'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,'

built here an aviary which cost £300. When the Duke of Lennox wished to
buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him:--'For this you will pardon me:
York House is the house where my father died, and where I first
breathed; and there will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and
the King.' It did not, however, please the King that he should; the
house was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the
Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on the plea
that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign potentates, and
for entertainments given to royalty.

The duke pulled it down: and the house, which was erected as a temporary
structure, was so superb that even Pepys, twenty years after it had been
left to bats and cobwebs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in
which the great duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were
shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers--peacocks and
lions--were quartered. York House was never, however, finished; but as
the lover of old haunts enters Buckingham Street in the Strand, he will
perceive an ancient water-gate, beautifully proportioned, built by Inigo
Jones--smoky, isolated, impaired--but still speaking volumes of
remembrance of the glories of the assassinated duke, who had purposed to
build the whole house in that style.

'_Yorschaux_,' as he called it--York House--the French ambassador had
written word to his friends at home, 'is the most richly fitted up of
any that I saw.' The galleries and state rooms were graced by the
display of the Roman marbles, both busts and statues, which the first
duke had bought from Rubens; whilst in the gardens the Cain and Abel of