The open place usually called Charing Cross, from a fine cross which stood there before the grand rebellion, is of a triangular form, having the Pall Mall and the Haymarket on the north-west, the Strand on the east, and the street before Whitehall on the south. In the middle of this space is erected a brazen equestrian statue of King Charles I., looking towards the place where that prince was murdered by the rebels, who had erected a scaffold for that purpose before the gates of his own palace. This statue is erected on a stone pedestal seventeen feet high, enriched with his Majesty’s arms, trophy-work, palm-branches, &c., enclosed with an iron palisade, and was erected by King Charles II. after his restoration. The brick buildings south-east of Charing Cross are mostly beautiful and uniform, and the King’s stables in the Mews, which lie north of it, and are now magnificently rebuilding of hewn stone, will probably make Charing Cross as fine a place as any we have in town; especially as it stands upon an eminence overlooking Whitehall. The Banqueting-house stands on the east side of the street adjoining to the great gate of Whitehall on the south. This edifice is built of hewn stone, and consists of one stately room, of an oblong form, upwards of forty feet in height, the length and breadth proportionable, having galleries round it on the inside, the ceiling beautifully painted by that celebrated history-painter, Sir Peter Paul Rubens: it is adorned on the outside with a lower and upper range of columns of the Ionic and Composite orders, their capitals enriched with fruit, foliage, &c., the intercolumns of the upper and lower range being handsome sashed windows. It is surrounded on the top with stone rails or banisters, and covered with lead. St. James’s Palace, where the Royal Family now resides in the winter season, stands pleasantly upon the north side of the Park, and has several noble rooms in it, but is an irregular building, by no means suitable to the grandeur of the British monarch its master. In the front next St. James’s Street there appears little more than an old gate-house, by which we enter a little square court, with a piazza on the west side of it leading to the grand staircase; and there are two other courts beyond, which have not much the air of a prince’s palace. This palace was a hospital, suppressed by Henry VIII., who built this edifice in the room of it.