In one of these streets opening into Leicester Square, St. Martin's Street, Sir Isaac Newton lived for the last sixteen years of his life. The house in which he lived looks dingy enough now; but in those days it was considered a very good residence indeed, and Like Leicester House was frequented by the best company in the fashionable world. The genius and reputation of its master attracted scientific and learned visitors; and the beauty of his niece, Mrs. Catharine Barton, drew to her feet all the more distinguished wits and beaux of the time. Between 1717 and 1760 Leicester House became what Pennant calls "the pouting-place of princes," being for almost all that time in the occupation of a Prince of Wales who was living in fierce opposition to the reigning king. In 1718 the Prince of Wales having had a furious quarrel with his father George I., on the occasion of the christening of the Prince's son George William, left St. James's, and took Leicester House at a yearly rent of five hundred pounds; and until he succeeded to the throne in 1727, it was his town residence. Here he held his court--a court not by any means strait-laced; a gay little court at first; a court whose selfish intrigues and wild frolics and madcap adventures and humdrum monotony live for us still in the sparkling pages of Horace Walpole; or are painted in with vivid clearness of touch and execution, but with a darker brush, by Hervey, Pope's Lord Fanny, who was a favourite with his mistress the handsome accomplished Caroline, Princess of Wales. Piloted by one or other of these exact historians, we enter the chamber of the gentlewomen-in-waiting, and are introduced to the maids-of-honour, to fair Mary Lepell, to charming Mrs. Bellenden, to pensive, gentle Mrs. Howard. We see them eat Westphalia ham of a morning, and then set out with their royal master for a helter-skelter ride over hedges and ditches, on borrowed hacks. No wonder Pope pitied them; and on their return, who should they fall in with but that great poet himself! They are good to him in their way, these saucy charming maids-of-honour, and so they take the frail little man under their protection and give him his dinner; and then he finishes off the day, he tells us, by walking three hours in the moonlight with Mary Lepell. We can imagine the affected compliments he paid her and the burlesque love he made to her; and the fun she and her sister maids-of-honour would have laughing over it all, when she went back to Leicester House and he returned to his pretty villa at Twickenham.