The great squares of Dublin are St. Stephen's Green, Rutland, Mountjoy, Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares. The first of these dates from the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is probably in a far more prosperous condition now than it ever was before. If we are to judge by Whitelaw's history, it presented in 1819 an aspect such as no public square out of Dublin--the enclosure of Leicester Square, London, excepted--could present. "Of that kind of architectural beauty," he says, "which arises from symmetry and regularity, here are no traces." Some houses were on a level with the streets, others were approached by a grand _perron_. The proprietors were of all degrees: here was the great house of a lord, there a miserable dramshop. The enclosure consisted of no less than thirteen acres, making Stephen's Green the largest public square in Europe. It was simply a great treeless field, with an equestrian statue of George II. stuck in the middle of it. The principal entrance to the ground is described as "decorated with four piers of black stone crowned with globes of mountain granite, once respectable, but exhibiting shameful symptoms of neglect and decay." There had been a gravel walk called the "Beaux' Walk," from its having been a fashionable resort, "but," says Whitelaw, "the ditch which bounds it is now usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state of putrefaction." At night this charming recreation-ground was illumined by twenty-six lamps, at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from each other, stuck on wooden poles. Such an account of the grand square of Dublin does not make one surprised to learn that the main approach to it from the heart of the city was of a very miserable description.