of Rabelais or Cervantes, but not for the charger
of a king. There is a lineal descendant of this
animal in Cavendish-square, and a near relative
in the enclosure of St. James's. The race in
the present day has still some representative,
and it was only yesterday that your servant saw
two highly comic leaders in a hearse, which
were exactly of this statuesque type, and which
were in unseemly spirits, and uninfluenced by
any sense of propriety.

To such a personage as should judge only by
the external indications of our capital it would
infallibly appear that, after the time of Charles
the First, some strange freaks had been indulged
in, in the way of costume. Indeed, in taking
leave of the statue of the royal martyr, we bid
good-by for a while to realities in dress, and the
next kind of costume that found favour was
either partially or completely of a Roman order.
There is a very good specimen of this Roman
rage in the statue of James the Second, at the
back of Whitehall. There is something
inconceivably dismal about that figure and the place
in which it stands. Turned away from the
great building, and apparently pointing at a
special place on the pavement, it strikes one at
first that it must have been arranged with
some peculiar object, and that some deed of
horror must have taken place on the spot which
the finger indicates. There was, indeed, a
rumour once in circulation that the figure was
pointing at the spot on which Charles the First
was beheaded. An interesting theory this, and
one which would have completely elucidated the
difficulty of the finger, but for one or two
obstinate circumstances which oppose, as facts
sometimes will, perfect and otherwise unanswerable
theories. Charles was executed on the other
side of the building, and on a scaffold level with
the first-floor windows. The real explanation of
the difficulty is this: the statue of James once
held in its hand that inevitable truncheon
without which no well-conducted Roman could
exist. The truncheon, held with the forefinger
along it, has slipped out of the hand, and hence
the action. This is surely a valuable lesson to
our modem sculptors—some of whom, to this
day, affect the truncheon for many of their
military characters—to make this convenient
weapon, if possible, of the same piece as the hand
which holds it, or if this may not be, to weld
and secure it in its place with such cunningly-
devised solderings and cements as shall defy the
action of even such winters as that of 1859-60.
The importance of this caution must not be
overlooked, as there is no telling what effect might
be produced by other such truncheon removals
as this which has taken place at the back of
Whitehall. Were the baton, for instance, which
is at present held in the hand of the first
gentleman in Europe, as he sits on horseback in
Trafalgar-square,—were this instrument to slip
its moorings, this august monarch would look
as if he was just going to slap his thigh, and
cry out, " Why, bless my life and heart, I've
come out without my hat!"

There is a certain comparatively modern,
but very dreadful and dirty Roman who
resides among the bushes in the centre of the St.
James's-square enclosure. Is it, or is it not, the
case that this Roman, like him of Whitehall, is
pointing with his forefinger at the ground? The
natural answer to this inquiry would be that the
writer who asks this question had better go and
look. He would do so willingly, but he is afraid.
There is an inconceivable horror about that
figure which surely strikes all who behold it.
Whether it is because this Roman, being a
Roman, is secreted among the privet in the middle
of that enclosure; whether it is because he is
such an inconceivably and appallingly black
Roman; or from what other cause the feeling may
arise, certain it is, that that figure and its horse
are supernaturally horrible objects. Surely no
child ever ventures near that statue. Surely
even the St. James's cats give it a wide berth.
The little dapper clean Roman in Golden-square
—he is pointing too—is quite another affair, and
has nothing alarming about him except,
considering his situation, his supernatural
cleanliness.

While considering these recluses of our squares,
it would be wrong to forget the dismallest statue
in the dismallest enclosure, in the dismallest
square, in the dismallest neighbourhood of our
dismal capital. This is a figure of Queen Anne,
in Queen-square, Bloomsbury. She is
represented (with that stiffness of action about the
neck which such feats necessitate) balancing a
small crown which does not enclose any part of
her head but lies lightly on the top of it. She
is at the same time pointing to a cushion and
sceptre, which lie beside her on the top of a
small but bulbous column, and is saying to her
audience, " I'll put that up there, too, presently."

The recluse of Soho-square is so mutilated, so
strangely clad in a mixture of armour and periwig,
is withal so hemmed in and surrounded
with props and woodworks, that it is not very
easy to make out anything about him; while the
slaughterous Duke of Cumberland who is
imprisoned in the Cavendish enclosure, would not,
to judge by the pace at which he is going, be a
recluse at all if he could help it. The Duke of
Bedford and Charles James Fox, in their respective
squares of Russell and Bloomsbury, have
got so near the railings that they can hardly be
called recluses at all, and are almost as well off,
and as completely public characters, as Mr. Pitt
and my Lord Bentinck, who have got outside
the railings altogether, and are free of the town
and its pleasures.

But what does our uneducated friend, who
judges of the history of British costume by our
monumental records, what does he make of the
changes in our habits all this time?
Immediately after the reign of Charles the First he
finds that a Roman conquest takes place, and
that very soon the ordinary walking costume of
a gentleman consisted of a toga, or hair cutting
wrapper; a short skirt, composed apparently of
strips of stamped leather, with a crown piece at
the bottom of each length; of sandals with