not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless
_clique_ who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its
chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his
brother. It was their _home_--their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of
Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's
Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that gallery
where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant lord,
afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In old times
Leicester House had stood on Lammas land--land in the spirit of the old
charities, open to the poor after Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon.
the Earl of Leicester'--as an old document hath it--was obliged, if _he_
chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated land, to pay a
rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, then really 'in the
fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt in all state himself, but
let, or lent his house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even
Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her indeed
'life's fitful fever,' died at Leicester House. It became then,
temporarily, the abode of ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles
II., occupied the place; Prince Eugene, in 1712, held his residence
here; and the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact--brave,
loyal-hearted, and coarse--lingered at Leicester House in hopes of
obstructing the peace between England and France.

All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House at the
instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by his royal
father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it until the death of
George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes
loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland--the hero,
as court flatterers called him--the butcher, as the poor Jacobite
designated him--of Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and
respectability then dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick
was its next inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George
III., had her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables;
and at these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is
conspicuous.

Grace Boyle--for she unworthily bore that great name--was the daughter
and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex,
bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Short,