I could name some of the chief. The truth is, he made few friends during his grandeur among the royal sufferers, but advanced the old rebels. He was, however, though no considerable lawyer, one who kept up the form and substance of things with more solemnity than some would have had. *** 28th. I dined with my late Lord Chancellor: * * * His Lordship pretty well in heart, though now many of his friends and sycophants abandoned him.-December 9. To visit the late Lord Chancellor. I found him in his garden, at his new-built palace, sitting in his gout-wheel-chair, and seeing the gates setting up towards the north and the fields. He looked and spake very disconsolately. Next morning I heard he was gone."

The same kind and delicate chronicler who notes the exit of the founder records the fate of the building he reared and loved so well :-" 19th June, 1683. I returned to town with the Earl of Clarendon: when passing by the glorious palace his father built but a few years before, which they were now demolishing, being sold to certain undertakers, I turned my head the contrary way till the coach was gone past it, lest I might minister occasion of speaking of it, which must needs have grieved him that in so short a time their pomp was fallen.” And on the 18th of September-"I went to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful with him, and sometimes so sad. * * The Chancellor gone and dying in exile, the Earl, his successor, sold that which cost 50,000l. building to the young Duke of Albemarle for 25,000l. to pay debts, which how contracted remains yet a mystery, his son being no way a prodigal. Some imagine the Duchess, his daughter, had been chargeable to him. However it were, this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate since the old man died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it 35,000l.; they design a new town as it were, and a most magnificent piazza. 'Tis said they have already materials towards it, with what they sold of the house alone, more worth than what they paid for it. See the vicissitude of earthly things! I was astonished at the demolition, nor less at the little army of labourers and artificers levelling the ground, laying foundations, and contriving great buildings, at an expense of 200,000l. if they perfect their design."

Lord Berkeley's house, begun, according to Pepys, about the same time with that of Lord Clarendon, on the west side of it, is described by Evelyn in these terms:-" 25th September, 1672. I dined at Lord John Berkeley's. It was in his new house, or rather palace, for I am assured it stood him in nearly 30,0007. It is very well built, and has many noble rooms, but they are not very convenient, consisting but of one Corps de logis: they are all rooms of state, without closets. The staircase is of cedar; the furniture is princely; the kitchen and stables are ill placed, and the corridor worse, having no respect to the wings they join to. For the rest, the fore-court is noble, so are the stables, and, above all, the gardens, which are incomparable, by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty piscina. The holly hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of. The porticoes are in imitation of a house described by Palladio, but it happens to be the worst in his book, though my good friend, Mr. Hugh

May, his Lordship's architect, affected it." In June, 1684, Evelyn writes:--" I went to advise and give directions about building two streets in Berkeley Gardens, reserving the house and as much of the garden as the breadth of the house. In the mean time I could not but deplore that sweet place (by far the most noble gardens, courts, and accommodations, stately porticoes, &c., anywhere about town) should be so much straitened and turned into tenements. But that magnificent pile and gardens contiguous to it, built by the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, being all demolished and designed for piazzas and buildings, was some excuse for my Lady Berkeley's resolution of letting out her gardens, also for so excessive a price as was offered, advancing near 1000l. per annum in mere ground-rents; to such a mad intemperance was the age come of building about a city by far too disproportionate already to the nation. I have in my time seen it almost as large again as it was within my memory.' Independently of the beauties of the house and gardens, but slender interest attaches to Berkeley House. Its founder is represented by Pepys as "a passionate and but weak man as to policy; but as a kinsman brought in and promoted by my Lord St. Alban's." The house was destroyed by fire, in what year we have been unable to ascertain. Devonshire House, which now stands between the two streets built," reserving the house and as much of the gardens as the breadth of the house," was erected by the third Duke of Devonshire (the second Duke died 4th June, 1729), from one of Kent's designs, at an expense of 20,000/.; including 1000. presented to the architect for his plans.

Regarding the house mentioned by Pepys as begun by Sir John Denham on the opposite side of Clarendon House from Lord Berkeley's, we find the Secretary to the Admiralty recording on the 28th of September, 1668"From St. James's to my Lord Burlington's house, the first time I ever was there, it being the house built by Sir John Denham, next to Clarendon House." How the transfer came to be made does not appear, but in the time which elapsed between the commencement of the building by Denham and Pepys's visit to the house when occupied by Lord Burlington, a dark episode had occurred in Sir John's history. In June, 1666, Pepys remarks-" Pierce, the surgeon, tells me how the Duke of York is wholly given up to his new mistress, my Lady Denham, going at noon-day, with all his gentlemen with him, to visit her in Scotland Yard, she declaring she will be owned publicly." In September he notes the progress of the intrigue:-" At night went into the dining-room and saw several fine ladies; among others, Castlemaine, but chiefly Denham again, and the Duke of York taking her aside and talking to her in the sight of all the world, all alone; which was strange, and what also I did not like. Here I met with good Mr. Evelyn, who cries out against it and calls it bickering; for the Duke of York talks a little to her, and then she goes away, and then he follows her again like a dog." In November comes the catastrophe :-" 10th. I hear that my Lady Denham is exceeding sick, even to death, and that she says, and everybody else discourses, that she is poisoned.-12th. Creed tells me of my Lady Denham, of whom everybody says she is poisoned, and he hath said it to the Duke of York.—January 7th. Lord Brouncker tells me that my Lady Denham is at last dead. Some suspect her poisoned, but it will be best known when her body is opened to-day." The rest is silence.

But Pepys's visit to Burlington House was troubled with no such tragic recollections. His memorabilia of the occasion are:-"Here I first saw and saluted my Lady Burlington, a very fine-speaking lady and good woman, but old and not handsome; but a brave woman. Here I also, standing by a candle that was brought for sealing a letter, do set my periwig a-fire; which made such an odd noise nobody could tell what it was till they saw the flame, my back being to the candle."

The present front of Burlington House and the colonnade within its court were designed and erected by Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington and fourth Earl of Cork, at whose death the title (since revived) became extinct. The Earl was so passionate an architectural amateur that he designed houses for his friends as well as for himself: among others, one for General Wade, in Cork Street, of which it was said by the public that it was too small for living in and too big to be hung at a watch. Lord Chesterfield said-" Since the General could not live in it at his ease, he had better take a house over against it, and look at it." Nightingale (vol. iv. p. 613) says, "Burlington House was left to the Devonshire family, on on the express condition that it should not be demolished." The fact may be so, but the authority is none of the best. The crude compiler who makes the statement tells this story in the same breath :-" The first good house that was built in this street (Piccadilly) was Burlington House, the noble founder of which said that he placed it there because he was certain no one would build beyond him." Something to the same purpose is told of the founder of Northumberland House in the Strand; and as to Burlington House, it was founded not by a nobleman, but by Sir John Denham; and Clarendon House and Berkeley House were founded at the same time, whilst Goring House had been built many years before. Immediately to the east of Burlington House, on the site now occupied by the Albany, stood the house and gardens of the versatile Earl of Sunderland, the treacherous minister of James II. The date of the erection of this villa we have not been able to ascertain.

These scattered notices enable us to form an idea both of the appearance of

the part of Piccadilly extending from St. James's Church to the west end of Devonshire House, towards the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries; and also of the tastes and pursuits of the noble occupants of the villas we have been describing, and the process by which some of them were converted into streets, and those which remained gradually surrounded by a populous city. The houses in that part of Piccadilly east of Devonshire House continued to be numbered separately from those to the west of it down to the commencement of the present century. The Court Guide for 1816 retains this double numbering. The turnpike, subsequently removed to Hyde Park Corner, was originally placed at the east end of Devonshire House, at the end of Berkeley Street. For many years subsequent to the transfer the trustees of the roads paid annually 1000l. to the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, towards the expense of maintaining the road between Berkeley Street and Hyde Park Corner, and that part of the street is still watered by trustees under a separate Act of Parliament. We allude to these facts for the purpose of explaining why we carry down the history of Piccadilly East a considerable way into the eighteenth century before adverting to Piccadilly West.

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Little remains, however, to be told of the former. The conversion of the site of Goring House into Arlington Street, and the extension of the new town commenced by the Earl of St. Alban's to the north-east, soon gave a decidedly town character to the south side of Piccadilly; and the example of the adventurers who purchased Clarendon House, and that of Lady Berkeley, produced a similar effect on the north side. Bond Street-a street of shops and lodging-houses-soon became a fashionable lounge. In the Weekly Journal' of the 1st of June, 1717, we read The new buildings between Bond Strect (i. e. Old Bond Street) and Mary-lebone go on with all possible diligence; and the houses even let and sell before they are built. They are already in great forwardness. Could the builders have supposed their labours would have produced a place so extremely fashionable, they might probably have deviated once at least from their usual parsimony by making the way rather wider: as it is at present, coaches are greatly impeded in the rapidity of their course, but this is a fortunate circumstance for the Bond Street loungers, who are by this defect granted glimpses of the fashionable and generally titled fair, who pass and repass from two till five o'clock; and for their accommodation the stand of hackney-coaches was removed, though by straining a point in the powers of the Commissioners." While New Bond Street was thus advancing northwards, the Earl of Burlington was converting what seems to have been originally called "Ten-acres-field," at the back of his gardens, into a semiprivate town bounded by the thoroughfares Bond Street and Swallow Street on the west and cast, and by the school founded by Lady Burlington "for the maintenance, clothing, and education of eighty females" on the north. At the south end of Old Burlington Street is a stately mansion, built by Leoni for Gay's patron, the Duke of Queensberry, the proprietor of which was allowed to erect his house so that it commanded a view into Burlington Gardens. This mansion, after remaining for some time in a state of dilapidation, was purchased by the Earl of Uxbridge, who repaired it, and gave it his own title. In Cork Street is General Wade's house already alluded to. Returning to the west side of Bond Street, we are informed that in 1723 the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Grantham purchased the waste ground at the upper end of Albemarle and Dover Streets for gardens, and turned a

road leading into May Fair another way. This accounts for the termination to the north given by Grafton Street, which consists of two streets meeting at right angles, and uniting Dover Street with Bond Street.

Fielding, discoursing of the mob (1740-50) as the fourth estate of the realm, describes it as gradually encroaching upon people of fashion, and driving them from their seats in Leicester, Soho, and Golden Squares, to Cavendish Square and the streets in its vicinity. The discomfited fashionables seem to have swept along or across Piccadilly East without attempting to make any settlement there; for the villas of noblemen enclosed by the street dwellings must be considered as among-not of—them. It is true that a letter from Sir William Petty to Pepys in September, 1687, is dated from Piccadilly: but an item in the inventory of theatrical properties inserted in the Tatler' of the 16th of July, 1709-" Aurungzebe's scymeter, made by Will Brown of Piccadilly"-seems to express more correctly the class by which it was chiefly inhabited. The fashionables occupied the streets opening into Piccadilly. Thus we find Sir Robert Walpole residing in Arlington Street; Evelyn, at an earlier period, occupying a house in Dover Street, where he must have been constantly reminded of having been "oftentimes so cheerful and sometimes so sad with Chancellor Hyde" on that very ground; and at a later period Boswell domiciled in Bond Street. Mr. Allworthy's lodgings too were in Bond Street, and there some of the most touching scenes in Tom Jones' are laid. The first attempt to build along the north side of Piccadilly, west of Devonshire House, fell to the ground. Clarges House, the residence of Sir Thomas Clarges, brother-in-law to the first Duke of Albemarle, stood on the site of the present Clarges-street. A considerable piece of ground adjoining it was let on lease by Sir Thomas, towards the close of the seventeenth century, to Mr. Thomas Neale, Groom-porter to the King, and first introducer of lotteries on the Venetian plan, who built the Seven Dials in St. Giles's, on condition that he was to lay out 10,000%. in building on it. Sir Walter, son and heir of Sir Thomas, with considerable difficulty got the lease out of the hands of Neale, who never took any steps to fulfil his part of the bargain.

At the end of Piccadilly nearest Hyde Park, however, building, as we had occasion to remark while treating of the Parks, began at a comparatively early period. During the Usurpation," says Faulkner, in his 'History of Kensington,'" several houses were built on the skirts of the Park, between Hyde Park Corner and Park Lane. These were afterwards granted on lease to James Hamilton, Esq. (appointed ranger in September 1660, on the death of the Duke of Gloucester), and the lease was renewed to Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton, for ninety-nine years, in 1692. Hamilton Street takes its name from this family." Faulkner adds, "Apsley House stands on the site of the old lodge, and is held under the Crown. Apsley House was built by Lord Bathurst, while Chancellor ; that is, between 1771 and 1778. Hamilton Place was built about thirty-five years ago. The three houses contiguous to Apsley House were erected before any of the other large houses on that side of Hamilton Place; the exact time we have not been able to ascertain, but it must have been previous to 1787, for in the April of that year M. Calonne was obliged to resign the office of Comptroller of the Finances, and take refuge in England. He threw the houses Nos. 146 and 147 into one, and furnished them in a most superb style. It is therefore only since 1780 that this part of Piccadilly changed its primitive appearance.