dence of my ears, for as to my eyes I could not discover any enemy to fire at; and I continued looking at the men until the company below me were actually raising their firelocks, and one vagabond sharper than the rest a mere lad without whisker or moustache-had covered me. In an instant I dashed my wife, who had just stepped back, against the pier between the windows, when a shot struck the ceiling immediately over our heads, and covered us with dust and broken plaster. In a second after I placed her upon the floor, and in another, a volley came against the whole front of the house, the balcony, and windows; one shot broke the mirror over the chimney-piece, another the shade of the clock, every pane of glass but one was smashed, the curtains and window-frames cut; the room, in short, was riddled. The iron balcony, though rather low, was a great protection; still fire-balls entered the room, and in the pause for reloading I drew my wife to the door, and took refuge in the back rooms of the house. The rattle of musketry was incessant, for more than a quarter of an hour after this; and in a very few minutes the guns were unlimbered and pointed at the 'Magasin' of M. Sallandrouse five houses on our right. What the object or meaning of all this might be was a perfect enigma to every individual in the house, French or foreigners. Some thought the troops had turned round and joined the Reds; others suggested that they must have been fired upon somewhere, though they certainly had not from our house or any other on the Boulevard Montmartre, or we must have seen it from the balcony. officer in the Lancers, and he had already done execution with his horsemen amongst the chairs and the idlers in the neighborhood of Tortoni's; but afterwards, imagining a shot to have been fired from a part of the Boulevard occupied by infantry, he put himself at the head of a detachment which made a charge upon the crowd; and the military historian of these events relates with triumph that about thirty corpses, al most all of them in the clothes of gentlemen, were the trophies of this exploit. Along a distance of 1,000 yards, going eastward from the Rue Richelieu, the dead bodies were strewed upon the foot-pavement of the Boulevard, but at several spots they lay in heaps. Some of the people mortally struck would be able to stagger blindly for a pace or two until they were tripped up by a corpse, and this perhaps is why a large proportion of the bodies lay heaped one on the other. Before one shop-front they counted thirtythree corpses. By the peaceful little nook or court which is called the Cité Bergère they counted thirty-seven. The slayers were many thousands of armed soldiery: the slain were of a number that never will be reckoned; but amongst all these slayers and all these slain there was not one combatant. There was no fight, no riot, no fray, no quarrel, no dispute. What happened was a slaughter of unarmed men, and women, and children. Where they lay, the dead bore witness. Corpses lying apart struck deeper into people's memory than the dead who were lying in heaps. Some were haunted with the look of an old man with silver hair, whose only weapon was the This wanton fusillade must have been the umbrella which lay at his side. Some result of a panic, lest the windows should shuddered because of seeing the gay idler have been lined with concealed enemies, of the Boulevard sitting dead against the and they wanted to secure their skins by wall of a house, and scarce parted from the the first fire, or else it was a sanguinary im- cigar which lay on the ground near his pulse. The men, as I have already hand. Some carried in their minds the stated, fired volley upon volley for more sight of a printer's boy leaning back against than a quarter of an hour without any re- a shop-front, because, though the lad was turn; they shot down many of the unhappy killed, the proof-sheets which he was carryindividuals who remained on the Boulevard ing had remained in his hands, and were and could not obtain an entrance into any red with his blood, and were fluttering in house; some persons were killed close to the wind. The military historian of these our door." The like of what was calmly achievements permitted himself to speak seen by this English officer, was seen with frenzied horror by thousands of French men and women. If the officers in general abstained from ordering the slaughter, Colonel Rocheforte did not follow their example. He was an with a kind of joy of the number of womeR who suffered. After accusing the gentler sex of the crime of sheltering men from the fire of the troops, the Colonel writes it down that "many an amazon of the Boulevard has paid dearly for her imprudent collusion แ with that new sort of barricade," and then | perience an intense desire to array myself he goes on to express a hope that women in purple and fine linen, knee shorts, lace will profit by the example, and derive from ruffles, pink silk stockings, diamond buckles, it แ a lesson for the future." One woman and a silver-hilted sword; to have my hair who fell and died clasping her child, was powdered, and my jewelled tabatiere filled suffered to keep her hold in death as in life, with scented rappee; to sit with my feet on for the child too was killed. Words which a Turkey carpet, before a table inlaid with long have been used for making figures of marqueterie, wax candles in silver sconces speech recovered their ancient use, being (the candles are green with filagree bowanted again in the world for the picturing bêches) on either side; and then, while my of things real and physical. Musket-shots Dulcinea in a hoop petticoat, a point lace do not shed much blood in proportion to the apron, red-heeled mules, a toupet and a slaughter which they work, but still in so patch on the left cheek-her feathered fan, many places the foot-pavement was wet and painted by Fragonard on the finest chickenred, that, except by care, no one could pass skin, lying beside her-plays the minuet along it without gathering blood. Round from "Ariadne" in an adjoining and gilded each of the trees in the Boulevards a little salon, decorated in the Style Pompadour, space of earth is left unpaved in order to on the harpsichord; and on pink scented give room for the expansion of the trunk. note-paper, with a diamond pointed pen and The blood collecting in pools upon the violet ink-the golden pounce-box at my asphalte, drained down at last into these elbow-to indite matter concerning Regent hollows, and, there becoming coagulated, it Street in the smoothest dythirambics. This remained for more than a day, and was ob- is rather a violent contrast to the dry skittleserved by many. "Their blood," says the ground, the cows, and the depraved sow English officer before quoted, "their blood which inspired me in the last chapter; but lay in the hollows round the trees the next only take my subject into consideration: morning when we passed at twelve o'clock. only permit me to inoculate you with one The Boulevards and the adjacent streets," drop of the etherial nectar which should be he goes on to say, were at some points a quaffed by every writer who would look perfect shambles." Incredible as it may upon Regent Street from a proper point of seem, artillery was brought to bear upon view. Ladies and gentlemen moving in the some of the houses in the Boulevard. On political circles accuse me of being of Boits north side the houses were so battered hemia, and to the manner born, of writing that the foot-pavement beneath them was a great deal too much about the Virginian laden with plaster and such ruins as field- weed in its manufactured state, and the ferguns can bring down. mented infusion of malt and hops; publishers refuse to purchase my novels because they contain too many descriptions of "low life;" because my heroes and heroines are too frequently ragged and forlorn creatures, who must go into "society," who don't go to church, who are never seen at the May meetings in Exeter Hall. Oh, lords and ladies! oh, brilliant butterflies of society! oh, respectable people of every degree! whose ears coarse language wounds, but who would have, believe me, to undergo much coarser deeds from the ragged ones you despise, were it not for the humble efforts of us poor pen-and-ink missionaries, think that you are but thousands to the millions of the tattered and torn, who have never studied the "Handbook to Etiquette," nor heard of Burke and Debrett, and would eat peas with their knives if they had any I declare that when I approach this peas to eat. They are around and about solemnly genteel theme my frame dilates, you always. I have no greed of gain in admy eyes kindle, my heart dances. I ex-vocating their cause, for I am unknown to A. W. KINGLAKE. FROM "TWICE AROUND THE CLOCK." TWO P. M.-REGENT STREET. I breathe again. I see before me, broad spread, a vista of gentility. I have done, for many hours to come, with shabby subjects. No more dams I'll make for fish, in Billingsgate; nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish, at second-rate eating-houses; nor fetch firing at requiring in Covent Garden or the Docks. Prospero must get a new man, for Caliban has got a new master: Fashion, in Regent Street. them, and am of your middle class, and am | modern Camden; but will just tell you, in as liable to be stoned for having a better my desultory way, that, in the days when coat than they any day. But woe be to you, the Mews reared their heads, an unsightly respectables, if you shut your ears to their plaints and your eyes to their condition. For the stones may fly thick and fast some day; there may be none to help you, and it may be too late to cry for help. I have heard Regent Street compared to the Boulevard des Italiens, Unter den Linden at Berlin, to Broadway at New York, to the Montagne de la Cour at Brussels, to the Corso de' Servi at Milan, and to the Nevskoi Perspecktive at Petersburg. In my opinion, it is an amalgamation of all of them, and surpasses them all. Their elements are strained, filtered, refined, condensed, sublimated, to make up one glorious thoroughfare. Add to this, the unique and almost indescribable cûchet which the presence of English aristocracy lends to every place it chooses for its habitat, and the result is Regent Street. Of the many cities I have wandered into and about, there is but one possessing a street that can challenge comparison with-and that, I must confess, well nigh equals the street that Nash, prince of architects, built for the fourth George. At right angles from the pleasant waters of the river Liffey, there runs a street, wide in dimensions, magnificent in the proportions of its edifices, splendid in its temples and its palaces, though many of the latter, alas! are converted now into hotels, now into linendrapers' shops; but on a golden summer's afternoon, when you see, speeding towards the column of Nelson in the distance, the glittering equipages of the rich and noble, who yet have their dwelling in Eblana; the clattering orderlies, on sleekgroomed horses, and with burnished accoutrements, spurring from the Castle towards the Post Office-and beauty of beauties, the side walks on either side parterres of living flowers, the grand and glorious Irish girls, with their bright raiment and brighter eyes; you will acknowledge that Regent Street has a rival, that beyond St. George's Channel is a street that the triumphal procession of a Zenobia or a Semiramis might pass down, and that it is Sackville Street, Dublin. mass of brick buildings in the area which is now Trafalgar Square; when Carlton House loomed at the eastern end of Pall Mall, instead of the ugly post erected as a monument of national gratitude to the Royal Prince who paid nobody; when the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, was hemmed in by a cobweb mass of dirty tenements, and Hungerford Market was yet unbuilt; when the old "Courier" newspaper office stood (over against Mr. Cross's older Exeter 'Change, with the elephant's tusks displayed outside, the shops beneath, and Chunee and the wild beasts all alive and roaring up stairs) in the space that now forms the approach to Waterloo Bridge; and when the vicinity of Temple Bar was blocked up by a brick-and-mortar cloaca, since swept away to form what is now termed Picket Place; that the area of Regent Street, the superb, was occupied by mean and shambling tenthrate avenues, among which the chiefest was a large, dirty highway, called Great Swallow Street. Old Fuller (I don't know why he should be called "old" so persistently, for he did not attain anything like a venerable age) was in the habit of collecting information for the "Worthies of England" from the tottering crones who sat spinning by the ingle-nook, and white-headed grandsires sunning themselves on the bench by the almshouse door. In like manner, I owe much of the information I possess on the aspect of London streets just previous to my nonage to communing with nurses, and nurses' female friends. The good folks who tend children seldom deem that the little pitchers they say jestingly have long ears, will suck their lore in so greedily, or retain it so long. My personal acquaintance with Regent Street dates from the year 'thirty-two, when I remember a great scrambling procession of operatives, with parti-coloured flags, em blazoned with devices I could not read, passing down it. Mrs. Esner, who was then attached to my person in a domestic capacity (she often calls upon me now, and, saying that she "nussed" me, expatiates on Do you know, youth of the present gen- the benefits of a pound of green tea) told eration that Regent Street has its antiqui- me that these operatives belonged to the ties, its archæologia, its topographical" Trades Union." She said though the curiosities? Mr. Peter Cunningham knows them all by heart; I am not about to steal from the "Handbook of London" of our good woman must have exaggerated-that they were half a million in number, and I recollect her portending, in a grave low voice, that there would be riots that night. I don't think that any occurred. This was about the time that they used to call the great Duke of Wellington "Nosey," and Sawbones," and to break his windows. I was too young to know then, that the Athenians grew tired of hearing Aristides called "The Just ;" and that a nation once grumbled at having to pay for the palace it had bestowed upon that John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim. I think, too, there must have occasionally. I am just of that age to be a been something about the cholera in my earliest recollections of Regent Street; yet no; I lived in North Audley Street at that time, and opposite the mansion of the great Earl of Clarendon; for, as clearly as though it were yesterday, I see a hot autumn afternoon. I am at the nursery-window in sad disgrace, and pouting because I have wrenched the sprightly wooden hussar from the horse which had the semi-circle of wire with the bullet at the end fixed in his stomach, and who used, with that impetus, to swing so deftly. There is much commotion in the great earl's mansion; for one of the servants partook too plentifully last night of gooseberry-fool after a rout his lordship gave-where are the "routs" and the "gooseberry-fools" now?-and she is dead of cholera morbus this morning. My female entourage are unanimously exacting in calling it cholera "morbus." The undertaker's men bring the body out; the shell gleams white in the afternoon's sunshine, and it is begirt with cords; "for," says the domestic oracles behind me, "it was so mortal swole that it would 'ave bust else." A horrible rumor runs about, that the coffin has been "pitched and sealed." What can "pitching and sealing" mean? There is a great crowd before the earl's door, who are violent and clamorous because the body has not been washed. My nurse says that they will have to send for the "padroll" with "cutlashes." All these things sink into my little mind; and then the whole sequel, with a train of years behind it, fades away, leaving me with but one more recollection-that we had a twopenny cottageloaf boiled in milk that day for dinner, which was consequently swollen to twice its natural size; and which the Eumenides of the nursery authoritatively assured me was, with brown sugar, the "best puddin' out." I know now that congested loaf to have been an insipid swindle. I am again in Regent Street, but at another window, and in another house. There is no nurse now, but a genteel young woman, aged about thirty-she asked me once, for fun, how old she was, and I guessed, in all youthful seriousness, fifty, whereupon she slapped me-to take care of me. Her name is Sprackmore, she has long corkscrew ringlets, and is very pious, and beneath her auspices I first study the "Loss of the Kent East Indiaman," and the "Dairyman's Daughter." She has fits, too, hollow-eyed little boy in a tunic, with a frill and a belt, and to be dreadfully afraid of the parent I used a year before to love and caress with such fearless confidence. They say I am a clever child, and my cleverness is encouraged by being told that I am not to ask questions, and that I had much better go and play with my toys than mope over that big volume of Lyttelton's "History of England," lent to me by Mr. Somebody, the lawyer-I see him now, very stout and gray, at the funeral whenever any of us dies: of which volume-it is in very shabby condition-I break the top cover off by letting it fall from the chair, which is my readingdesk. I suffer agonies of terror and remorse for months, lest the fracture should be discovered, though I have temporarily repaired it by means of a gimlet and a piece of twine. Then, one bright day, my cousin Sarah gives me a bright five-shilling piece-I take her to the opera now, but she always remembers my childish dependence upon her, and insists upon paying the cab home-and take Lyttelton's "History," still with great fear and trembling, to a bookbinder's in Broad Street, Golden Square, who tells me that the "hends is jagged," and that there must be a new back, lettering, and gilding to the book. He works his will with it, and charges me four shillings and sixpence out of the five shilling piece for working it; but to tell of the joyful relief I feel when I bring Lyttleton's "History" back safe and sound! I do not get rid of my perturbation entirely, however, till I have rubbed the back against the carpet a little to soil it, in order that it may not look too new. Oh! the agonies, the Laocoon-like conscience windings, the Promethean tortures, that children suffer through these accidental breakages! Oh! the unreasoning cruelty of parents, who punish children for such mischances! So I am the little boy in a tunic; and I daresay, that, with my inquisitiveness, and my moping over books, I am an intolerable little nuisance. I am at the Regent Street | in my childhood most glorious playgrounds. window, and much speculation is rife as to There I kept preserves of broken bottles whether the King, who is lying mortally and flowerpots; on these leads I inscribed sick at Windsor, is dead. For it is within a fantastic devices; and often have I come to few minutes of eleven, and at that time the domestic grief through an irresistible prowell-known troop of Horse Guards pass on pensity for poaching on the balconies of the their way to St. James's; and it is reasona- neighbours on either side. Still in a state bly inferred that, if King William be of tunic-hood, I remember a very tall, gathered to his fathers, the standard will be handsome gentleman, with a crimson velvet furled. The Guards pass; they wore hel- under-waistcoat-I saw his grave in Perè la mets with plumes above them shaped like Chaise last winter-who was my great black mutton chops-not the casques with aider and abetter in these juvenile escathe flowing horse-hair they wear now; and pades. He had a wondrous weapon of of to be sure the standard is furled, in a fence called a "sabarcane," a delightful species of drab umbrella case. The King thing (to me then), half walking-stick, half is dead for sure; nay, he does not die for a pea-shooter, from which he used to disfull week afterwards; the flag was merely charge clay pellets at the vagrant cats on furled because the day was dark and louring, the adjoining balconies. He it was who presaging rain. was wont to lean over the balcony, and fish for people's hats with a salmon-hook affixed to the extremity of a tandem-whip; he it was who came home from the Derby (quite in a friendly manner) to see us one evening, all white-white hat, white coat, white trousers, white waistcoat, white neckerchief, white boots, to say nothing of the dust and the flour with which he had been plentifully besprinkled at Kennington Gate, and insisted upon winding-up our new French clock with the snuffers. He it was who made nocturnal excursions from parapet to parapet along the leads, returned with be wildering accounts of bearded men who were playing at dice at No. 92; of the tenor of the Italian Opera, who, knife in hand, was pursuing his wife (in her nightdress) about the balcony, at No. 74; and of Mademoiselle Follejambes, the premier sujet of the same establishment, who was practising pirouttes before a cheval glass at the open window of No. 86, while Mademoiselle Follejambe's mamma, with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief tied round her snuffy old head, was drinking anisette out of a tea cup. You must be forbearing with me, if, while I speak of Regent Street, I interlard my speech with foreign languages a little. For, from its first ædification, the Quadrant end of Regent Street, has been the home of the artistic foreigners, who are attracted to London during the musical and operatic season, less by inclination for the climate and respect for the institutions of England. than by a profound admiration for the cir cular effigies, in gold, of her Majesty the Queen, which John Bull so liberally bestows on those who squall or fiddle for him, provided they be of foreign extraction. From I lived in the house in Regent Street in which the Marquis de Bourbel forged his letters of credit. I think, without vanity, that I am pretty well qualified to speak of the place, for, walking down it the other day, I counted no less than eleven houses, between the two circuses, in which I had at one time dwelt. But they were all early, those remembrances, and connected with the time when the colonnade of the Quadrant existed. Whatever could have possessed our Commissioners of Woods and Forests to allow those unrivalled arcades to be demolished! The stupid avarice of tradesmen who petitioned for the removal of the columns gained nothing by the change, for the Quadrant, as a lounge in wet weather, was at once destroyed; and I see now many of the houses, once let out in superior apartments, occupied as billiard-rooms and photographic studios, and many of the shops invaded and conquered by cheap tailors. The Quadrant colonnade afforded not only a convenient shelter beneath, but it was a capital promenade for the dwellers in the first floors above. The entresols, certes, were slightly gloomy; and moustached foreigners with some gaily-dressed company still naughtier, could with difficulty be restrained from prowling backwards and forwards between Glasshouse Street and the County Fire Office; but perambulating Regent Street at all hours of the day and night, as I do now frequently, I see no diminution in the number of moustached, or rouged, or naughty faces, whose prototypes were familiar to me, years agone, in the brilliant Quadrant. As to the first-floor balconies above, they were VOL. V 107 |