Paddington.]

ferate even louder than the boys; and, not unfrequently, a bold Freethinker stood up in opposition to them to propagate his reckless creed."

In 1865 the ground was at last enclosed and ornamentally laid out, and in the summer of the next year it was thrown open to the public. How great the improvement to the neighbourhood can be known only to those who saw it in the days of its degradation. The fine old houses skirting the further side of the Green put on a renovated appearance, and rents rose immediately; and now, instead of squalor and unruliness, decently-dressed people and children daily enjoy the grassy lawns, and flower-beds, and seats beside the gravel paths, and order and neatness reign there. The poor, too, are not excluded.

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Charlotte and her governess, the Duchess of Northumberland, I think. They were both in plain morning dress, and evidently sought to avoid notice. The princess, tall and stout for her age (she was then eleven), wore a white muslin frock, and a straw bonnet, crossed by a plain white satin riband. The waist of the frock, according to the ugly fashion of the time, was placed high up under her arms, much as may be seen in her more mature portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Her forehead was broad and rather high, her face full, and her nose prominent, but not disagreeably so. She might have been styled pleasing, but she had no pretensions to beauty; and she was more womanly than is usual with girls of the same age. She frequently asked questions of her elder companion, and the tones of her voice were soft and musical. Once, apparently

On Paddington Green was for some years the residence of Thomas Uwins, R.A., and here he painted his picture of "The Little Girl in the Brigand's Hat," so well known to us by the engraver's art. Here, too, was the studio of Wyatt, in which was moulded the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, so long at Hyde Park Corner. The Rev. J. Richardson records, in his amusing "Recollections," the fact that twelve gentlemen sat down to a repast in the interior of the horse, like the Greeks in the belly of the Trojan horse, in imitation of Virgil's Æneid.

Literature and art have been represented among the inhabitants of this neighbourhood. Robert Browning has lived for some time in Warwick Crescent; and the venerable Chevalier de Chatelain, who has done useful work in translating various poems, and also Shakespeare's works, into French, resides next door to him, at Castelnau Lodge. At one time Mr. Babbage was resident here; and close by the canal lived the great lineengraver, Henry Robinson. George Colman, too, died here; he was buried, as already mentioned, at Kensington.* The Princess Charlotte was an occasional visitor at Dudley House, Paddington Green. The fields about there were pleasant places for a country ramble, even at the beginning of the present century. The author of the "Old City" writes:-"On a September day in 1807, I was walking on the banks of the Grand Junction Canal, at Paddington, and then quite in the country, when a plain private carriage drew up. Two ladies, one very young, and the other of middle age, got out, and commenced promenading. It was the Princess

See ante, p. 129.

into a run, but the duchess checked her by a look, and the decorous step was resumed. For a few minutes she escaped notice, but the instant that her rank was known, importunate promenaders began to throng about, and soon obliged her and the duchess to beat a retreat to the carriage." It is satisfactory to find that the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation were quite as ill-mannered and vulgar as the Englishmen and Englishwomen who "mobbed" Queen Adelaide when she paid a visit to the palm-house at Kew, or intruded their gaze upon Queen Victoria at Brighton, on her accession to the throne, and so drove her from the place. Dudley House is kept in remembrance by the "Dudley Arms" Tavern and Dudley Grove, in the Harrow Road.

At the close of the last century, Mrs. Hutchins and Mr. Samuel Pepys Cockerell were the two principal residents in Westbourne Green; and Paddington Green boasted John Chamberlain and John Symonds amongst its inhabitants.

Paddington House is described, at the commencement of the present century, as a handsome brick edifice, on the east side of the Green." It is said to have been built by a certain Mr. Dennis Chirac, who, having made a fortune as jeweller to Queen Anne, chose late in life to retire here into the country. Having long since been converted into shops, it was pulled down in 1876.

Hone, in his "Every-Day Book," mentions Paddington as one of the suburbs of London which formerly were enlivened by the "Jack in the Green on May Day." "The last specimens of the Jacks in the Green' that I remember," he writes, in 1827, "were at the Paddington May-dance, near the Yorkshire Stingo,' about twenty years ago, whence, as I heard, they diverged to Bayswater,

"ON MRS. SIDDONS' COTTAGE AT WESTBOURNE.

"Would you I'd Westbourne Farm describe?
I'll do it, then, and free from gall;
For sure it would be sin to gibe
A thing so pretty and so small.
"A poplar-walk, if you have strength,
Will take a minute's time to step it;
Nay, certes 'tis of such a length
'Twould almost tire a frog to leap it.
"But when the pleasure-ground is seen,

Then what a burst comes on the view!
Its level walk, its shaven green,

For which a razor's stroke would do.

"Now, pray be cautious when you enter,

And curb your strides with much expansion; Three paces take you to the centre ;

Three more, you're close against the mansion.

"The mansion, cottage, house, or hut

Call't what you will-has room within To lodge the King of Lilliput,

But not his court nor yet his queen.

"The kitchen-garden, true to keeping,

66

Has length, and breadth, and width in plenty;
A snail, if fairly set a-creeping,

Could scarce go round while you told twenty.

Perhaps you'll cry, on hearing this,
'What, everything so very small !'
No; she that made it what it is

Has greatness that makes up for all."

The great actress was certainly living here in 1806, and the following year, for Cyrus Redding thus mentions her abode, in his "Fifty Years' Recollections: ”—“ I did not slumber in bed, often rising at four o'clock, walking to Manchester Square, calling up a friend there, and then going into the country to an inn near Mrs. Siddons' villa, a little on the town side of Kensal Green, but then far in the green fields. We breakfasted together. I returned to Gough Square, sometimes before my fellow-lodger had left his bed, and generally before ten o'clock; thus I gained six hours on the day."

The Lock Hospital and Asylum, which stand on the opposite side of the Harrow Road, derive their name from the "Loke," or "Lock," in Kent Street, Southwark, an ancient hospital for lepers. The name may have been derived, as suggested by a writer in Notes and Queries, from the old French word loques, "rags "-referring to the linen rags applied to sores; but with more probability it comes, as Archer is inclined to believe, in his "Vestigia," from the Saxon log or loc, equivalent to "shut," or "closed," in reference to the isolated condition of the leper.

This hospital was founded in 1746, and the asylum about forty years later, mainly by the efforts of the Rev. Thomas Scott, the well-known

215

Biblical commentator; and it is mentioned in Strype's edition of "Stow," in 1765, as being "at Pimlico." It was removed hither from Grosvenor Place* in 1842. A chapel has been attached to it since 1764. In 1849 its authorities were able to double the number of patients and penitents, through the help of the late Duke of Cambridge, who issued an autograph appeal on behalf of the charity. This establishment is in reality a branch of the Lock Hospital, and is intended for the reception of females only; the branch for males is situated in Dean Street, Soho. From the published report, we learn that since the foundation of the asylum, the institution has been the means of giving the advantages of domestic training to about three thousand females. During the year 1875, no less than fifty young women were fitted for service, nearly all of whom have given satisfactory proof of real amendment by their conduct in their situations; whilst of those sent out in previous years, many have earned the reward given by the committee of the institution for remaining twelve months in the same situation; several have been restored to friends; whilst others have testified to the great change that has been effected in them by contributing from their scanty earnings to the support of the institution, which has rescued them from a life of misery. The buildings here cover a large extent of ground, and the gardens surrounding them are well planted with trees and shrubs.

Although not in the immediate vicinity of the Lock Hospital, it may not be altogether out of place here to speak of one or two other institutions, devoted to charitable purposes, which exist in the parish. St. Mary's Hospital, originally styled the Marylebone and Paddington Hospital, stands in Cambridge Place, on a site which once formed the reservoir of the Grand Junction Waterworks, between the Great Western Railway Terminus and the Harrow Road, in the centre of a crowded neighbourhood. The first stone was laid by the Prince Consort, in June, 1845, and the first ward was opened in 1850. It is built of red brick, with stone dressings, and was erected from the designs of Mr. Thomas Hopper and Mr. J. H. Wyatt. The building will accommodate 180 beds, and in its construction the greatest attention was paid to the ventilation and warming. Twelve hundred cubic feet of space, at least, is allotted to each bed. This is the only general hospital for an extensive and populous district of the metropolis, and its doors are ever open for the relief of the sick and maimed.

See p. 14, ante.

the spiritual wants of the inmates of the hospital, he is to be the principal of the collegiate establishment." The staff of the hospital, according to the original report, consists of three physicians, three assistant physicians, three surgeons, three assistant surgeons, a physician-accoucheur, a surgeon-accoucheur, an ophthalmic surgeon, and an aural surgeon. The laws of the hospital provide for four resident medical officers, all of whom are to be fully qualified medical practitioners.

"In the Hospital Medical School and Medical Collegiate Establishment the determination of the course of education, the rules and regulations for the government and conduct of the pupils, and the appointment of all lecturers and teachers, is vested, under the advice of the medical committee, in the governors at large; and every pupil of the school

members of this committee; and legally qualified medical and surgical practitioners, whether governors or not, are at liberty, on a proper introduction,, to attend the practice of the hospital. The medical governors are also at liberty to attend all lectures delivered by the teachers in the hospital school; and if residing within half a mile of the hospital, they are entitled to be summoned to all important operations, on paying a trifling contribution towards the expense of summoning. Thus the medical profession at large has every opportunity to form its opinion of the principles and practice taught in the hospital, an efficient voice in the management of the medical affairs of the institution, and a direct influence in the system of education to be adopted in the hospital school, of which their own sons or private pupils might be members."