1745, and were executed in that year. Their heads remained a ghastly spectacle to the citizens till 1772, when they were blown down one night in a gale of wind. Having thus noticed some of the interesting objects east of Temple Bar, we will now take A FIRST GLANCE AT THE WEST END. The Strand—so called because it lies along the bank of the river, now hidden by houses—is a long, somewhat irregularly built street, in continuation westward from Temple Bar; the thoroughfare being incommoded by two churches—St. Clement Dane’s and St. Mary’s—in the middle of the road. On the site of the latter church once stood the old Strand Maypole. The new _Palace of Justice_, about whose site there have been so many Parliamentary discussions, will stand on what is at present a huge unsightly space of boarded-in waste ground, formerly occupied by a few good houses, between Temple Bar and Clement’s Inn, and many wretched back-slums. Not having the gift of prophecy as to its future, and warned by so many long delays in its case, we hazard no conjecture as to the time when it will gladden our eyes. In the seventeenth century the Strand was a species of country road, connecting the city with Westminster; and on its southern side stood a number of noblemen’s residences, with gardens towards the river. The pleasant days are long since past when mansions and personages, political events and holiday festivities, marked the spots now denoted by Essex, Norfolk, Howard, Arundel, Surrey, Cecil, Salisbury, Buckingham, Villiers, Craven, and Northumberland Streets—a very galaxy of aristocratic names. The most conspicuous building on the left-hand side is Somerset House, a vast range of government offices. Adjoining this on the east (occupying the site once intended for an east wing to that structure), and entering by a passage from the Strand, is a range of rather plain, but massive brick buildings, erected about thirty years ago for the accommodation of King’s College; and adjoining it on the west, abutting on the street leading to Waterloo Bridge, is a still newer range of buildings appropriated to government offices—forming a west wing to the whole mass. The Strand contains no other public structure of architectural importance, except the spacious new Charing Cross Railway Station and Hotel on the south side. The eastern half of the Strand, however, is thickly surrounded by theatres—Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Olympic, the Charing Cross, the Adelphi, the Vaudeville, the Lyceum, the Gaiety (built on the site of Exeter ’Change and the late Strand Music Hall, as is the Queen’s on that of St. Martin’s Hall in Long Acre), the Globe, and the Strand Theatres, are all situated hereabouts. Exeter Hall is close by, and—pardon the contrast of ideas—so is Evans’s Hotel and Supper Rooms, long famous for old English glees, madrigals, chops and steaks, and as a place for friendly re-unions, without the objectionable features of many musical halls.