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pig on a nice white napkin in the hall, I told some one to take it up-stairs to Mrs. Ducrow. The fellow said it warn't for me, it was for Mr. Roberts. You know who he is? Why, he's the chap as orders the corn for the horses. I'm only the chap as pays for it. So he gets the pigs and I don't. Then those confounded carpenters of mine sneak in of a morning with their hands in their breeches - pockets, doubled up as though they'd got the colic. And at night they march out as upright as grenadiers. Why? 'Cause every one of 'em has got a deal plank at his back up his coat. Then the supernumeraries carry out each of 'em a lump of coal in his hat, and going round the corner, club their priggings together, and make up the best part of a chaldron of it. As to the riders, they come into rehearsal gallows grand, 'cause they've had all the season a precious deal better salary than they were worth; and at night they come in gallows drunk from having had a good dinner for once in their lives; and forgetting that they may want to come back another year, they are as saucy as a bit of Billingsgate. Mr. Bunn confirms the accuracy of this description. "This is about the case with all theatres," he writes; " and while the manager is blamed for all these ill-doings, and most assuredly is the only sufferer by them, the real criminals escape unpunished."

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In 1834 Ducrow lost his brother John, the clown. Mrs. Ducrow died in 1836. Two years later Ducrow married Miss Woolford, long a famous equestrian at Astley's. Under the date of the 10th of June, 1838, Mr. Bunn records in his journal: "Dined at Topham's New Hotel at Richmond to celebrate Ducrow's matrimonial honours participated in by Miss Woolford."

On the 8th of June, 1841, Astley's Amphitheatre was totally destroyed by a fire which broke out at five in the morning, and which no exertions could subdue. Ducrow and his family narrowly escaped with their lives; a female servant perished in the ruins. The stud at this time consisted of some fifty horses, two zebras, and a few asses and mules; of these scarcely any were rescued. The total loss was estimated at thirty thousand pounds.

Ducrow was ruined, or believed himself

to be so. His mind gave way under the pressure of his misfortunes. He died in the York-road, Lambeth, on the 27th of January following. In his will he left directions that a sum of eight hundred pounds should be expended on a monu

ment to his memory, to be erected in Kensal Green Cemetery. The annual interest arising from two hundred pounds invested in the funds was to be devoted to the purchase of flowers for the adornment of his grave. This monument, one of the most remarkable contained in the cemetery, is a curious Egyptian-looking structure of large size and lavish ornamentation. Plants encircle it, and do something to screen and to relieve its excessive embellishments. The inscription runs: "Within this tomb, erected by genius for the reception of its own remains, are deposited those of Andrew Ducrow, whose death deprived the arts and sciences of an eminent professor and liberal patron; his family of an affectionate husband and father; and the world of an upright man." It is understood that this epitaph was written by the equestrian's widow.

His

Ducrow has been called the "king of mimics," the "Colossus of equestrians,” and other fanciful names. His performances in the ring were noted for their grace, daring, and inventiveness. pantomime was remarkable for its variety and intensity. He was clearly a mute actor of rare ability, but many of his feats have, of course, now become the ordinary "business" of the modern circus. repertory of the riders of to-day is greatly indebted to Ducrow's skill and fancy. Whenever an especially attractive act of horsemanship is now presented, the spectator may safely conclude that he has witnessed a faithful following of an example set by Ducrow.

The

Ducrow was five feet eight inches in height, of fair complexion, and handsome features. Exceedingly muscular and of prodigious strength, his figure was yet graceful in outline and perfectly symmetrical. He was accomplished as a contortionist, and could twist his shapely limbs into the strangest forms. Doctor Barker, lecturing in the School of Surgery at Edinburgh, during a visit of Ducrow to that city, recommended his pupils by all means to see the great equestrian, "as they would then be able to form a judg ment of what the human frame was capable of as regards development, posi tion, and distortion." With all his impetuosity of temper and speech, Ducrow was yet thoroughly kind-hearted and liberal. He was held in warm regard by the members of his company. In his profession he was an enthusiast, and spared no labour and outlay to perfect the spectacles and performances he purveyed. The play

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going public never possessed a more un-heroism. Strype, writing in 1720, calls tiring servant and caterer for their diver- Leicester Fields a very handsome, large sion than they found in this intrepid, illite- square, enclosed with rails and graced on rate rider and rope-dancer, Andrew Ducrow. all sides with good houses, well inhabited and resorted unto by gentry, especially the side towards the north, where the houses are larger, amongst which is Leicester House, the seat of the Earl of Leicester, and the house adjoining to it, inhabited by the Earl of Aylesbury."

THE LIGHT OF THE HEARTH.
FATHER and children with red wet eyes
Open the cage and the linnet flies:
All the house has been sorrow-rack'd,
And water and food the bird hath lack'd.

Mother sleeps in the churchyard near,
Her seat at the board is empty and drear,
The rose-bush withers at the door,
The kind hand waters it no more.

The spinning-wheel is silent there;

With holes in his stockings the boy doth fare;
The spider spins on the ceiling grey,
No brisk broom brushes it away.

The mother's care was ever blest,
Her busy hands were never at rest;
Father oft was angry and mad,
But now in the ingle he sits, so sad!

Sad he sits by a cheerless fire,
Help from strangers he now must hire;
Much indeed may be bought for gold,
All save the heart that is now so cold.

The busy, blessing, caressing hand,
The face so thoughtful, and sweet, and bland,
For the first last time are loved and known
When the gentle light of the hearth hath flown.

CHRONICLES OF LONDON STREETS.

LEICESTER-SQUARE.

ABOUT 1635, when the Civil War was already brewing, Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, built a mansion at the north-east corner of a square plot of "Lammas land," or common, belonging to the poor of St. Martin's parish. The land could not have been very valuable, since the earl only paid three pounds a year for the rent of the field before his house, with the building ground and garden. Other houses soon sprang up, and in 1671 the south side was completed. This Earl of Leicester was the father of Algernon Sydney, the patriot who conspired against Charles the Second; of the handsome Sydney who figures in so many of De Grammont's adventures; and of the Lady Dorothy, the Sacharissa of the poet Waller. Singularly enough, the square, even in those early times, seems to have had an attraction for foreigners, the earl frequently letting his mansion to distinguished strangers. At one time, Colbert, the French Ambassador, resided here, while in Queen Anne's reign Prince Eugène lived in Leicester House, and did his best to prevent peace between England and France. In Leicester House the Queen of Bohemia came to end her troublous life, neglected by a licentious court which had no sympathy with her

In 1718, when the Prince of Wales (afterwards George the Second) had been turned out of St. James's by his irascible father, he bought Leicester House, and started an opposition court. Here his son, the Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, was born in 1721. In due time the princely mutineer came to the throne, and quarrelling with his son in his turn, Prince Frederick also turned his back on his father and took up his abode in Leicester House with his dancing-master and all those other parasites who aided him to vex and insult his father. It was to Leicester House that the wife of the Earl of Cromarty came with four of her children to intercede for her husband, implicated in the '45 Rebellion. The princess made no reply to the supplicating woman except by bringing in her own children and placing them beside her. Addison's play of Cato was performed in Leicester House by the prince's family; the boy (afterwards George the Third) taking the part of Portius.

That good-natured poet, Gay, was often at Leicester House, and suffered here many indignities. On one occasion, having come to read his tragedy of the Captives to the princess and her ladies, Gay, abashed at the audience he saw assembled, stumbled over a stool, and falling forwards threw down a heavy Japan screen, to his own infinite confusion and the alarm and amusement of the giggling maids of honour. For writing his admirable Fables for the young Duke of Cumberland, Gay was offered the place of gentleman usher to a child princess, a post his pride would not let him accept. "Why," he groans to Pope, "did I not take your advice before my writing Fables for the duke, not to write them, or rather to write them for some young nobleman? It is very, very hard fate. I must get nothing, write for them or against them."

In March, 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died suddenly at Leicester House, from the breaking of an imposthume, which had been caused by the blow of a tennisball. No character can be conceived so contemptible as that which is handed down to us of this prince. He was a great

gambler, and the most frivolous of men. He boasted of "nicking Bubb Doddington out of five thousand pounds," and then tried to win popular favour by honouring Pope with a visit, and sending Glover, the author of Leonidas, five hundred pounds. He was a mass of contradictions; affable to the poor, yet detesting his own parents; a faithless husband, yet always praising his wife; desirous of acquiring military glory, yet amusing himself, while Carlisle was being besieged, by bombarding a barleysugar castle with sweetmeats. With all these faults, the people, when he died, exclaimed, "Oh, that it were but his brother! Oh, that it had been the butcher (Cumberland)!" The butcher's remark upon his brother's death was worthy of him. "It is a great blow to the country, but I hope it will recover in time."

After her husband's death, the princess kept Prince George in great seclusion at Leicester House, under the dominion of the Earl of Bute.

There was blood spilt in Leicester-square in 1698. On the 29th of October in that year, some officers had been drinking at the Greyhound Tavern in the Strand, and a quarrel that there arose ended in a duel in Leicester Fields. The revellers had split into two parties; the notorious Lord Mohun, Lord Warwick, and a Mr. Coote on one side, and on the other Captain James, Captain French, and a Mr. Dockwra; hurrying into sedan-chairs, they were taken to the place of combat. Two duels then took place, one between Captain French and Mr. Coote, the other between Captain James and the Earl of Warwick. Little is known of what first happened, but the result was that Mr. Coote, severely wounded, died soon afterwards, and was carried to the Round House, in St. Martin's-lane. The Earl of Warwick and Lord Mohun were tried in Westminster Hall, before the House of Lords, on the 28th of March, 1699, and the evidence given on the trial is full of curious details, illustrative of the manners of the times.

It appeared that when Mr. Coote was hurrying along in his sedan towards the Fields, he swore at the chairmen, and declared he would run his sword into them if they did not get to the place first. He and Lord Mohun got out of the chairs at the corner of Green-street, "the lower corner of the paved stones going up to Leicester House." When the duel was ended, the chairmen tried to lift the sedan over the rails, but seeing Mr. Coote was dying, and declaring the blood would spoil the chair,

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refused to meddle any more with him till a hundred pounds was promised them if they would carry him to a surgeon. Still unable to lift the chair containing the dying man, the chairmen then went to the aid of Captain French, who was severely wounded, and took him to a French surgeon's at a bagnio, in Long Acre. There the Earl of Warwick swore at them, and told them to call the next day for their money. When Mr. Coote was examined by the surgeons, they found that he was run through the lungs and the diaphragm.

When the Earl of Warwick and his friends, somewhat sobered by what had happened, met at the bagnio, they examined their swords; the Earl of Warwick's was covered with blood, but yet they all agreed that it was French who had fought Coote. Nevertheless the earl fled that night, and hid himself till parliament met. The two noblemen were acquitted; the earl, claiming "the benefit of clergy," being discharged on the payment of the usual fees. His widow married Addison, who found her, to his cost, high tempered and despotic. It was the son of the duellist who was summoned to Addison's death-bed to see how a Christian should die.

At No. 47, on the west side (from 1761 to his death in 1792), lived Sir Joshua Reynolds. The great painter led a methodical life: he rose early, breakfasted at nine, entered his studio at ten, examined designs, or touched unfinished portraits till eleven, when the knocker began to resound, and titled people to rustle in; he painted till four, then dressed, and gave the evening to society. His beaming spectacles and his ear-trumpet were to be seen often at the club and theatre of those days, and the owner of them was always welcome. Doctor Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, Banks, Sterne, Gibbon, almost every one celebrated in those days knocked at the door of No. 47.

Reynolds's pleasant dinner-parties seem to have partaken somewhat of the picnic character-never knives or glasses enough, bad waiting, but good talk. Every one scrambles for himself, and Johnson eats till the veins swell out on his forehead; Goldsmith suggests a reply to an axiom of Johnson's, and is stared at by Boswell; Gibbon talks with learned dignity, and Burke is more eloquent even than usual. Reynolds had his vexations too here, when Barry's moroseness vexed him, and when grand people returned portraits as bad likenesses, or complained of the colour fading. Here he chafed to think of young Lawrence setting up in opposition in the same square,

or fretted at the preference some people had for Romney. With well-bred sitters he was polite and amiable, but when a rich citizen told him once that the pattern of his lace ruffles was obscurely made out, Sir Joshua replied hastily : "That is my man. ner, sir, that is my manner;" and when a vain lady displayed her taper hands, he said, calmly: "Madam, I commonly paint my hands from my servants."

Half that busy yet tranquil life of Sir Joshua's passed at No. 47, till at last came that sad afternoon, when, finding himself growing blind, he laid down his brush, and said, mournfully, "I know that all things on earth must come to an end, and now I am come to mine."

Nor do we often visit Leicester-square without thinking of the affecting story of Reynolds, almost blind, wandering round the rails, seeking for a pet canary of his that had strayed.

hard before he drew that last sketch, which he called the End of All Things, adding to a series of worn-out and broken things a shattered palette, emblematical of his approaching death.

Next door to Hogarth lived John Hunter, the great surgeon, and here he stored those treasures now in the Royal College of Surgeons. The story goes that when the studious man used to return for a quiet evening's reading, he would often, to his disgust, find the house full of company, and on one occasion, provoked beyond endurance, he is said to have ordered the whole party his wife had invited out of the house.

In St. Martin's-street, on the south side of the square, Sir Isaac Newton lived; the little turret that was his observatory is still to be seen. Doctor Burney afterwards took the house. He was one of Doctor Johnson's steadfast friends, and to his door the giant of literature must have often made his ponderous way. Burney was fond of telling how he attended the first representation of Johnson's tragedy of Irene, and witnessed the public disapprobation. When the heroine was about to be strangled on the stage, the audience cried "Murder." Many stories were circulated at the time, Burney says, of the author's being observed at the representation to be himself dissatisfied with some of the speeches and conduct of the play, and, like La Fontaine, expressing his disapprobation aloud. Quite as a young man, we find Burney so delighted with the Rambler, that he became a subscriber to the Dictionary the moment the great project was announced, and Johnson replied to his letter in the blandest terms. "Your civilities," he wrote, were offered with too much elegance not to engage attention, and I have too much pleasure in pleasing men like you not to feel very sensibly the distinction which you have bestowed upon me." Burney has preserved some interesting notes of Johnson's conversations, and describes him at Streatham telling Miss Thrale that she should dash away on the harpsichord like Burney. Although the doctor generally talked slightingly of music, Burney upon this said to him, "I believe, sir, we shall make a musician of you at last." Upon which Johnson replied, "Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense given me." Of Burney's daughter, the In Leicester-square this great satirist authoress of Evelina, Johnson was a great spent his busy middle life, close to where, admirer. One day at the Essex-street Club, in youth, he had been apprenticed to he boasted that the day before, at Mrs. Gamble, the silversmith. He had worked | Garrick's, he had dined with Fanny Burney,

Hogarth lived at the east side of the square, nearly at the south end. In his time a cork gilt head stood over the door. There the little man, with the full round forehead, and the firm mouth, painted all his great pictures; and there, in dreams, the hideous Idle Apprentice and the handsome good one, the Rake, the hangmen, the madmen, the thieves, and all the odd people whom he painted, visited him. From this spot Hogarth sallied to see the Rake married to the rich old maid at Marylebone Church, and to the Adam and Eve to see the Guards stagger by to Finchley. From here he set out for his walk to the quiet New River and to Southwark Fair, with all its noise and merry clamour. From Covent Garden brawls, carefully noted by him, and from executions at Tyburn, Hogarth returned to this square, to think over his pictures. It is difficult to imagine that such nightmare figures as Tom Idle and the wretches of Gin Lane did not perpetually haunt the painter, but we suppose he exorcised them by thoughts of the pleasant faces he could paint when he liked. The pretty actress the rustics are staring at in the Southwark Fair, the compassionate girl who saves the Rake from arrest, are specimens of Hogarth in his happier and more innocent moods. His terrible power of satire, his honest hatred of what was evil, enabled Hogarth to brand more rascals than even Pope, yet without the poet's personal malice.

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Mrs. Carter, and Mrs. Hannah More, and three such women were not to be found elsewhere. He was, indeed, never tired of flattering and praising Fanny Burney, who keenly appreciated his homage.

One day a lady made Johnson talk of love. The doctor eulogised the tender passion in tremendous phrases. "We must not despise a passion," he thundered, "which he who never felt never was happy, and he who laughs at never deserves to feel; a passion which has caused the change of empires and the loss of worlds; a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice; a passion, in short, that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny (Burney) here, and she is very cruel." One special night at the Burneys the authoress of Evelina has herself described. She paints Johnson as very illfavoured, tall, stout, and grand in figure, but stooping horribly, his mouth opening and shutting continually, his fingers twirling, his hands twisting, his vast body seesawing backwards and forwards, his whole great person looking as if it were going to roll itself quite voluntarily from his chair to the floor. Presently, after holding his nose quite close to the keys of the piano while a duet was playing, he strode to the book-shelves, and taking down a book began to read, as if entirely oblivious of every one present. At a subsequent party Miss Burney sketches with much humour the despotic way in which Johnson ordered about Boswell, who was always trying to get near him, with a "What do you do there, sir? Go to the table, sir. What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is removed? Čome back to your place, sir." Which makes us shrewdly conjecture that Boswell, after all, must have had a hard life of it.

Saville House (north side, some years ago destroyed by fire) was sacked by the mob during those terrible Gordon Riots, in which Barnaby Rudge figured. The men with the blue ribbons hated the proprietor for his supposed anti-Protestant feeling; their expression of dislike was not of the gentlest kind, and unripping beds and demolishing looking-glasses was their only consolation for not burning Sir George Saville's mansion to the ground.

Leicester House, subsequent to its being pulled down, became a show place for a Museum of Natural History, collected by Sir Ashton Lever. Eventually the museum was put up in a lottery, only eight hundred out of thirty-six thousand tickets being sold. For all this it was won by Mr. Parkinson,

the proprietor of only two tickets, who afterwards exhibited the collection in Blackfriars. It was eventually offered to the British Museum, but was, after all, sold by auction in 1806. The sale lasted four days, and there were four thousand one hundred and ninety-four lots.

The memories of Hogarth, Reynolds, and Newton form a border of immortelles for Leicester-square, that even its general dinginess and disrepair cannot hide. May we live to see the day when the hideous statue in the centre of weeds and refuse is replaced by some real work of art, and flowers take the place of nettles. At present the square is an eyesore and a disgrace to that quarter of London.

now.

WAXWORK.

WAX once played a more important part in the history of every-day life than it does The busy bee made wax and honey centuries ago as at present, neither less nor more cleverly; but there were reasons why those products were more valued in the days of Queen Elizabeth, or of Queen Matilda, than in those of Queen Victoria. When gas-lighting was unknown, when petroleum, paraffine, kerosene, camphine, stearine, and ozokerit had not yet been discovered, society depended on wax for the best lights, and coarse tallow, coarse oil, and torches for common purposes. Then again, mead or honey wine was a favourite beverage in old days, whereas a modern Londoner would scarcely deem it a good substitute for Barclay or Bass: we may approve or disapprove the change of taste, but it certainly leaves us now very little dependent on the bee.

Every one knows what wax is. The bee does not really form or originate this substance. Wax enters into the composition of the pollen of flowers, covers the envelope of the plum and other fruits, and forms a sort of varnish on the surface of many kinds of leaves. Myrtle wax is obtained from the berries of the Myrica cerifica, an American plant; when the berries are boiled in water, the wax exudes, floats on the water, is skimmed off, and remelted. The wax-palm of the Andes, the Ceroxylon Andicola, is a lofty tree yielding a mixture of wax and resin, of which the natives make candles. The wax-tree of Guiana and Brazil yields a resinous juice which is called wax, although it scarcely deserves that name. What we generally know as wax, however, is the product of the bee;

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