Should you have chosen to forego seeing the mansions until some time when you are riding, it may be that you have elected, instead, to have tea at Claridge's, and see the very smart world that gathers there.

A very short distance east of Claridge's is New Bond Street, the heart of the fashionable West End shopping district, the rue de la Paix of London. Following it north, you come to Oxford Street, just facing the department store of Marshall and Snelgrove, which is one of my favorite shops in London.

Following New Bond Street south, you come (without noting the transition) into Old Bond Street and thence into Piccadilly, not far from the Ritz (two blocks west, on Piccadilly) or from Burlington House and the Royal Academy (one block east), and almost to the top of Saint James's Street which leads south to Saint James's Palace and the beginning of Pall Mall.

Rumpelmayer's, on Saint James's Street, is a favorite place for afternoon tea.

We shall saunter in Saint James's Street and vicinity another time when you are more likely to be keen and 'fit' for it.

Now, there is another order in which you might prefer to take many of the places mentioned in this chapter.

After leaving Tavistock Square, you might walk north for a very short distance to Euston Road, and take a westbound bus there which says 'Tottenham Court Road Oxford Street.' Ride west in Oxford Street to Marshall and Snelgrove's and lunch in their attractive tea-room. Then explore New Bond Street, south, or Oxford Street, west. If you do the latter, let me commend you very specially to the shop of Phillips, at 492 Oxford Street, selling antique jewelry and specializing in old 'paste' jewelry, very beautiful and unusual. I have few possessions so much coveted as

those which were bought here, and I am constantly being asked for the address. Ask for Mr. Randall.

There are many shops I like in New Bond Street, but I can specially commend to you that of W. Bill, selling Irish and Scotch homespuns, and coats, suits, etc., made therefrom; also hand-knit sweaters, stockings, and the like; and fleecy, feather-weight Scotch shawls and fine travelling blankets.

And it might be that after several hours' shopping, you'd like to take a taxi and drive up Holles Street past Cavendish Square, then over to Wimpole Street, and north in it to Devonshire Terrace and Saint Marylebone Church, and then through Hanover Gate into Regent's Park. You may not have energy enough left for the Zoo, but if it is a fine afternoon I think you can hardly fail to enjoy a sunset from Primrose Hill which lies to the north of Regent's Park, on the other side of Albert Road.

'Regent's Park,' says an unnamed writer whom Mrs. E. T. Cook quotes in her 'Highways and Byways in London,' 'lies below, a frame of restful greenery. To the left rises Camden Town-prosaic neighborhood!-up a gentle slope. In the evening sunlight it is transfigured into a mass of brightness and colour, rising in clear-cut terraces, like some fair city on an Italian hill-top. Saint Pancras Station is a thing of beauty, with a Gothic spire, and lines like those of a Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal. Hard by rises the dome of the Reading-Room of the British Museum, embowered in trees a stately witness to the learning of a continent. Saint Paul's soars up grandly above its sister spires, in misty purple — dominating feature of the city as Saint Peter's in Rome. Away towards the mouth of the river rises the high line of Blackheath, and the hills of the Thames Valley curve round in a noble sweep above the light haze which marks the unseen river, past the crest of

Sydenham Hill with the Crystal Palace shining out white and clear, past Big Ben and the Abbey, and the Mother of Parliaments, to where the ridges above Guildford and Dorking fade away into "the fringes of the southward-facing brow" of Sussex and Hampshire, towards the English Channel. Innumerable slender church spires point upwards to the wide overarching sky. Northward, again, are the wooded heights of Highgate and Hampstead, and the long battlemented line of the fortress at Holloway. What a view! On Primrose Hill on a summer's evening the Londoner feels, indeed, that he is a citizen of no mean city. Wordsworth, truly, thought that "Earth had not anything to show more fair" than the view from Westminster Bridge in the early morning. But it needs a modern poet a poet of the whole English-speaking race to do justice to this view of the great city on the Thames, lying bathed in the magic glow of a summer sunset beneath Primrose Hill.'

V

YOUR FIFTH LONDON DAY

THE Houses of Parliament have to be seen on Saturday, unless you are escorted by a member of Parliament. I advise getting there (beside the Victoria Tower, at the South end) a little before 10 A.M., and going through with the first crowd.

I'm not taking any of our space here for comment on these buildings, since your guide-book deals with them in great detail.

It may be that this would seem to you the most convenient time for visiting the new Westminster Cathedral, the largest and most important Roman Catholic Church in England. If so, take Bus Number 11, running southwest in Victoria Street, and get off (in five minutes, or less) at Ashley Place, opposite Belgravia Chambers. A very short walk down this street will take you to the London Cathedral of the old faith, the Church of Rome, as Saint Paul's is the London Cathedral of the newer faith, the Church of England.

If you do this, I should think your best plan for the rest of your Saturday would be to get on another Number 11 Bus, where you got off the first one, and ride on to Chelsea, covering the itinerary which I am giving as part of a possible Sunday programme, in our next chapter. Going to Chelsea on Saturday has the advantage over going on Sunday, that on the former day you can visit Carlyle's house, and the latter day you cannot. And, further, you could probably on Saturday (if you have written asking for permission) see Lambeth Palace, after visiting the Tate Gallery.

Supposing, however, that Westminster Cathedral does not seem to you one of the things in London that you must see, even in a hurried week, or that you are planning to attend service there on Sunday, I suggest that you take a taxi to the London Museum, in Lancaster House, west of Saint James's Palace.

For every reason, this is one of the places that no visitor to London should miss; and yet most of them do miss it. One reason is that here is probably the most magnificent mansion in London, permitting those of us to whom the other 'great houses' of royalty and richest nobility are closed, to wander at will over a town house which is said to have made Queen Victoria, when a guest in it, say to the Duchess of Sutherland: 'I come from my house to your palace.'

Lancaster House, which was formerly Stafford House, and before that was York House, was built for that amiable and popular uncle of Queen Victoria's whose statue stands atop the high column in Waterloo Place at the head of the Duke of York's steps leading down to the Mall and Saint James's Park. If you don't mind a little walking which could be avoided, direct your taxi-driver to set you down at the foot of those steps, and make your acquaintance with the Duke of York before you proceed along Pall Mall and Cleveland Row to Stable Yard and Lancaster House.

As you ascend the Duke of York's steps, the first of the mansions in Carlton House Terrace on your left is the German Embassy.

At the intersection of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place, you have, on your right, the United Service Club for army and navy officers, and on your left, the very famous Athenæum Club, where Macaulay and Thackeray and other illustrious members studied and wrote.

Then, turning west (left) in Pall Mall (which you must