been variously occupied, and been progressively used as a pottery, a tavern, a brothel, and a school. In the last occupation, Carlisle House maintained a distinguished reputation for more than thirty years; but during the present summer (1828), it has been entirely pulled down, to make room for new dwellings between the Back Lane and Hercules Buildings.

WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE, ISLINGTON.

WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE obtained its name from an ancient stone CONDUIT, standing at a little distance on the north-west side, which was built over a small spring, or head of water, that in times past supplied the Charter House, by means of leaden pipes extending to that foundation. The extreme pleasantness of this situation, has for many years rendered it a very attractive spot to the London populace in their recreative excursions, and particularly on a Sunday afternoon in Summer, when the City" pours forth its congregated throngs," and the labours of the week are forgotten in the exhilaration of sunshine and fresh air. The gardens are then crowded to an excess; and on other fine evenings also, this place has many visitors; some attracted by its bowling green and Dutch-pin grounds, and others by the harmony of a fine-toned organ, with occasional singing, which stands in the long room. The anonymous author of "The Sunday Ramble," which was first published in 1774, has given the following description of the grounds :-"The garden is formed into several pleasing walks, prettily disposed;

at the end of the principal one is a painting, which serves to render it much longer in appearance than it really is; and in the middle of the garden is a round fish-pond, encompassed with a great number of very genteel boxes for company, curiously cut into the hedges, and adorned with a variety of Flemish and other paintings; there are likewise two handsome tearooms, one over the other, as well as several inferior ones in the dwelling-house." The fish-pond mentioned in this extract was filled up about twenty years ago, and has been planted over; the small paintings have been defaced or removed, and a new dancing and other rooms built, but in other respects the gardens are nearly the same as they then were. The "White Conduit Loaves" have long been famous, and before the great augmentation in the price of bread, during the Revolutionary war with France, they formed one of the regular" London Cries."

From these gardens, Graham, the intrepid aëronaut, has several times ascended in his balloon, in the course

of the last three years. As a means also of increasing their celebrity, they were opened in the summer of 1827 as a Minor Vauxhall, with fireworks, rope-dancing, and other amusements; but the magistrates having seriously objected to that display, the scheme was obliged to be given up.

Nearly a century has now passed since White Conduit House has maintained its fame; yet, "such is the mutability of human affairs," as Scott's Baillie Mucklethrift would express it, that ere long we may rationally expect it to be numbered, like Dobney's

Its plea

Bowling Green, with the places that were. * santness has of late years been much deteriorated by the new streets that have arisen on all the neighbouring fields; and as the population increases, its umbrageous walks, alcoves, and shady bowers, will doubtless become more valuable when covered with houses than by any other mode of occupation. The famous Ducking Pond, called the Basin, immediately without the gardens, to the north, has been filled up, and a new carriage road crosses its site.

WHETSTONE'S PARK, LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS.

THE slip of ground between the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Holborn, now occupied by the avenue called WHETSTONE'S PARK, is in old deeds named "Le Spencer's Lond;" and a deep ditch which anciently separated it from those fields, and extended nearly to Drury Lane, had the appropriate designation of "Spencer's Dig." On this ground, which, from lying open and waste, was frequently the scene of low dissipation, houses were first erected, on the eastern part, by Mr. Whetstone, in Charles the Second's time, a vestryman of St. Giles's, and from him it obtained

* Dobney's, or, more correctly, D'Aubigney's, Bowling Green, is now occupied by a group of houses called Dobney's Place, near the bottom of Penton Street, and almost opposite to the Belvidere Tavern and Tea Gardens. About fifty years' ago, equestrian performances were exhibited there, by a clever rider named Price, whilst similar feats were exhibited by a rival named Sampson, in a close behind the Old Hats, near Islington Turnpike.

the name of Whetstone's Park. On the other half, the houses were continued by a Mr. Phillips, and called Phillip's Rents. Several of the courts communicating with Holborn, were built about the same time, particularly Pargiter's Court, by a person of that name, but now called Feathers' Court, from a neighbouring sign in Holborn. Gate Street, and Great and Little Turnstiles, were, as their names imply, avenues leading into Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Strype in his edition of Stow's "London," Anno 1723, says that "Whetstone Park, at the backside of Holborn, was once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants, which some years since were forced away;" and Butler, our inimitable satirist, has thus alluded to its profligacy :

"And makes a brothel of a palace,

Where harlots ply, as many tell us,

Like brimstones in a Whetstone Alehouse.“

Dryden also, in his "Limberham," alludes to it as a well known harbouring place for dissolute females; who, in reference to the Park, have, by another author, been designated "wanton does."

THE CHARTER HOUSE.

THE modern appellation of the Charter House is derived (or, more properly, corrupted) from the French Chartreuse, the name of the place where the first Carthusian convent was founded in France, by Bruno, an austere canon of Cologne and Rheims. In 1349, a