be behindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under heavy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's eyes went up to the ceiling which was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the last days have all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now. Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the wilderness. Eothen saw her therenot in Baker Street: but in the other solitude." It was at the north end of the street, now 14 York Place, that Pitt lived; where his famous niece kept house for him; where he sat drinking his bumpers beneath the same ceiling which was later to look down on the great writer, who, by the magic of his pen, has conjured up for us this vignette of the pilot and his cronies. To anyone who knows that Pitt lived in Baker Street, or that the Rawdon Crawleys resided in Curzon Street, or that Gaunt House was but a nom de guerre for Harcourt House, how much more interesting are these localities. No one, I think, can pass through even the desolation of Baker Street without feeling that at least one ray of light is shed on it by the reference which Thackeray makes in the immortal pages of his masterpiece.

VI

PENDENNIS

LIKE "The Newcomes," "Pendennis" begins in London. In the former book we find ourselves in the company of Colonel Newcome at "The Cave of Harmony "; in the first chapter of the novel under consideration we sit down to breakfast with Major Pendennis and his numerous correspondence, "at a certain club in Pall Mall." The club indicated was, no doubt, the United Service, which had been established in 1815, and housed in its present quarters in 1826. Major Pendennis was a Londoner of Londoners, and the appropriate note is struck when he is introduced to us in that quarter of the town which contained, according to Theodore Hook, all that was best worth cultivating in the Metropolis.

The Major's lodgings were close by, in Bury Street, where Swift had once dwelt, and Vanessa, and where the Major might have heard, perchance, the blythe spirit of Tommy Moore carolling in his rooms at No. 27, or one of the other houses in the street in which he lodged at intervals from 1806 to 1830.

As all know who have read this book (and who has not?) the Major* is called away from his beloved

"The Wheel of Fortune" patronised by the Major's man, Morgan, was in this neighbourhood, but cannot be identified. Perhaps it was The Prince of Wales's Feathers" in Pall Mall.

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London, and his numerous invitations (the refusal of one from Lord Steyne, to join a party at The Star and Garter, giving the recipient special regret), to lecture his wayward nephew at Fairoaks. While he is on that long and tedious mail-coach journey, we are retrospectively shewn how other characters were connected with the city he has just quitted. We are told how his brother, Arthur's father, after his marriage, secured lodgings in Holles Street, and taking his wife hither, "conducted her to the theatres, the Parks, the Chapel Royal; showed her the folks going to a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the pleasures of the town." Not, of course, those pleasures which make up so much of the "Life in London," or "The Tom and Jerry" of Pierce Egan, but such simple delights as would be likely to please the gentle Helen Pendennis. We are shewn her son, Arthur, as a boy at The Charterhouse (Thackeray properly sent as many of the children of his brain to his own old school as possible) where one of the upper boys had actually fought a duel, and another 66 kept a buggy and horse at a livery stable in Covent Garden, and might be seen driving any Sunday in Hyde Park with a groom with squared arms and armorial buttons, by his side." When Major Pendennis broke in on Doctor Swishtail's tremendous denunciation, and carried off the boy to far off Fairoaks, where the elder Pendennis was lying stricken to death, he severed for ever his nephew's connection with the famous school where Colonel Newcome had also been educated and where his son was to go in due course, and be visited by young Pendennis then become a literary man living in the Temple and hold

ing colloquies with Warrington during so many midnight hours.

Chatteris and Clavering form the rural background now, and we follow Pen's fortunes far from the stress of the great city. Even the Major exiled himself from his " afternoons from club to club-his rides in Rotten Row, his dinners, and his stall at the Opera," to keep an eye on his nephew whose adventure with The Fotheringay, had proved the need of a more worldly-wise mentor than the simple mother whose pliant spirit could be so easily bent to the direction which her boy wished. Later when Pendennis is on his way to Oxford, he passes a few days in town with his uncle who, such is his unselfishness, remains in the wilderness (" The Pall Mall pavement was deserted; the very red-jackets had gone out of town. There was scarce a face to be seen in the bowwindows of the clubs "), in order to fit his nephew out for his new career. Foker is in London, too, and he and Pen drive to the Charterhouse and swagger about the playground, talking to their old cronies. They made an excursion also to Foker's parental brew-house. "Foker's Entire," we are told, "is composed in an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the Grey Friars, and the name of that wellknown firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house signs, tenanted by its vassals in the neighbourhood." Foker's parents lived in Grosvenor Street whither Pendennis, much to the Major's satisfaction, was invited to dinner. After the day at the Charterhouse, Foker and Pendennis were entertained by the Major at the Covent Garden Coffee House, " whence they proceeded to the play." Concerning all which doings

Pen wrote a droll account to his mother, who, with Laura, read that letter and others that followed, many, many times, and brooded over them as women do."

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Pendennis's Oxford career does not concern us. He only comes into our ken again when he returns precipitately from his Alma Mater, plucked, and as he thinks, disgraced, and has his terrible interview with the Major in Bury Street, and wanders about London when, as he afterwards remembered, he looked at the prints hanging in Ackermann's window. Ackermann's shop was then at the rebuilt No. 96 Strand, whither he had returned in 1827 after removing, for a time, to No. 101, the site, to-day, of "Simpson's." These were sad days for our hero until that letter arrived from Home which prayed for the prodigal's return. Then it was that he sallied forth from his lodgings in the Covent Garden inn and took his place in the Chatteris coach at the Bull and Mouth in Piccadilly. This famous coaching office was situated at the south-east corner of Piccadilly Circus, whence the "Age" coach used to be tooled into the west country by the Duke of Beaufort. An extant print shows the ducal whip on the point of starting with a load of passengers among whom one likes to think one can distinguish Arthur Pendennis, Esq., of "Fairoaks," and late of St. Boniface, Oxbridge.

After a period of rustication Pendennis returns to London to begin that career at the Bar, with which his future history chiefly concerns itself. The 66 Alacrity" coach bears him from the groves of Chatteris to the Glo'ster Coffee House. As the vehicle pulls