In the London churchyards there is plenty to interest the explorer, but it may be doubted if anything could be more tragically romantic than is offered by two memorials, found in two old churchyards--separated by one easy half-hour’s walk. The moralist will find profit, and a curious meditation over the instability of things, in his visit to these two interesting spots. Standing on that ill-shaped open _place_, the former Regent’s Circus, and looking along the bend of the new Shaftesbury Avenue, we can see the blackened and ungainly steeple of old St. Anne’s Church in Soho, now unexpectedly revealed by the clearances and “demolitions.” This clumsy, eccentric object seems to take the shape of a vintner’s cask perched airily on a spire, and must be pardoned to the memory of Wren, as one of those architectural freaks in which he occasionally indulged when invention failed him. To the same class belonged those extraordinary obelisks and other devices which he has placed on some of his towers. The church is a very old and interesting one, dating from 1686, and looks out on Dean Street. It has attained a sort of celebrity from its musical services; and the Princess of Wales and other distinguished persons are often found in the congregation. The old rectory, where, up to the present incumbency of Dr. Wade, the rector used to reside, stands where it did, beside the church, its rows of ancient windows having a cheerful prospect of the churchyard; but the actual rectory is in the quaint Soho Square. The churchyard is a very large forlorn piece of ground opening upon Wardour Street, and it was taken in hand some years ago by the improvers and spoilers. The tombstones were all collected together and laid down neatly as a sort of pavement, the rest planted with grass. It is now given over to a large colony of fowls, which pick up a livelihood and enjoy a sort of _rus in urbe_ there. One would have thought these measures were preparatory to throwing open the place as a recreation ground; but the gates remain fast locked, and the public may not enter now. On the outside wall of the church are seen two tablets, which arrest the attention; one to the memory of Hazlitt, of an extraordinary kind, setting forth his peculiar opinions; the other to an actual genuine king, who, after his abdication, died in England. The king’s coffin was placed in the vaults beneath, where the clerk recollects seeing it many years ago. But among the other bizarre proceedings which marked the course of the “improvements,” the vaults were completely filled up with sand, and the contents, as it were, obliterated. The inscription, which is the work of Horace Walpole, runs:-- Near this place is interred THEODORE, KING OF CORSICA, who died in this parish, Dec. 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King’s Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in conveyance of which he registered his kingdom of Corsica, for the benefit of his creditors.