the poor Duchess was asleep. They have removed her to a lodging in the neighbourhood, where I have been with her two hours, and am just come away. I never saw so melancholy a scene. She has moved my very soul. The lodging was inconvenient, and they would have removed her to another; but I would not suffer it, because it had no room backward, and she must have been tortured with the noise of the Grub Street screamers mentioning her husband's murder in her ears."*

Sir Robert Walpole lived at one period of his life in St. James's Square, and at the same time, nearly opposite to him, lived the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, on the other side of the square. When George the Second quarrelled with his eldest son, Frederick Prince of Wales, in 1737, and when he issued his peremptory order to the Prince to quit St. James's Palace with his family, the latter took up his residence at Norfolk House, on the east side of the square, which immediately became the centre of opposition and political intrigue.† His court was necessarily a small one, for the King at the same time issued an order that no persons who paid their court to the Prince and Princess should be

admitted to his presence. In Norfolk House George the Third was born, on the 4th of June, 1738. He was a "seven-months' child," as is evident from his sister, afterwards Duchess of Brunswick, having been born on the 11th of August,

"Journal to Stella," 15th Nov. 1712. + Lord Mahon's "Hist. of England."

1737. "The identical bed," says Wraxall, "in which the Princess of Wales was delivered, is now at the Duke of Norfolk's seat of Worksop, in the county of Nottingham; and it forcibly proves the rapid progress of domestic elegance and ease within the last eighty years. Except that the furniture is of green silk, the bed has nothing splendid about it, and would hardly be esteemed fit for the accommodation of a person of ordinary condition in the present times.*"

In St. James's Square lived Warren Hastings, one of the greatest men who were ever persecuted by an ungrateful country. The residence of the unfortunate statesman, the Marquis of Londonderry, better known as Lord Castlereagh, was at No. 16, at the north corner of King Street. No. 15 was formerly occupied by Sir Philip Francis, the reputed, and, I believe, indisputable author of Junius;† next door, No. 13, is Litchfield House, celebrated for having been the scene of Whig cabals in the present century; and at No. 11, in the north-west corner, lived the amiable scholar and statesman, William Windham.

There remain the names of two other individuals whose history is associated with St. James's Square, one of which at least is no less illustrious than any we have yet mentioned, while both of them excite

Wraxall's "Memoirs."

This house was occupied by Queen Caroline during the period. of her celebrated trial, and from hence she proceeded in state to the House of Lords on each day that it lasted.

VOL. I.

I

We allude to

It is melan

feelings of deep and painful interest. Dr. Johnson, and Savage, the poet. choly to reflect, that to such a state of misery and destitution were they reduced, at one period of their lives, that they were unable to defray the expenses of a lodging, and were consequently compelled to wander together during whole nights in the streets. In after years, Johnson mentioned a particular night to Sir Joshua Reynolds, when, without a shilling between them, he had perambulated St. James's Square for hours with his unfortunate friend.* Misfortune and misconduct generally mean the same thing; and whatever the errors or the habits of the great philosopher may have been at this period of his life, by improved industry and a life of virtue he grew to hold a high position in society and in the literature of his country, while the illfated Savage, by a long course of dissipation and self-indulgence, was reduced to a miserable death, within the precincts of a provincial gaol.

It may be necessary to observe, that the statue in the centre of St. James's Square is that of William the Third.

From St. James's Square we pass into Charles Street, of which I have nothing to remark but that it was at one period the residence of Edmund Burke. Close by is Jermyn Street, which derives its name (as does St. Alban's Place, running out of Charles Street,) from Henry Jermyn Earl of St.

Boswell's "Life of Johnson."

Alban's, whose mansion and gardens occupied, in the days of Charles the First, the spot of ground where Waterloo Place now stands. The Earl, as is well known, was the lover and reputed husband of Henrietta Maria. Of their marriage, indeed, there can be little doubt; and it was probably on this very ground that the Earl entertained and wooed his royal mistress. In her subsequent days of exile and distress, the once haughty and beautiful queen had little reason to congratulate herself on the frailty and condescension which had induced her to be unfaithful to the memory of her martyred husband,

Non servata fides cineri promissa Sichæo,

and to bestow her hand upon a subject. Madame de Bavière observes, in one of her letters: "The widow of Charles the First made a clandestine marriage with her chevalier d'honneur, Lord St. Alban's, who treated her extremely ill, so that, while she had not a faggot to warm herself with, he had in his apartment a good fire and a sumptuous table. He never gave the queen a kind word, and when she spoke to him, he used to say, Que me veut cette femme? What does that woman want?"" The truth of this anecdote is corroborated by Count Hamilton, in his Memoirs of Count de Grammont. "It is well known," he says, "what an excellent table the Earl kept at Brussels, while the King, his master, was starving, and his mistress, the Queen Dowager, lived not over well in France."

But Jermyn Street is associated with brighter

names than these.

We find, by his correspondence, that Sir Isaac Newton was residing here in 1699, and here, in 1768, lived Thomas Gray, the poet. In a letter from him, dated the 3rd of August, in this year, he informs his correspondent, Mr. Nicholls, that the King has conferred upon him the Professorship of History at Cambridge.

I seldom pass by the St. James's Hotel in Jermyn Street, without reflecting with a painful interest that it was the scene of almost the latest sufferings, and received nearly the last sigh, of Sir Walter Scott. When that great man, by his own particular wish, was hurried from the shores of the Mediterranean to breathe his last at his beloved Abbotsford, it was here that he passed the three melancholy weeks which intervened between his arrival in London, and his departure for the banks of the Tweed.* "When we reached the hotel," says Mr. Lockhart, "he recognised us with many marks of tenderness, but signified that he was totally exhausted; so no attempt was made to remove him farther, and he was put to bed immediately. To his children, all assembled once more about him,

* Just before Sir Walter Scott set out for the Continent, in hopes of regaining that health which never returned to him, he dined with the late Mr. Murray in Albemarle Street. Mr. Murray informed me, that, for some time, he joined cheerfully in conversation, but suddenly a thought seemed to strike him, and an expression of melancholy passed over his face. After a short pause, he said, "It is singular that both Fielding and Smollett should have died in foreign countries;" evidently reflecting on his own shattered state of health, and foreseeing that the fate of his two illustrious brother novelists would in all probability be his own.