and humility declared to her Majesty, when I had the honour to wait upon her after my arrival from Holland."†

This manly declaration, delivered in the most emphatic manner, produced a great impression; and a resolution against ministers was carried in the House of Peers by a majority of twelve. In the Commons, however, they had a large majority, and an address containing expressions similar to those used by Lord Anglesea, reflecting on Marlborough, was introduced and carried there. The Whig majority, however, continued firm in the Upper House; and the leaders of that party began to entertain sanguine hopes of success. The Queen had let fall some peevish expressions in regard to her ministers. She had given her hand, in retiring

from the House of Peers on the 15th December, to the Duke of Somerset, instead of her own Lord Treasurer; it was apprehended her old partiality for Marlborough was about to return; Mrs Masham was in the greatest alarm; and St John declared to Swift that the Queen was false.* The

ministers of the whole alliance seconded the efforts of the Whigs, and strongly represented the injurious effects which would ensue to the cause of European independence in general, and the interests of England in particular, if the preliminaries which had been agreed to should be made the basis of a general peace. The Dutch made strong and repeated representations on the subject; and the Elector of Hanover delivered a memorial strongly urging the danger which would ensue if Spain and the Indies were allowed to remain in the hands of a Bourbon prince.

Deeming themselves pushed to extremities, and having failed in all attempts to detach Marlborough from the Whigs, Bolingbroke and the ministers resolved on the desperate measure of bringing forward the accusation against him, of fraud and peculation in the management of the public monies entrusted to his management in the Flemish campaign. The charges were founded on the report of certain commissioners to whom the matter had been remitted; and which charged the Duke with having appropriated L.63,319 of the public monies destined for the use of the English troops, and L.282,366, as a per-centage of two per cent on the sum paid to foreign ambassadors during the ten years of the war. In reply to these abominable insinuations, the letter of the Duke to the commissioners was published on the 27th December, in which he entirely refuted the charges, and showed that he had never received any sums or perquisites, not sanctioned by previous and uniform usage, and far less than had been received by the general in the reign of William III. And in regard to the L.282,000 of per

centage on foreign subsidies, this was proved to have been a voluntary gift from those powers to the English general, authorised by their signatures and sanctioned by warrants from the Queen. This answer made a great impression; but ministers had gone too far to retreat, and they ventured on a step which, for the honour of the country, has never, even in the worst times, been since repeated. Trusting to their majority in the Commons, they dismissed the Duke from all his situations on the 31st December; and in order to stifle the voice of justice in the Upper House, on the following day patents were issued calling twelve new peers to the Upper House. On the following day they were introduced amidst the groans of the House: the Whig noblemen, says a contemporary annalist, "cast their eyes on the ground as if they had been invited to the funeral of the peerage."†

Unbounded was the joy diffused among the enemies of England by these unparalleled measures. On hearing of Marlborough's fall, Louis XIV. said with triumph, "The dismission of Marlborough will do all we can desire." The Court of St Germains was in exultation; and the general joy of the Jacobites, both at home and abroad, was sufficient to demonstrate how formidable an enemy to their cause they regarded the Duke; and how destitute of truth were the attempts to show that he had been engaged in a secret design to restore the exiled family. Marlborough disdained to make any defence of himself in Parliament; but an able answer on his part was prepared and circulated, which entirely refuted the whole charges against the illustrious general. So convinced were ministers of this, that, contenting themselves with resolutions against him in the House of Commons, where their influence was predominant, they declined to prefer any impeachment or accusation, even in the Upper House swamped by their recent creations. In the midst of this disgrace