[B] The appearance of Whitehall from the Thames in the reign of Charles II. may be seen in our woodcut. The beautiful Banqueting-house of Inigo Jones was crowded among a heterogeneous mass of ugly buildings connected with the exigencies of the court. Beside the houses, to the spectator's left, was a large garden extending to the river, with fountains and parterres. A small garden also projected into the river in front of the buildings; and here Charles used to view the civic processions of the Lord Mayor, who on the day of his taking the oaths at Westminster, generally gratified the sovereign and other sight-seers with a pageant on the Thames, in some degree adulatory of the monarch. The king resided here so constantly, that the most striking pictures of his private manners are recorded to have happened at Whitehall, and for which the graphic pages of Pepys, Evelyn, and De Grammont may be consulted. Whitehall, indeed, has obtained its chief interest from its connection with the Stuarts. The Banqueting-house, erected by James I., in front of which his unfortunate son was executed; the residence of Cromwell here in a quietude, strangely contrasted with the voluptuousness of the Restoration; the flight of James II., and his queen's escape with her infant son by the water-gate, shown in our cut, closes the history of the Stuart family in this country of sovereigns; and the history also of the palace; for, on the 10th April, 1691, the greater part was burnt by a fire, which was succeeded by another in 1698, which destroyed nearly every building but the Banqueting-house, and Whitehall ceased to be the residence of royalty. [C] Nell's "town-house" was in Pall Mall. Pennant says, "it was the first good one on the left hand of St. James's Square, as we enter from Pall Mall. The back room on the second floor was (within memory) entirely of looking-glass, as was said to have been the ceiling. Over the chimney was her picture, and that of her sister was in a third room." At this house she died in 1691, and was pompously interred in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, leaving that parish a handsome sum yearly, that every Thursday evening there should be six men employed for the space of one hour in ringing, for which they were to have a roasted shoulder of mutton and ten shillings for beer. [D] Pepys was Secretary to the Admiralty, and it was he who published, from the king's dictation, the minute and interesting account of his escape from the Battle of Worcester, and adventures a Boscobel, and in the "Royal Oak." He kept a very minute and amusing diary, in which he neglected not to enter the most trivial matters, even the purchase of a new wig, or a new riband for his wife. This very littleness of detail has made his Memoirs the most extraordinary picture we possess of the times. He appears to have been a coarse but shrewd man, and fully alive to the faults of his master.