He was an excellent classic scholar, and perfectly acquainted with the Belles Lettres of Europe. He could engage in the grave discussions of criticism and literature with superior power; while he was qualified to enliven general society with the smile of Horace, the laughter of Cervantes, or he could sit in Fontaine's easy chair and unbosom his humour to his chosen friend. When he resided in London he lived as other men of the world do, whose philosophy partakes more of Epicurus than the porch; and in the country, when Skelton Castle was without company, he had recourse to a very fine library and a playful muse.

66

"That he was a man of singular genius and a peculiar cast of thought, must be acknowledged by all who read his work; that, while he caught the ridicule of life, he felt for its misfortunes, will be equally evident to those who read the page which contains the epitaph on Zachary Moore:* and nothing surely can be wanting to confirm the latter opinion when we have added that he was the Eugenius of Lawrence Sterne. Many odd stories are still related of his whims and eccentricities. Being subject to hypochondria, he had a peculiar dislike to the east wind; whenever the wind blew from that quarter, he would not leave his bed. He had the weathercock so placed, that he could see it from his chamber window; and when it pointed east, he retreated under cover and would not rise that day. To cure the complaint and obtain his friend's society, the jocund Tristram procured a youth to climb the cupola and tie the vane to the west, where it continued during Sterne's visit. The squire, observing that the surly winds had settled at a favorite point, quitted his bed and joined the social circle; when wit, wine and mirth, flew round the table, and the gay party resumed 'the feast of reason and flow of soul." "

Before closing our notice of the history of Cleveland, we must enter our protest against the genealogical department of the work. Nothing can be more imperfect or more unsatisfactory-there are forty-three pedigrees, including those of Challoner, Mauleverer, Carey, Consett, Allan, Bruce, Crathorne, Foulis, Ingram, Wharton, Turner, Meynell, Lowther, and Pennyman; but with the exception of Allan of Blackwell Grange, Bruce of Skelton Castle, and two or three others, there is scarcely one which is not either defective or inaccurate; in that of Wharton of Grinkle Park, the present Mr. Lloyd Wharton of Dryburn, whom we know to be under sixty years of age, is set forth as the father of two ladies-Mrs. Ettrick and Mrs. Leighton, who were born more than a entury since! The descent of the Carys, Lords Falkland, at page 476, 's totally unintelligible; Lucius Charles, meant for the grandfather of the present peer, appears in the genealogy quite disconnected with any previous generation, and besides this hiatus, we have also to complain of the omission in this pedigree as in many others, of wives' names, an omission which the slightest trouble and research would have supplied. The lineage of Lowther-which the author states to have been "carefully compiled from various original sources, and to have been revised and

"Zachary Moore was an intimate friend of Hall Stevenson, and resided at Lofthouse. He was a person of convivial disposition, and by expensive habits and high connexions, squandered away a large fortune. There is a tradition at Lofthouse, that during his travels on the continent his horses' shoes were made of silver, and that so careless was he of money, that he would not turn his horses' head if they got loose or fell off, but replaced them with new ones. He was at length reduced to poverty, and the gay butterflies who had sported about him in his summer hour with the men of royal and ducal rank who had feasted at his board, rewarded their old friend with a paltry lieutenancy in Gibraltar. Sheridan on his death bed surrounded by bum-bailiffs; Beau Brummell an idiot and a pauper at Calais; Zachary Moore, starving at Gibraltar, are black spots on the character of the then Prince Regent,

Which all the multitudinous seas incarnadine
Cannot wash out !'"'

corrected by the living representative of the family,"-bears on the face of it its own condemnation, in the utter absence of a single christian name in the first ten generations; besides, it is impossible to believe that any evidence can exist of a Lowther living in 940, married to a D'Eyncourt-a pedigree of this description would never gain admission into the pages of Baker, Ormerod, or Hunter.

Mr. Ord possesses many of the essential attributes of a county historian, that we deem it our duty to point out these defects in the hope that in bis next performance he may attend more minutely to genealogical details, eschew altogether polemical discussion, and thus produce a work for which we feel assured his abilities qualify him, that may take its place next to those learned tomes we have already referred to, illustrative of the several counties of Warwick, Chester, Durham and York.

By J. HENEAGE

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF LONDON. JESSE. 2 vols., 8vo. London. R. Bentley. THE plan of these volumes may be very briefly explained. It combines a history of the different London streets, and of the chief houses in them, with some account of their principal tenants, the houses being selected, not so much for their architectural pretensions, as to afford the writer an opportunity of describing the important individuals, who happened at one time to inhabit them. This has given the author an opportunity of bringing together a mass of light and pleasant materials, collected indeed from common and obvious sources. Thus amongst the older writers we find Pepys, Evelyn, and Walpole frequently laid under contribution, while even the most popular of modern works, such as Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, are made available to these Memorials of London. The work therefore is far from bearing that character of originality, which in some degree may be said to belong to compilations from less familiar sources, and especially where new conclusions are drawn from old data, or where widely scattered facts are brought together and by the force of the writer's genius made to form one consistent whole, as we see in a well written history. But this, though it may in some measure detract from the praise due to the compiler, will by no means affect the amusement to be derived from our "Memorials" by the reader. There is besides one great advantage in this book; it has neither beginning, nor end, nor middle; you may lay it down when you will, and take it up when you will, being assured that you disturb no regular flow of interest by breaking off, and that resume it in what mood you may it will make no difference. We would by no means be understood as saying this naso adunco; it is really and truly a merit, and though not of a very exalted kind in the estimate of scholars, it is a strong letter of recommendation to the novel-reading public, who are by no means inclined to honour any excessive draughts upon their understanding.

We start from Piccadilly, for which the author has found a new etymology, having demolished the old one in a very ingenious and unanswerable fashion, though his own derivation is somewhat questionAs the passage, though long, is rather curious, it may be worth extracting:

able.

"According to the authority of almost every person who has written on the

subject of the streets of London, and I am sorry to disturb an opinion so long received, Piccadilly derives its name from Peccadilla Hall, a repository for the sale of the fashionable ruffs for the neck, entitled piccadillies or turnovers, which were introduced in the reign of James the First. Barnabe Rice, in his 'Honestie of the Age,' speaks of the body-makers that do swarm through all parts, both of London and about London.' The body,' he says, is still pampered up in the very dropsy of excess. He that some forty years since should have asked after Piccadilly, I wonder who would have understood him or could have told what a Piccadilly had been, either fish or flesh.' In Ben Jonson's 'Devil is an Ass;' in Beaumont and Fletcher's Pilgrim;' and in Drayton's satirical poem 'The Moon Calf,' will be found more than one allusion to the fashionable 'pickadel,' or piccadilly.' It must be remarked, however, that the earliest of these productions (and they have all evidently reference to a ridiculous and ephemeral fashion of recent introduction) dates no further back than 1616; and, moreover, according to every evidence which I have been able to collect on the subject, the introduction of the Piccadilly' was at least not of an earlier period than 1614. When we are able, therefore, to prove, that the word Pickadilla' was in common use as far back as 1596 (our authority is Gerard's 'Herbal,' where the small wild buglosse,' or ox-tongue, is spoken of as growing upon the banks of the dry ditches about Pickadilla,') we are compelled to disturb the old opinion that the present street derives its name from a fashionable article of dress which we find was not introduced till nearly twenty years after Pickadilla' had become a familiar name, and which, moreover, was little likely to be sold in so rural a district as Piccadilly was in the days of James the First.

"Let us be allowed to throw out one suggestion on the subject. Pickadilla House, which stood nearly on the site of the present Panton-square, was a fashionable place of amusement, apparently as far back as the reign of Elizabeth, and continued to be so nearly till the time of the Commonwealth. It has been the custom of all countries to confer an alluring name on places of amusement, -as for instance, we find the fashionable 'Folly' floating on the Thames in the days of Charles the Second,--and I cannot, therefore, but think, that Pickadilla House derived its name simply from the Spanish word peccadillo, literally meaning a venial fault, but which was intended, perhaps, to imply more than met the eye. Under all circumstances, it seems far more reasonable to suppose that the newly-invented ruff should have derived its name from being worn by the fair ladies and silken gallants who frequented Pickadilla House, than that a trifling article of dress should have given a name, first to the suburban emporium in which it is asserted to have been sold, and afterwards to one of the principal streets in Europe. Why, indeed, should a ruff have been called a piccadilla, unless from some such reason as we have mentioned? Or what lady is there who ever went into the fields to buy her attire? And, in the days of Elizabeth and James the First, Pickadilla House stood literally in the fields. The fact, however, that Pickadilla' was a well-known spot, nearly twenty years before the introduction of the pickadel,' or turn-over,' at least puts one part of the argument at rest."

He has been equally successful in demolishing another popular tradition, when speaking of Cleveland-row, a the bottom of Saint James's street, a place which at one time was remarkable for being frequented by the fashionable wits. How often have we been told that the famous quarrelling scene in the Beggar's Opera between Peachem and Lockitt was intended as a skit upon the fracas between Walpole and Townsend and that the minister's neglect of Gay proceeded from resentment at being thus held up to ridicule. By a single date Mr. Jesse upsets the whole tradition.

"Here resided Colonel John Selwyn, an aide-de-camp of the great Duke of Marlborough, and the father of the memorable wit, George Selwyn: and it was

in his house that the celebrated personal encounter took place between Sir Robert Walpole, then prime minister, and Lord Townshend, one of the Secretaries of State. The particulars may be briefly related.

During an altercation, in which they were engaged, Sir Robert exclaimed with considerable warmth,- My Lord, for once, there is no man's sincerity whom I so much doubt as your lordship's. Lord Townshend, who to many excellent qualities united a fiery and uncertain temperament, immediately seized the first minister by the throat. Sir Robert grappled with his antagonist in return, and, after a momentary struggle, both parties mutually relinquished their grasp and laid their hands on their swords. Mrs. Selwyn, who was present, ran out in a fright to call in the palace guard; she was prevented, however, by the celebrated Henry Pelham, by whose interposition the friends were subsequently reconciled. According to Wraxall, Gay introduced this scene into the Beggar's Opera,' where Walpole and Townshend are represented as Peachum and Lockit. Unfortunately however, for the truth of this literary anecdote, I find that the fracas between the two ministers of state did not take place till the year 1729, at which period the Beggar's Opera' had the run of the stage about a year."

Sometimes our memorialist ventures out of the beaten track, as for instance, when he gives an extract from an unpublished letter in the British Museum, relative to the passage of Charles the First through Saint James' Park on the morning of his execution. The passage is perhaps of no great importance in itself, but its value is yet farther lessened by his not affording us the slightest clue by which to find the document. "A letter in the British Museum" is a somewhat vague direction even for the most laborious student, and though we have no doubt the matter is as he has stated it, yet it would have been more satisfactory had he at least given us the option of referring to the original and judging for ourselves.

The Green Park and St. James's Palace afford the memorialist an opportunity of telling for the hundreth time the worn and well known anecdotes of Charles the Second and his licentious Court, as in like manner Marlborough-house naturally introduces us to the heros and heroines of Queen Anne's reign. Then the Mall brings us to the Hanoverian dynasty; but as Charles Mathews in USED UP says of the Colosseum and the crater of Mount Vesuvius,-there is nothing in it. A reviewer may well be excused if he proves too much blasé to be strongly excited by so old an anecdote as the following :

"These allusions to the exclusiveness of St. James's Park, in the reign of George the First, are not a little curious; but it is still more remarkable to find the Queen of King George the Second entertaining a serious intention of excluding the public altogether from the Park, and converting it into a garden, which was to be an appanage to the palace. When this project was first contemplated by her, she inquired of Sir Robert Walpole what he considered would be the cost of the undertaking? Madum,' was the significant reply, only three

crowns.'

After following the course of events for some time in this direction, our memorialist, in hunting phrase, "tries back," the old Palace of Westminster bringing us with little preparation to the time of William the Conqueror, whence we are led on regularly anecdotizing all the way, 'till after having escaped singeing by the Gunpowder Plot we find ourselves in Westminster Hall, which opening upon Palace Yard allows us to see the execution of Charles' adherents about six weeks after the death of their master. The Hall itself gives him occasion for several pages

of historical anecdote, which he has raked up out of Holinshed and the old chroniclers, excellent authorities no doubt, but almost too familiar to afford a decent pretext for the gleaner. Then we have the trials of Essex, Strafford, and Charles I., with nothing new however as to facts or as to the mode of telling them, the interest which naturally belongs to such narrations being their best recommendation. In saying this we are not at all influenced by the author's political creed, neither do we intend pronouncing any judgment on his opinions as to the rival claims of the Stuarts and the House of Brunswick; let them speak for themselves.

"The first of our German sovereigns, George the First, was crowned and feasted at Westminster, the usual ceremonies being performed, if with less popular enthusiasm, at least with as much magnificence as had attended the coronation ceremonials of the Plantagenets or the Stuarts. The people of England had not forgotten their ancient kings; they remembered that the legitimate heir to the throne was an exile in a foreign land; half England was ready to embrace a cause which was at once the rightful and the romantic one; while the devoted and enthusiastic Highlanders were ready, at a moment's notice, to draw the claymore in favour of the descendant of Robert Bruce.

"Against this tide of national loyalty and enthusiasm, the German Elector could oppose neither legitimate claims nor talents for government, not even fascination of manner nor personal accomplishments. He was alike ungraceful in his person and inelegant in his address; alike ignorant in literature, ignorant of the customs and manners of the people over whom he came to rule, ignorant even of their very language, in which he had never thought it worth his trouble to instruct himself. He was alike a bad husband, a bad man, and a bad King. He had inherited from his great-grandfather, James the First, all the worst qualities of the Stuarts, without their accomplishments. He could boast neither the scholarship of James the First, nor the dignified manners, the high-bred melancholy look, and domestic virtues of Charles the First. He was as much a libertine as Charles the Second without the excuse of youth and passion; he kept almost as many mistresses as that monarch, without their charms of youth and beauty; and he was as debauched as Charles without the charm of his affability, or the fascination of his wit. When Charles the Second, on the night of his Restoration, slipped down the back stairs at Whitehall, and crossed the water to pass the night with Lady Castlemaine, he had only that day completed his thirtieth year, while, when George the First made his appearance in the British metropolis with his hideous seraglio of German prostitutes, he had attained the mature age of fifty-five."

But though, wishing to avoid all political discussions, we make no remarks upon this passage involving the claims of the two dynasties, it may yet be permitted us to remark that the family of the Stuarts did set an example of encouragement to English literature, which candour must allow has not been imitated by any of their successors. It is hardly possible, when reading the following extract, not to believe that Charles the Second, whatever else might have been his faults, had the heart and spirit of an Englishman.

"How much one would like to know the site of the house in the Strand-and perhaps the house itself may still exist-in which Marvell spent his last days in penury and privation, at a time when the slightest departure from his political principles would have crowned him with the wealth which he wanted, and the honours which he despised. It was at the very time when his poverty compelled him to borrow a sovereign from a friend, in order to purchase the necessaries of life, that the poet one day went forth from his wretched lodging in the Strand to the splendid palace at Whitehall, for the purpose of passing the evening with the merry monarch and his gay courtiers. Of the events and conversation of the