the great Duke of Marlborough, at the close of the reign of Queen Anne.

At No. 2, James Street, lived Glover, the author of "Leonidas," and I believe this is the same house which was afterwards occupied by Gifford, the translator of "Juvenal," and editor of the "Quarterly Review."

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The ground between James Street and Tothill Street, Westminster, was formerly known as Petty France. Here it was, on quitting his residence in Scotland Yard, that Milton removed to a garden house," opening into St. James's Park, next door to the Lord Scudamore's; here it was that he lost his second wife, who died in childbed, and to whose death we owe one of the most beautiful of his sonnets;

Methought I saw my late espoused saint,

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, &c. and here it was that the great poet became totally blind. Milton resided in Petty France, from 1652, till within a short time before the Restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660; when, foreseeing the danger which awaited him in the event of a change of dynasty, he sought refuge in the house of a friend in Bartholomew Close. Here he remained concealed till he found himself included in the general amnesty, when he removed to a house in Holborn, near Red Lion Square, and shortly afterwards to Jewin Street.

Close to the spot which must have been the site of Milton's residence is Queen's Square, where the

celebrated Jeremy Bentham lived and died; and a little to the east is Storey's Gate, formerly called Storehouse Gate, from a storehouse of the ordnance having formerly stood here. Almost immediately facing Buckingham Palace, and adjoining Storey's Gate, the houses on the western side of Duke Street, Westminster, look into the Park. The Chapel,-a conspicuous object as we pass from the Birdcage Walk,—was originally a wing of the mansion of the infamous Judge Jeffries, and it was by the particular favour of his sovereign, James the Second, that he was allowed to construct the flight of steps, which still lead into the Park. The house in Duke Street was afterwards purchased by the Government from the son of Lord Jeffries, and was used as the Admiralty Office, till the erection of the present unsightly building in Whitehall.

Let us pass from the Park through Storey's Gate into Westminster.

KING STREET, WESTMINSTER,-ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH.

LORD

WESTMINSTER, KING STREET.-RESIDENCE OF SPENSER, CAREW, DORSET, CROMWELL.-GREAT PLAGUE.-MRS. OLDFIELD.-DOWNING STREET.-GARDINER'S LANE.-CANNON ROW.-ST. MARGARET'S

CHURCH.-THE SANCTUARY.

THE old city of Westminster,-with its venerable Abbey, its remains of the ancient palace of the Saxon Kings, and its gloomy and narrow streets, once the residence of peers, courtiers, and poets, -constitutes, perhaps, the most interesting district of the great metropolis. We have the Sanctuary, too, famous in history,-the beautiful but mouldering cloisters of the old Abbey,-the Almonry, anciently called the Eleemosynary, where the monks distributed alms to the poor, and where Caxton, under the auspices of Bishop Islip, established the first printing-press in England; and, lastly, we have still left to us Westminster Hall, with all its host of historical associations.

Fashion, or rather an entire change in the rank and character of its inhabitants,-has revolutionized the aspect of the streets of Westminster far more than time. It was only yesterday that the author made a pilgrimage through its confined streets and

dingy alleys, and, with one single exception, he found every street which he was in search of, bearing the same name by which it was distinguished two centuries ago. Milton, Spenser, Herrick, Ben Jonson, Davenant, Dorset, with how many of the greatest or the sweetest of our national poets are those streets associated! To the author, the most pleasing part of his labours, in composing the present work, has been to search out the haunts,— and they generally comprise the calamities,-of departed genius,

Free from the crowd, each hallowed spot I roam,
Where genius found a death-bed or a home;
While memory lingers on each honoured name,
Through life despised, yet heirs to endless fame;

Children of fancy, famine, and despair,

Whose drink was tears, whose daily bread was care;
Ambition's playthings, o'er whose sacred dust
Relenting Time has reared the tardy bust.
Here Dryden's genius soared its lofty flight,
There fancy blazed through Milton's darkened sight;
These walls still speak of Goldsmith's mournful tale ;
Here Spenser starved; there Rushworth died in jail;
Here Otway's fate yon frowning Tower recalls;
Here Gay was nursed in Queensberry's ducal halls ;—
Those walls, where Prior was beloved of yore,
Received with rapture one true poet more.
Here, in this chamber, Congreve's hours were blest,
With blooming Wortley for his evening guest;
Here Oldfield's beaming eyes and quiet mirth
Threw love and laughter o'er the poet's hearth;
Here flashed his wit, and here the poet died,
Marlborough's young Duchess weeping by his side;
Reversed for him the bard's proverbial doom,

Through life beloved, and wept o'er in the tomb. J. H. J.

Previous to the building of the present Par

liament Street, late in the last century, King Street constituted the only thoroughfare between the cities of London and Westminster; and such was its miserable state, that, to a late period,-on the days on which the sovereign opened or dissolved Parliament, faggots were thrown into the ruts to render the passage of the ponderous state-coach more easy. When we consider this circumstance, it is not a little curious, in glancing over the "New View of London," published in 1708, to find King Street dignified as "the most spacious street and principal for trade in Westminster, being between the gate at the south end of the Privy Garden and the Abbey Yard." It may be mentioned that the gate, here alluded to, was not the one designed by Holbein, which we shall describe in our notices of Whitehall, but a smaller one which spanned King Street, immediately to the north of where Downing Street now stands. The latter originally formed a part of the palace of Whitehall, and in the reign of Charles the First contained the apartments of the beautiful and intriguing Mary Countess of Buckingham, the mother of the great favourite, George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. She died in the "Gatehouse Whitehall," in 1632, and from hence her body was conveyed with great pomp to Westminster Abbey, where it lies beside the murdered remains of her ill-fated son.

King Street is replete with interesting associations. Either in this gloomy thoroughfare, or in the streets which diverge from it, have lived or