country that it is (say) E· minutes to H· o'clock.
Two or three doors further west, formerly stood
the ponderous structure itself—with its two
enormous Corinthian columns supporting
nothing architecturally, but framing acres of
painted show-cloth—and narrowed the Strand,
thence to Burleigh-street, with parasitic sheds
leaning against its wall. Below the fluted shafts,
a huge arched entrance yawned over the Strand
foot pavement; ingress to the upstairs exhibition
of wild animals being invited, at a den-like
side-door, by a gorgeous showman. Lawful space
for the display of his finery and the delivery of
his bills, was here curtailed by a tiny news-
window (with, perhaps, a news-shop behind, too
small to be seen), especially dear to the memory
of the present writer. Thence, in the year '22,
was first issued The Mirror of Literature and
Instruction, price twopence: modest precursor
of cheap periodicals, by which he and millions
more have since largely benefited. It is painful
to add that after attaining to a robust
manhood under the management of its
projector, The Mirror declined in other hands;
and finally, about a dozen years ago, fell a
sacrifice to the competition of its own
innumerable and unnatural progeny.

Although I had to pass through Exeter
Change twice a day for several years, I can
remember nothing more of its interior than that
it was a dismal mart for cutlery. But I do
remember assisting—outside—at the death of
Chuni, the lamented elephant. Injudiciously
deprived of the solace of a pillar against which
he loved to rub his head—spiked nails having
been driven into it by a keeper, who afterwards
paid a heavy penalty for his ill nature—remorselessly
separated from his consort, Chuni was
seized with raging mania, and threatened to
anticipate the after-fate of the building by tearing
it violently down there and then. We, the mob,
intently gazing over the leans-to opposite to the
end of Savoy-street, expected, hoped, to see
him (gratis) smashing through the menagerie
windows. The building shook with his furious
onslaughts upon the beams that held it together,
and with the vibrations of his own and his
fellow-captives' roars. Poison had been tried in
vain. Distracted keepers rushed to Somerset
House to implore the Fusiliers there posted to
come and shoot the elephantine maniac at once;
and an excited public, ignorant of military
law, were angry because the soldiers would
not incur the penalty of being shot
themselves for deserting their posts without orders.
Meanwhile, a few more beams splintered in
twain, more crashing of floors, more lions and
tigers mixed together by the snapping of
partition bars, and, at last, a guard appeared
under proper orders, provided with the
regulation rounds of ammunition. They filed past
the splendid doorkeeper amidst the cheers
of the populace. Presently a volley—we
outsiders ducking our heads instinctively—a little
smoke curling leisurely out from the broken
windows, and poor Chuni was no more. In a
lucid interval, when accessible to the call of
duty, the victim knelt down, it is said, at a sign
from his keeper, to receive the fatal lead. This
anecdote of brute docility has been preserved in
all the natural history books since published.
Let us believe, therefore, that it is true.

Westward, from Exeter Change to Beaufort-
buildings, the Strand was still very narrow. At
Mr. Deville's lamp-shop, one door from
Burleigh-street, phrenology established its
headquarters in London during its brief existence as
a science. Fish-sauce (Harvey's) sprung into
popularity on the site of Exeter Hall. This
union of seriousness and sauce would be
considered incongruous, but for Ude's hackneyed
criticism that we English have fifty religions and
only one sauce, and but for an epigram of the
period, which I quote from memory:

Two Harveys had a secret wish
   To shine in different stations;
The first invented sauce for fish,
   The second "Meditations."
One to good living was allied,
   T'other to holy dying:
This relishes a sole when fried,
   That saves a soul from frying.*

*Byron also rhymed thus, in reference to
Harvey's Sauce and the great fast of the Romish Church:
And therefore, humbly, I would recommend
   "The curious in fish sauce," before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook or wife or friend,
   Walk or ride to the Strand and buy in gross,
Ketchup, Soy, Chili vinegar, and Harvey,
   Or, by the Lord, a Lent will well-nigh starve ye.

I should like to have said a word about Ackermann's
shop and show-rooms opposite, where the
Forget-me-Not set the fashion for illustrated
annuals—formerly the Fountain Tavern, famous
in the time of Charles the Second, and often
mentioned by Swift, Steele, and Horace Walpole, now
a dining establishment and divan; about Lilly's
house, where The Spectator was published—
a perfumer's even now; about the courts and
alleys that led down to the river; about the
jolly young watermen, and rowing matches, and
fishermen upon the river itself (yes, Mr. Frank
Buckland, I have seen boat-loads of Thames
flounders constantly netted between the Fox-
under-the-Hill and the Savoy); about the yacht-
like Peter-boats that brought fruit from Kent
to Covent Garden; but here the daily walk
of my boyhood and youth ended, and the garrulity
of age must also be put a stop to, although
not one word of Mr. Thornbury's Haunted
London has been written.

NOAH'S ARKS.

IN Kew Gardens is a seldom-visited collection
of all the kinds of wood which we have
ever heard of, accompanied by specimens of
various articles customarily made of those
woods in the countries of their growth. Tools,
implements, small articles of furniture, musical
instruments, sabots and wooden shoes, boot-
trees and shoe-lasts, bows and arrows, planes,
saw-handles—all are here, and thousands of
other things which it would take a very long
summer day indeed even to glance at. The fine