sheep with six legs; calves born inside out;
marionnettes; living marionnettes; lecturers
on Bloomerism; expositors of orrery—all of
these have by turns found a home in Saville
House. In the enlarged cosmopolitanthropy
of that mansion, it has thrown open its arms
to the universe of exhibitions. One touch of
showmanship makes the whole world kin;
and this omni-showing house would
accommodate with equal pleasure, Acrobats in its
drawing-rooms. Spiritual Rappers in its upper
rooms, the Poughkeepsie Seer in the entrance
hall, and the Learned Pig in the cellar.

But I should be doing foul injustice to
Saville House were I to omit to mention one
exhibition that it has of late years adopted.
The assault of arms! Who has not seen
the adventurous life-guardsman effect that
masterly feat, the severisation of the leg
of mutton; and that more astonishing
exploit, the scientific dissection at two strokes
of the carcase of a sheep? Who has not
applauded the masterly cutting asunder of
the bar of lead; the " Saladin feat; " the
terrific combat between the broadsword and
bayonet; the airy French fencing and small-
sword practice (like an omelette soufflée after
solid beef and pudding)? And then the windup,
when Saville House, forgetting its
antecedents of the drama (slightly illegitimate),
and puppets and panoramas, takes manfully to
fisticuffs! I am reminded of that company
of Athenian actors, who, in the earlier days
of the Greek drama, essayed a performance
before an Athenian public; but who, finding
their efforts not by any means appreciated or
understood by their audience, took refuge in
some gladiatorial acquirements they were
lucky enough to possess, and "pitched into"
each other manfully, to the intense delight of
the Areopagus. I am reminded too, by the
way, during this "wind-up," of the propinquity
of certain gentlemen, whose bow legs, green
cut-away coats, flattened noses, fancy shawls,
scarred lips, chameleon-coloured eyes, swollen
mottled hands, Oxonian shoes (tipped), closely
cropped hair, bull necks, large breast pins, &c.,
remind me, in their turn, that I am in the
antechamber of the Ring; which leads me to
descend into the street, foregoing the pleasure
of witnessing the "Grand exhibition of wrestling
between two Southerners," wherein I am
promised a living illustration of the genuine
Devonshire kick, and the legitimate Cornish
hug. Needs must I linger, though, by the
peristyle of Saville House, at the foot of its
wide exterior staircase; though Mr. Cantelo's
acolyte, next door, mellifluously invites me
to ascend and see how eggs are hatched by
steam; though there is a rival lady with her
head undergoing the very process of decapitation
next door to him; with a horned lady, a
bearded lady, and a mysterious lady, on the
other side. Saville House has charms for
me which I cannot lightly pass by. There
are the Shades, a remnant of the old London
night cellars, bringing to mind Tom
King's Coffee-house, and the cellar where
Strap had that famous adventure, and
the place where the admired Captain
Macheath and his virtuous companion first heard
"the sound of coaches." Saville House
boasts also of a billiard-room, where there are
celebrated professors in moustaches, who will
give you eighty out of the hundred and beat
you; who can do anything with the balls and
cues save swallowing them; who are clever
enough to make five hundred a year at
billiards, and do make it, some of them;
where there are markers who look like
marquises in their shirt sleeves and difficulties.
I have nought more to say of the palace
of my square, save that the Duke of Gloucester
lived at Leicester House, in 1767, previous
to its final decadence as a royal residence; that
Sir Ashton Lever formed here the collection
of curiosities known as the Leverian museum;
and that New Lisle Street was built on the site
of the gardens of Leicester House in 1791.

To resume the circling of my square may I
beg you to pass Cranbourne Street, also a
large foreign hotel, also a hybrid floridly
eccentric building of gigantic dimensions,
where the Pavilion at Brighton seems to have
run foul of the Alhambra, and repaired
damages with the temple of Juggernaut:
splicing on a portion of a Chinese pagoda as
a jury-mast, and filling up odd leaks with
bits of the mosque of St. Sophia.

Passing this enigmatical habitation (if
inhabited it be), tarry, oh viator ! ere you come
to Green Street, by Pagliano's Sablonière
Hotel, a decent house, where there is good
cheer after the Italian manner. The northern
half of this hotel was, until 1764, a private
dwelling-house -- its door distinguished by a
bust made of pieces of cork cut and glued
together, and afterwards gilt, and known as
the "Painter's Head." The painter's head was
cut by the painter himself who lived there;
and the painter was that painter, engraver,
and moralist, that prince of pictorial moralists,

        Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
        And through the eye correct the art;

the King's Sergeant Painter, William Hogarth.

I would give something to be able to
see that merry, sturdy, bright-eyed, fresh-coloured
little fellow in his sky-blue coat, and
bob wig, and archly cocked hat, trudging
forth from his house. I would hypothecate
some portion of my vast estates to have been
in Leicester Square the day Will Hogarth
first set up his coach; to have watched him
writing that wrathful letter to the nobleman
who objected to the too faithful vraisemblance
of his portrait, wherein he threatened, were it
not speedily fetched away, to sell it, with the
addition of horns and a tail, to a wild beast
showman, who doubtless had his show in
Leicester Fields hard by; to have seen him
in his painting room putting all his savage
irony of colour and expression into the picture
of the bully-poet Churchill; or "biting in" that