behind. Ah! it was a pleasant time; and lucky was he who had fire, and youth, and money, and could live in it! I had all these, and the old frequenters of White's, Wattier's, and Goosetree's could tell stories of the gallantry, spirit, and high fashion of Captain Barry." Of White's we already know enough, I think. Wattier's was the club started by the man of that name, who had been cook to the Prince of Wales, in Bolton Street. It was famous for its cooking and the Prince took a personal interest in its welfare. Goosetrees succeeded Brookes's club (in 1778) in Pall Mall, on the site of which the Marlborough Club now stands. As Barry Lyndon subsequently tells us how, in 1773, he married the Countess of Lyndon, and of the great reception in Berkeley Square on that occasion; how Walpole made a lampoon on the wedding and Selwyn cut jokes about it at the Cocoa Tree, we must not be too particular about dates, especially as we are following the record of a seasoned braggart and liar. The Cocoa Tree, unlike Goosetrees and Wattier's,* was in existence, as it had been in the days of Mr. Spectator, and as, as a club, it still is. To-day it is in St. James's Street, but it was originally started in Pall Mall, and during Lord Bute's administration was regarded as the ministerial club, although in 1745, when yet a coffee-house, it was the recognised headquarters of the Jacobites. It was a great gaming centre, and Walpole records anecdotes of it in this capacity; while Gibbon has left a description of it (in 1762) when he was a member. Among other fashionable

The name is generally spelt Watiers, but Thackeray gives it two t's; so his spelling is adopted.

resorts affected by our hero, was Carlisle House, Soho Square, then under the auspices of Mrs. Cornelys who, from 1763 to 1778, gave those balls and masquerades for which she was so famous. In the British Museum may still be seen a wonderful collection of documents: tickets, play-bills, advertisements, etc., connected with these assemblies. The energetic proprietress was a bankrupt in 1772, but four years later was again to the fore with her fashionable amusements. St. Patrick's Chapel in Sutton Street now occupies the site of the ballroom where so many illustrious ones of the eighteenth century revelled and where the gay idlers danced time away. Here it was that Lyndon, on one occasion, saw Boswell cut a ridiculous figure in a Corsican habit, perhaps a reminiscence in Thackeray's mind of Goldsmith and Reynolds in those dresses about which he speaks in "The Roundabout Papers." Says Lyndon, "All the high and low demerips of the town gathered there, from his grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too; poor Hackman that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Ray, and (on the sly) his reverence Dr. Simony,* whom my friend Sam Foote, of the Little Theatre, bade to live even after forgery and the rope cut short the unlucky parson's career."

And he proceeds to give a picture of London life of the period which properly finds a place here: "It was a merry place, London, in those days, and

* Dr. Dodd.

that's the truth. I'm writing now in my gouty old age, and people have grown vastly more moral, and matter of fact than they were at the close of last century, when the world was young with me. There was a difference between a gentleman and a common fellow in those times. We wore silk and embroidery then. Now every man has the same coachman-like look in his belcher and caped coat, and there is no outward difference between my lord and his groom. Then it took a man of fashion a couple of hours to make his toilette, and he could show more taste and genius in selecting it. What a blaze of splendour was a drawing-room, or an opera, or a gala night! What sums of money were won and lost at the delicious faro-table! My gilt curricle and outriders, blazing in green and gold, were very different objects to the equipages you see nowadays in the ring, with the stunted grooms behind them. A man could drink four times as much as the milksops nowadays can swallow; but 'tis useless expatiating on this theme. Gentlemen are dead and gone. The fashion has now turned upon your soldiers and sailors, and I grow quite moody and sad when I think of thirty years ago."

An amusing little picture of Lyndon having an interview with sleepy Lord North in Downing Street, a passing reference to the Gordon Riots" at the time they nearly killed my friend Jemmy Twitcher (Lord Sandwich was so-called), and burned Lord Mansfields' house down (in Bloomsbury Square) "; a visit to the lawyer, Mr. Tapewell, in Gray's Inn; and Lyndon's lodging at Mr. Bendigo's, the Sheriff's officer, in Chancery Lane, and his final imprisonment

in the Fleet, bring the London of "Barry Lyndon to a close," not inappropriately.

It is always difficult to follow statements as to topography in such a record as this of Barry Lyndon -one of dashing braggadocio, because, purposely, the author intends exaggeration and mis-statement as appropriate to the protagonist's character. Notwithstanding this, however, there are here and there in the book, life-like little vignettes recording places and people of that period with which Thackeray had made himself so curiously familiar, and which, more than most novelists, he has succeeded in illustrating so vividly.

The London of which we get too fleeting a glimpse in "Denis Duval " is, like that of Barry Lyndon, the London of 1776-the London that is of the early years of George III.'s long reign, when the loss of America was still a fresh and poignant wound, before the Gordon Rioters had helped to desecrate the Metropolis. The city of that period did not greatly differ from the city which Rocque has left in a wellknown map dated 1741-5. Where its features were chiefly altered was in the region north of Oxford Street and the west end of Holborn. Russell Square was not yet formed, but one of its most important features, Bolton, formerly Baltimore, House, was erected in 1760. Portman Square was begun four years later, and even in 1807, was described by Southey as being on the outskirts of the town, and its chief residence-Portman House, which was abuilding in 1781,-was then regarded as being in an open situation. Bedford Square was not yet in existence, but Queen's Square had been built in