quadrangle, comprise the anecdotal annals of the last century, and the earlier portion of the present. The early companions of George IV. here revelled; and a host of buried talent, senatorial, literary, forensic, and dramatic, has the 'venue' of its brightest witticisms and most brilliant sallies laid in the hotels of 'the Garden'--in the Bedford, the Russell, the Piazza, Offley's, Mother Butler's, and the rest. "All around the subject of our article has experienced its full share of change. There is a painting by Hogarth, from which an etching has been published, representing Covent Garden in 1745. There stands the predecessor of the present church, alike in every respect (except the illuminated clock in the pediment); but here the resemblance ceases. The area now occupied by the handsome market, with its granite columns, plate-glass windows, covered arcades and conservatories, is in Hogarth's picture an uneven space divided by posts and chains, with a pump in its centre. Here and there a market-woman, with looped-up petticoats and exposed neck, presides over heaps of vegetables scattered on the ground, while among mounds of turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strut several formal figures in the uncouth head-dresses, pinched stomachers, and stiff diamond-quilted skirts of a century ago, accompanied by puppy-dogs, and beaux as precise and quaint in attire as themselves. But to return. The design both of church and piazza of the present building is said to have been borrowed from a place built by Cosmo de Medicis at Leghorn. The bold projecting cornice outside, and the eight Corinthian columns of the altar-piece within, have found many admirers among the cognoscenti. In conclusion, we must add, that the inimitable author of _Hudibras_ is also buried here, and no less a humorist than Dr. Walcot, the well-known 'Peter Pindar:' their monuments ought to be preserved." CHAPTER XIV. WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND THE PARKS.