rd of St. Clement's Danes. The Strand was broad and fair enough
to view as far as the New Exchange; but in lieu of that magnificent
structure which Sir William Chambers, the Swedish architect, has built
for Government offices, and where the Royal Academy of Arts and the
Learned Societies have their apartments (when I first came to town there
was no Royal Academy at all, only a Mean School for painting from the
Life and drawing from Bustos in St. Martin's Lane; the Royal Society
held their sittings in a court off Fleet Street; the College of
Physicians was chock-a-block among the butchers in Warwick Lane, Newgate
Market, where it still, to the scandal of Science, remains; and
Surgeon's Hall, where malefactors were anatomised after execution--a
Sanguinary but Salutary custom--was in the Old Bailey, over against the
leads of the Sessions House)--in place, then, of what we now call
Somerset House, albeit it has lost all connexion with the proud Duke of
that name, there stood the Old Palace of the Queens of England, a
remarkable tumbledown barn of a place, hideous in its ugliness towards
the Strand, but having some stately edifices at the back, built by that
Famous Engineer, Mr. Inigo Jones. Here sometimes Queens were lodged, and
sometimes Embassadors--'twas the Venetian Envoy, I think, that had his
rooms in Somerset House when I first knew it,--and sometimes Masquerades
were given. A company of Soldiers was kept on guard in the precincts,
not so much for ornament as for use, for they had hard work every night
in the week in quelling the pottle-pot brawls and brabbling among the
Rogues, Thieves, Besognosos, Beggars, Ribbibes, Bidstands, and
Clapper-dudgeons, male and female, who infested the outskirts of the Old
Palace, or had Impudently Squatted within its very walls, and had made
of the Place a very Alsatia, now that Scamp's Paradise in Whitefriars
had been put down by Act of Parliament. Here they burrowed like so many
Grice, till the shoulder-tapping Pilchers of the Compter came a
badger-drawing with their bludgeons. 'Twas a perfect chaos of
clap-dishes, skeldering, cranion-legged Impostors, fittous cripples, and
gambling bullies, for ever roaring over Post and Pair, or Dust Point, or
throwing their Highmen, or barbing gold, or yelling profane songs and
catches. A man was killed here about every other day in some Callet and
Cockoloch squabble, and there was a broil about twice in every hour. Of
course there were Patricos he