how weary the quick time was, and how long seemed the journey;-scarce any lights, save those carried by link-boys; badly hung coaches; bad pavements; great holes in the road, and vast quagmires of winter mud. That drive from Piccadilly to Fleet Street seemed almost as long to our young man, as the journey from Marlborough to London which he had performed in the morning."

On his arrival George found Col. Lambert and Lieut.-Colonel Wolfe in Amos's sponging-house, with his brother. What a meeting was that, as the two hearts beat each to each amid the squalid surroundings of Cursitor Street!

After Harry's release from his gloomy and squalid surroundings, the story does not carry us into many new London haunts, for some time. George's unexpected appearance and his introduction to his English relatives, the gradual dethronement, so to speak, of Harry, including the now-much-desired-byall-parties severance of his engagement with Lady Maria, are topics sufficiently exciting. George's description of his adventures, wound, imprisonment, and escape, which he is obliged to repeat more than once, takes up, at this juncture, a considerable portion of the tale which oscillates between Lord Castlewood's house in Kensington Square, Sir Miles Warrington's residence and General Lambert's lodgings (in Lord Wrotham's mansion) in Hill Street, and the abode of the Baroness Bernstein in Clarges Street. A passage or two, however, from Chapter 58, where George pays his respects to his sovereign at Kensington Palace, deserves to be quoted, as bearing more directly on the subject of this volume. Here,

for instance, is a picture of Kensington Palace, as it was in the days of George II.

"They (George, Sir Miles and General Lambert went together in a hackney coach) alighted at Kensington Palace Gate, where the sentries on duty knew and saluted the good General, and hence modestly made their way on foot to the summer residence of the Sovereign. Walking under the portico of the Palace, they entered the gallery which leads to the great black marble staircase (which hath been so richly decorated and painted by Mr. Kent), and then passed through several rooms, richly hung with tapestry and adorned with pictures and busts, until they came to the King's great drawing-room, where that famous Venus by Titian is, and, amongst other masterpieces, the picture of St. Francis adoring the infant Saviour, performed by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; and here, with the rest of the visitors to the Court, the gentlemen waited until his Majesty issued from his private apartments where he was in conference with certain personages who were called in the newspaper language of that day, his M-j-ty's M-n-st-rs. George Warrington, who had never been in a palace before, had leisure to admire the place, and regard the people round him. He saw fine pictures for the first time too, and I daresay delighted in that charming piece of Sir Anthony Vandyke, representing King Charles the First, his Queen and Family, and the noble picture of Esther before Ahasuerus, painted by Tintoret, and in which all the figures are dressed in the magnificent Venetian habit."

The scene described must have taken place in what

is now called The King's Drawing Room, communicating with the King's Privy Chamber, where George II. is shewn as being in conference with his Ministers. The Drawing Room was decorated by Kent with his heavy mouldings and luxuriance of gilding, and its ceiling was also painted by the then fashionable jack of all trades. The pictures mentioned by Thackeray no longer hang here, their places being taken by West's full length portraits of George III. and his family. Titian's Venus, on which George Warrington gazed, is now at Hampton Court-it is an old Venetian copy of the famous Uffizi picture-and there too, is Tintoretto's " Esther," a work originally purchased by Charles I., hung in St. James's Palace, and after the King's execution sold to a Mr. Smith for £120! The "St. Francis," by Rubens, and Vandyke's "Charles I. and his Family," have also been removed from Kensington Palace.

Harry Warrington having been given the cold shoulder at White's and Arthur's, in the Ring, and in Pall Mall, and the gaming-houses, sought these haunts of pleasure less and less, although Aunt Bernstein was for having him brave public opinion and by living down his disaster, conquer. He had, however, made up his mind and determined to abide by his decision. His brother's influence was now paramount. Other changes took place about this time, among our dramatis persona. The brothers "removed from the court-end of the town, Madame de Bernstein pishing and pshaing at their change of residence." George had taken to frequenting Sir Hans Sloane's new museum, then recently opened in Montague House (1759), and to be near it he and Harry