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uncertain, but it was thought by some at the commencement of the seventeenth century, when it was equally as now a matter of doubt, to have been given to a noted house there as being the skirt or fringe of the town-a picardill having been a kind of stiff collar or fringe to the skirt of a garment. At the corner of DOWN STREET is the mansion, finished in 1850, of Henry Thomas Hope, Esq., and erected under the joint superintendence of M. Dusillion, a French architect, and Professor Donaldson. It has a frontage of 70 feet in Piccadilly, and 64 feet in Down Street. The total height from the level of the street to the top of the ballustrade is 63 feet. The building is enclosed with a handsome iron railing, cast in Paris for the purpose. The entire cost, exclusive of the decorations, which are magnificent, was £30,000. The collection of pictures is extremely valuable. Clarges Street was built in 1717, and was so called after Sir Walter Clarges, the nephew of Ann, wife of General Monk. DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, by STRATTON STREET, is an old brick mansion, built by Kent, in 1738, for William Cavendish, third Duke of Devonshire, at a cost of £25,000. The old entrance, taken down in 1840, was by a flight of steps on each side. The gardens extend northward to those of Lansdowne House, in Berkeley Square. In Stratton Street, built 1695, and called after the Baron Berkeley, of Stratton, in Cornwall, lived Mrs. Coutts, afterwards Duchess of St. Albans. The House (No. 1) is now the residence of Miss Angela Coutts Burdett, understood to be the wealthiest heiress in the kingdom. BERKELEY STREET leads to the aristocratic Berkeley Square, where is situated the noble mansion of the Marquis of Landsdowne. There is here a fine gallery 100 feet in length, filled with antique statues and busts. ARLINGTON STREET, on the opposite side, contains the mansions of the Duke of Beaufort (No. 22), the Marquis of Salisbury (No. 20), and the Earl of Yarborough (No. 17). Next door was the mansion (No. 16) of the Duke of Rutland, where the Duke of York died in 1827. In DOVER STREET is Ashburnham House (No. 30), the customary residence of

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the Russian Ambassador. ALBEMARLE STREET contains the ROYAL INSTITUTION, So famous for the weekly lectures on chemical science by Professors Faraday and Brande. It was established in 1799, and a handsome façade of fourteen fluted Corinthian columns, by Vulliamy, was added to the building in 1836. The cost of this tasteful embellishment was £1,853. An admission fee of five guineas, and an annual subscription of five guineas, entitle a member, who must be ballotted for, to enjoy the privileges of the Institution. On the ground floor the principal apartments are a newspaper room, a small library, and a cabinet of minerals. On the first floor is the apparatus-room, communicating with the theatre, which will accommodate 900 persons. On the same floor is a spacious and valuable library. The laboratory on the basement story is fitted up on a scale of magnitude and completeness not before attempted in this country. In this apartment is the large galvanic apparatus with which Sir Humphrey Davy made his famous discovery of the composition of the fixed alkalies.

BURLINGTON ARCADE, a favourite lounge, and fitted up with some tasty shops, is upwards of 200 yards in length, and has a Bazaar attached. It was originally built in 1819, sustained some few years back considerable injury by fire, and is now re-embellished. At night, when the shops are illuminated, the vista has a pretty effect. It is a thoroughfare into Cork Street. BURLINGTON HOUSE adjoining is almost screened from the sight of the passenger by a lofty brick wall, behind which is a spacious court-yard. The first house was built about 1650, and when Lord Burlington was asked why he built his house so far out of town, he replied, more like a peer than a prophet, "because he was determined to have no building beyond him." In 1735, when the title became extinct, the house became the property of the Dukes of Devonshire. THE ALBANY, a series of chambers on a superior scale, deserves notice for the number of eminent literary men who have been its inhabitants, and amongst whom may be mentioned Monk Lewis, Canning, Byron, and Bulwer. The mansion in

the centre was designed by Sir W. Chambers for the first Viscount Melbourne, who afterwards exchanged it with the Duke of York and Albany-whence its name-for Melbourne House, Whitehall. The EGYPTIAN HALL, on the opposite side the way, owes its appellation to its style of architecture, and has generally some attractive exhibition on view within.

ST. JAMES'S CHURCH was built by Wren in 1684, at the expense of Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Alban, from whom the adjacent street derives its appellation. The interior is of exquisite workmanship, and has a fine organ intended by James II. for his popish chapel at Whitehall, and given to this church by his daughter Mary. At the east end of the chancel a new painted window, representing the crucifixion, was erected in 1846. In the churchyard adjoining lie Arbuthnot the wit, Akenside the poet, Dodsley the bookseller, Gillray the caricaturist, and Vandervelde the painter. Here, and at St. George's, Hanover Square, most of the fashionable marriages are solemnized. Hence we pass down the Haymarket and again reach Charing Cross.

DISTRICT 4.

CHARING CROSS TO LEICESTER SQUARE-REGENT STREET-HANOVER SQUARE OXFORD STREET LANGHAM PLACE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION-PORTLAND PLACE-SOHO SQUARE-NEW OXFORD STREET ST. GILES'S-IN-THE-FIELDS-INTERESTING MONUMENTS -SEVEN DIALS-DRURY LANE-LONG ACRE-COVENT GARDEN

MARKET-BOW STREET-THEATRES- LINCOLN'S INN FIELDSSIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM-THE NEW LINCOLN'S INN HALLROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS-MUSEUM OF THE COLLEGE

GRAY'S INN, HOLBORN-BEDFORD ROW-RED LION SQUARE, &c.

ROM Charing Cross we now pursue the opposite direction of ST. MARTIN'S LANE, noticing at the back of the National Gallery the new structure built and opened in 1849, called the ST. MARTIN'S BATHS AND WASHHOUSES, and of which, in the first six months, no less than 106,760 persons availed themselves. At the end is CRANBOURNE STREET, that in March, 1844, was opened as a broad and commodious thoroughfare, communicating with Long Acre, and supplanting the former narrow outlet of Cranbourne Alley, which for so many years maintained a celebrity for straw bonnets and cheap millinery. We are thus introduced to LEICESTER SQUARE, so called from the stately mansion built by Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, that occupied its northern side, and which was frequently tenanted by branches of the royal family, until the reign of George III. The square has a dingy, dreary aspect, and will soon disappear before the onward progress of improvement. In the centre is an equestrian statue of George II., brought from Canons in 1754, the dismantled seat of the Duke of Chandos. Around the square are some popular exhibitions and taverns of repute. BURFORD'S PANORAMA, and the WESTERN LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION, established 1825, are here situated. On the south side, by St. Martin's Street, lived Sir Isaac Newton, and Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds were

also inhabitants of houses on the eastern and western sides of

the square.

COVENTRY STREET, to which we are now brought, leads direct to Piccadilly. To give some idea of the immense cost involved in disturbing the old thoroughfares, we may mention that when the houses were taken down here in 1844, to form the present improved avenue, no less than £71,827 was paid to the Marquis of Salisbury for his claims upon the estate, and upwards of £100,000 was distributed among the shopkeepers, for the good-will of their respective establishments. In PRINCE'S STREET will be remarked the Church of ST. ANNE'S, SOHO, the tower and spire of which, built in 1686 by Hakewell, enjoy the unenviable distinction of being the ugliest in London. The whole of this district is thickly crowded with foreigners, who, settling in this locality, have given quite a continental tone to the coffee-houses and dining-rooms of the neighbourhood.

Hence we continue along Coventry Street till we arrive at the REGENT CIRCUS, where a fine view of the splendid avenue of Regent Street becomes apparent, linking St. James's Park with the Regent's Park by nearly two miles of mansionlike shops and palace-like mansions.

REGENT STREET was designed by Nash, and commenced under his direction in 1816. The houses in this magnificent thoroughfare are from the designs of Nash, Soane, Repton, Decimus Burton, and other architects, producing an extent and variety of architectural display unparalleled in Europe. The shops are of unequalled beauty and unrivalled for the opulence of their contents. The Quadrant was constructed for the purpose of avoiding the obliquity of the turning; but the Ishadow of the colonnade being found to interfere with the interests of the shopkeepers beneath, the 145 stately cast-iron columns that supported it were removed at the latter end of 1848, and the present architectural embellishments substituted, The building surmounted by the colossal figure of Britannia is the COUNTY FIRE OFFICE, founded by Barber Beaumont,

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