a glimpse on the left of the well known mansion of the great Sir Robert Peel; celebrated for its choice gallery of paintings.

The name Charing-Cross is believed to be a corruption of Chère Reyne. The spot is said to have been classic since the days of Edward I., who cross to the memory of his Queen Eleanor, whose body rested here on the journey from Lincolnshire to the Abbey of Westminster, where it received funeral honors.

At this early period, Charing was a rural hamlet, on the highway between London and Westminster, consisting of no more than a dozen houses, or hovels. The associations of the statue which, in the following century, succeeded to the site of the cross, are generally of a painful character; but there is one noticeable exception. The exceedingly expressive and beautiful piece of sculpture, which represents Charles I. (the earliest equestrian public statue in London, by the way,) may be looked upon as a happy memorial of one of the most enlightened and munificent patrons of art England has known. This was cast, in 1633, for the Earl of Arundel, the famous collector, and to whom Charles is said to have been materially indebted for his artistical taste. The subsequent history of the statue is very curious. During the

civil wars it was sold to a brazier in Holborn, of the name of John River, with orders to break it in pieces; the brazier, however, was too much of a loyalist, or too much an admirer of art, which is the more likely, as the statue would hardly have been sold to a known favorer of the royal cause, or, which is likeliest of all, had too keen a perception of its pecuniary value at some future time, to obey his orders; so he buried it, and satisfied the officers of government by showing them some broken pieces of metal. That our "worthy brazier," as he has been called, was not overburdened with any very strict principles of honesty we know from an amusing anecdote related by M. d'Archenholz, who says he cast a vast number of handles of knives and forks in brass, which he sold as made of the broken statue. They were bought with great eagerness by both parties-by the loyalists as a mark of affection to their monarch, and by the republicans as a memorial of their triumph.* the Restoration the statue was, of course, restored too. And, as a preliminary, a libation of blood was poured forth, as if to wash away the memory of its temporary degradation. Here, in the reign of Charles II., were executed Harrison, Scrope, Colonel Jones, Hugh Peters, Chaplain of Oliver * Cunningham.

At

Cromwell, and others of those extraordinary men, who, in welcoming a bloody death, gave the last undoubted proofs that they were real patriots as well as bigots; and, to mark beyond the possibility of mistake the thirst for vengeance from which the act sprang, the executioners, inspirited by the presence of the king at a short distance, and fulfilling, no doubt, the orders given to them, actually revelled in cruelty, adding tortures that not even the execrable terms of the sentence could be supposed to include. When Coke was cut down and brought to be quartered, one Colonel Turner called to the sheriff's men, to bring Mr. Peters to see what was doing; which being done, the executioner came to him, and rubbing his bloody hands together, asked him, "how he liked that work?" The answer of the brave and high-principled man was simply that he was not at all terrified, and that he might do his worst. And when he was upon the ladder, he said to the sheriff, "Sir, you have butchered one of the servants of God before my eyes, and have forced me to see it, in order to terrify and discourage me, but God has permitted it for my support and encouragement." These were not very attractive reminiscences to be connected with any statue, and the matter was still worse when the relation was so intimate as between the events

and the individual represented by the particular statue in question. For the time, at least, it ceased to be looked upon as anything but a party memorial, and it was treated accordingly.

Sir Harry Vane, the younger; Isaac Barrow, the divine; Rhodes, the bookseller, resided in the immediate vicinity.

The birth-place of Ben Jonson is generally supposed to have been in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross.

In Scotland Yard, Whitehall, lived Milton, in Cromwell's time. Here also lived Inigo Jones; here died his successor, Sir John Denham, the poet of Cooper's Hill; here lived Sir Christopher Wren; and here, in a fantastic house, immortalized by Swift in some ludicrous lines, lived Sir John Vanbrugh.

This vicinity was so called, it is said, after the kings of Scotland and their ambassadors, who were occasionally lodged there.

In Cockspur street, near Pall Mall East, stands the equestrian statue of George III.—the pious | but pertinacious potentate who persisted in the coercive taxation of his American Colonies till he lost them. At the corner of Suffolk-street are two societies of British Painters and Sculptors. The Royal College of Physicians is situated opposite St.