public subscription was opened for its accomplishment. Sufficient funds were immediately proffered: and the owner of the mansion had verbally made terms with the patriots, when the Chancellor, outbidding them, bought the house himself. "I had no other means," he wrote to his daughter, "of preventing the destruction of my present house as a place in which I could live, or which anybody else would take. The purchase money is large, but I have already had such offers, that I shall not, I think, lose by it." Russell-square-where Lord Loughborough (who knows aught of the Earl of Rosslyn?) had his town house, after leaving Lincoln's Inn Fields, and where Charles Abbott (Lord Tenterden) established himself on leaving the house in Queen-square, into which he married during the summer of 1795-maintained a quasi-fashionable repute much later than the older and therefore more interesting parts of the "old law quarter." Theodore Hook's disdain for Bloomsbury is not rightly appreciated by those who fail to bear in mind that the Russell-square of Hook's time was tenanted by people who-though they were unknown to "fashion," in the sense given to the word by men of Brummel's habits and tone—had undeniable status amongst the aristocracy and gentry of England. With some justice the witty writer has been charged with snobbish vulgarity, because he ridiculed humble Bloomsbury for being humble. His best defense is found in the fact that his extravagant scorn was not directed at helpless and altogether obscure persons so much as at an educated and well-born class who laughed at his caricatures, and gave dinners at which he was proud to be present. Though it fails to clear the novelist of the special charge, this apology has a certain amount of truth, and in so far as it palliates some of his offenses. against good taste and gentle feeling, by all means let him have the full benefit of it. Criticism can afford to be charitable to the clever, worthless man, now that no one admires or tries to respect him. Again it may be advanced, in Hook's behalf, that political animosity--a less despicable, though not less hurtful passion than love of gentility-contributed to Hook's dislike of the quarter on the north side of Holborn. As a humorist he ridiculed, as a panderer to fashionable prejudices he sneered at, Bloomsbury; but as a Tory he cherished a genuine antagonism to the district of town that was associated in the public mind with the wealth and ascendency of the house of Bedford. Anyhow, the Russell-square neighborhood-although it was no longer fashionable, as Belgravia and Mayfair are fashionable at the present day —remained the locality of many important families, at the time when Mr. Theodore Hook was pleased to assume that no one above the condition of a rich tradesman or second-rate attorney lived in it. Of the lawyers whose names are mournfully associated with the square itself are Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd. In 1818, the year of his destruction by his own hand, Sir Samuel Romilly lived there; and Talfourd had a house. on the east side of the square up to the time of his lamented death in 1854. That Theordore Hook's ridicule at Bloomsbury greatly lessened for a time the value of its houses there is abundant evidence. When he deluged the district with scornful satire, his voice was a social power, to which a considerable number of honest people paid servile respect. His clever words were repeated; and Bloomsbury having become a popular by-word for contempt, aristocratic families ceased to live, and were reluctant to invest money, in its well-built mansions. But Hook only accelerated a movement which had for years been steadily though silently making progress. Erskine knew Red Lion-square when every house was occupied by a lawyer of wealth and eminence, if not of titular rank; but before he quitted the stage, barristers had relinquished the ground in favor of opulent shopkeepers. When an ironmonger became the occupant of a house in Red Lionsquare, on the removal of a distinguished counsel, Erskine wrote the epigram— "This house, where once a lawyer dwelt, Is now a smith's-alas! How rapidly the iron age Succeeds the age of brass." These lines point to a minor change in the social arrangements of London, which began with the century, and was still in progress when Erskine had for years been moldering in his grave. In 1823, the year of Erskine's death, Chief Baron Richards expired in his town-house, in Great Ormond-street. In the July of the following year, Baron Wood-i. e., George Wood, the famous special pleader-died at his house in Bedford-square, about seventeen months after his resignation of his seat in the Court of Exchequer to John Hullock. At the present time the legal fraternity has deserted Bloomsbury. The last of the judges to depart was Chief Baron Pollock, who sold his great house in Queensquare at a quite recent date. With the disappearance of this venerable and universally respected judge, the legal history of the neighborhood may be said to have closed. Some wealthy solicitors still live in Russellsquare and the adjoining streets; a few old-fashioned. barristers still linger in Upper Bedford-place and Lower Bedford-place. Guildford-street and Doughty-street, and the adjacent thoroughfares of the same class, still number a sprinkling of rising juniors, literary barristers, and fairly prosperous attorneys. Perhaps the ancient aroma of the "old law quarter "-Mesopotamia, as it is now disrespectfully termed is still strong and pleasant enough to attract a few lawyers who cherish a sentimental fondness for the past. A survey of the Post Office Directory creates an impression that, compared with other neighborhoods, the district north and northeast of Bloomsbury-square still possesses more than an average number of legal residents; but it no longer remains the quarter of the lawyers. There still resides in Mecklenburgh-square a learned Queen's Counsel, for whose preservation the prayers of the neighborhood constantly ascend. To his more scholarly and polite neighbors this gentleman is an object of intellectual interest and anxious affection. As the last of an extinct species, as a still animate Dodo, as a lordly Mohican who has outlived his tribe, this isolated counselor of Her Gracious Majesty is watched by heedful eyes whenever he crosses his threshold. In the morning, as he paces from his dwelling to chambers, his way down Doughty-street and John-street, and through Gray's Inn Gardens, is guarded by men anxious for his safety. Shreds of orange peel are whisked from the pavement on which he is about to tread; and when he crosses Holborn he walks between those who would imperil their lives to rescue him from danger. The gatekeeper in Doughty-street daily makes him low obeisance, knowing the historic value and interest of his courtly presence. Occasionally the inhabitants of Mecklenburghsquare whisper a fear that some sad morning their Q. C. may fit away without giving them a warning. Long may it be before the residents of the "Old Law Quarter" shall wail over the fulfillment of this dismal anticipation! V. LOVES OF THE LAWYERS. CHAPTER XXIII. WOULD compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives unto a bag full of snakes, having among them a single eel; now if a man should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel; but it is an hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake." These words were often heard from the lips of that honest judge, Sir John More, whose son Thomas stirred from brain to foot by the bright eyes, and snowy neck, and flowing locks of cara Elizabetha (the cara Elizabetha of a more recent Tom Moore was "Bessie, my darling") -penned those warm and sweet-flowing verses which delight scholars of the present generation, and of which the following lines are neither the least musical nor the least characteristic : "Jam subit illa dies quæ ludentem obtulit olim Lactea cum flavi decuerunt colla capilli, Cum gena par nivibus visa, labella rosis; The goddess of love played the poet more than one droll trick. Having approached her with musical flattery, he fled from her with fear and abhorrence. time the holiest and highest of human affections was to For a |