"Mr. Normond Cony," saith the historian, "exhibited a singular bed for two shillings and sixpence each person, the product of his own ingenuity; the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty he could procure; the ground represented white damask, mixed with silver and ornaments of various descriptions, supporting vases of flowers and fruits. Each curtain had a purple border a foot in breadth, branched with flowers shaded with scarlet, the valence and bases the same. The bed was eighteen feet in height; and from the description must have been a superior effort of genius, equally original with the works of the South Sea Islanders, whose cloaks, mantles, and caps, grace the collection formed by Captain Cook, now preserved in the British Museum."[193] This was a gentle exhibition enough. Sixty years ago, instead of the bed, was presented the right honourable body of Lord Baltimore, a personage who ran away with young ladies against their will. The body lay "in state," previously to its interment at Epsom. Lord Baltimore was succeeded by the wild beasts, who kept possession in their narrow unhealthy cages till the death of the poor elephant in 1826, which conspiring with the new spirit of improvement to call final attention to this excresence in the Strand, it was adjudged to be rooted out. The death of this unfortunate animal, who seems to have had just reason enough to grow mad, had its proper effect, in exciting the public to guard against similar evils; nor is it likely that these intelligent and noble creatures, nor indeed any others, will undergo such a monstrous state of existence again. [Illustration: EXETER CHANGE.] Passing one day by Exeter Change, we beheld a sight strange enough to witness in a great thoroughfare--a fine horse startled, and pawing the ground, at the roar of lions and tigers. It was at the time, we suppose, when the beasts were being fed. FOOTNOTES: [127] Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book ii. [128] Pennant, _ut supra_, p. 139. [129] Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 397. [130] Biographia Dramatica, from Oldys's MS. Notes on Langbaine. [131] Censura Literaria, vol. i., p. 176. [132] State Poems, vol. ii., p. 143, [133] Boswell, vol. i., p. 383. [134] Boswell, vol. iii., p. 331. [135] Dugdale's Antiquities of Westminster. Heraldic MS. in the Museum, quoted in Londinium Redivivum (vol. ii., p. 282). Brydges's Collins's Peerage. Belsham's Life of Lindsey. We have been thus minute in tracing the occupancies of this house, from the interest excited by some of the members connected with it. Pennant says, upon the authority of the Sydney Papers, that Leicester bequeathed it to his son-in-law, which appears probable, since the latter possessed it. Perhaps the herald was confused by the name of Robert, which belonged both to son and son-in-law.