21. _New Tunbridge Wells, at Islington._--This fashionable morning lounge
of the nobility and gentry during the early part of the eighteenth century,
is omitted by Mr. Cunningham. There is a capital view of it in Bickham's
_Musical Entertainer_, 1737:
"These once beautiful tea-gardens (we remember them as such) were
formerly in high repute. In 1733 their Royal Highnesses the Princesses
Amelia and Caroline frequented them in the summer time for the purpose
of drinking the waters. They have furnished a subject for pamphlets,
poems, plays, songs, and medical treatises, by Ned Ward, George Colman
the older, Bickham, Dr. Hugh Smith, &c. Nothing now remains of them but
the original chalybeate spring, which is still preserved in an obscure
nook, amidst a poverty-stricken and squalid rookery of misery and
vice."--George Daniel's _Merrie England in the Olden Time_, vol. i. p.
31.
22. _London Spa_ (from which Spa Fields derives its name) dates as far back
as 1206. In the eighteenth century, it was a celebrated place of amusement.
There is a curious view of "London Spaw" in a rare pamphlet entitled
_May-Day, or, The Original of Garlands_. Printed for J. Roberts, 1720, 8vo.
23. _Spring Gardens._--Cox's Museum is described in the printed catalogue
of 1774, as being in "Spring Gardens." In the same year a small volume was
published containing _A Collection of various Extracts in Prose and Verse
relative to Cox's Museum_.
24. _The Pantheon in Spa Fields._--This place of amusement was opened in
1770 for the sale of tea, coffee, wine, punch, &c. It had an organ, and a
spacious promenade and galleries. In 1780 it was converted into a
lay-chapel by the Countess of Huntingdon, and is now known as _Northampton_
or _Spa Fields Chapel_. Mr. Cunningham speaks of the burying-ground
(originally the garden), but singularly enough omits to notice the chapel.
25. _Baldwin's Gardens_, running between Leather Lane and Gray's Inn Lane,
were, according to a stone which till lately was to have been seen against
a corner house, bearing the arms of Queen Elizabeth, named after _Richard
Baldwin_, one of the royal gardeners, who began building here in 1589.
26. _Rathbone Place._--In an old print (now before me) dated 1722, this
street is called "_Rawbone Place_." The Percy coffee-house is still in
existence.
27. _Surrey Institution, Blackfriars Road._--This building was originally
erected, and for some years appropriated to the _Leverian Museum_. This
magnificent museum of natural history was founded by Sir Ashton Lever, who
died in 1788. It was afterwards disposed of by way of lottery, and won by
Mr. James Parkinson, who transferred it from Leicester Place to the Surrey
side of Blackfriars bridge.
28. _Schomberg House, Pall Mall_, (now, I believe, about to be pulled
down), was once the residence of that celebrated "quack" Dr. Graham. Here,
in 1783, he erected his _Temple of Health_. He afterwards removed to Panton
Street, Haymarket, where he first exhibited his _Earth Bath_. I do not find
any mention of Graham in Mr. Cunningham's book.