In spite of steam Piccadilly continues to be one of the great vomitories of London. The Birmingham, Great Western, and South-western Railways have eclipsed the glories of long-stage coaching. The White-horse Cellar is no longer what it was. The race of long-stage drivers, in white milled box-coats, multitudinous neckhandkerchiefs, and low-crowned hats, who gave law to the road, and were the "glass of fashion and the mould of form" to the ingenuous youth of England, are disappearing. Never again shall we, diffident of our own powers of early rising, and distrustful of those of our whole family, take a bed at the Gloucester, when intending to start next morning with some early coach for the West of England, and, between the stirring influence of spring and the anticipation of rural drives, watch from the window the first faint glimmer of the reservoir in the Green Park, till broad day come, and with it Boots, to warn us that the hour of starting draws

Hazlitt has done justice to the imposing appearance of the mail-coaches in Piccadilly :-"The finest sight in the metropolis is that of the mail-coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The horses paw the ground and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious of the precious burden they convey. There is a peculiar secrecy and despatch, significant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and supercilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer's heat or the winter's cold, since they are borne through the air in a winged chariot. The mail-carts drive up-the transfer of packages is made-and, at a given signal, they start off, bearing the irrevocable scrolls that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts for ever! How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a line after they are gone! Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the mail-coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land's End." Pursuing his reverie Hazlitt remarks that in the time of Cowper mail-coaches were hardly set up; and already they are far advanced in their "decline and fall." Even the "Putney and Brentford stages" are being superseded by the Putney and Brentford omnibuses.

nigh. And yet the incessant plying of omnibuses from nine in the morning till twelve at night, and the continued influx of huge market-carts bound for Covent Garden from midnight till daybreak, to say nothing of post-chaises and huge West-country waggons, reminding us of Strap and Roderick Random, Captain and Mrs. Weazle, and the obstreperously laughing Joey, present us with a thoroughfare not a whit less crowded, bustling, and confusing than in the days of old.

Hyde Park Corner is a worthy terminal mark to a great metropolis. Entering or issuing, it is alike imposing. "To him who hath been long in city pent," the view from the Achilles along the elm-rows towards the Serpentine has a park-like appearance that makes him feel out of town the moment he reaches it. To the traveller from the country the view across the Green Park towards Westminster Abbey is truly courtly and metropolitan. The triumphal archways on either side corroborate the impression of stately polish; the magnificent scale of St. George's Hospital is worthy the capital of a great nation; the statue in Hyde Park, notwithstanding the gross blunder in the interpretation of its action by the bungling copyist who erected it, is magnificent in its scale, outline, and position; and Apsley House seems placed there in order that the hero of a hundred fights may keep watch and ward on the outskirts of the central seat of power of the land whose troops he has so often led to victory.

In the old map of London, attributed to Ralph Aggas, which represents the metropolis as it appeared in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, the west end of the line of road now called Piccadilly is introduced under the designation of "The way to Reading." It is quite a country road. Between St. Martin's Church and the Mews is St. Martin's Lane, which extends in a waving line to the western extremity of an enclosure round St. Giles's Church. From the northwest corner of this enclosure a road is represented extending due west, bearing the double name "The way to Uxbridge," " Oxford Road:" from the southwest corner "the way to Reading" curves to the south-west till it reaches the northern extremity of the Haymarket, from which its direction seems to be parallel to the more northern line of road. In Aggas's plan there are a few houses around the church of St. Giles, one at the corner of the enclosure of the Convent Garden, apparently where Long Acre and St. Martin's Lane now meet, a mass of buildings at the Mews, and a few houses with a chapel rather to the west of the south end of the Haymarket, in what is now Pall Mall. To the west and north of these erections seems to have been fields and open country.

Some light is thrown upon the condition of the line of road afterwards called Piccadilly (in the early part of the reign of Queen Mary) by Stow's narrative of the rash attempt of Sir Thomas Wyatt upon London in 1554. Wyatt, having crossed the Thames at Kingston, advanced upon Brentford. The proceedings of the Queen's adherents in London, and the further movements of the rebels, in so far as they bear upon our subject, are thus described by Stow :—

"The same night (6th February, O.S.), about five of the clock, a trumpeter went about and warned all horsemen and men of arms to be at St. James's Field, and all footmen also to be there, by six of the clock on the next morning. The Queen's scout, upon his return to the court, declared Wyatt's being at Brentford, which sudden news made all in the Court wonderfully afraid. Drums went

through London at four of the clock in the morning, commanding all soldiers to armour, and so to Charing Cross.

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Wyatt hearing the Earl of Pembroke was come into the field, he staid at Knightsbridge until day, where his men, being very weary with travel of that night and the day before, and also partly feebled and faint, having received small sustenance since their coming out of Southwark, rested. There was no small ado in London; and likewise the Tower made great preparation of defence. By ten of the clock the Earl of Pembroke had set his troop of horsemen on the hill in the highway above the new bridge over against St. James's: his footmen were set in two battles, somewhat lower and nearer Charing Cross, at the lane turning down by the brick wall from Islington-ward, where he had also certain other horsemen ; and he had planted his ordnance upon the hill-side. In the mean season Wyatt and his company planted his ordnance upon a hill beyond St. James, almost over against the Park Corner; and himself, after a few words spoken to his soldiers, came down the old lane on foot, hard by the Court gate at St. James, with four or five ancients, his men marching in good array. Cuthbert Vaughan and two ancients turned down towards Westminster. The Earl of Pembroke's horsemen hovered all this while without moving, until all was passed by, saving the tail, upon which they did set and cut off. The other marched forward in array, and never staid or returned to the aid of their tail. The great ordnance shot off freshly on both sides. Wyatt's ordnance overshot the troop of horsemen. The Queen's ordnance, one piece, struck three of Wyatt's company in a rank, upon the heads, and, slaying them, struck through the wall into the Park. More harm was not done by the great shot of neither party.

"The Queen's whole battle of footmen standing still, Wyatt passed along by the wall towards Charing Cross, where the said horsemen that were there set upon part of them, but were soon forced back. At Charing Cross there stood Sir John Gage, Lord Chamberlain, with the guard, and a number of others, being almost a thousand; the which, upon Wyatt's coming, shot at his company, but at the last fled to the Court gates, which certain pursued, and forced with shot to shut the Court gates against them. In this repulse the said Lord Chamberlain and others were so amazed that many cried treason in the Court, and had thought that the Earl of Pembroke, who was assaulting the tail of his enemies, had gone to Wyatt, taking his part against the Queen. There was running and crying out of ladies and gentlemen, shutting of doors and windows, and such a shrieking and noise as was wonderful to hear."

Wyatt passed on to Ludgate, but, finding that the city was in possession of the Queen's forces and that no one joined him, he lost his self-possession and surrendered. For our purpose, it is only necessary to add further from Stow that— "The noise of women and children, when the conflict was at Charing Cross, was so great that it was heard at the top of the White Tower, and also the great shot was well discerned there out of St. James's Fields: there stood upon the leads the Marquis of Northampton, Sir Nicholas Penn, Sir Thomas Pope, Master John Seymour, and others." And that-"The 11th of April Sir Thomas Wyatt was beheaded at Tower Hill, and after quartered; his quarters were set up in divers places, and his head on the gallows at Hay Hill, near Hyde Park, from whence it was shortly after stolen and conveyed away."

This stirring narrative of the most striking incident in the early reign of "bloody Mary"—of the first inconsiderate protest of the national sentiment against a relapse into the old religion, of which the projected union with the King of Spain, which Wyatt sought to break off, gave dark augury-conveys to us a precise notion of the scene of action. Two lines of road, "the old lane," which passes "hard by the Court-gate at St. James's," and the "highway on the hill," "over against St. James's," on which is "the new bridge," diverge on the summit of a hill "beyond St. James's, almost over against the Park Corner." It is clear that the one must have crossed the fields afterwards thrown into the Green Park slantingly to the north-east corner of St. James's Palace, and thence along the north side of the Park wall to Charing Cross. The "new bridge" must have crossed the stream which ran in the hollow, east of the ranger's house in the Green Park, and the line of road on which it was constructed must have climbed the acclivity to the east of it. The" old lane" led to Charing Cross; the "highway on the hill" to the "lane turning down by the brick wall from Islington-ward." This description corresponds with the plan of Aggas, in which the wall of the Convent Garden forms for a space the eastern boundary of St. Martin's Lane. In corroboration of this inference regarding the relative position of the “old lane” and the highway" is the fact that a shot from the Queen's ordnance broke through the Park wall. Thus do we form our first acquaintance with Piccadilly as a country road, amid the bustle of mailed and mounted men, the clash of arms and the roar of artillery, the screaming of the affrighted maids of honour in the court at Whitehall, and with the still picture of the lords and gentlemen on the leads of the White Tower in the background, strengthening our impression of the hubbub at once by the sheer force of contrast, and by the thought that they at that distance, and through the din and bustle of the thronged city, heard the wail of women, and saw the smoke of the ordnance. This is a stately prologue to the history of Piccadilly, contrasting with the even tenor of its subsequent story much in the same way that the stately entrance to the street at Hyde Park does with its homely termination in Coventry Street.

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During the subsequent part of Mary's reign, and during the whole reigns of Elizabeth and James I. (excepting what we learn from the map of London already referred to), the history of Piccadilly is a blank. Under Charles I. we again catch a glimpse of it, and are for the first time introduced to the name it now bears. Lord Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion,' speaks of " Mr. Hyde going to a house called Piccadilly, which was a fair house for entertainment and gaming, with handsome gravel-walks with shade, and where an upper and lower bowling-green, whither many of the nobility and gentry of the best quality resorted for exercise and recreation," &c. This seems to have been the same house mentioned by Garrard in his letter to the Earl of Strafford (alluded to in our paper on St. James's Park), dated June, 1635, as "a new Spring Garden erected in the fields beyond the Mews, where is built a fair house and two bowling-greens, made to entertain gamesters and bowlers-at an excessive rate, for I believe it hath cost him above four thousand pounds, a dear undertaking for a gentleman barber.”

We are enabled to fix with considerable precision the site of "Piccadilly House," by means of some proceedings before the Privy Council in the reign

of Charles II. On the 24th of May, 1671, a petition from Colonel Thomas Panton was read at the Board of Privy Council, "setting forth that the petitioner having been at great charge in purchasing a parcel of ground lying at Pickadilly, part of it being the two bowling-greens fronting the Haymarket, the other part lying on the north of the Tennis Court, on which several old houses were standing; " and praying for leave to build upon this ground, notwithstanding the royal proclamation recently issued against building on new foundations within a certain distance from London. Sir Christopher Wren, "surveyorgeneral of his Majesty's works," was appointed to report upon the application, which he did in favour of the petitioner. In consequence of Sir Christopher's favourable report, Colonel Panton obtained leave to build "certain houses" in Windmill Street; " on the east corner towards the Haymarket, about one hundred feet in front;" on the west (east ?) side of Windmill Street "in the two bowlinggreens between the Haymarket and Leicester Fields;" and "a fair street of good buildings" between the Haymarket and Hedge Lane, marked in the MS. to be called Panton Street. The tract of ground designated Piccadilly in these transactions seems to have extended from Panton Street on the south to a considerable way northward in Windmill Street. Evelyn, in his Diary,' seems to use the name with a similar latitude of application, when he speaks of a meeting of the Commissioners for reforming buildings and streets in London, on the 31st of July, 1662, at which orders were issued to pave "the Haymarket about Piqudillo." The site of "Piccadilly House," mentioned by Clarendon, seems satisfactorily ascertained by that of " the two bowling-greens between the Haymarket and Leicester Fields," apparently "one hundred feet east of the corner of Windmill Street," and " fronting the Haymarket." It is the site on which Panton Square, at the end of Arundel Street on the north side of Coventry Street, now stands. We are also enabled to fix the western limits of the district called Piccadilly by the Act of Parliament of 3 James II., erecting a portion of St. Martin's parish into "the parish of St. James within the liberty of Westminster." This statute, tracing the boundaries of the new parish, mentions "the mansion-house of the Earl of Burlington fronting Portugal Street." In the same Act of Parliament a "toft of ground" on the north side of the church, which is assigned to the rector along with some other pieces of ground as a glebe, is said to be situated in Piccadilly. In the early maps of the parish of St. James, several of which are preserved in the King's Collection in the British Museum, the line of street from the Haymarket to Swallow Street is inscribed Piccadilly; its continuation to the west of Swallow Street is marked Portugal Street.

These citations seem to establish with tolerable certainty that Piccadilly, originally the name of what in Faithorne's plan of London, published in 1658, is called "the Gaming House," had come in time to designate the upper or northern part of the Haymarket, and the fields immediately adjoining on the north and west. The name itself seems to be derived by common consent from the ruffs called " piccadils," or " peccadilloes," worn by the gallants of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. In 1615 the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, in anticipation of a visit from King James, thought it necessary to issue an order prohibiting" the fearful enormity of dress in all degrees, as,