The church accordingly was built, and the “noble Tuscan portico,” which is said to be exactly like one described by the Italian architect Vitruvius, was erected in Covent Garden—nobody remembering that the entrance could not possibly be there, as the altar occupies the eastern extremity of every church. Passing through the “sham portico”—as it was contemptuously called by Horace Walpole—we come to the northern side of the square and find a long row of red-brick houses built over a colonnade so broad and lofty that we pause in wonder. The handsome groined roof is supported on massive stone pillars, now disfigured with paint and compo. The pavement is dirty and ill-kept, and the shops, thus sumptuously sheltered, are of the dingiest description. At the end of the colonnade the stone pillars have been replaced by iron ones, and behind these is the large foreign fruit market. This colonnade is called the Piazza, and it, too, was designed as long ago as 1633 by Inigo Jones. Probably the fact that the architect took the model of his church from Vitruvius will account for the Italian name given to the square, a name which struck Byron as so remarkable, that he wrote— “bating Covent Garden, I can hit on No place that’s called Piazza in Great Britain.” To realise the aim of Inigo Jones in building this place, we must picture the scene as it was in his day. There was no market, and the great square was a free open space, neatly gravelled, and admirably kept in order. It was bounded on the south side by the garden of Bedford House, outside the wall of which a grove of trees, “most pleasant in the summer season,” gave grateful shade to a few market-women who sat there selling fruit and vegetables. Jones’s Piazza was built round the north and east sides of the square, and the colonnade thus constructed formed the fashionable promenade of the ladies and gentlemen who lived in the surrounding houses. Some years later a handsome column, surmounted by a sun-dial, was erected in the middle of the open space, and on the black marble steps at its base, we are told that “cleanly matrons” used to sit and dispense barley broth and porridge to their customers. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries the houses in the Piazza were occupied by persons of high position and considerable wealth. Among these were several celebrated painters, such as Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller. Lely’s real name was Van der Faes, but his grandfather being a perfumer, whose sign was the lily, Sir Peter’s father, on becoming an officer, discarded the family name, adopting instead that of Lely, which his son was destined to make famous. Sir Peter became a great favourite at the English Court; he died in 1680, and was buried by torchlight in the Church of St. Paul’s, which faced his dwelling.