r sketched
the prim old maid going to early service. We shall look in at the
Tavistock to see Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller at work at
portraits of beauties of the Carolean and Jacobean Courts; remembering
that in the same rooms Sir James Thornhill afterwards painted, and poor
Richard Wilson produced those fine landscapes which so few had the taste
to buy. The old hustings deserve a word, and we shall have to record the
lamentable murder of Miss Ray by her lover, at the north-east angle of
the square. The neighbourhood of Covent Garden, too, is rife with
stories of great actors and painters, and nearly every house furnishes
its quota of anecdote.

The history of Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres supplies us with
endless anecdotes of actors, and with humorous and pathetic narratives
that embrace the whole region both of tragedy and comedy. Quin's jokes,
Garrick's weaknesses, the celebrated O.P. riots, contrast with the
miserable end of some popular favourites and the caprices of genius. The
oddities of Munden, the humour of Liston, only serve to render the gloom
of Kean's downfall more terrible, and to show the wreck and ruin of many
unhappy men, equally wilful though less gifted. There is a perennial
charm about theatrical stories, and the history of these theatres must
be illustrated by many a sketch of the loves and rivalries of actors,
their fantastic tricks, their practical jokes, their gay progress to
success or ruin. Changes of popular taste are marked by the change of
character in the pieces that have been performed in various ages; and
the history of the two theatres will include various illustrative
sketches of dramatic writers, as well as actors. There was a vast
interval in literature between the tragedies of Addison and Murphey and
the comedies of Holcroft, O'Keefe, and Morton; the descent to modern
melodrama and burlesque must be traced through various gradations, and
the reasons shown for the many modifications both classes of
entertainments have undergone.

Westminster, from the night St. Peter came over from Lambeth in the
fisherman's boat, and chose a site for the Abbey in the midst of Thorney
Island, to the present day, has been a spot where the pilgrim to
historic shrines loves to linger. Need we remind our readers that Edward
the Confessor built the Abbey, or that William the Conqueror was crowned
here, the ceremony ending in tumult and blood? How vast the store of
facts from which we