_The Quadrant_
The principle of _suum cuique_ is felicitously enforced in that
ostentatious but rather heavy piece of architecture, the Regent
Quadrant, the pillars of which exhibit from time to time different
colours, according to the fancy of the shop-owners to whose premises
respectively they happen to belong. Thus, Mr. Figgins chooses to see
his side of a pillar painted a pale chocolate, while his neighbour
Mrs. Hopkins insists on disguising the other half with a coat of light
cream colour, or haply a delicate shade of Dutch pink; so that the
identity of material which made it so hard for Transfer, in Zeluco,
to distinguish between his metal Venus and Vulcan, is often the only
incident that the two moieties have in common.
_Squares_.
The few squares that existed in London antecedent to 1770, were rather
sheep-walks, paddocks, and kitchen gardens, than any thing else.
Grosvenor Square in particular, fenced round with a rude wooden
railing, which was interrupted by lumpish brick piers at intervals of
every half-dozen yards, partook more of the character of a pond than
a parterre; and as for Hanover Square, it had very much the air of a
sorry cow-yard, where blackguards were to be seen assembled daily,
playing at husselcap up to their ankles in mire. Cavendish Square was
then for the first time dignified with a statue, in the modern uniform
of the Guards, mounted on a charger, _à l'antique_, richly gilt and
burnished; and Red Lion Square, elegantly so called from the sign of
an ale-shop at the corner, presented the anomalous appendages of two
ill-constructed watch-houses at either end, with an ungainly, naked
obelisk in the centre, which, by the by, was understood to be the
site of Oliver Cromwell's re-interment. St. James's Park abounded in
apple-trees, which Pepys mentions having laid under contribution by
stealth, while Charles and his queen were actually walking within
sight of him. The quaint style of this old writer is sometimes not a
little entertaining. He mentions having seen Major-General Harrison
"hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing-Cross, he (Harrison) looking
as cheerful as any man could in that condition." He also gravely
informs us that Sir Henry Vane, when about to be beheaded on Tower
Hill, urgently requested the executioner to take off his head so as
not to hurt a seton which happened to be uncicatrized in his neck!
_Modern Building_.
We are the contemporaries of a street-building generation, but the
grand maxim of the nineteenth century, in their management of masonry,
as in almost every thing else, as far as we can discover, appears to
lie in that troublesome line of Macbeth's soliloquy, ending with,
"'twere well it were done quickly." It is notorious that many of the
leases of new dwelling-houses contain a clause against dancing, lest
the premises should suffer from a mazurka, tremble at a gallopade, or
fall prostrate under the inflictions of "the parson's farewell," or
"the wind that shakes the barley." The system of building, or rather
"running up" a house first, and afterwards providing it with a false
exterior, meant to deceive the eye with the semblance of curved stone,
is in itself an absolute abomination. Besides, Greek architecture, so
magnificent when on a large scale, becomes perfectly ridiculous when
applied to a private street-mansion, or a haberdasher's warehouse. St.
Paul's Church, Covent-Garden, is an instance of the unhappy effect
produced by a combination of a similar kind; great in all its parts,
with its original littleness, it very nearly approximates to the
character of a barn. Inigo Jones doubtless desired to erect an edifice
of stately Roman aspect, but he was cramped in his design,
and, therefore, only aspired to make a first-rate barn; so far
unquestionably the great architect has succeeded. Then looking to
those details of London architecture, which appear more peculiarly
connected with the dignity of the nation, what can we say of it,
but that the King of Great Britain is worse lodged than the chief
magistrate of Claris or Zug, while the debates of the most powerful
assembly in the world are carried on in a building, (or, a return to
Westminster Hall,) which will bear no comparison with the Stadthouse
at Amsterdam! The city, however, as a whole, presents a combination of
magnitude and grandeur, which we should in vain look for elsewhere,
although with all its immensity it has not yet realized the quaint
prediction of James the First,--that London would shortly be England,
and England would be London.
_Morning_.
The metropolis presents certain features of peculiar interest just at
that unpopular dreamy hour when stars "begin to pale their ineffectual
fires," and the drowsy twilight of the doubtful day brightens apace
into the fulness of morning, "blushing like an Eastern bride." Then it
is that the extremes of society first meet under circumstances
well calculated to indicate the moral width between their several
conditions. The gilded chariot bowls along from square to square with
its delicate patrimonial possessor, bearing him homeward in celerity
and silence, worn with lassitude, and heated with wine quaffed at his
third rout, after having deserted the oft-seen ballet, or withdrawn in
pettish disgust at the utterance of a false harmony in the opera. A
cabriolet hurries past him still more rapidly, bearing a fashionable
physician, on the fret at having been summoned prematurely from the
comforts of a second sleep in a voluptuous chamber, on an experimental
visit to
"Raise the weak head, and stay the parting sigh,
Or with new life relume the swimming eye."