But of all London statues the most unfortunate and the most ignominiously treated was that of George I in Leicester Square. The Square throughout the 'sixties was a standing eyesore; an unkempt wilderness, where garbage of every kind was shot. The dilapidated condition of the statue in 1865 harmonized with its dingy surroundings and prompted a parody of Cowper:-- I am Monarch of all I survey, My right leg is minus a foot, My left has been taken away, And another they haven't yet put. In the "Lay of Leicester Square" _Punch_, after a survey of the great days of Leicester House, where "Prince Fred 'gainst Bubb Dodington once held the stakes," describes its lamentable condition at the moment he wrote:-- In dirt and neglect Soho's Slums I outvie Than my seediest foreigner seedier am I. Things had come to such a pass that "well bred spectres" no longer could haunt Leicester Square:-- I, Leicester Square garden, so called from the days When my beds were made, shrubs pruned, and grass duly mown, In my dirt and disorder maintain the old ways-- While my leg-less lead King, from his war-horse o'erthrown, Proclaims in his downfall that highest of laws, "Vested rights are still rights, whate'er nuisance they cause." Later on in the year there is a cartoon aimed at Ayrton, the unpopular Chief Commissioner of Works in which "Ayrton the (B)Ædile" is shown pointing to the battered statue from which the figure of the rider had been removed, and saying "Ha! Now that's a style of Art I flatter myself I really do understand." From this derelict condition Leicester Square was rescued by the enterprise and munificence of Baron Albert Grant, whose chequered career was largely redeemed by an act which gave us the Square as we know it. Under the heading, "Grant in Aid and a Check that wants Crossing," _Punch_ gratefully records his intervention and the difficulties which delayed the execution of the scheme.