The Society of Arts have put up one of their medallions to mark the house. St. James's Theatre was built by Beazley for Braham, the great tenor, and was opened in December, 1835. It has never been very successful. Kenney told Alfred Bunn that he had been in the green-room one night, and on hearing Braham say he was proud of his pit, had gone round and counted it, when he found that there were seventeen persons present. French plays have usually been acted here, and it was the scene of the triumphs of Mdlle. Rachel; within the last year or so crowded houses have witnessed the acting of Ravel and Schneider.

Willis's Rooms are well known as the scene of numerous grand balls. Here, for many years, were held the select assemblies known as "Almack's." The rooms were planned by Robert Mylne, and were opened in February, 1765. The original scheme consisted of a ten-guinea subscription, for which in return a ball and supper were given once a week for twelve weeks. On the opening night the Duke of Cumberland was present, but the general attendance was not large. The ceilings were dripping with wet, owing to the hurry with which the building had been finished; but to give the public confidence, Almack, the proprietor, absurdly advertised that hot bricks and boiling water had been used in the building. In March, 1765, Gilly Williams wrote to Selwyn :-" Our female Almack's flourishes beyond description. . . . Almack's Scotch face in a bag wig, waiting at supper, would divert you, as would his lady in sack, making tea and curtseying to the duchesses." Five years after (on May 6, 1770,) Walpole tells George Montagu,—“There is a new institution that begins to make, and if it proceeds, will make a considerable noise. It is a club of both sexes, to be erected at Almack's, on the model of that of the men at White's. Mrs. Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs. Meynel, Lady Molyneux, Miss Pelham, and Miss Loyd are the foundresses. I am ashamed to say I am of so young and fashionable a society." The Hon. Mrs. Boscawen, in a letter to Mrs. Delany, gives a description of this female club, the numbers of which were to extend to

two hundred.

The first fourteen members settled the rules; one of these was, that the ladies should nominate and choose the men, and the men the ladies. 34

Almack's niece married Willis, who succeeded to the business on the retirement of Almack. The present proprietor, Mr. Thomas Willis, is his grandson.

Bury Street (or Berry Street as it ought to be spelt) was built about the year 1672, and called after a Mr. Berry, the landlord of most of the houses, who died in 1735, over one hundred years old. Sir Richard Steele lived from 1707 to 1710 in a house since pulled down. In a letter to Mrs. Scurlock, before his marriage to her, he writes, "I believe it would not be amiss if some time this afternoon you took a coach or chair and went to see a house next door to Lady Berkeley's towards St. James's Street, which is to let." A few days after Steele wrote to his mother-in-law to tell her that he had taken the house and hoped she would live with him and his wife. In his various notes to his wife he gives the direction differently. "At her house 3rd door from Germain Street, left hand in Berry Street." "Third door right hand in Berry Street." "At her house the last house but two on the left hand Berry Street, St. James's." A Mrs. Vanderput was Steele's landlady, and she was naturally anxious for the arrears of rent, which the author was never very well able to pay.

Dean Swift took a lodging in Bury Street in 1710. “I have the first floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a week, plaguy dear." In 1726 he was again in lodgings in this street. Daniel O'Connell lived at No. 19 in 1826, and the poet Moore lodged at No. 33 in his visits to London.

Duke Street, famous as the first street in which a pavement was laid down for walkers, leads us back into Piccadilly, from which place we originally started. Sir Carr Scrope, on whom Rochester wrote some scurrilous lines, lived at the north end of the east side from 1679 to 1683. Edmund "Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany, 2nd Series, vol. i. p. 261.

Burke was at No. 6 in 1793, and at No. 25 in the following year. The poet Campbell lived between the years 1830 and 1840 at the Sussex Chambers in this street.

On the east side there is a yard formerly occupied by one house with a handsome garden. This was inhabited by the Duke of Shrewsbury at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

With our return to Piccadilly through Duke Street our rambles in the Court District of London are ended.

Imperfect and selective as are the collections here gathered together, I hope they may not be considered an inadequate summary of the interesting memorials and events of the past, which cluster so thickly around the houses and streets of this part of town; or as an unworthy chapter in the history of that London, so rich in its varied associations, which Cowper praises thus:

"Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd

The fairest capital of all the world.