Euston Square.]

Street, the lower end of which, adjoining Bedford Square, we have noticed in the preceding volume.* Among the residents in the upper part of it was "Jack" Bannister, the actor, as already mentioned. Sir George Rose, not less known for his wit and vivacity than for those talents which he displayed as a lawyer, was a near neighbour of Bannister, living on the opposite side of the street. One day, as he was walking, he was hailed by Bannister, who said, “Stop a moment, Sir George, and I will go over to you.” "No," said the good-humoured punster, "I never made you cross yet, and I will not begin now." He joined the valetudinarian, and held a short conversation, and immediately after his return home,

wrote

On meeting the Young Veteran toddling up Gower
Street, when he told me he was seventy.
"With seventy years upon his back
Still is my honest friend young Jack,
Nor spirits checked, nor fancy slack,
But fresh as any daisy.

Though time has knocked his stumps about,
He cannot bowl his temper out,
And all the Bannister is stout,
Although the steps be crazy."

This good-natured jeu d'esprit, we may here remark, was left by its author almost immediately afterwards at Bannister's door.

A chapel at the north end of this street, within a few yards of the Euston Road, was at one time the head-quarters of open and avowed Antinomian doctrines.

No. 40, Upper Gower Street was for many years the residence of that most powerful landscape painter, Peter de Wint, the effect of whose broad and masterly touch throws nearly every other artist, excepting Turner, into the shade. At No. 15 lived and died Francis Douce, the antiquary. In 1822 Charles Dickens as a boy was living with his parents for a short time in this street, but the place has no reminiscences of his early youth, as the future "Boz" was employed during that time as a drudge in the blacking warehouse at Hungerford Stairs.

Three or four well-built streets running out of the south side of Euston Square, lead into Gordon and Tavistock Squares, which we have already dealt with, when describing the adjacent neighbourhood, in the previous volume.t

At the south-east corner of the square stands the New Church of St. Pancras. The foundationstone was laid by the Duke of York in July, 1819, and the church was consecrated by the Bishop of London in April, 1822. The model of the

353 edifice is after the ancient temple of Erectheus, at Athens; and this church is said to have been the first place of Christian worship erected in Great Britain in the strict Grecian style. Mr. William Inwood was the architect. The steeple, upwards of 160 feet in height, is from an Athenian model, the Temple of the Winds, built by Pericles; it is, however, surmounted by a cross in lieu of the Triton and his wand, the symbols of the winds, in the original. The western front of the church, of which we give an engraving on page 349, has a fine portico of six columns, with richlysculptured capitals. Towards the east end are lateral porticoes, each supported by colossal female statues on a plinth, in which are entrances to the catacombs beneath the church; each of the figures bears an ewer in one hand, and rests the other on an inverted torch, the emblem of death. These figures are composed of terra-cotta, formed in pieces, and cemented round cast-iron pillars, which in reality support the entablatures. The eastern end of the church differs from the ancient temple in having a semi-circular, or apsidal, termination, round which, and along the side walls, are terracotta imitations of Greek tiles. The interior of the new church is in keeping with its exterior. Above the communion-table are some verd antique scagliola marble columns, copied from the Temple of Minerva. The pulpit and reading-desk are made of the celebrated Fairlop Oak, which stood in Hainault Forest, in Essex, and gave its name to the fair at Easter-tide long held under its branches. Gilpin mentions this tree in his "Forest Scenery." "The tradition of the country," he says, "traces it half way up the Christian era." The tree was blown down in 1820. When the new church was erected in the New Road the fields to the north were quite open; and we have seen a print showing the unfinished edifice rising out of a surrounding desert of brick-fields.

Of the several vicars of St. Pancras, since this new church was built, none, perhaps, have been more popular than the Rev. Thomas Dale, who afterwards became Canon of St. Paul's, and subsequently, for a very few months, Dean of Rochester. The son of well-to-do parents, he was born in Pentonville, then almost a country village, at the close of the last century. Losing both his parents when quite a child, he was placed by his friends in Christ's Hospital, and in due course he found his way to Cambridge. In 1818, while still an undergraduate, he published "The Widow of Nain, and other Poems," which were well received by the public, and ran through several editions. On leaving Cambridge, Mr. Dale employed himself

portant living of St. Pancras, which he held for more than fourteen years. Already-namely from 1840 to 1849-he had held what is known as the "Golden Lectureship" at St. Margaret's, Lothbury. He accepted this lectureship not so much for the emolument (though that was considerable), as to break up the evils connected with it. The principal source from which the income was derived was the rent of a notoriously bad but licensed house near Temple Bar. This evil, so great a blot on the lectureship, he determined to root out, and therefore he not only refused to renew the lease, but turned out the tenants, keeping the house empty and himself with a greatly reduced income, until he could find a respectable person willing to

take it.

and in 1868 he was nominated to the Deanery of Lichfield, which he held till his decease. His son, the Rev. Weldon Champneys, succeeded him. From 1869 till 1877 the Vicarage was held by Dr. Thorold, now Bishop of Rochester, who was succeeded by Canon Spence.

From St. Pancras Church, a walk of a few minutes, in a southward direction, by way of Woburn Place and Tavistock Square, brings us once more to Guilford Street, the southern boundary of the parish of St. Pancras. The Foundling Hospital, which stands on the north side of this street, but just within the limits of the parish of which we have been treating, having been unavoidably passed by in our previous perambulation in this neighbourhood, will form the subject of the following chapter.

THIS quaint and dull old-fashioned looking building, which reminds us of the early days of the last century, stands on the north side of Guilford Street, and forms part of the south-eastern boundary of the parish of St. Pancras. It is constructed of brick, with stone dressings, and consists mainly of a centre and wings, with a large open space before it for the exercise of the children, and extensive gardens at the back. These gardens, including the court in front, which is laid down in turf, cover some acres. The hospital was first established by royal charter, granted in 1739 to Thomas Coram (master of a trading vessel), for the reception, maintenance, and education of exposed and deserted young children, after the example of similar institutions in France, Holland, and other Christian countries. The first intention of Captain Coram, however, was modified after his death, because it was feared that the hospital would prove in practice only an encouragement of vice, if illegitimate children were admitted as long as there was room, without any restriction; and the restrictions imposed so far diminished the applications, that in a few cases the doors were thrown open for the reception of some legitimate children of soldiers.

In the petition which Coram makes for a charter, backed by "a memorial signed by twenty-one ladies of quality and distinction," he recites that, "no expedient has been found out for preventing the frequent murders of poor infants at their birth, or for suppressing the custom of exposing them to perish in the streets, or putting them out to nurses" (ie., persons trading in the same manner as the baby-farmers of more recent times), "who, undertaking to bring them up for small sums, suffered them to starve, or, if permitted to live, either turned them out to beg or steal, or hired them out to persons, by whom they were trained up in that way of living, and sometimes blinded or maimed, in order to move pity, and thereby become fitter instruments of gain to their employers." In order to redress this shameful grievance, the memorialists express their willingness to erect and support a

hospital for all helpless children as may be brought to it, "in order that they may be made good servants, or, when qualified, be disposed of to the sea or land services of His Majesty the King."

The governors first opened a house for "foundlings" in Hatton Garden, in 1740-1; any person bringing a child, rang the bell at the inner door, and waited to hear if the infant was returned from disease or at once received; no questions whatever were to be asked as to the parentage of the child, or whence it was brought; and when the full number of children had been taken in, a notice of "The house is full" was affixed over the door. Often, we are told, there were 100 children offered, when only twenty could be admitted; riots ensued, and thenceforth the mothers balloted for the admission of their little ones by drawing balls out of a bag.

It was not until some years after the granting of the charter that the governors thought of building the present hospital. Fresh air is as necessary for children as for plants; and so the governors, wandering round the then suburbs in search of some healthy spot whereunto they could transfer their tender "nurslings," found it in the balmy meads of Lamb's Conduit Fields, then far away out in the green pastures, five minutes' walk from Holborn. The governors bought fifty-five acres of these fields from the Earl of Salisbury, for £5,500; in fact, the governors bought the whole estate, not because they required it, but because the earl, its owner, would not sell any fractional part of it. As London increased, the city approached this property; and in course of time a considerable part of the estate-indeed, all that was not actually absorbed in the hospital and its contiguous grounds-became covered with squares and streets of houses, the ground-rents producing an annual income equal to the purchase-money. The new building was at once commenced, the west wing being completed first, the east wing afterwards; the chapel, connecting the two, was finished last. The edifice was built from the designs of Jacobson.