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PHILOSOPHY OF LONDON.


_The Quadrant_

The principle of _suum cuique_ is felicitously enforced in that
ostentatious but rather heavy piece of architecture, the Regent
Quadrant, the pillars of which exhibit from time to time different
colours, according to the fancy of the shop-owners to whose premises
respectively they happen to belong. Thus, Mr. Figgins chooses to see
his side of a pillar painted a pale chocolate, while his neighbour
Mrs. Hopkins insists on disguising the other half with a coat of light
cream colour, or haply a delicate shade of Dutch pink; so that the
identity of material which made it so hard for Transfer, in Zeluco,
to distinguish between his metal Venus and Vulcan, is often the only
incident that the two moieties have in common.


_Squares_.

The few squares that existed in London antecedent to 1770, were rather
sheep-walks, paddocks, and kitchen gardens, than any thing else.
Grosvenor Square in particular, fenced round with a rude wooden
railing, which was interrupted by lumpish brick piers at intervals of
every half-dozen yards, partook more of the character of a pond than
a parterre; and as for Hanover Square, it had very much the air of a
sorry cow-yard, where blackguards were to be seen assembled daily,
playing at husselcap up to their ankles in mire. Cavendish Square was