The West End is a very agreeable portion of the world to me for three reasons: - Imprimis, because I have lived there; secondly, because it is the next part of the town to Hampstead, my other place of abode; and thirdly, because it contains the fairest portion of God's creatures under the sun. If the two first reasons are thought egotistical, they will be found to resemble most others given by people for their preference of places. The only difference between them and me is, that I tell what I feel. As to the third reason, it is not only what no Englishman will dispute, but no Frenchman or Italian that has seen English women. But of this, more hereafter.

The West End may be supposed to commence at Leicester Square. It is but a mongrel square, a mixture of house and shop; but it is green in the middle, and contains a statue of some prince. There are people who object to these royal statues, thinking it a pity that they are not rather those of some great philosophers, poets, or other public benefactors. But when they reflect that the faces are too far off to be seen, and that few persons know who they are, the objection perhaps will vanish. In Leicester Square, at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds (situate, I believe, in the west side, towards the alley from which you cross into Coventry Street), were many meetings of Johnson, Goldsmith, and others. Leicester House (now lost in the large house with shops on the north side) was the residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales,*

In the diseases and jarring tempers of this prince and his wife, may be discerned the seeds of the unfortunate malady which afflicted the late king, their son. [George III., who was deprived of reason during the last ten years of his life. - ED.]

who affected the love of liberty, and patronized Thomson.* Whitcomb Street was formerly called Hedge Lane, no doubt from a lane which ran up from Charring Cross to the fields about Piccadilly and Marylebone. Think of lovers having walked here on a May-morning! In a house opposite Coventry Street lodged an early friend of mine, whom it is a comfort to me to take even this obscure way of noticing. He was an intelligent fellow, full of goodness, and in love with music, and poetry, and all good things. I once walked with him a hundred and twelve miles along the coast from Margate to Brighton, talking, laughing, and singing all the way, eating breakfasts which made us ashamed to ask for more, and falling to sleep at night the moment we laid our heads on the pillow. We did it in four days. Poor J. R.! He had an overstock of love, which was not very happily placed. He become sick, unsuccessful, a wanderer; and was at last taken prisoner by the French, and died during the long detention of . his countrymen by Napoleon. He wrote me a long letter from Bagneres, where he had been suffered to go for the benefit of his health; and I delayed, from day to day, in order to write him as long an answer, till I delayed for months, and heard of his death. The letter has been upon my conscience ever since. It would be a useful task for those who have been culpable during their lives on the score of delay, and other petty neglects of duty, to set down upon paper

* Leigh Hunt should not have forgotten Hogarth, who lived at the "Painter's Head," in Leicester Square. ED.

all the unkind and serious consequences resulting from it. There are petty as well as great remorses which people feel, on and off, during the whole of their lives; and a good many of them amount to a good large remorse; and with reason, considering what they do. I have an assortment of my own. which make me speak. The one in question has never suffered me to pass by that house, or think of it, without a pang. I hope it was on a more fanciful account that Dr. Johnson always avoided going through Sydney's, or Cranborne Alley, in this neighborhood, I forget which.

In Piccadilly, during the time of Cromwell and the Stuarts, was a house of entertainment with a bowling-green, where the gentry and members of Parliament used to refresh themselves. Here came the sprightly wits of the court, and the grave heads that earned for us our liberties. Parliament at that time used to meet at eight in the morning. If statesmen got a little too much wine after dinner, it was in honor of Phyllis and Chloe, and not to put themselves in a fit state for settling the affairs of the world. They did their work with clear heads; and if they gambled, gambled in the open air, which is better than losing one's money and health together in the clubrooms about St. James's. It is doubtful whether the Burlington House mentioned in Gray's Trivia was the one in Piccadilly, or another in the Strand: most probably the former. I cannot refer to books. As the passage, however, is metropolitan and pleasant, I will lay it before the reader:

"Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienced friend,
Thy briefs, thy deeds, and even thy fees, suspend;
Come, let us leave the Temple's silent walls;
Me business to my distant lodging calls:
Through the long Strand together let us stray;
With thee conversing I forget the way.
Behold that narrow street which steep descends,
Whose building to the slimy shore extends;
Here Arundel's famed structure reared its frame,
The street alone retains an empty name.
Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warmed,
And Raphael's fair design with judgment charmed,
Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here
The colored prints of Overton appear.
Where statues breathed, the work of Phidias' hands,
A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands.
There Essex' stately pile adorned the shore,

There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers', now no more.
Yet Burlington's fair palace still remains;
Beauty within, without proportion reigns.
Beneath his eye declaring Art revives,

The wall with animated picture lives.

There Handel strikes the strings, the melting strain
Transports the soul, and thrills through every vein.
There oft I enter (but with cleaner shoes)

For Burlington's beloved by every Muse."

Handel and Gay must have found two subjects of mutual interest: music, of which the latter was a judge; and good eating, in which, Congreve tells us, he was a great performer.* Handel set his pretty Serenata of Acis and Galatea to music. I have never been inside Burlington House; but I once witnessed an adventure inside the gates, which Gay might have written upon had he seen it, and Handel have set to music with drums and trumpets. The reader must know I have been a soldier, have had a red coat and

In a letter to Pope. See Spence's Anecdotes. "As the French philosopher," says Congreve, "used to prove his existence by cogito, ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edit ergo est." Gay's poems abound with allusions to eating and drinking. [Thackeray says Gay was "forever eating and saying good things." — ED.]

great long green feather, and bivouacked in Dufour's Place. I have seen horrid war at Wormwood

Scrubbs, and marched from " Ealing to Acton" in all the dusty glory of a campaign. Our regiment had not been long organized, when it was announced to us that we were to have Lord A. for our colonel, and that his lordship would make his first appearance among us on a certain morning, on the parade before Burlington House. We mustered about a

thousand strong at that time, and were all under arms on the day appointed, anxious and exalted. On a sudden the great gates are thrown open, the band strikes up, the regiment presents arms, and his lordship, on a gallant white charger, instead of riding tenderly in, introduces himself to us by pitching head foremost over his horse's neck! The debut was awkward the sympathy hardly made it better; but nothing came of the bad omen; unless it was prophetic of the prostration which was afterwards required of the noble lord in China, and which he so naturally refused to make. The ko-tou to the band-major was certainly enough, once in a man's life.

Golden Square is a vile square, though it was once among the most fashionable.* You gather this from the slip-slop novels, which always make a point of being high-bred. No hero can have an interesting aspect, and no heroine a becoming wretchedness of mind, unless the family have an establishment in Portman or Grosvenor Square to support it. Soho Square

* "I have a grim pleasure in thinking that Golden Square was once the resort of the aristocracy," says Thackeray, in a delightful digression on the mutations of fashion, in Philip. — ED,