In May, 1832, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, of the Adelphi, and W. H. Williams, the comic actor and singer, tried their hands, and reopened the Panarmonion theatre as the ‘Royal Clarence,’ decorating it in the style of a Chinese pavilion. It is claimed that many well-known actors learnt their art at this bijou theatre. What is certain is that it often changed its name—being called, for instance, the Cabinet, and, in its latest days, the King’s Cross Theatre—and that both actors and audiences steadily deteriorated. During the greater part of its existence its boards were trodden by stage-struck amateurs; at one time it was used as a tobacco manufactory; and in the eighties or nineties its entrance-front might be seen plastered with bills announcing a mission-service or a temperance meeting. At last, early in 1897, Messrs. Reggiori, the proprietors of the neighbouring restaurant (Nos. 1 and 3, Euston Road) took the little theatre bodily into their premises, of which it now forms an additional dining-saloon. The old entrance-front (in Liverpool Street) has been smartened up with stucco and stained-glass windows. It seems likely that the vanished gardens gave a hint for the laying out of Argyle Square, which covers a considerable portion of their site. [Prospectuses and lithographs of the Panarmonion; newspapers of 1829 and 1830; Clinch’s _Marylebone_, etc., p. 182 _f._; Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Baker’s _London Stage_, ii., p. 260; _Era Almanack_, 1868, advt., p. vii; 1869, p. 34. The annals of the theatre may also be sought in the pages of the _Theatrical Journal_.] THE EAGLE AND GRECIAN SALOON THE Eagle tavern and Grecian theatre which stood till lately at the corner of the dreary City Road and Shepherdess Walk were developed out of a quiet eighteenth-century pleasure-garden known as the Shepherd and Shepherdess, which had its arbours, skittle-ground, and small assembly-room. {57a} About 1822 a rather remarkable man, named Thomas Rouse (born in 1784), came into possession of the premises. {57b} He is said to have begun life as a bricklayer; at any rate, he had a turn for building, and in later days indulged himself in saloons, pavilions, and Cockney gardening. He rebuilt the tavern, or, at any rate, renamed it the Eagle, and from 1824 onwards the Eagle lawn was the scene of some of Green’s balloon ascents, and of annual tournaments of the Devon and Cornish wrestlers and single-stick players. One of the earliest balloon ascents, on May 25, 1824, gave a melancholy advertisement to the place. A balloonist named Thomas Harris ascended from the grounds, accompanied by a young lady named Sophia Stocks, who was described by the journalists as ‘an intrepid girl’ who entered the balloon ‘with but slight appearance of fear.’ The balloon took the direction of Croydon, but by its fall to the earth in Beddington Park, Harris was killed and his companion severely injured. {58a}