then for the first time dignified with a statue, in the modern uniform
of the Guards, mounted on a charger, _à l'antique_, richly gilt and
burnished; and Red Lion Square, elegantly so called from the sign of
an ale-shop at the corner, presented the anomalous appendages of two
ill-constructed watch-houses at either end, with an ungainly, naked
obelisk in the centre, which, by the by, was understood to be the
site of Oliver Cromwell's re-interment. St. James's Park abounded in
apple-trees, which Pepys mentions having laid under contribution by
stealth, while Charles and his queen were actually walking within
sight of him. The quaint style of this old writer is sometimes not a
little entertaining. He mentions having seen Major-General Harrison
"hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing-Cross, he (Harrison) looking
as cheerful as any man could in that condition." He also gravely
informs us that Sir Henry Vane, when about to be beheaded on Tower
Hill, urgently requested the executioner to take off his head so as
not to hurt a seton which happened to be uncicatrized in his neck!


_Modern Building_.

We are the contemporaries of a street-building generation, but the
grand maxim of the nineteenth century, in their management of masonry,
as in almost every thing else, as far as we can discover, appears to
lie in that troublesome line of Macbeth's soliloquy, ending with,
"'twere well it were done quickly." It is notorious that many of the
leases of new dwelling-houses contain a clause against dancing, lest
the premises should suffer from a mazurka, tremble at a gallopade, or
fall prostrate under the inflictions of "the parson's farewell," or
"the wind that shakes the barley." The system of building, or rather
"running up" a house first, and afterwards providing it with a false