men who played so beautifully with the marrow-bones and cleavers influenced? Were the Liberty Boys of Newport Market influenced? Were the residents of Peter Street, Orchard Street, the Almonry influenced? They were not voters. The voting qualification of 1784 was the burgage holding, the tenant who paid scot and lot, and the potwaller. Did the presence of the sailors assist the Court party? Did the valiant chairman prove of any real help to Fox? I think not. All these things amused the mob: none of these things moyed the elector. The one thing that damaged Fox was his late coalition with Lord North, the man most heartily and thoroughly detested in all the length and breadth of the country-the man universally regarded as the chief cause of the national disasters and humiliations. And I think that what hurt Sir Cecil Wray most was the marching of the three hundred Guards in a body to vote as they were ordered, and the interference of the Court in commanding every person connected with the Household to vote against Fox. And for my own part, had I been able to vote at that election, Fox should have had a plumper from me if only to win one of the Duchess's smiles; and if any other reason were wanting. I should have voted for Fox because, of all the men of that most disagreeable period, Fox, to my mind, with all his faults, stands out as the bravest, the most genial, and the most patriotic.

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CHAPTER X

THE STREETS AND THE PEOPLE

AFTER the Palace and the Monastery, the City of Refuge, the Sign of the Red Pale, and the Borough at Electiontime, we turn to the City streets and the people.

Now, if we include that part of the City lying west and north of Charing Cross and Pall Mall, the part which has been built and occupied since the seventeenth century, we are face to face with nothing less than the history of the British aristocracy during the last two centuries. This history has never been written; it is a work which cannot even be touched upon in these pages to consider any part of it in a single chapter would be absurd. It belongs, like the history of the House of Commons, to the City of Westminster because most of its events took place, and most of the people concerned lived, within the limits of that City. Also, like the House of Commons, the quarter where the aristocracy have had their town houses for two hundred years belongs to the national history, and must be treated independently of the City.

The British aristocracy was never so much a Caste apart as during the hundred and fifty years ending about the middle of this century. Their younger sons had quite abandoned the ancient practice of entering the City and going into trade: every kind of money-making, except the collection of rents from land, had become unworthy of a gentleman. No one could buy or sell and continue to call himself a gentleman. There was a noble Caste and a trading

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Caste, quite separate and apart. The noble Caste possessed everything worth having: the whole of the land was theirs; all the great offices of state, all the lesser offices worth having, were theirs; the commands in the army and the navy were theirs-not only the command of armies and fleets, but also of regiments and men-o'-war; the rich preferments of the Church,-the deaneries, canonries and bishoprics, were theirs; the House of Commons belonged to them (even the popular or radical members belonged to the Caste in the election which was treated in the last chapter, Fox, the Friend of Liberty, the Chosen of the Independent Electors, belonged to the Caste as much as his opponents, Lord Hood and Sir Cecil Wray). Everything was theirs, except the right to trade: they must not trade. To be a banker was to be in trade; the richest merchant was a tradesman as much as the grocer who sold sugar and treacle.

The materials for this history are abundant: there are memoirs, letters, biographies, autobiographies, recollections, in profusion. The life of the Caste during this period of a hundred and fifty years can be fully written. The historian, if we were able to exercise the art of selection, would present a series of highly dramatic chapters: there would be found in them love, jealousy and intrigue; there would be ambition and cabal; there would be back-stairs interest; there would be Court gossip and scandal and whisperings; there would be gaming, racing, coursing, prizefighting, drinking; there would be young Mohocks and old profligates; there would be ruined rakes and splendid adventurers,-in a word, there would be the whole life of pleasure and the whole life of ambition. It would be, worthily treated, a noble work.

This Caste, which enjoyed all the fruits of the earth, for which the rest of the nation toiled with the pious contentment enjoined by the Church, created for its own separate use a

society which was at the same time free and unrestrained, yet courtly and stately. No one not born and bred in the Caste could attain its manners; if an outsider by any accident found himself in this circle he thought he had got into the wrong paradise, and asked leave to exchange. Again, among the Caste, which, with a few brilliant exceptions, was without learning and without taste, were found all the patrons of art, poetry and Belles Lettres. Still more remarkable, while the Caste had no religion, it owned the patronage of all the best livings in the Church. And, while it enjoyed an immunity never before claimed by any class of men from morality, principle, and self-restraint, the Caste was the encouraging and fostering patron of every useful and admirable virtue, such as thrift, fidelity, temperance, industry,

Bigelow

perseverance, frugality and contentment. A wonderful history indeed -and all of it connected with Westminster !

Of course another side presents

itself: the Caste was brave- its courage was undoubted ; it was never without ability of the very highest kind, though a great deal of its ability was allowed to lie waste for want of stimulus it was proud; if the occasion had arrived-it was very near arriving-the Caste would have faced the mob as dauntlessly as its cousin in France, whom the mob might kill, but could neither terrify nor degrade.

Again, there is the literary side. With the exception of a few names belonging to Fleet Street and a few belonging to Grub Street, most of our literary history belongs to the quarter lying west of Temple Bar-in other words, to Westminster. One might go from street to street pointing out the residence of Byron here and of Moore there, of Swift, of Pope, of Addison. And in this way one could compile a chapter as interesting as a catalogue.

In the same way, the connection of street and noble residents might be carefully noted down, with the same result. This, indeed, has been already done by Jesse. If you read one or two of his chapters, taken almost at random, you will presently feel that your wits are wandering. For instance, here is a passage concerning one of the least distinguished streets in Westminster :

'In Cannon Row stood the magnificent residence of Anne Stanhope, the scorned and turbulent wife of the great Protector, Duke of Somerset. Here, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was the inn or palace of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby. Close by was the mansion of Henry, second Earl of Lincoln, who sat in judgment on Mary Queen of Scots, and who was one of the peers deputed by Queen Elizabeth to arrest the Earl of Essex in his house. Here, in the reign of James I., the Sackvilles, Earls of Dorset, had their town residence; and here, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, was the mansion of the great family of the Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland.'

How much, gentle reader, are you likely to remember of