44 THE BANQUETING-HOUSE of Justice (an eagle) to heaven." In the third he is embracing Minerva, and routing Rebellion and Envy." These panels, and others at the sides, were painted by Rubens in 1635, with the assistance of his pupil Jordaens. They were restored by Cipriani. In 1837, the whole building, which had been closed since 1829, was refitted and repaired under the direction of Sir Robert Smirke. It would occupy too large a space to trace the history of the Banqueting-House from its first erection to its Georgian transformation into an unconsecrated chapel (1724), seductive as it might be to speak of it as the theatre of Ben Jonson's masques and the buffooneries of Cromwell. In Charles II.'s time, to which, in the foregoing remarks, we have mainly confined ourselves, it was the scene of many impressive ceremonies and state receptions. It was in the Banqueting-House that Charles begged his Honourable House of Commons to amend the ways about Whitehall, so that Catherine of Braganza might not upon her arrival find it "surrounded by water "; it was in the Banqueting-House that he gravely went through that half solemn, half ludicrous business of touching for the evil; it was in the BanquetingHouse that, coming from the Tower of London with a splendid cavalcade, he created at one time six Earls and six Barons. Under its storied roof he magnificently entertained the French Ambassador, Charles Colbert, Marquis de Croissy, on which occasion he presented Mr. Evelyn, from his own royal plate, with a piece of that newly-imported Barbadian luxury, the King-pine; it was here also that he received the Russian Ambassador with his presents THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S of carpets and sables and "sea-horse teeth"; and the swarthy envoys from Morocco, with their scymetars and white albagas, and their lions and "estridges (ostriches). (A Paladin of Philanthropy.) THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S A PROPER NEW BALLAD OF THE COUNTRY AND 44 THE TOWN Phyllida amo ante alias."-VIRG. THE ladies of St. James's Go swinging to the play; Their footmen run before them, 44 With a Stand by! Clear the way!" But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! She takes her buckled shoon, The ladies of St. James's Wear satin on their backs; She dons her russet gown, The ladies of St. James's! THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S But Phyllida, my Phyllida! The breath of heath and furze, The ladies of St. James's! It trembles to a lily, It wavers to a rose. The ladies of St. James's! The ladies of St. James's ! ; They have their fits and freaks Come either storm or shine, My Phyllida! my Phyllida! I care not though they heap HORACE WALPOLE AS A VIRTUOSO I care not whose the beauties HORACE WALPOLE AS A VIRTUOSO As a virtuoso and amateur, his [Walpole's] position is a mixed one. He was certainly widely different from that typical art connoisseur of his day—the butt of Goldsmith and of Reynolds-who travelled the Grand Tour to litter a gallery at home with broken-nosed busts and the rubbish of the Roman picture-factories. As the preface to the Aedes Walpolianae showed, he really knew something about painting, in fact was a capable draughtsman himself, and besides, through Mann and others, had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for procuring genuine antiques. But his collection was not so rich in this way as might have been anticipated; and his portraits, his china, and his miniatures were probably his best possessions. For the rest, he was an indiscriminate rather than an eclectic collector; and there was also considerable truth in that strange attraction from the great to the little, and from the useful to the odd " which Macaulay has noted. Many of the marvels at Strawberry would never have found a place in the treasure-houses-say of Beckford or Samuel Rogers. It is difficult to fancy Bermingham's fables in paper on looking-glass, or Hubert's cardcuttings, or the fragile mosaics of Mrs. Delany either at Fonthill or St. James's Place. At the same time, it should be remembered that several 44 THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING of the most trivial or least defensible objects were presents which possibly reflected rather the charity of the recipient than the good taste of the giver. All the articles over which Macaulay lingers, Wolsey's hat, Van Tromp's pipe case, and King William's spurs, were obtained in this way; and (with a laugher) Horace Walpole, who laughed a good deal himself, would probably have made as merry as the most mirth-loving spectator could have desired. But such items gave heterogeneous character to the gathering, and turned what might have been a model museum into an old curiosity-shop. In any case, however, it was a memorable curiosity-shop, and in this modern era of bric-à-brac would probably attract far more serious attention than it did in those practical and pre-æsthetic days of 1842 when it fell under the hammer of George Robins. (Horace Walpole-A Memoir.) THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING ON Monday the 29th of January, 1753, one Elizabeth Canning, a domestic servant aged eighteen or thereabouts, who had hitherto borne an excellent character, returned to her mother, having been missing from the house of her master, a carpenter in Aldermanbury, since the Ist of the same month. She was halfstarved and half-clad, and alleged that she had been abducted, and confined in a house on the Hertford Road, from which she had just escaped. This house she afterwards identified as that of one Susannah or Mother Wells, a person of very indifferent reputation. An ill-favoured old gipsy woman named |