But it is time to glance at fashionable London. As to its locality, it has been anything but stationary. Gradually, however, it has been gliding westward for the last three centuries and more. First breaking its way through Ludgate, and lining the Thames side of the Strand with noble houses, then pushing its course farther on, and spreading itself out over the favored parishes of St. James and St. George. Here, during the first half of the last century, might be seen the increasing centralization of English patricians. The city was deserted of aristocratic inhabitants, and Devonshire-square was the spot "on which lingered the last lady of rank who clung to her ancestral abode." But this westward tendency, flowing wave on wave, was checked for awhile in Soho and Leicester-squares, which remained till within less than a hundred years ago, the abode or resort of the sons and daughters of fashion. St. James's, Grosvenor, and Hanover-squares, were, however, of a more select and magnificent character. The titled in Church and state loved to reside in the elegant mansions which lined and adorned them, so convenient for visits to court, which then migrated backwards and forwards between St. James's and Kensington. Still, though these anti-plebeian regions were scenes of increasing convenience, comfort, and luxury, some of the nuisances of former days lingered amidst them; and as late as 1760, a great many hogs were seized by the overseers of St. George's, Hanover-square, because they were bred, or kept in the immediate neighborhood of these wealthy abodes. On the levee day of a prime minister, a couple of streets were sometimes lined with the coaches of political adherents, seeking power or place, when favored visitors were admitted to an audience in his bedchamber. The royal levees were thronged with multitudes of courtiers, who thereby accomplished the double purpose of paying their respect to the sovereign and reviving their friendships with each other. It is very melancholy to read in dean Swift's letters such a passage as the following, since it evinces so painful a disregard of the religious character and privileges of the Lord's-day, very common, it is feared, at the time to which it relates: "Did I never tell you," he says, "that I go to court on Sundays, as to a coffee-house, to see acquaintances whom I should not otherwise see twice a year." "Drawing-rooms were first introduced in the reign of George II., and during the lifetime of the queen were held every evening, when the royal family played at cards, and all persons properly dressed were admitted. After the demise of the queen in 1737, they were held but twice a week, and in a few years were wholly discontinued, the king holding his 'state' in the morning twice a week."--_Cunninghame_.