LOND ONIANA.*
"HE that is tired of London is tired of life," says Dr. Johnson; and whether we agree with his assertion or not, the absorbing interest in all that relates directly or indirectly to the "great wen," is not to be disputed. Every man who lives within the metropolitan circle has his own London, and forms probably a conception of the whole from his knowledge of a fraction. Lord Bacon recommends a traveller to chatge his lodging from one part of a town to another, "which is a great adamant of ac- quaintance ;" but the stranger who would gain any conception of the variety and extent of London might reside in twenty different positions, and could afterwards, without difficulty, select twenty more. Even then there would be fresh ground to tra- verse, memorials and things of fame of which he must be content to be ignorant. In London, there is as much food for the student of the past as for the man who is content to enjoy the present, and it would be difficult to hit upon any pursuit, however remote or bizarre, which does not interest and occupy some of our London citizens. It is natural and reasonable that such a subject should form a fruitful theme for our periodical literature, and readers who like to glance rapidly from topic to topic, or whose aim in taking up a magazine is to spend a brief quarter of an hour pleasantly, will find an agreeable com- panion in Mr. Walford. The short and slightly-written papers which form Londoniana "have no sequence or connection with each other, each one being complete in itself; their point of unity being simply this,—that they treat of persons, places, or things now or heretofore connected with the great metropolis." Such a plan, if plan it may be called, leaves the author free to write on any topic that is in any sense associated with London ; but it must be allowed that Mr. Walford does not often abuse his privilege. He kdips near to London throughout, and might have wandered farther than he has done, without losing sight of St. Paul's. His papers, forty-one in number, are in many cases of the slightest texture, and the reader will be surprised. to find productions so obviously ephemeral preserved within the covers of a volume. If, however, the book lacks solidity, it can boast of variety, and there is not one of the subjects treated from which it may not be possible to glean some amusement.
As Londoniana cannot be said to have either begin- ning or end, and the reviewer is at liberty to open the volumes where he will, we turn to an essay of more substantial texture than many, called, "A Summer Day in Hyde Park." Cromwell, whose naughty doings, apocryphal or otherwise, are associated with half the damaged edifices in England, may have had nothing to do with the sale of Hyde 4ordonfana, By Edward Walford, M.A. 2 Tole. London : Hand k Blackom Park, in 1652. Sold, however, it was, the 621 acres which it then contained realising upwards of £17,000. At the Restora- tion the Park reverted to the King, and it was stocked with deer and walled round. Very varied scenes have been enacted in Hyde Park. There fine ladies and gentlemen would•meet at horse-races, and Mr. Walford observes that even Oliver, Puritan though he was, had his stud of racers ; there all sorts of sights and amusements were to be had for money ; and there, such is the mingled yarn of life, a vast number of duels were fought by "persons of quality," one of the most noticeable of these duels being that between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, in 1712. "They fought with swords, and with such ferocity that Mohnn was killed on the spot, and the Duke expired before he could be conveyed to the keeper's house." There, too, military criminals were shot or flogged. not always for desperate offences, since we read of two soldiers who, on August 6th, 1716, "were flogged almost to death in Hyde Park, and turned out of the Service with every mark of infamy and disgrace, for having worn oak-boughs in their hats on Oak-Apple Day." Hyde Park, as Mr. Walford reminds us, has been frequently used for military encampments and reviews, and it would be well if such uses were its only contributions to the exigencies of war. One great and irretrievable injury, however, was inflicted on the Park about the end of the last century Walnut-tree Walk," writes Mr. Walford, "which extended nearly the whole length of the park from Hyde Park Corner towards Cum- berland Gate, consisted of two rows of magnificent walnut-trees, shad- ing a broad gravel-walk near Grosvenor Gate ; these trees formed a circle, the area of which will be readily imagined, when the reader is informed that the reservoir of the Chelsea Waterworks, which was placed in the centre of this circle, stood ninety feet from the nearest tree. This splendid grove was consigned to the axe during the war against Napoleon about the end of the last century, the wood being required by Government, to be used in the manufacture of stooks for soldiers' muskets."
In a, allapter on Temple Bar, the writer shows how many
attempts were made to have the famous barrier taken away before the final sentence was pronounced. A bar separating London from Westminster has stood on the site of Temple Bar from time immemorial ; but Mr. Walford observes that no allu- sion to the Bar as a "gate" is to be found before the sixteenth cen- tury. The old Bar was pulled down after the Fire of London, and the structure so familiar to all Londoners was completed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672. A hundred years later the cry for its destruction was raised, but in 1789 the Bar seems to have had a narrow escape, for the motion of an Alderman that it should. be taken down was lost by a majority of one.
Mr. Walford does not expend regret on the removal of this famous relic, which is associated with so much that is terrible in English history, and, we may add, with so much that is quaint and. grotesque. Another historic edifice has disap- peared with Northumberland House, and it is, perhaps, char- acteristic of the ago that the building which now first strikes a spectator while standing under the portico of the National Gallery is a monster hotel. Mr. Walford's account of the House is drawn from familiar sources. The gossip associated with the building, and with its contents and inmates, is pleasantly recorded, and may have satisfied the curiosity of magazine- readers, but the chapter contains nothing which cannot be readily met with elsewhere. Indeed, as we pass from paper to paper, we are constrained to wonder more and more that the clever writer of these superficial sketches should have deemed them worthy of preservation in a permanent form.
Short and by no means remarkable reviews of Mr. Timbs's
Curiosities of London, of Dean Milman'e Annals of S. Paul's Cathedral, and of the Life of Lord Mitecrallay, did all the service
for which they are fitted on their first appearance, in magazines or newspapers ; and such topics as the Plague in London and the Great Fire, that swept away the pestilence, may be said to have been worn threadbare by previous writers. On the last- mentioned topic, indeed, a few facts of comparative novelty are inserted, but for these the author would seem to have been indebted to a relative. Mr. Walford's chatty pages, however, are admirably fitted for idle reading. He is never dull, he demands nothing from his readers, and he gives them a good deal of which they may probably be ignorant. As a con- tribution to literature, the book is without value. No one, we
imagine, would ever care to glance a second time at any paper contained in it ; but we may add, to the credit of the author
that any reader with leisure to be idle may find amusement of an agreeable sort in these smartly written pages.
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