King Street, through which we can see the trees of St. James’s Square, must not delay us, or we shall never get along, but we may remember that from 1673, when it was formed, to 1830, it was not a street proper at all, but merely one of those exiguous courts, of which Crown Court, in Pall Mall, is a survivor. There is one private house of interest in King Street, for at No. 1c, as a memorial tablet commemorates, Napoleon III., while yet only Prince Louis Napoleon, resided for two years, 1838-40, after he had been expelled from Switzerland. While living here he was enrolled as a special constable during the Chartist riots; and while here he also took part in that famous Eglinton Tournament which required nothing to make it successful but fine weather. It was from King Street that the future Emperor started on his unsuccessful descent on Boulogne, when it is said that he procured a tame eagle from Covent Garden as a sort of political property, which was to be released on his stepping on to French soil--a piece of theatrical legerdemain that cost him the adherence of at least one follower. I may remind the stranger that the famous Willis’s Rooms, formerly Almack’s, that “Matrimonial Bazaar,” as Lord William Pitt Lennox calls it, the laws of which were as those of the Medes and Persians, as the great Duke of Wellington once had reason to remember when he was turned away from its doors, are still in King Street, but turned to other uses, and that just opposite stands the equally famous “Christie’s,” where old and new masters are continually changing hands. As we turn into Pall Mall, the picturesque buildings of St. James’s Palace tempt us to loiter; but that is a subject which once entered upon in this little book would lead me into an endless maze of historical and topographical _data_, and we must unwillingly pass by. [Sidenote: PALL MALL.] Here we are in the very heart of Clubland; indeed, so long ago as 1849, when J. T. Smith wrote his fascinating book on the Streets of London, he speaks of this noble street as bidding fair to contain in a short time nothing but club-palaces, as he very properly terms them; and to-day (as Thackeray wrote): “Extending down the street palace after palace rises magnificent, and under their lofty roofs warriors and lawyers, merchants and nobles, scholars and seamen, the wealthy, the poor, the busy, the idle assemble.” [Illustration: _Sᵗ. James’s Palace, view’d from Pall Mall._] [Illustration: _The Same from the Park._] [Sidenote: THE CARLTON AND REFORM CLUBS.]