nder is Sarah Marlborough's
palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter
Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79, and occupied by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor
Gwynn, comedian.

How often has Queen Caroline's chair issued from under yonder arch! All
the men of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen
Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their
way to Brookes's; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas;
and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett's; and Byron limping
into Wattier's; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and
Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince
of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson
counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley's
window; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just
bought out at Christie's; and George Selwyn sauntering into White's.

In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of correspondence
by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole's, or so bitter and bright
as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time,
because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices
speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and
Sporus's malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters--as one looks
at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and
voluptuous people--one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the
laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the brimming cups; the
shout at the racecourse or the gaming-table; the merry joke frankly spoken
to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who
heard and spoke such coarse jokes; how grand those gentlemen!

I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, has almost
vanished off the face of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver or
the Red Indian. We can't have fine gentlemen any more, because we can't
have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey: the
parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly: children do not go down
on their knees to beg their parents' blessing: chaplains do not say grace
and retire before the pudding: servants do not say "your honour" and "your
worship" at every moment: tra