Amongst those who were buried in the churchyard was (Nov. 15, 1615) the beautiful Mrs. Anne Turner, who was hanged at Tyburn for her part in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and who, "having been the first person to bring yellow starched ruffs into popularity, was condemned by Coke to be hang'd in her yellow Tiffiny ruff and cuffs," the hangman also having his bands and cuffs of the same, "which made many to forbear the use of that horrid starch, till it at last grew generally to be detested and disused." After he had lain in state, the murdered body of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey* was buried in this churchyard in 1679, with an immense public funeral, at the head of which walked seventy-two clergymen of the Church of England, in full canonicals; John Lacy, the dramatist, was buried here in 1681; Sir Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough, in 1688; George Farquhar, the comedywriter and friend of Wilkes, in 1707; and Lord Mohun, killed in duel with the Duke of Hamilton, in 1711. In 1762 Hogarth and Reynolds here followed Roubiliac to his grave, which was near that of Nell Gwynne, who died of an apoplexy in her house in Pall Mall in 1687, being only in her thirty-eighth year. She left an annual sum of money to the bell-ringers which they still enjoy. Archbishop Tenison, who had attended her death-bed, preached her funeral sermon here with great extolling of her virtues,

* Macaulay and others write the name Edmundsbury. But in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey there is a monument to a brother of Sir Edmund, where he is designated as Edmundus Berry Godfrey. The best authority, however, is Sir Edmund's father. The Diary of Thomas Godfrey of Lidd, in Kent, says, "My wife was delivered of another son the 23rd of December, 1621, who was christened the 13th January, being Sunday. His godfather was my cousin John Berrie, his other godfather my faithful loving friend and my neighbour sometime in Greek Street, Mr. Edmund Harrison, the king's embroiderer. They named my son Edmund Berrie, the one's name, and the other's Christian name."

a fact which, repeated to Queen Mary II. by the desire of his enemies to bring him into discredit, only drew from her the answer, "I have heard as much. It is a sign that the unfortunate woman died penitent; for if I can read a man's heart through his looks, had she not made a pious and Christian end, the doctor would never have been induced to speak well of her."

The parish of St. Martin's, now much subdivided, was formerly the largest in London. Burnet speaks of it in 1680 as "the greatest cure in England," and Baxter tells how its population consisted of 40,000 persons more than could find room in the church. The labyrinthine alleys near the church, destroyed in the formation of Trafalgar Square, were known as "the Bermudas;' hence the reference in Ben Jonson—

"Pirates here at land

Have their Bermudas and their Streights in the Strand."
Ep. to E. of Dorset.

In the time of the Commonwealth St. Martin's Lane was a shady lane with a hedge on either side. It was open country as far as the village of St. Giles's. In a proclamation of 1546, Henry VIII. desires to have "the games of Hare, Partridge, Pheasant and Heron," preserved from the Palace of Westminster to St. Giles's in the Fields. In Faithorne's Map of London, 1658, St. Martin's Lane is the western boundary of the town. At one time the Lane was the especial resort of artists, and in one of its entries, St. Peter's Court, was the first house of the Royal Academy. Sir James Thornhill lived in the Lane, at No. 104; Sir J. Reynolds lived opposite May's Buildings, before he moved to Leicester Square; Roubiliac lived in Peter's

Court in 1756; Fuseli at No. 100 in 1784; and the interior of a room in No. 96 is introduced by Hogarth in the "Rake's Progress." * Cecil Court, on the left of St. Martin's Lane, commemorates the old house of the Cecils, created Earls of Salisbury in 1605, and Cranbourne Alley took its name from their second title.

The ambition of London tradesmen might justly feel encouraged by the almost European reputation which was obtained in his own day by Thomas Chippendale, a cabinetmaker of St. Martin's Lane, and which has not diminished, but increased, since his death. He published here, in 1752, that exceedingly rare work, the "Gentleman and Cabinet Makers' Director."

The north of what is now Trafalgar Square is the place where the king's hawks were kept in the time of Richard II. Sir Simon Burley is mentioned as keeper of the falcons "at the meuset near Charing Cross." The site was occupied by the Royal Stables from the time of Henry VIII. to that of George IV., when they gave place to the National Gallery, built 1832-38 from designs of W. Wilkins, R.A. The handsome portico of the Prince Regent's palace of Carlton House has been removed hither, and in spite of the wretched dome above it, if it were approached by steps like those of St. Martin's, it would be effective: as it is, it is miserable. The, till lately, fine view from the

* See Rev. W. G. Humphry's "History of the Parish of St. Martin's in the Fields."

†The word mew was applied by falconers to the moulting of birds: it is the French word mue, derived from the Latin mutare, to change.

The National Gallery is open to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednes. days, and Saturdays: on Thursdays and Fridays it is open to students only. The hours of admission are from 10 to 5 from November to April, and from 10 to 6 in May, June, July, August, and the first fortnight in September. During the last two weeks of September and the whole of October the Gallery is closed.

portico has been utterly ruined by the destruction of Northumberland House.

"This unhappy structure may be said to have everything it ought not to have, and nothing which it ought to have. It possesses windows without glass, a cupola without size, a portico without height, pepperboxes without pepper, and the finest site in Europe without anything to show upon it."-All the Year Round. 1862.

The National Collection of pictures originated in the purchase of Mr. Angerstein's Gallery on the urgent advice of Sir George Beaumont, who added to it his own collection of pictures, in 1824. It has since then been enormously increased by donations and purchases. sum of £10,000 is annually allotted to the purchase of pictures. The contents of the gallery were rehung in

A

1876, when many new rooms were opened, which allow an advantageous arrangement of the pictures, but are full of meretricious taste in their upper decorations, and of tawdry colour injurious to the effect of the precious works of art they contain. The collection (according to the numbers attached to the Rooms) begins with the specimens of the British school; but alas! the curators are only beginning to realise the truth of Ruskin's advice that

"It is of the highest importance that the works of each master should be kept together; no great master can be thoroughly enjoyed but by getting into his humour, and remaining long enough under his influence to understand his whole mode and cast of thought."

It is impossible to notice all the pictures here: they will be found described in the admirable catalogues of Mr. Wornum which are sold at the door. But "in a picture gallery," as Shelley says, "you see three hundred pictures you forget for one you remember," and the object of the following catalogue is to notice only the best specimens of each master deserving attention, or pictures which are important as portraits, as constant popular favourites, or for some story with which they are connected. Such works as may be considered chefs-d'œuvre, even when compared with foreign collections, are marked with an asterisk. When the painters are first mentioned the dates of their birth and death are given.

"A fine gallery of pictures is like a palace of thought."-Hazlitt. "The duration and stability of the fame of the old masters of painting is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every chord of sympathetic approbation.”—Sir J. Reynolds.

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'Painting is an intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing."-Coleridge.