One of the peculiar institutions of the country is the square. Charles Knight says:—“The Piazza, Place, Platz, of Italy, France, or Germany, have little in common with it. Its elements are simple enough—an open space of a square figure, houses on each of the four sides, and an enclosed centre with turf, a few trees, and, it may be, flowers; and there is a square.” There are fashionable squares, all alive with the sound of carriage-wheels and the chaste accents of a thousand flunkeys; there are city squares, dull, dark places, with old red-brick houses, and a stunted, smoke-dried shrub or two in the middle. Then there are respectable squares, which never were fashionable, nor ever aimed to be such; and then there are squares which were once fashionable, but now are sadly gone out of repute. One of the chief of these is Leicester-square. Do our readers remember how Queen Caroline found time to be the mother of seven promising children, of whom the eldest, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was a continual source of sorrow and vexation to both his parents? “He resembled,” writes Horace Walpole, with his usual sneer, “the Black Prince only in dying before his father.” Well, there was a house built before the Commonwealth, called Leicester-house. Hither came this young, dissipated, short-lived Prince, and fixed his court. When he passed away, and the wits wrote— “Here lies Fred, Who was alive, And is dead,” still the place had the prestige of fashion. It gradually assumed the shape of a square, and became the dwelling-place of men truly great. Sir Isaac Newton resided near the square, in a house yet standing, and known to fast men as Bertolini’s, _alias_ the Newton Hotel. Where now we see the Sablonière Hotel, Hogarth once dwelt, and at a later time Sir Joshua Reynolds lived on the opposite side of the square. In its neighbourhood Sir Charles Bell made his discoveries respecting the nervous system, and here the renowned John Hunter lived. In later times Wordsworth made it the scene of his Moon-gazers; and if he could term it “Leicester’s busy square,” still more is that epithet appropriate to it at the present time. It is true that the Great Globe is not a success; that the Panopticon failed; that the Western Literary Institution did not flourish; that the place is not literary or scientific, nor even business-like, for by daylight the shops look seedy, and the wares exhibited are somewhat of the cheapest. But at night a change comes over the spirit of its dream. Here, from cheap lodging-houses hard by, from cold garrets or dark and dusty two-pair backs, crawl out to walk its flagstones, or taint its air with the smoke of cheap cigars, men of all nations and tongues—French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Poles—the scoundrels and patriots of Europe. There is business here now; the air is laden with the sickly odour of a thousand dinners. Hotels and _cafés_ and _restaurants_ are lit up and gay.