pany, some others persons of high rank and less wit, and your humble servant, a party that would not have disgraced the table of Lælius, or of Atticus."

Hay Hill is interesting as being the spot where a skirmish took place between the rebels and the royal forces, during Sir Thomas Wyatt's insurrection in 1554. Here, after his execution, the head of Sir Thomas was exposed on the common gibbet, three of his most dangerous associates being hung in chains on the same spot. From Hay Hill we pass into Grafton Street, where Charles James Fox resided when secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1782, and thence return to Bond Street, to the east of which we will point out a few spots worthy of notice.

In Conduit Street, a few yards from Bond Street, is a small chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to which a peculiar interest attaches itself. When James the Second sought to seduce his subjects, and more especially the army, to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, he caused a large wooden chapel to be erected, movable at will, which was wheeled to Hounslow Heath, where his army was then lying, and occasionally moved from one part of the camp to the other. When James was subsequently compelled to fly the kingdom, this chapel was brought back to London, and placed in what was then fields, where it remained till 1716, when the present Trinity Chapel was erected on its site.

In 1772, Boswell mentions Doctor Johnson drinking tea with him at his lodgings in Conduit Street. From Conduit Street a narrow passage leads us into Saville Row; here Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, the celebrated mistress of George the Second, lived after the death of her royal lover; here the well-known Betty Germaine was residing in 1741; and here Richard Brinsley Sheridan breathed his last. At the north end of Saville Row is Uxbridge House, the work of Leoni, formerly called Queensberry House, from having been the residence of Charles, third Duke of Queensberry, and his beautiful duchess, Katherine Hyde, the "Kitty" of Prior, and rendered still more celebrated by the verse of Pope :

"If Queensberry to strip there's no compelling,
'Tis from a handmaid we must paint a Helen."

It was here that Gay was domesticated and petted by his affectionate patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and in this house he died. To Pope he writes, about two years before his death: "My melancholy increases, and every hour threatens me with some return of my distemper. Not the divine looks, the kind favours and expressions of the divine duchess, nor the inexpressible goodness of the duke, can in the least cheer me. The drawing-room no more receives light from these two stars; there is now, what Milton says is in hell, darkness visible.'

Oh, that I had never known what a court was!" How beautifully has Pope done justice to the affectionate friendship of the Duchess of Queensberry!

"Blest be the great, for those they take away,
And those they left me, for they left me Gay;
Left me to see neglected genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:

Of all thy blameless life the sole return,

My verse, and Queensberry weeping o'er thy urn!"

In Cork Street, which runs parallel with Saville Row, died the gifted and amiable Doctor Arbuthnot, the courtly physician of Queen Anne, and the friend of Pope, Gay, Bolingbroke, and Swift; and in this street, also, the well-known General Wade had a house, which was designed by Lord Burlington. It was wittily said of it, that it was too small to live in, and too large to append to a watch-ribbon; indeed, so inconvenient was its interior, and so fantastic its exterior, that Lord Chesterfield observed, "Since the general could not live in it, he had better hire the opposite house in order to look at it." No vestige of it now remains. In Cork Street Doctor Johnson was a frequent visitor at the house of Mr. Diamond, an apothecary. About the year 1752, he used to dine there nearly every Sunday, accompanied by his blind protégée, Mrs. Williams, the poetess.

CHAPTER IV.

ST. JAMES'S STREET.

St. James's Street - Clubs - Colonel Blood - Cocoa Tree TavThatched House-Death of Gibbon- Byron.

ern

ST. JAMES'S STREET, styled in 1670 the "Long Street," appears to have grown into a regular street between the last days of the Protectorate and the early part of the reign of Charles the Second; and, it is almost needless to add, derived its name from the neighbouring palace of St. James's. It has continued, almost from the days of the merry monarch to the present time, to be the nucleus of fashionable society, and the lounging-place of the witty and the gay. In the days of Queen Anne, it was scarcely less celebrated for the gifted society which frequented its exclusive chocolate-houses, than it is at the present time for the fashionable clubs which are its principal characteristics; the latter, unfortunately, preserving the worst qualities which distinguished the society of the last century, without either the dignity of its talent or the fascination of its wit.

It is rather remarkable that two of the most fashionable clubs of our own time-the "Cocoa

Tree" and "White's”. - should have sprung from the "Cocoa Tree Tavern " and "White's Chocolate House" of the reign of Queen Anne. The former — the favourite resort of George the Fourth when Prince of Wales - has only ceased to exist within the last few years, while White's has recently acquired a second youth. Even as late as 1745, we find, by the correspondence of the day, that the latter still continued to be called "White's Chocolate House." Could we fortunately obtain proper materials, there would be no social history more curious or more amusing than that of White's Club, from the days of Addison and Swift, to those of Lord Alvanley and Brummel.

I

The

The first event of any interest connected with St. James's Street is the seizure of the Duke of Ormond's person by the notorious Colonel Blood, on the night of the 6th of December, 1670. duke, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had executed some of Blood's accomplices, who had been engaged in a treasonable design of surprising Dublin Castle, and, in revenge for this act, Blood expressed his determination to seize the duke's person, and hang him at Tyburn. Accordingly, on a dark night, as the duke was returning from an entertainment in the city, and was passing the bottom of St. James's Street, at the end of

'A letter from Doctor Newton to George Selwyn, dated 10 December, 1745, is addressed to him at "White's Chocolate House, St. James's, London."