Here, in less ancient days, lived the great judge, Lord Mansfield, whose house was burned during the Gordon Riots, in 1780; the mob threw his pictures, valuable books, and manuscripts, out of the windows and made a bonfire of them, while he and his wife escaped for their lives by the back of the building. Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, lived at one time in this square; also, Sir Richard Steele, who, giving here a grand entertainment during financial distresses, was waited on by bailiffs disguised as lacqueys; and, finally, Isaac d'Israeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield: who wrote his _Curiosities of Literature_ at No. 6. "His only amusement," says his son, who, as an infant, used to toddle round the square with his nursemaid, "was to ramble about the booksellers' shops," still so frequent in this vicinity. About 1760, the square was still so countrified that the Duchess of Bedford used to send out cards to her guests, inviting them to Bedford House to "take tea and walk in the fields"; while their coachmen "were regaled with the perfume of the flower-beds of the gardens in Great Russell Street." Within the enclosure is now a bronze statue of Charles James Fox, by Westmacott. These old London squares, with their tall plane trees, their luxuriant and well-ordered garden enclosures, convey a delightful sense, even now, of leisure and repose. No one in Bloomsbury, Tavistock, or Russell Squares would imagine that behind those green masses of foliage,--beyond the blue mist into which they melt so picturesquely,--lies that great "cauldron" or "fermenting vat," as Carlyle would say, of busy London. Yet it is there, but a stone's throw, indeed, away. In the squares the birds twitter and chirp; vistas of entwined branches, leafy glades, hide the glaring continuity of the streets and houses; you might think yourself in some suburban haunt of peace. Even the rumble of the wheels in neighbouring Southampton Row and Holborn seems, in Russell Square in summer, like a soothing tune "to rock a child asleep." You feel in the world, yet not of it; close to the "mighty pulse of the machine," yet in your garden enclosed, and at rest.... And in the back gardens of the houses themselves (for some of the old mansions yet have gardens, entered occasionally from side streets by mysterious Jekyll and Hyde doorways) it is the same. I know a "backyard" that still boasts its mulberry tree, bursting its fat green buds gaily in the spring; and another that can flaunt, when "soft April wakes," its hedge of fragrant lilac. The "daughters of the varying year" deign to notice us even in Bloomsbury, though they may not, perhaps, condescend to stay with us quite so long. (But then we do not ourselves, as a rule, pay such long visits in London as in the country.) Still, the crocus "breaks like fire" at our feet in the spring; the graceful bells of the foxglove usher us pleasantly into the autumn; and in London, imprisoned in brick, who