lodgings in Pall Mall. I sung several Italian songs and one English, and that was Ianthe the Lovely.' He desired me to sing that song, Ianthe the Lovely,' for he said he had the original of it, and had translated it out of the Greek.” When Mrs. Wadsworth visited Mr. Fielding on another occasion, he told his valet "to get wax-candles, and sconces, and fires in the rooms;" and some time after her arrival" he came down stairs in great haste, and said, Boucher [his valet], go and bespeak a dish of pickles. I did so, and brought over a cloth and the rest of the things, and left them in the window." The dish of pickles was the wedding-feast, for on this occasion Mr. Fielding locked the supposed widow and her friend in his apartments till he went and procured "a priest in a long red gown lined with blue, and a long beard and a fur cap," who performed the marriage ceremony. The lady did not visit him again for fifteen or sixteen days, and then seems to have put up with pot-luck. "He was not at home when she came; but she went to supper by herself. She had for her supper some toasted cheese, a pint of wine, and a bottle of oat-ale. When he came home, he asked her why she did not send for something better for supper?"

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The public amusements of Pall Mall were at this period scarcely more refined than those of the neighbouring May Fair. "Certain models," says Malcolm in his Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century,' representing William the Third's palaces at Loo, Keswick, and Hunslaerdike, were shown in 1701, from ten in the morning till one, and from two till eight at night, at the White Hart near Pall Mall, facing the Haymarket, within two doors of the glass-lamps." The proprietors elegantly observe in their advertisement that they were "brought over by outlandish men," and that, "to render those diversions altogether more delightful and acceptable, there will be a collection of several curiosities to be sold and raffled for at the opening, and likewise every Monday and Friday following, those days being appointed the public raffling-days, besides a great variety of rarities; and to entertain the nobility and gentry (who the Undertakers hope will countenance them with the honour of their company), there shall be on Wednesday, the 14th of January, a concert of music by the best performers; and if all these diversions please such for whom they are intended, there shall be from time to time great additions made.” The "outlandish men" who brought over the models of the palaces were possibly in league with the king, who may have wished to shame the English into giving him a new palace by showing how much better the Stadtholder of Holland had been lodged than the King of England was. If so, the plot was too refined for this meridian; the outlandish men, finding their exhibition did not pay, were glad to dispose of it to natives, who sought to enhance its attractions by adding the delights of a raffle, concerts, and indefinite promises of something still finer behind. So, notwithstanding sundry and divers models of projected palaces still extant at Hampton Court, Buckingham Palace was the first built in England since the Revolution, and a creditable specimen of royal and national taste it is.

In 1733 the Pall-Mallians do not seem to have advanced in taste and refinement much beyond their condition in 1701. We again quote from Malcolm :"Some absurd persons were at the expense (!), in October, 1733, of procuring a Holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes, which they offered as

prizes to any four women who would run for them at three o'clock in the afternoon in Pall Mall. The race attracted an amazing number of persons, who filled the streets, the windows, and the balconies. The sport attendant on this curious method of killing time induced Mr. Rawlings, high constable of Westminster, resident in Pall Mall, to prepare a laced hat as a prize to be run for by five men, which appears to have produced much mirth to the projector; but the mob, ever on the watch to gratify their propensity for riot and mischief, committed so many excesses, that the sedate inhabitants of the neighbourhood found it necessary to apply to the magistrates for protection, who issued precepts to prevent future runs to the very man most active in promoting them."

But a new era was dawning for Pall Mall at the very time that these swift Camillas were scouring along its plain. Schomberg House, it is true, built in the reign of William III. by the Duke of that name, had rather retrograded it had fallen into the hands of Astley the painter, who divided it into three habitations, reserving the centre for his own residence. The house bestowed upon Nell Gwynne by Charles II., from the back wall of which she horrified the decorous Evelyn by holding a light conversation with the King, never seems to have had any architectural pretensions: it is now occupied by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Marlborough House was scarcely visible from Pall Mall. In the paper on St. James's Palace we had occasion to notice the cavalier manner in which Marlborough House, when occupied by "old Sarah," gave the public to know whether it was peace or war between it and the Court. This is perhaps the most appropriate place to advert to a characteristic scene which occurred in 1740. The City in that year observed with great solemnity the anniversary of Admiral Vernon's birth; and the Duchess of Marlborough presented two does to the Lord Mayor, and one to each of the Sheriffs, that they might feast their friends on the occasion. These dignitaries returned the compliment by visiting her Grace in state on the 1st of January. "She received us," says Mr. Hoare, "in her usual manner, sitting up in her bed; and expressed much satisfaction for the compliment and great honour, as she said, we had done her in returning our thanks; and after an hour's conversation on indifferent matters we retired.” Lord Grantham, too, had a house in Pall Mall; and Sir Robert Walpole for some time lived nearer the Duchess Sarah than seems to have been altogether conducive to the preservation of his equanimity.

But these were trifles to the glories preserved for Pall Mall. In 1732 Frederick Prince of Wales purchased what an erudite historian of London calls “the original Carlton House and Gardens of the Earl of Burlington." The name of the proprietor seems almost to warrant that, in his hands, the English architecture of the day had already done its worst; but royalty can prompt the genius even of absurdity to flights beyond what ordinary mortals have the power to inspire. Flitcroft is said to have drawn a plan, in 1734, intended as an improvement of Carlton House; and Kent laid violent hands upon the gardens, said by the historian above alluded to to be "very beautiful, and full as retired as if in the country." For this sequestered spot Kent designed "a cascade;" and a saloon was erected in 1735, and paved with Italian marble brought to England by Lord Bingley and the immortal Bubb Doddington. "The walls were adorned with rich paintings and statues; and the chair of state was of crimson velvet, embroidered with gold,

which cost five hundred pounds. A bagnio near it consisted of encrusted marble." It was not till 1788 that one Prince of Wales completed what the kindred taste of another had begun but there is much to be told of Pall Mall before we reach that era.

It was about the same time that Carlton House was undergoing the process of "translation," as Nick Bottom's cronies would have called it, into a royal residence, that the literature of Pall Mall received its first development. Previous attempts appear to have been made. Letitia Pilkington at one time opened a pamphlet-shop here; but her stock-in-trade consisted only of a couple of dozens of an unsaleable pamphlet, generously presented to her by the author or by the publisher, and a few secondhand prints, and the concern was soon wound up. In 1732, however, Dodsley, born and bred to be the appropriate link between new and old Pall Mall-between the Pall Mall of mere Court gaiety and the Pall Mall of elegant literature-Dodsley, born a poet and bred a footman, published his Muse in Livery.' In 1735 he opened, with the assistance of his patrons, a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall.

over.

The Muse in Livery' is indeed the work of a footman: it is professional all The very frontispiece (the "effigies auctoris" representing a young man with one hand attached by a shackle-bolt to concentric rings, inscribed "poverty," "ignorance," &c., and extending the hand which he has wrenched from its confinement, with the handcuff still there, but ornamented by a pair of wings, to the sun, the god of poetry) is typical of the sentiment and imagination of the particoloured race. Fielding, in the opening of his 'Joseph Andrews,' has presented us with a full-length portrait of the footman of that age; and, to parody a favourite expression of coal-merchants when their commodity rises in price, "footmen were footmen then." It was only in 1701 that the Right Hon. Charles Earl of Carlisle, Earl Marshal of England during the minority of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, moved thereto by "many mischiefs and dangerous accidents occasioned by footmen wearing of swords," had found it advisable to "order that no footman attending any of the nobility and gentry of his Majesty's realms shall wear any sword, hanger, bayonet, or other such-like offensive weapon, during such time as they or any of them shall reside or be within the cities of London and Westminster." And it was not till a good many years later that a Townley arose to break the spirit of this ancient and honourable fraternity, by his 'High Life below Stairs,' as effectually as the Minister of George II. broke the spirits of the Scots Highlanders by the Act of Parliament forbidding them to wear their national dress. Dodsley flourished as a footman in the yet palmy days of the profession, when (see Joseph Andrews' for the particulars) the gentlemen of the cloth were still, in their own especial gallery, lords paramount of theatrical criticism. To have been drawn by a non-professional hand, Fielding's sketch must be allowed to have merit; and so has 'Humphrey Clinker,' although that great man, living in the declining days of his order, had betaken himself to Methodism; but still a portrait of a footman and his tribe by one of themselves must be allowed to be the more authentic. Dodsley has given us a full, true, and particular account of his thinkings and doings from the time of his rising in the morning till the close of the day's labours, which commences thus :

"As soon as laziness will let me,

I rise from bed, and down I set me
To cleaning glasses, knives, and plate,
And such-like dirty-work as that,
Which, by the bye, is what I hate.
This done, with expeditious care
To dress myself I straight prepare;
I clean my buckles, black my shoes,
Powder my wig, and brush my clothes,
Take off my beard, and wash my face,
And then I'm ready for the chace."

A few rapid and abruptly cadenced lines convey a lively impression of the multitudinous errands on which his lady despatches him: then follows a savoury description of the odours from the kitchen announcing the approach of the dinnerhour that makes one's mouth water. The meditative footman tells how he lays the cloth, decants the wine, ale, and beer, and declares

"This is the only pleasant hour
Which I have in the twenty-four;
For whilst I unregarded stand,
With ready salver in my hand,
And scem to understand no more
Than just what's called for out to pour,
I hear and mark the courtly phrases,
And all the elegance that passes."

We reluctantly pass over his graphic account of the ceremonies of the teatable to hurry to his public appearance in state when the hour of paying visits arrives :

"The chairman straight prepares his chair,

A lighted flambeau I prepare;

And, orders given where to go,

We march along, and bustle through

The parting crowds, who bustle off

To give us room. Oh, how you'd laugh

To see me strut before a chair,

And with a sturdy voice and air

Crying, 'By your leave, Sir! Have a care!'
From place to place with speed we fly,
And Rat-a-tat' the knockers cry;
'Pray is your lady, sir, within?'

If no, go on; if yes, we enter in."

Tastes are free: we have no mind to enter into controversy with any one who may prefer Steele's more amplified description of a similar scene in the 109th Tatler:'—" There has not, for some years, been such a tumult in our neighbourhood as this evening about six. At the lower end of the lane the word was given that there was a great funeral coming by. The next moment came forward in a very hasty, instead of a very solemn manner, a long train of lights, when at last a footman, in very high youth and health, with all his force, ran through the whole art of beating the door next to me, and ended his rattle with the true finishing rap. This did not only bring one to the door at which he knocked, but to that of every one in the lane, in an instant. Among the rest, my country maid took the alarm, and, immediately running to me, told me there was a fine, fine

lady, who had three men with burial torches making way before her, carried by two men upon poles, with looking-glasses on each side of her, and one glass also before, she herself appearing the prettiest that ever was." In justice, however, to Mr. Dodsley, we must remark that Steele, to heighten the effect of his description, employs the artifice of carrying the visit into a region where such sights were unknown. We may add that Dodsley writes like an experienced footman-Steele like one less familiarised with the ceremony.

But be this as it may, none but a footman, none but one who could say of the deeds he narrates "quorum pars magna fui," could give, as Dodsley has done, the scene in the servants' hall while their mistresses are chatting abovestairs:

"Then to the hall I guide my steps,
Amongst a crowd of brother skips,
Drinking small beer and talking smut,

And this fool's nonsense putting that fool's out;
Whilst oaths and peals of laughter meet,
And he who's loudest is the greatest wit.

But here among us the chief trade is
To rail against our lords and ladies;
To aggravate their smallest failings,
To expose their faults with saucy railings.
For my part, as I hate the practice,

And see in them how base and black 'tis,

To some bye-place I therefore creep,

And sit me down to feign to sleep;

And could I with old Morpheus bargain,

'T would save my ears much noise and jargon.

But down my lady comes again,

And I'm releas'd from all my pain"—

that is, he is hurried off to conclude the evening at the play or opera. This, it will be allowed, is conceived in the true spirit of a footman, even to the peaching against his fellows, and affecting that he had never taken part in their uncivil comments on their betters; for, be it remembered, Dodsley's poetical vein was encouraged by his masters and mistresses, and this poem, and all the rest, were composed with a view to their being perused by them.

It may not be out of place to remark here that, curtailed though the footmen of our degenerate days are of the proportions and appendages of their progenitors, they are closer copies of them than is found to be the case with any other class in gay and genteel society. On the great gala occasions, when the nobles of the land present themselves to their sovereign, there is some attempt made by them to revive the finery of former days, but court suits, bags, and swords are only to be worn gracefully by those to whom custom has made them a second nature-almost what his fur and tail are to the monkey. The wearers of these antique adornments for a day walk as awkwardly in them as David did in Saul's armour. Not so their footmen, whose daily dresses are the only ones a beau of Queen Anne's time would acknowledge to be passable were he to rise from the grave, and who by daily use learn to wear them with a grace. We never stand at St. James's on a levee or drawing-room day, and observe the gentlemen (civilians at least) so ashamed of their unwonted array as to lose more than half the pleasure of being presented to royalty, and mark the dégagé, casy, self-pos