ALBEMARLE STREET.

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with his father in 1717. Sir Gustavus Hume, groom of the bedchamber to George the First, writes, on the 24th of December, to the Earl of Marchmont : "The Prince and Princess, after having been both very ill, are now perfectly recovered: they are still at my Lord Grantham's, in Albemarle Street, where they saw company last Sunday for the first time. I am told, his Highness's levee was very slender, not above three or four noblemen, and they such as have not appeared at St. James's for a long time. All such as are admitted to the King's court are under strict orders not to go at any time to the prince or princess's, more particularly all of us that have the honour to be immediately in his Majesty's service. This unhappy difference gives a sensible disturbance to all honest men, and as much pleasure to all those that are enemies to the family." *

Hereafter Albemarle Street will be interesting to the lovers of past history, from its containing the residence of the late Mr. Murray,

Lintot and Tonson of his day,

at whose hospitable table have assembled every person of talent of the present century, and whose house is especially interesting from so many literary recollections. He informed me, I remember, that it was in walking up and down Albemarle Street that Lord Byron composed the greater part of the "Corsair."

On the site of the Albany stood the house and

* Marchmont Papers.

gardens of the celebrated minister Charles Spencer Earl of Sunderland, who died in 1722. The first and late Lord Melbourne afterwards built a house on the spot, which he subsequently exchanged with the Duke of York for his mansion in Whitehall, now the residence of Lady Dover. Having been deserted by his Royal Highness a set of chambers were erected on the gardens, to which purpose also the house was converted, and they then received the name of the Albany Chambers, from the Duke's second title of Duke of Albany. In 1814 Lord Byron was residing at No. 2, in the Albany, and it was during his residence here that "Lara” was published, and apparently composed. In his journal of the 28th of March he writes: "This night I got into my new apartments, rented of Lord Althorpe, on the lease of seven years. Spacious, and room for my books and sabres. In the house, too, another advantage. The last few days, or whole week, have been very abstemious, regular in exercise, and yet very unwell." And, again he writes, on the 10th of the following month. "I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I never am long in the society even of her I love without a yearning for the company of my lamp, and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library. I have not stirred out of these rooms four days past; but I have sparred for exercise (windows open) with Jackson an hour daily to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me."

Nearly opposite to the Albany is St. James's

ST. JAMES'S CHURCH.

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Church, built by Sir Christopher Wren in the reign of James the Second. The interior is as beautiful as the exterior is unseemly; but even if it possessed no other object of beauty or interest, the exquisite marble font, the work of Grinlin Gibbons, would alone render it worthy of a visit. In this church is buried the celebrated footman and bookseller, dramatist and poet, Robert Dodsley, and in the chancel lies the body of William Duke of Queensberry, to whose eccentricities we have already alluded. There are few who have passed by the Jermyn Street entrance to St. James's churchyard, who have not noticed a small stone in the wall of the tower to the memory of Tom D'Urfey, the poet, on whose shoulders Charles the Second used familiarly to lean, and hum gay tunes in concert with his favourite. The inscription is sufficiently brief. "Tom D'Urfey, died Feb. ye 26th, 1723." On the west side of the parsonage-house may be seen a flat stone to the memory of the inimitable Gillray. "In memory of Mr. James Gillray, the caricaturist, who departed this life 1st of June, 1815, aged 58 years."

We have already mentioned that Piccadilly House stood on the site of Panton Square, at the east end of Piccadilly, and that it continued to be a fashionable place of amusement till the middle of the seventeenth century. Lord Clarendon, then Mr. Hyde, speaking of himself, observes: "Mr. Hyde, going to a house called Piccadilly, which was a fair house for entertainment and gaming, with handsome gravel walks, with shade, and where were an upper

and lower bowling-green, whither many of the nobility and gentry of the best quality resorted for exercise and recreation." Piccadilly House is generally supposed to be the same place of amusement as that mentioned by Garrard in one of his letters to the Earl of Strafford. "Since Spring Gardens was put down," he writes, in June 1635, "we have, by a servant of the Lord Chamberlain's, a new Spring Gardens erected in the fields beyond the Meuse, where is built a fair house, and two bowling-greens, made to entertain gamesters and bowlers, at an excessive rate, for I believe it hath cost him about 40007. A dear undertaking for a gentleman-barber. My Lord Chamberlain much frequents this place, where they bowl great matches."

Not far from Panton Square, to the north-west, lies Golden Square; originally, according to Pennant, called Gelding Square, from the sign of a public house which formerly stood in the neighbourhood. This, however, is unquestionably a mistake. The name was originally Golding Square, as appears by the "New View of London," published in 1707, about ten years after its erection, and it is there distinctly stated to derive its name from one Golding, who built it. This gloomy-looking square, once one of the most fashionable sites in the metropolis, was built, after the accession of William the Third, in what were then styled the Pest House Fields, the site of a lazaretto erected by Lord Craven as a receptacle for the miserable sufferers from the great plague of 1665.

One would wish to be able to point out the house in Golden Square which was once the residence of the celebrated Henry St. John Lord Bolingbroke. Here he entertained for the last time at dinner his former colleague and friend the no less celebrated Harley, when, among other guests, were present the Duke of Shrewsbury, Earl Powlet, and Lord Rochester, and where the latter, we are told, "taking pains to calm the spirit of division and ambition," made a vain attempt to effect a reconciliation between the rival politicians. Here, a few months afterwards, we find Bolingbroke entertaining the great Duke of Marlborough as his guest;* here he was residing when the death of Queen Anne effected so extraordinary a revolution in his fortunes, and from hence, apparently, he departed by stealth, in the dress of a servant, on the night of his memorable escape to the continent.

Either in Golden Square, or in the immediate neighbourhood, at the house of her father, who was a painter, lived the beautiful singer Anastasia Robinson. Although a performer at the opera, a teacher of music, and of the Italian language-occupations which constantly threw her in the way of temptation-she refused to enrich herself by any illicit connection, and for some years supported an aged father by her industry and her talents. Her beauty and her virtue captured the heart of the celebrated and eccentric Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, who privately married her towards the *Cooke's "Life of Lord Bolingbroke." + Noble's Biog. Hist.