and I could bear it no more. The market carts were rattling into Covent Garden; and the illuminated clock marked all sorts of small hours as we concluded this night's pleasure."

Costigan was generally to be seen at the Cave of Harmony and in the opening chapters of "The Newcomes" we are told how the outraged Colonel, after listening to one of his ribald songs, denounced the old reprobate in unmeasured terms, and catching Clive by the arm, marched the boy out of the polluted atmosphere into "the fresh night air of Covent Garden Market."

"Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, without accident to himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table where we sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old acquaintance.

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'He's a great character,' whispered that unlucky King of Corpus to his neighbour, the Colonel 'Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?' "Bedad, I will,' says the Captain, and I'll sing ye a song tu.'

"The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing, or saying, selected one of the most outrageous performances of his repertoire, fired off a tipsy howl by way of overture, and away he went. At the end of the second verse the Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his stick, and looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree. 'Silence!' he roared out.

"Hear, hear!' cried certain wags at a farther table. 'Go on, Costigan!' said others.

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"Go on!' cries the Colonel, in his high voice, trembling with anger. 'Does any gentleman say, "Go on"? Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say "Go on" to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the king's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?'

"Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?' cries a voice of the malcontents.

"Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen,' cried out the indignant Colonel. 'Because I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow a man, and an old man, so to disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your bed, you hoary old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see, for once in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonour, drunkenness and whiskey may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir! Curse the change!' says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. 'Keep it till you see me in this place again; which will be never-by George, never!' And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of scared bacchanalians the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him."

It is generally conceded that this Cave was no other than the old chophouse known as "Evans's" — a resort to which Thackeray once took Mr. Lowell to listen to the last chapters of "The Newcomes." Since then a new stone front has been added and the name changed to that of

the Sporting Club, — the white building seen in my sketch through the columns of St. Paul's.

Of the pedigree of the adjoining structures, no question can arise. The "Bedford Hotel," which runs out of my sketch on its extreme right hand, is to-day the same old pile of masonry - black, queer, and fog-stained - that welcomed Thackeray in his younger days, as well as many of his characters. Here he invariably "put up," whenever in his early wanderings he strayed into London. His description of it might almost be written under my sketch, so little changes have taken place in the surroundings:

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"The two great national theatres on one side," he says, "a churchyard full of mouldy but undying celebrities on the other; a fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote or history; an arcade often more gloomy and deserted than a cathedral aisle; a rich cluster of brown old taverns of them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many actors long since silent, who scowl and smile once more from the canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers; a something in the air which breathes of old books, old painters, and old authors; a place beyond all other places one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight, a crystal palace - the representative of the present which presses in timidly from a corner upon many things of the past; a withered bank that has been sucked dry by a felonious clerk, a squat building with a hundred columns, and chapel-looking fronts, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables; a common centre into which Nature showers her choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the

narrow thoroughfares; a population that never seems to sleep, and that does all in its power to prevent other sleeping; a place where the very latest suppers and the earliest breakfasts jostle each other over the footways."

This same bustle and noise surrounded my easel when I opened it under the great portico of St. Paul's, and began the composition with the church on my left, its columns framing the buildings which Thackeray's pen made so real, and so interesting to his readers of to-day.

The crowd about me was greater, perhaps, than usual, because of the novelty of the sight - outdoor painters being scarce at Covent Garden Market-and because, no doubt, the roof of the portico served as a shelter from the rain, which seemed determined to make a day of it. But it was a goodnatured, orderly crowd, the market-men marking a protecting circle about me with the toes of their heavy boots, the women and children looking over their shoulders.

None of them had ever heard of "Evans's." They all knew that the white house between the columns, and which my bit of charcoal was making clear to them, had been a tavern of one kind or another-longer ago than even the oldest could remember-up to the time the Sporting Club moved in, but that was as far as their information went.

They "knowed all about" Tavistock's, next the Bedford. I could get "a bite and a pint o' bitters easy, if I was a bit hongry at Tavistock's."

And so, the sketch finished and the rain over, I betook myself to the old, mouldy, smoky tavern under the arcade, and sat me down to the very table no doubt, at which