St. James's-street-Crockford's, the Travellers', and other Club Houses-The at Clubs of Johnson's days-Drawing Room day at St. James's-Bridge

water House-Stafford House-Rogers's House-Johnson and SavagePall Mall-Charles II.-Dodsley-St. James's Palace-Buckingham Palace-Royal Procession to Parliament-St. James's Park Milton's House-Peace Celebration-the Horse Guards, etc.

ERE we approach Saint James's-street, which is celebrated all over Europe for its splendid club-houses, and the old Palace that bears its name. These clubs, numbering above thirty-five, include some of the most splendid edi

fices of the metropolis. is the best known to our diplomatic corps being not unfrequently guests at its tables. The names of the most celebrated are as follows: the Travellers', White's, Brookes's, the Thatched House, the Conservative Club, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Carl

The Travellers' Club Americans; members of

ton, the United Service, the Reform Club, the Athenæum, Arthur's, and the Army and Navy Club. St. James's Coffee-House, St. James's-street, which was a Whig coffee-house of the time of Queen Anne, was frequented by Addison and Steele, and occasionally attended by Goldsmith and Garrick. Here originated Goldsmith's "Retaliation."

White's, a Tory club-house, opposite Crockford's, was originally White's Chocolate-House, under which name it was established. As a Club it dates from 1736. It was then made a private house, for the convenience of the chief frequenters of the place, whose annual subscriptions towards its support were paid to the proprietor, by whom the Club was formed. The arms of the Club were designed by Horace Walpole and George Selwyn.

The most noted of these clubs was Crockford's, the notorious gambling-house of the great Metropolis. This magnificent structure was long the wonder and boast of London. Crockford's has been not inaptly styled Pandæmonium. Its interior decorations are splendid in the extreme. On entering from the street, a magnificent vestibule and staircase break upon the view. To the right and left of the hall are the reading and dining rooms. The staircases are of sinuous form,

sustained by four columns of the Doric order; above which are series of examples in the Ionic order, forming a quadrangle, with apertures to the chief apartments. Above the pillars is a covered ceiling, perforated with numerous panels of stained glass, from which springs a dome of surpassing beauty; from the dome depends a lantern containing a magnificent chandelier.

Its state drawing-room was decorated in the gaudy style of the school of Louis Quatorze, its panels being richly ornamented by mirrors; sumptuous chandeliers were suspended from a richly groined and gilded ceiling, and, taken as a whole, such was its consummate splendor, that it was long considered altogether unrivalled. There were other chambers scarcely inferior in beauty: yet this gorgeous palace was desecrated to the worst of purposes-that of gambling. We remember an instance of princely fortune having been squandered away in a single night-that of Lord Milton, who sacrificed at the dice-table £30,000! This notorious establishment possessed a private bank, and more diabolical wickedness was perpetrated within its walls than has ever been revealed, and yet enough has been exposed to render it an object of universal detestation.

On Crockford's death in 1844, the Club was closed, and it ceased to be occupied until May, 1849, when it was taken possession of by the Military and Naval County Service Club. The following impromptu was perpetrated by Sydney Smith, at a party at Holland House, upon a lady's remarking, that the money which men lost at their clubs in gambling, would dress the ladies :

66 Thoughtless that 'all that's brightest fades,'
Forgetting quite that knave of spades-

The sexton, and his subs,

How foolishly we play our parts,
Women on diamonds set their hearts,

Men set their hearts on clubs."

A new phase of English society has been presented by the establishment of these numerous Clubs; they differ essentially in their constitution from those of the age of Johnson. Some of the most influential and opulent of the British Peerage are attached to these institutions. As to architectural elegance, they exhibit some of the best specimens extant.

These establishments, which have of late years assumed a splendor unknown to the ideas of their originators, are the resorts of political, fashionable, and literary characters, for the purpose of conversation, reading, or refreshment. Persons desirous of admission must be proposed by members, and

balloted for. The subscriptions vary, according to the character of the club, from twenty to twentyfive guineas entrance, and from five to six guineas j per annum.

Until about thirty years ago a Club was seldom more than a mere knot of acquaintances who met together of an evening, at stated times, in a room engaged for that purpose at some tavern, and some of them held their meetings at considerable intervals apart. Most of them were anything but fashionable-some of them upon a footing not at all higher than that of a club of mechanics. Among the regulations of the Essex-street Club, for instance, (instituted by Dr. Johnson shortly before his death, and limited to twenty-four members,) one was, that each person should spend not less than sixpence; another, that each absentee should forfeit threepence, and each of the company was to contribute a penny as a douceur for the waiter! At that period the chief object of such associations was relaxation after the business of the day, and the enjoyment of a social evening in a homely way, in what would now be called a snug party. The celebrated "Literary Club," which was founded by Reynolds in 1763, and whose meetings were held once a week at the Turk's Head, in Gerardstreet, Soho, now a very unfashionable locality,