It is curious that most of the great London architects should have come from Scotland. Among these the most distinguished are Chambers, the designer of Somerset House, Campbell, Rennie, Gibbs, and the Brothers Adam. All these have left their mark upon the great city. The Barry family were Irish; Pugin and Vanbrugh of foreign extraction; while Inigo Jones was a Welshman. Wren, however, outweighs the rest, and he was an Englishman. Vanbrugh was an interesting character, and his scattered works abound in London and its suburbs. This brilliant man has scarcely obtained the full credit he deserves for his numerous and versatile gifts, for he adorned no less than five professions. He was soldier, dramatist, and manager; an architect and a herald to boot: to say nothing of his being a wit and a poet. His plays, “The Relapse,” “The Confederacy,” “The Provok’d Wife,” and “The Provok’d Husband” are among the works that no theatrical gentleman’s library should be without. His great mansions at Blenheim and Castle Howard are monuments of his skill, and his fables were considered by Pope to be superior to those of La Fontaine. In soldiering and management he was not so successful, though he was persuasive enough to obtain from the nobility and gentry £30,000 with which to build an opera-house in the Haymarket on the exact spot where Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands. When this theatre was finished hardly a word could be heard, and the voices of the actors had the effect of low undulating murmurings. The object of the designer, however, was to furnish an interior for both music and Italian opera; and it would pass the wit of our Phippses and Emdens to supply a building which would be equally suited for acting and singing. It seems to be the fate of every architect of eminence who is favoured with a “commission” for some vast public building to suffer hardship and sordid treatment at the hands of the authorities. It was so with Wren, Barry, Street, and above all with Vanbrugh, who had to go to law with the Marlboroughs to obtain his fees. He was himself sued by the contractors and workmen, who could obtain no money from either the family or Government. The story of this persecution is to be found in the curious Vanbrugh papers. More curious is it to discover, as the writer did lately, that there is still standing in London his old mansion, the very first attempt he made, which (though dilapidated enough) seems still hale, stout, and strong. When it became known, about the year 1702, that the wit and dramatist had turned architect and had actually built himself a mansion in Whitehall, it became the subject of much ridicule; and Dr. Swift was merry on the shape and peculiarity of the new building. One asks the waterman hard by, Where may the Poet’s palace lie? At length they in the rubbish spy A thing resembling a goose-pie-- A type of modern wit and style The rubbish of an ancient pile.