All this and much more is followed by a most tantalizing and puzzling P.S. to poor Richardson. His fair, or rather "brown as an oak-wainscot, with a good deal-of-countryred in her cheeks" correspondent, requests him "to direct only to C. L., and enclose it to Miss J., to be left at Mrs. G.'s" &c. &c., previously observing that, "whenever there happens to be a fine Saturday I shall look for you in the Park, that being the day on which I suppose you are called that way."

Roused into desperation, Richardson on the 2nd February writes to Mrs. Belfour as follows:

"What pains does my unkind correspondent take to conceal herself! Loveless thought himself at liberty to change names without Act of Parliament. I wish, madam, that Lovelace-'A sad dog,' said a certain lady once, 'why was he made so wicked, yet so agreeable?'

“Disappointed and chagrined as I was on Friday night with the return of my letter, directed to Miss J, rejected and refused to be taken in at Mrs. G's, and with my servant's bringing me word that the little book I sent on Thursday night, with a note in it, was also rejected; and the porter (whom I have never since seen or heard of, nor of the book) dismissed with an assurance that he must be wrong; my servant being sent from one Mrs. G to another Mrs. G—— at Millbank; yet I resolved to try my fortune on Saturday in the Park in my way to North End. The day indeed, thought I, is not promising; but where so great an earnestness is professed, and the lady possibly by this time made acquainted with the disappointment she has given me, who knows but she will be carried in a chair to the Park, to make me amends, and there reveal herself? Three different chairs at different views saw I. My hope, therefore, not so very much out of the way; but in none of them the lady I wished to see. Up the Mall walked I, down the Mall, and up again, in my way to North End. O this dear Will-o'-wisp, thought I! when nearest, furthest off! Why should I, at this time of life? No bad story, the consecrated rose, say what she will and all the spiteful things I could think of I muttered to myself. And how, Madam, can I banish them from my memory,

when I see you so very careful to conceal yourself; when I see you so very apprehensive of my curiosity, and so very little confiding in my generosity? O Madam! you know me not! you will not know me!

"Yesterday, at North End, your billet, apologizing for the disappointment was given me. Lud! lud' what a giddy appearance! thought I. O that I had half the life, the spirit! of anything worth remembering I could make memorandums.

66

'Shall I say all I thought? I will not. But if these at last reach your hands, take them as written, as they were, by Friday night, and believe me to be,

Sir Walter Scott says, that "the power of Richardson's painting of his deeper scenes of tragedy has never been, and probably never will be, excelled;" and in Mrs. Inchbald's Life of Richardson,' we read, that "as a writer he possessed original genius, and an unlimited command over the tender passions." He carried on a foreign literary correspondence, and was on terms of intimacy with many eminent and literary persons of his time, particularly Dr. Young, Dr. Johnson, Aaron Hill, and Arthur Onslow, Esq., Speaker of the House of Commons.

A short distance further on, we enter the Hammersmith Road, opposite a tavern called "The Bell and Anchor,” which stands beside the turnpike, and passing about twenty shops on the left towards Hammersmith, we notice in the fore-court of a house called "The Cedars," two noble cedar trees of immense girth, one of which is represented in the accompanying cut. This was formerly the residence of Sir James Branscomb, who, according to Faulkner, "in his early days had been a servant to the Earl of Gainsborough,

and afterwards, for upwards of forty years, carried on a lottery office in Holborn. He was a common-councilman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and received the honour of knighthood during his shrievalty." The house has been a ladies' boarding-school for many years. From the Kensington Road we can return direct to London, having in this chapter departed from our even course on the Fulham Road for the purpose of visiting the North End district.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PRYOR'S BANK, FULHAM.

NESTLING in trees beneath the old tower of Fulham Church, which has been judiciously restored by Mr. George Godwin, there may be seen from Putney Bridge a remarkable group of houses, the most conspicuous of which will be conjectured from a passing glance to belong to the Gothic tribe. This house, which has been a pet kind of place of the Strawberry Hill class, is called the Pryor's Bank, and its history can be told in much less than one hundredth part of the space that a mere catalogue of the objects of interest which it has contained would occupy. In fact, the whole edifice, from the kitchen to the bedrooms, was a few years since a museum, arranged with a view to pictorial effect; and if it had been called “The Museum of British Antiquities" it would have been found worthy of the name.

In a print, published about forty years since, by J. Edington, 64 Gracechurch Street, of Fulham Church, as seen from the river, the ancient aspect of the modern Pryor's Bank is preserved. The situation of this humble

residence having attracted the fancy of Mr. Walsh Porter,

he purchased it, raised the

building by an additional

story, replaced its latticed casements by windows of coloured glass, and fitted the interior with grotesque embellishments and

theatrical decora

tions. The entrance hall was called the robber's

cave, for it was construct

ed of material made to look like large projecting

rocks, with a winding

staircase, and mysterious in-and-out passages. One of the

bed-rooms was called, not inaptly, the lion's den. The dining-room represented, on a small scale, the ruins of Tintern Abbey; and here Mr. Porter had frequently the honour of receiving and entertaining George IV., when Prince of Wales. It was then called Vine Cottage,

and having been disposed

Vine Cottage.*

*Copied from a picture in oil in the possession of George Bunnett,

Esq., of Fulham.