at altered, but the scenes are scarcely
changed. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board less in the
streets that Hogarth drew than there were when Addison walked them, but
practically they are the same, and remained the same for a still later
generation. Maps of the time show us how curiously small London was.
There is open country to the north, just beyond Bloomsbury Square;
Sadler's Wells is out in the country, so is St. Pancras, so is
Tottenham Court, so is Marylebone. At the east Stepney lies far away,
a distant hamlet. Beyond Hanover Square to the west stretch fields
again, where Tyburn Road became the road to Oxford. There is very
little of London south of the river.

The best part of the political and social life of this small London was
practically lived in the still smaller area of St. James's, a term
which generally includes rather more than is contained within the
strict limits of St. James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman or
loyal Hanoverian courtier of the year 1714 could revisit to-day the
scenes in which he schemed and quarrelled, he would find himself among
the familiar names of strangely unfamiliar places. St. James's Park
indeed has not altered out of all recognition since the days when Duke
Belair and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall between the
hours of twelve and two, and quoted from Congreve about laughing at the
great world and the small. There were avenues of trees then as now.
Instead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populous with ducks,
which joined a pond called--no one knows why--Rosamund's Pond. This
pond was a favorite trysting-place for happy lovers--"the sylvan
deities and rural {66} powers of the place, sacred and inviolable to
love, often heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes"--and
a convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown themselves in, if we may
credit the _Tatler_. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House on its
right are scarcely changed; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's house
lay between it and the pleasant park where the deer wandered. Farther
off, where Buckingham Palace now is, was Buckingham House. It was then
a stately country mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircular
wings and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, where a
fountain played round a Triton driving his sea-horses. On the roof
stood statues of Mercury, Liberty, Secrecy, and Equity, and across the
front ran an inscription