LEICESTER SQUARE.* THE recent rescue of Leicester Square from its

prolonged dis- reputable condition, its embellishment in a style with which— except that we do not think a statue of Shakespeare is an appro- priate decoration for a place with which Shakespeare had nothing whatever to do—we have no fault to find, and which will, we hope, be imitated in other• quarters of big and ugly London, fur- nishes a fair pretext for a book d'occasion. Mr. Tom Taylor is a proper person to write such a book; he knows a good deal about - the important personages in history, in art, and in science who dwelt in their respective times in Leicester Square ; he has the power of writing so as to interest his readers ; and one may open his book without suspecting that it is a puff for Mr. Albert Grant—not, indeed, that there has been much exaggerated expres- sion about that gentleman's really munificent act in the purchase and presentation to London of the gigantic back-yard and dust- heap, which was for so long a disgrace to the city and a boon to the comic papers ; while his offer to lay out the central enclosure of Soho Square, at a cost of £7,000, and to endow it with an annual income of £150, has passed almost without comment. There are certain writers of the neat and appropriate order who might have taken up the Leicester-Square topic after a fashion which would have rendered it supremely distasteful, and we are very glad that Mr. Tom Taylor has got the start of them. There are some evidences of baste in the compilation of the volume, as if the author were too conscious of the start ; but, on the whole, it is well executed and thoroughly readable, and Mr. Tom Taylor has done wisely in disdain- ing the vagabond-refugee element which has made so much of the history of Leicester Square in. the present century, and concluding his historical chronicle with the funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He begins it "Before the Houses," with a sketch of London, according to the bird's-eye view, known as Aggas's " Civitas Londinum," published in 1603, which is the earliest map which has come down to us. A fac-simile of the Leicester-Fields portion of this map, printed, probably for greater realism, but mistakenly, on paper of a dingy-brown hue, accompanies the book, and is followed by a fac-simile of Faithorne's map of the same district, published fifty-five years later ; they are curiously-suggestive pictures, and Mr. Tom Taylor says very truly of the first,—"There is so much in the map which brings Shakespeare to mind, that one is surprised not to find the Globe and the Red Bull, the Fortune and the Curtain playhouses as conspicuous as the Bull and Bear Gardens." In Aggas's map, all the country north of Charing

• Leicester Square: its Associations and its Worthies. By Tom Taylor. With a Sketch of Hunter's Scientific Character and Works, by Richard Owen, F.S.S.,

D.C.L., London: Bickers and Son.

Cross and west of Chancery Lane is still entirely devoted to country life and uses, and the Hospital for Lepers, dedicated to St. Gfles, stood in the fields where now stands Leicester Square. The history of the Square begins with Leicester House, which was built between 1622 and 1636, by Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, whose voluminous correspondence, preserved among the "Sidney Papers," is a history, in little, of his time, and of whose song, Philip and Algernon Sidney, Leicester Fields hold many memories. There is a good sketch of the house of the Sidneys—the first on the Fields—at the opening of the Revolutionary struggle,. when Mi. Tom Taylor peoples it with dramatis personm of the period, guests suitable to the different characters of the Sidney family party; with the Intransigentes of the Revolution, as the asso- ciates of Algernon ; with its more soldierly or politic, but less advanced and uncompromising adherents, for the comrades of Lord Lisle. Through all the terrible time that followed, Leices- ter House and Penshurst (whither two of King Charles's children -were sent), were in perpetual tumult ; and the history of the Sidneys is fall of romantic interest, public and private. Mr. 'Toin Taylor sketches it briefly, but lucidly ; he has little sym- pathy with Algernon, but much with the poor old Earl, whose return to Leicester House, in his mournful solitude, after the Restoration, his brief interview with Charles II., and his final retirement to Penshurst, he relates in one of the best-written among the historical passages of the book. In 1662, after Leices- ter House had been let to sundry ambassadors, Lord Craven hired it from Lord Leicester for the use of the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, who is sometimes called "The Snow Queen" and sometimes "Queen of Hearts," and who lived and died there, attended by the unswerving devotion of her prevx chevalier, whose devotion to the daughter of King James began in his boyhood, and lasted to the end of his long life, for he survived his beloved lady many years.

As the history of Leicester House becomes more modern, it grows crowded with more familiar names and images, and a flavour of crime attaches to it after the cheerful days of the clever Countess of Sunderland, the decorous John Evelyn, and Mr. Samuel Pepys, at the end of' the seventeenth century, when a populous quarter had sprung up about it, and the motley char- acter of the inhabitants of the Fields was already established. The story of "Tom of Ten Thousand,"—as the worthless Mr. Thymic whom Count Kthaigsmarck killed, not much to anybody's regret, was called,—with the Monmouth episode, is very well told ; also that of Lady Ogle and "the proud Deke of Somerset,"—who must have been an egregious- ass —and the creation of the Earldom of Northumberland for their third son. Between the Restoration and the Revolution, Castle Street, Newport Street, Cranbourne Alley, and Bear Lane Iliad been- built, and the Square, surrounded by houses, had assumed its present dimensions. Its centre was railed round, and regarded as handy for duels. There Lord Warwick and Lord Mohan fought in 1699, and there was fought, in 1712, the duel which Thackeray has rendered doubly celebrated, in which the same infamous Lord Mohnn and the Duke of Hamilton both fell. In 1698- Peter the Great came to England. We do not remember over to have read a more graphic description of this eccentric savage than Mr. Tom Taylor's. A grand fête was given to the Czar. of Muscovy at Leicester House by Lord Carmarthen. Next am the list of royal guests comes Prince Eugene, the "great cap- tain," an ugly, yellow, wizened, humpy little man, with an intense abhorrence of peace, but to whom no portion of the discredit which attached to Marlborough at this time (1712) adhered. Mr. Tom Taylor records how Prince Eugene and Dean Swift were to have met, and have "a sober meal" together, but the meeting never took place. Swift was at his zenith of literary production and political influence in 1718, "when," says the author, "Leicester Yields may be proud of the chance which sent him thither for lodgings, in the year of his most incessant and jubilant activity."

With the literary and artistic " illustrations " of the " Fields " the .author's sympathies are strongest ; he wanders away into a most happy and laudable irrelevancy, apropos of Sir Isaac Newton, and afterwards of Hogarth. He is evidently vexed by the indifference or the ignorance of Londoners concerning Newton, whom he

'describes as "the highest of all human intelligences until now," ior, he says,—

" Now that the connection of Newton with Leicester Fields has been ,commemorated by his bust, the fact of his having spent the last sixteen years of his life in a house adjacent to the Square has a better chance of being borne in mind by those who pass through the now dingy purlieus .of St. Martin's Street. In 1710 the region was good enough for envoys and high official personages. And to this house not only did Newton .draw all that London contained of residents or visitors most distill- gnished for knowledge or love of science, but thither his charmi-ng„ niece, Catherine Barton, attracted all the famous wits of the age of Anne and the first George—dull Sovereigns of a brilliant tune—and the women whom their admiration has immortalised."

Then comes a long list of the great names of the time, after which the author rambles into a delightful chapter about Newton and. his niece, ranging far from Leicester Square, but returning to tell us how, later on, Dr. Burney and "Fanny" lived in the "Fields," and Evelina was written in St. Martin's Street. In- a chapter headed "The Pouting-place of Princes," we find &-

merciful and softened version of the coarse, vulgar, inhuman, detestable history of the family relations between George I. and his son and successor, and those between George H. and "Sheep.- faced Frederick" (who died Prince of Wales) at Leicester House, between which and Savik House—whose final destruction by fire the present Prince of Wales witnessed in 1865, when the house of his ancestors had been turned into a music-hall and a restau- rant—a communication had been made. The story of the Royal Family is a sorry one, disgusting and contemptible, a blot upon the great memories of Leicester Square. Mr. Tom Taylor does well to tell it briefly ; we are overdone with "memoirs" of a.

period which oblivion best befits. He does not quote the well- known epitaph on Frederick, Prince of Wales, and he disputes the authenticity of the generally received account of the conduct of the King on the occasion of his son's death. There is an amusing chapter on "The Horse and its Rider." It is difficult to picture the familiar image of opprobrium and decay as the object of a city's enthusiasm, and firmly believed by country

populations to be made of solid gold. Then we come, with a sense of relief, after the dull and sullen wickedness of the royal

chronicle, to the days when "the life of him who best deserves the title of the founder of the English school of painting had Leicester Fields for its centre." William Hogarth served his apprenticeship probably between 1712 and 1719 to Ellis Gamble, silversmith, in Cranbourne Alley ; and in 1733, the same year in which his old master became bankrupt, set himself up under the sign of the "Golden Head," made of pieces of cork, cut, glued together, and gilded by Hogarth himself, in the last house bu two on the east side, afterwards the northern half of the Sab- lonniere Hotel, and now replaced by the Tenison School.

This is a delightful section of the book, full of life, spirit,

appreciative criticism, and characteristic anecdotes; and the author does not confine himself to Leicester Fields, but strays away with Hogarth to Chiswick, to the great painter's-quiet life there ; to the hurried journey back to, and the quick death, at the old house in the Fields. Sir Joshua Reynolds interests us much less,—his smooth, smiling prosperity rounds him off too

much from view ; but that is a pleasant chapter which tells of the popular painter's life at No. 47, now Puttick and Simpson's

Book Auction Rooms, and retaining no traces of it courtly and famous occupant, daring whose term of occupancy the Fields witnessed the horrors of the " Gordon " or " No-Popery " riots, when Savile House was gutted, and Burke made one of the party of volunteers who garrisoned the ruins.

After Sir Joshua's time, Mr. Owen takes up the story with a deeply interesting account of Dr. Hunter, his scientific works, and his Museum; and then Mr. Tom Taylor tells us of other

famous surgeons in the Square, of Cruikshank and Charles Bell, He concludes his work with an amusing list of all the " Shows " which have enlivened the historic precinct, from Sir Ashton Lever's " Holophusikon," which claimed to embrace the whole of nature, to Wyld's Great Globe, a hideous structure, which we can all remember, and whose removal preceded the era of desolation now happily at an end.