In the days when London was no bigger than one of our second-rate provincial towns, Charing Cross was its market square. Here stood the pillory, even as late as the beginning of the last century; here were read the Royal proclamations, and here were the booths of the showmen who dealt in giants and fat ladies,--it was here, too, that Punch made his first appearance in England in 1666. Where the railway station now stands was Hungerford Market, and Trafalgar Square occupies the yard of what were once the Royal Mews, where the king’s falcons were kept till they were replaced by the king’s horses. It is rather odd that the word “mews” is now always associated with stables, for it once meant the pens or coops in which moulting falcons were kept (from the French _muer_--to moult). Geoffrey Chaucer, who lodged at Westminster, was in his time Clerk of the King’s Works and of the Royal Mews. WATER GATES “In some parts of London we may go back through the whole English history, perhaps through the history of man.” LEIGH HUNT. People seem to think that a great deal of time and energy must be spent if they wish to see anything of historic London, and they pass by, unnoticed, many of the most interesting reminders of bygone periods, just because they may see them every day. Buckingham Street, leading out of the Strand, is only a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross and it is full of historic memories. What stories the beautiful old water gate at its foot could tell of the days when the silver Thames washed up and down its grey stone steps, and of the famous people who used to take boat there! It was built by my Lord Duke of Buckingham, that hated favourite of James and Charles the First, who cuts such a sorry figure in English history books and such a romantic one in the pages of Dumas. He was the father of the extravagant, erratic George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom Scott describes in _Peveril of the Peak_, and Pope more pungently: Who in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon. Lely painted a wonderful portrait of the son. It hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, but even more interesting is the Vandyck picture of him with his brother Francis, painted when they were boys, and lately bought for the National Gallery. With his father murdered, and his property confiscated by the Commonwealth and given to General Fairfax, the duke solved his problem by marrying the General’s daughter and heiress, a solution for which Cromwell made him pay by a sojourn in the Tower, where he was an intermittent resident. But in spite of his wife’s fortune the man who, “was everything by turns and nothing long” was obliged to sell the magnificent mansion that his father had re-built in 1625 on the site of the old York House.