artist may have been, and the intermediate retouchers or repainters of the god, certain it is that the pencil of Morland, in accordance with the desire of the landlord, either transformed the petasus of Mercury into the horned head of a goat, his talaria into spurs upon boots of huge dimensions, and his caduceus into a cutlass, or thus decorated the original sign, thereby liquidating a score which he had run up here, without any other means of payment than what his pencil afforded. The sign, however, has been recently painted over, with considerable additional embellishment from gold leaf, so that not the least trace of Morland's work remains, except, perhaps, in the outline.

The road turning off at the Goat and Boots proceeds to the King's Road, and, although not in a direct line, to Battersea Bridge.

A few paces further on the main Fulham road, at the north or opposite side, stands "Manor House," a large, old-fashioned building, with the intervening space between it, and the road screened in by boards, which were attached to the antique iron gate and railings about four years ago, when it became appropriated to a charitable asylum. Previously, Manor House had been a ladies' boarding school; and here Miss Bartolozzi, afterwards Madame Vestris, was educated.

SEYMOUR PLACE, which leads to Seymour Terrace, is a cul-de-sac on the same side of the main Fulham road, between Manor House and the Somerset Arms public-house, which last forms the west corner of Seymour Place.

At No. 1 Seymour Terrace expired, on the 19th of June, 1824, in her twenty-fifth year, Madame Riego, the widow of the unfortunate patriot General Riego, "the restorer and martyr of Spanish freedom." Her short and eventful history possesses more than ordinary melancholy. While yet a child, she had to endure all the hardships and privations consequent upon a state of warfare, and, under the protection of her maternal grandfather, had to seek refuge from place to place on the mountains of

Asturias from the French army. At the close of 1821 she was married to General Riego, to whom she had been known and attached almost from infancy, and, in the spring of the following year, became, with her distinguished husband, a resident in Madrid. But the political confusion and continued alarm of the period having appeared to affect her health, the general proceeded with her in the autumn to Grenada, where he parted from his young and beloved wife, never again to meet her in this world, the convocation of the extraordinary cortes for October 1822 obliging him to return to the capital.

Accompanied by the canon Riego, brother to her husband, and her attached sister, Donna Lucie, she removed in March to Malaga, from whence the advance of the French army into the south of Spain obliged them to seek protection at Gibraltar, which, under the advice of General Riego, they left for England on the 4th of July, but, owing to an unfavourable passage, did not reach London until the 17th of August. Here the visitation which impended over her was still more calamitous than all that had preceded it. Within little more than two months after her arrival in London, the account arrived of General Riego's execution.*

Gerald Griffin, the Irish novellist, in a letter dated 22d of November, 1823, says,―

"I have been lately negociating with my host (of 76 Regent Street) for lodgings for the widow and brother of poor General Riego. They are splendid apartments, but the affair has been broken off by the account of his death. It has been concealed from her. She is a young woman, and is following him fast, being far advanced in a consumption. brother is in deep grief. He says he will go and bury himself for the remainder of his days in the woods of America."

The house,

His

No. 1 SEYMOUR PLACE, as it was then, Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, as it is now called, became, about this period, the residence of the unhappy fugitives. Griffin, who appears to have made

their acquaintance through a Spanish gentleman, named Valentine Llanos, writes, in February 1824,

"I was introduced the other day to poor Madame Riego, the relict of the unfortunate general. I was surprised to see her look much better than I was prepared to expect, as she is in a confirmed consumption."

Mental grief, which death only could terminate, had at that moment "marked" Madame Riego "for his own;" yet her look, like that of all high-minded Spaniards, to a stranger was calm-"much better than he was prepared to expect."

On the 18th of May, exactly one month and a day before the termination of her sufferings, Griffin says,

"The canon Riego, brother to the poor martyr, sent me, the other day, a Spanish poem of many cantos, having for its subject the career of the unhappy general, and expressed a wish that I might find material for an English one in it, if I felt disposed to make any thing of the subject. Apropos, Madame Riego is almost dead. The fire is in her eye, and the flush on her cheek, which are, I believe, no beacons for hope to the consumptive. She is an interesting woman, and I pity her from my soul. This Mr. Mathews, who was confined with her husband, and arrived lately in London, and who, moreover, is a countryman of mine, brought her from her dying hus. band a little favourite dog and a parrot, which were his companions in his dungeon. He very indiscreetly came before her with the remembrances without any preparation, and she received a shock from it, from which she has not yet, nor

ever will recover. What affecting little circumstances these are, and how interesting to one who has the least mingling of enthusiasm in his character!"

Madame Riego died in the arms of her attached sister, attended by the estimable canon. In her will she directed her executor, the canon, to assure the British people of the gratitude she felt towards them for the sympathy and support which they extended to her in the hours of her adversity. But what makes the will peculiarly affecting is her solemn attestation to the purity and sincerity of the political life of General Riego. She states that she esteems it to be her last act of justice and duty to the memory of her beloved husband, solemnly to declare, in the awful presence of her God, before whose judgment-seat she feels she must soon appear, that all his private feelings and dispositions respecting his country corresponded with his public acts and professions in defence of its liberties.

A few yards beyond the turn down to Seymour Place, on the opposite side of the road, stands the

cognised through the iron gate by which you enter, and which is surmounted by a lion rampant, probably the crest of one of the subsequent possessors. It is surprising, indeed, that so little alteration, externally as well as internally, should have taken place. The appearance of the

BACK OF SHAFTESBURY HOUSE, as represented in an old print, is unchanged, with the exception of the flight of steps which led to the garden being now transferred to the west (or shaded side) of the wing,-an addition made by Lord Shaftesbury to the original house. This was purchased by him in 1699 from the Bovey family, as heirs to the widow of Sir James Smith, by whom there is reason to believe it was built in 1635 as

ANNO DM 1635,

is engraved on a stone which forms part of the pavement in front of one of the summer-houses still remaining in the garden.

The Right Honourable Sir James Smith was buried at Chelsea 18th of

November, 1681. He was probably the junior sheriff of London in 1672.

"It does not appear," says Lysons, "that Lord Shaftesbury pulled down Sir James Smith's house, but altered it and made considerable additions by a building fifty feet in length, which projected into the garden. It was secured with an iron door, the window-shutters were of the same metal, and there were iron plates between it and the house to prevent all communication by fire, of which this learned and noble peer seems to have entertained great apprehensions. The whole of the new building, though divided into a gallery and two small rooms (one of which was his lordship's bedchamber), was fitted up as a library. The earl was very fond of the culture of fruittrees, and his gardens were planted with the choicest sorts, particularly every kind of vine which would bear the open air of this climate. It appears by Lord Shaftesbury's letters to Sir John Cropley that he dreaded the smoke of London as so prejudicial to his health, that whenever the wind was easterly he quitted Little Chelsea," where he generally resided during the sitting of parliament.

In 1710 the noble author of Churacteristics, then about to proceed to Italy, sold his residence at Little Chelsea to Narcissus Luttrell, Esq., who, as a book-collector, is described by Dr. Dibdin as "ever ardent in his love of past learning, and not less voracious in his bibliomaniacal appetites" than the Duke of Marlborough. Sir Walter Scott acknowledges in his preface to the works of Dryden the obligations he is under to the "valuable" and "curious collection of fugitive pieces of the reigns of Charles II., James II., William III., and Queen Anne," "made by Narcissus Luttrell, Esq., under whose name the editor quotes it. This industrious collector," continues Sir Walter, " seems to have bought every poetical tract, of whatever merit, which was hawked through the streets in his time, marking carefully the price and the date of the purchase. His collection contains the earliest editions of many of our most excellent poems, bound up, according to the order of time, with the lowest trash of Grub Street. It was dispersed on Mr. Luttrell's death," adds Sir Walter Scott, and he then mentions Mr. James Bindley and Mr. Richard Heber as having obtained a great share of the Luttrell

collection, and liberally furnished him with the loan of some of them in order to the more perfect editing of Dryden's works.

This is not exactly correct, as Mr. Luttrell's library descended with Shaftesbury House to Mr. Sergeant Wynne, and from him to his eldest son, after whose death it was sold by auction in 1786. On the title-page of the sale-catalogue the collection is described as "the valuable library of Edward Wynne, Esq., lately deceased, brought from his house at Little Chelsea. Great part of it was formed by an eminent and curious collector in the last century." At the sale of Mr. Wynne's library Bindley purchased lot "209, Collection of Poems, various, Latin and English, 5 vols. 1626, &c." for seven guineas; and "211, Collection of Political Poems, Dialogues, Funeral Elegies, Lampoons, &c., with various Political Prints and Portraits, 3 vols. 1641, &c." for sixteen pounds; and it is probable that these are the collections to which Sir Walter Scott refers.

Dr. Dibdin, in his enthusiastic mode of treating matters of bibliography, endeavours to establish a pedigree for those who

"Love a ballad in print a' life," from Pepys, placing Mr. Luttrell the second in descent.

"The opening of the eighteenth century," he observes, "was distinguished by the death of a bibliomaniac of the very first order and celebrity; of one who bad, no doubt frequently discoursed largely and eloquently with Luttrell upon the variety and value of certain editions of old ballad poetry, and between whom presents of curious old black-letter volumes were in all probability passing,-1 allude to the famous Samuel Pepys, secretary to the Admiralty."

Of Narcissus Luttrell, he then says:

"Nothing would seem to have escaped his lynx-like vigilance. Let the object be what it may (especially if it related to poetry), let the volume be great or small, or contain good, bad, or indifferent warblings of the Muse, his insatiable craving bad stomach for all.' We may consider his collection the fountain-bead of these copious streams, which, after fructifying in the libraries of many bibliomaniacs in the first half of the eighteenth century, settled for awhile more determinedly in

the curious book reservoir of a Mr. Wynne, and hence breaking up and tak ing a different direction towards the collections of Farmer, Steevens, and others, they have almost lost their identity in the innumerable rivulets which now in. undate the book-world."

It is to the literary taste of Mr. Edward Wynne, as asserted by Doctor Dibdin, that modern bookcollectors are indebted for the preservation of most of the choicest relics of the bibliotheca Luttrelliana.

"Mr. Wynne," he continues, "lived at Little Chelsea, and built his library in a room which had the reputation of having been Locke's study. Here he used to sit surrounded by innumerable books, a great part being formed by an eminent and curious collector in the last century.""

What Dr. Dibdin says respecting Mr. Wynne's building a library and Locke's study is inaccurate, as there can be no reasonable doubt that the room or rooms his library occupied were those built by Lord Shaftesbury, which had (and correctly) the reputation of having been his lordship's library, and the study, not of Locke, although of Locke's pupil and friend. It is not even probable that Lord Shaftesbury was ever visited by our great philosopher at Little Chelsea, as from 1700 that illustrious man resided altogether at Oates, in Essex, where he died on the 28th of October, 1704.

Whether to Lord Shaftesbury or to Mr. Luttrell the embellishments of the garden of their residence are to be attributed can now be only matter for conjecture, unless some curious autograph-collector's portfolio may by chance contain an old letter or other document to establish the claim. Their tastes, however, were very similar. They both loved their books, and their fruits and flowers, and enjoyed the study of them. An account drawn up by Mr. Luttrell of several pears which he cultivated at Little Chelsea, with outlines of their longitudinal sections, was communicated to the Horticultural Society by Dr. Luttrell Wynne, one hundred years after the notes had been made, and may be found printed in the second volume of the transactions of that society. In this account twentyfive varieties of pears are mentioned

carefully preserved, its antique summer-houses respected, and the little infant leaden Hercules, which spouted

And see on the basement-story of the original house the embellished mouldings of a doorway, which carries the mind back to the days of Charles I., and, standing within which, imagination depicts the figure of a jolly cavalier retainer, with his pipe and tankard; or of a Puritanical, formal servant, the expression of whose countenance is sufficient to turn the best-brewed October into vinegar.

Now a sleek cat purs there, in answer to some aged inmate's passing recognition of, poor pussy."

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