el Romilly, whose sad death in 1818 caused universal regret. Pepys
mentions the walks, and observed the fashionable beauties after church
one Sunday in May, 1662. Sir Roger de Coverley is placed on the terrace
by Addison, and both Dryden, Shadwell, and other old dramatists speak of
the gardens. It was at Gray's Inn Gate--the old gate into Portpool
Lane--that Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller and publisher of the
eighteenth century, had his shop.

The district northward of Gray's Inn needs very little comment. Great
St. James Street is picturesque, with eighteenth-century doorways and
carved brackets; the tenants of the houses are nearly all solicitors.
Little St. James Street is insignificant and diversified by mews. In
Strype's plan the rectangle formed by these two streets is marked
"Bowling Green"; in one corner is "the Cockpitt."

Bedford Row is a very quiet, broad thoroughfare lined by
eighteenth-century houses of considerable height and size, which for the
most part still retain their noble staircases and well-proportioned
rooms. Nearly every house is cut up into chambers. Abernethy, the great
surgeon, formerly lived in this street, and Addington, Viscount
Sidmouth, was born here; Bishop Warburton, the learned theologian and
writer of the eighteenth century, and Elizabeth, daughter of Oliver
Cromwell, are also said to have been among the residents. Ralph, the
author of "Publick Buildings," admired it prodigiously, naming it one of
the finest streets in London.

Red Lion Square took its name from a very well-known tavern in Holborn,
one of the largest and most notable of the old inns. There is a modern
successor, a Red Lion public-house, at the corner of Red Lion Street. To
the ancient inn the bodies of the regicides were brought the night
before they were dragged on hurdles to be exposed at Tyburn. This gave
rise to a tradition, which still haunts the spot, that some of these
men, including Cromwell, were buried in the Square, and that dummy
bodies were substituted to undergo the ignominy at Tyburn.

There was for many years in the centre of the Square an obelisk with the
inscription, "Obtusum Obtusioris Ingenii Monumentum Quid me respicis
viator? Vade." And an attempt has been made to read the mysterious
inscription as a Cromwellian epitaph. Pennant says that in his time the
obelisk had recently vanished, which gives the date of destruction about
1780.

The Square was built about 1698, and is curiously laid