The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature: All volumesVarious
History
The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature: All volumes
Various
Periodicals
In No. 28, on the eastern side of the Square, the celebrated anatomist
John Hunter lived. Like most distinguished men of the day, he sat to Sir
Joshua Reynolds for his portrait; but was so restless and preoccupied that
he made a very bad sitter. At last one day he fell into a reverie. The
happy moment had come; Sir Joshua, with his instinctive tact, caught the
expression and presented to us the great surgeon in one of his most
characteristic attitudes. The other celebrated surgeons, Cruickshank and
Charles Bell, also lived in this Square. The house in which Bell resided
for many years was large and ruinous, and had once been inhabited by
Speaker Onslow. Here he set up his Museum, and began to lecture on
anatomy, having for a long time, he writes, scarcely forty pupils to
lecture to.
During all the later portion of its history Leicester Square has been
famous for shows. In 1771 Sir Ashton Lever exhibited a large and curious
Museum in Leicester House. In 1796 Charles Dibdin built at Nos. 2 and 3,
on the east side of Leicester Square, a small theatre in which he gave an
entertainment consisting of an interesting medley of anecdote and song. In
1787 Miss Linwood opened her gallery of pictures in needlework, an
exhibition which lasted forty-seven years, for the last thirty-five of
which it was exhibited at Savile House, a building which was destroyed by
fire in 1865.
After Miss Linwood's, one of the best shows in Leicester Square was
Burford's Panorama, which is now numbered with the things that were, its
site being occupied by a French chapel and school. In 1851 a new show was
inaugurated by Mr. Wylde the geographer. It consisted of a monster globe
sixty feet in diameter, which occupied the central dome of a building
erected in the garden of the Square. The world was figured in relief on
the inside of it, and it was viewed from several galleries at different
elevations. It was exhibited for ten years, and was then taken down by its
proprietor, owing to a dispute concerning the ownership of the garden. Out
of this case, which was decided in 1867, the proceedings originated which
resulted in the purchase and renovation of the garden by Baron Grant, who
having once more made it trim and neat, handed it over to the Board of
Works.--_Chambers's Journal._
A WOMAN'S LOVE.
A SLAVONIAN STUDY.
Those races that have not undergone the beneficial and domesticating
influences of civilisation, and that are isolated from the more cultured
nations, possess to an excess the different qualities or impulses inherent
to our nature. Amongst the emotions that move the heart of man, love is
certainly the one that has the greatest empire over him; it rules the soul
so imperiously that all the other passions are crushed by it. It makes
cowards of the bravest men, and gives courage to the timid. Love is,
indeed, the great motive-power of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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