and what with the intrinsic fidelity of his female domestic, he could put the whole family into a state of requisition, and command an elegant table, as well as ready attention, upon any particular occasion."

"Such was the situation of a man of genius, and an author, in the decline of a long life, and in a country at the highest pitch of grandeur and wealth. But it must be remembered, that the comforts he possessed were not derived from the profits of literature."

During the last year of Arthur Murphy's life he possessed a certain income of 500l., and added to this was 150%. for the copyright of his Tacitus, which, however, was less than half the sum he had been frequently offered for it. The translation of Sallust, which Murphy left unfinished, was completed by Thomas Moore, and published in 1807.

Murphy appears to have perfectly reconciled his mind to the stroke of death. He made his will thirteen days previous to it, and dictated and signed plain and accurate orders respecting his funeral. He directed his library of books and all his pictures to be sold by auction, and the money arising therefrom, together with what money he may have at his bankers or in his strong box, he bequeathed to his executor, Mr. Jesse Foot, of Dean Street, Soho. To Mrs. Mangeon (his landlady) he gave "all his prints in the room one pair of stairs and whatever articles of furniture" he had in her house, bookcase excepted." And to his servant, Anne Dunn, "twenty guineas, with all his linen and wearing apparel." After the completion of this will, Murphy observed, “I have been preparing for my journey to another region, and now do not care how soon I take my departure." And on the day of his death (18th June, 1805) he frequently repeated the lines of Pope :

66 the

Taught, half by reason, half by mere decay,

To welcome death and calmly pass away."

All that we can further glean respecting the interior of Murphy's apartment is, that in it "there was a

portrait of Dunning (Lord Ashbur ton), a very striking likeness, painted in crayons by Ozias Humphrey."

Humphrey, who was portraitpainter in crayons to George III. and in 1790 was elected a member of the Royal Academy, resided, in 1792 and 1793, at No. 19 Queen's Buildings, Knightsbridge; but whether this was the fifth house beyond Nattes', or the No. 19 Queen's Buildings, now called Brompton Road (Mitchell's, a linen-draper's shop), I am unable, after many inquiries, to determine. It will be remembered that Dr. Walcott (Peter Pindar) introduced Opie to the patronage of Humphrey, and there are many allusions to "honest Ozias," as he was called in the contemporary literature.

"But, Humphrey, by whom shall your labours be told,

How your colours enliven the young and the old?"

is the comment of Owen Cambridge; and Hayley says,

"Thy graces, Humphrey, and thy colours clear,

From miniatures' small circle disappear; May their distinguished merit still prevail,

And shine with lustre on the larger scale."

A portrait of Ozias Humphrey, painted by Romney in 1772, is preserved at Knowle, a memorial of the visit of those artists to the Duke of Dorset. It has been twice engraved, and the private plate from it, executed by Caroline Watson in 1784, is a work of very high merit. 1799 Humphrey resided at No. 13 High Row, Knightsbridge, nearly opposite to the house in which Murphy lodged, and there, with the exception of the last few months, he passed the remainder of his life.

In

At No. 21 Queen's Buildings (the second house beyond that occupied by Ozias Humphrey), Mr. Thomas Trotter, an ingenious engraver and draftsman, resided in 1801. He engraved several portraits, of which the most esteemed are a head of the Rev. Stephen Whiston and a head of Lord Morpeth. Nearly the last work of his burine was a portrait of Shakspeare, patronised by George Steevens. Trotter died on

the 14th February, 1803, having been prevented from following his profession in consequence of a blow on one of his eyes, accidently received by the fall of a flower-pot from a window. He, however, obtained employment in making drawings of churches and monuments for the late Sir Richard Hoare, and other gentlemen interested in topographical illustration.

Queen's Buildings, Brompton, are divided, rather than terminated, at No. 28 (Green's, an earthenware-shop) by New Street, leading into Hans Place"snug Hans Place," which possesses one house, at least, that all literary pilgrims would desire to turn out of their direct road to visit. Miss Landon, alluding to "the fascinations of Hans Place," playfully observes, "vivid must be the imagination that could discover them.

"Never hermit in his cell,

Where repose and silence dwell,
Human shape and human word
Never seen and never heard,'

had a life of duller calm than the indwellers of our square." Hans Place may also be approached from Sloane Street, and

No. 22 HANS PLACE,

is the south-east corner. Among its inmates have been Lady Caroline Lamb,* Miss Mitford, Lady Bulwer, Miss Landon, and Miss Roberts. How much of the "romance and reality" of life is in a moment conjured

up in the mind by the mention of the names here grouped in local association!

The editor of the memoirs of L. E. L. records two or three circumstances which give a general interest to Hans Place. Here it was that Miss Landon was born on the 14th August, 1802, in the house now No. 25; and "it is remarkable that the greater portion of L. E. L.'s existence was passed on the spot where she was born. From Hans Place and its neighbourhood she was seldom absent, and then not for any great length of time; until within a year or two of her death, she had there found her home, not indeed in the house of her birth, but close by. Taken occasionally during the earlier years of childhood into the country, it was to Hans Place she returned. Here some of her school time was passed. When her parents removed she yet clung to the old spot, and, as her own mistress, chose the same scene for her residence. When one series of inmates quitted it, she still resided there with their successors, returning continually after every wandering, like a blackbird to his

nest.'

999

The partiality of Miss Landon for London was extraordinary. In a MS. letter, 1834, now before me, and addressed to a reverend gentleman, she ominously says, "When I have the good luck or ill luck (I rather lean to the latter opinion) of being married, I shall certainly insist on the wedding excursion not extending much beyond Hyde Park Corner."

When in her sixth year (1808), Miss Landon was sent to school at No. 22 Hans Place. This school was then kept by Miss Rowden, who in 1801 had published A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany,† and in 1810 a poem entitled The Pleasures of Friendship. Miss Rowden became the Countess St. Quentin, and died some years since in the neighbourhood of Paris. In this house, where she had been educated, Miss Landon afterwards resided for many years as a boarder

1828.

† 8vo. 2d ed. 1812.

Ibid.

with the Misses Lance, who conducted a ladies' school. "It seems," observes the biographer of L. E. L., "to have been appropriated to such purposes from the time it was built, nor was L. E. L. the first who drank at the 'well of English' within its walls. Miss Mitford, we believe, was educated there, and Lady Caroline Lamb was an inmate for a time."

It is the remark of Miss Landon herself, that "a history of the how and where works of imagination have been produced would often be more extraordinary than the works themselves." "Her own case," observes a female friend, "is, in some degree, an illustration of perfect independence of mind over all external circumstances." "Perhaps to the L. E. L., of whom so many nonsensical things have been said, as that she should write with a crystal pen, dipped in dew, upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a butterfly's wing, a dilettante of literature would assign for the scene of her authorship a fairy-like boudoir, with rose-coloured and silver hangings, fitted with all the luxuries of a fastidious taste. How did the reality agree with this fancy sketch? Miss Landon's drawing-room,* indeed, was prettily furnished, but it was her invariable habit to write in her bedroom. I see it now, that homelylooking, almost uncomfortable room,

ATTIC, No. 22 HANS PLACE.

fronting the street, and barely furnished, with a simple white bed, at the foot of which was a small, old, oblong-shaped, sort of dressing-table, quite covered with a common worn writing-desk, heaped with papers, while some strewed the ground, the

table being too small for aught besides the desk; a little high-backed cane chair, which gave you any idea rather than that of comfort. A few books scattered about completed the author's paraphernalia."

In this attic did the muse of L. E. L. dream of and describe music, moonlight, and roses, and "apostrophise loves, memories, hopes, and fears," with how much ultimate appetite for invention or sympathy may be judged from her declaration that, "there is one conclusion at which I have arrived, that a horse in a mill has an easier life than an author. I am fairly fagged out of my life." Miss Roberts, who had resided in the same house with Miss Landon, prefixed a brief memoir to a collection of poems by that lamented lady, which appeared shortly after her death, her own mournful lines,"Alas! hope is not prophecy-we dream, But rarely does the glad fulfilment come; We leave our land, and we return no more."

And within less than twenty months from the selection of these lines they became applicable to her who had quoted them.

Emma Roberts accompanied her sister, Mrs. M'Naughten, to India, where she resided for some time. On her sister's death Miss Roberts returned to England, and employed her pen assiduously and advantageously in illustrating the condition of our eastern dominions. She returned to India, and died at Poonah, on the 17th September, 1840. Though considerably the elder, she was one of the early friends of Miss Landon, having for several years previous to her first visit to India boarded with the Misses Lance in Hans Place.

"These were happy days, and little boded the premature and melancholy fate which awaited them in foreign climes. We believe," says the editor of the Literary Gazette, "that it was the example of the literary pursuits of Miss Landon which stimulated Miss Roberts to try her powers as an author, and we remember having the gratification to assist her in launching her first essay-an historical production, which reflected high credit on her talents, and at once established

her in a fair position in the ranks of literature. Since then she has been one of the most prolific of our female writers, and given to the public a number of works of interest and value. The expedition to India on which she unfortunately perished was undertaken with comprehensive views towards the further illustration of the East, and portions of her descriptions have appeared as she journeyed to her destination in periodicals devoted to Asiatic pursuits."

The influence of Miss Landon's literary popularity upon the mind of Miss Roberts very probably caused that lady to desire similar celebrity. Indeed, so imitative are the impulses of the human mind, that it may fairly be questioned if Miss Landon would ever have attuned her lyre had she not been in the presence of Miss Mitford's and Miss Rowden's "fame, and felt its influence." Miss Mitford has chronicled so minutely all the sayings and doings of her school-days in Hans Place (H. P., as she mysteriously writes it), that she admits us at once behind the scenes. She describes herself as sent there (we will not supply the date, but presume it to be somewhere about 1800) "a petted child of ten years old, born and bred in the country, and as shy as a hare." The schoolmistress, a Mrs. S-, " seldom came near us. Her post was to sit all day, nicely dressed, in a nicely furnished drawing-room, busy with some piece of delicate needle - work, receiving mammas, aunts, and godmammas, answering questions, and administering as much praise as she conscientiously could-perhaps a little more. In the school-room she ruled, like other rulers, by ministers and delegates, of whom the French teacher was the principal." This French teacher, the daughter of an émigré of distinction, left upon the short peace of Amiens to join her parents in an attempt to recover their property, in which they succeeded. Her successor is admirably sketched by Miss Mitford; and the mutual antipathy which existed between the French and English teacher, in whom we at once recognise Miss Rowden:

"Never were two better haters. Their relative situations had probably something to do with it, and yet it was wonderful that two such excellent persons should so thoroughly detest each other. Miss

R.'s aversion was of the cold, phlegmatic, contemptuous, provoking sort; she kept aloof, and said nothing. Madame's was acute, fiery, and loquacious; she not only hated Miss R., but hated for her sake knowledge, and literature, and wit, and, above all, poetry, which she denounced as something fatal and contagious, like the plague.'

Miss Mitford's literary and dramatic tastes seem to have been acquired from Miss Rowden, whom she describes as 66 one of the most charming women that she had ever known:"

"The pretty word graziosa, by which Napoleon loved to describe Josephine,

seemed made for ber. She was full of a delicate grace of mind and person. Her little elegant figure and her fair mild face, lighted up so brilliantly by her large hazel eyes, corresponded exactly with the soft, gentle manners which were so often awakened into a delightful playfulness, or an enthusiasm more charming still, by the impulse of her quick and ardent spirit. To be sure she had a slight touch of distraction about her (distraction French, not distraction English), an interesting absence of mind. She united in her own person all the sins of forgetfulness of all the young ladies; mislaid her handkerchief, her shawl, her gloves, her work, her music, her drawing, her scissors, her keys; would ask for a book when she held it in her hand, and set a whole class hunting for her thimble, whilst the said thimble was quietly perched upon her finger. Oh! with what a pitying scorn our exact and recollective French woman used to look down on such an incorrigible scatterbrain! But she was a poetess, as madame said, and what could you expect better!"

Such was Miss Landon's schoolmistress; and under this lady's especial instruction did Miss Mitford pass the years 1802, 3, and 4; together they read "chiefly poetry;" and "beside the readings," says Miss Mitford, "Miss R. compensated in another way for my unwilling application. She took me often to the theatre; whether as an extra branch of education, or because she was herself in the height of a dramatic fever, it would be invidious to inquire. The effect may be easily foreseen; my enthusiasm soon equalled her own; we began to read Shakspeare, and read nothing else."

In 1810 Miss Mitford first appeared as an authoress by publishing a volume of poems, which, in the course

of the following year, passed into a second edition.

Returning from Hans Place to the Fulham Road through NEW STREET, No. 7 may be pointed out as the house formerly occupied by Chalon, "animal painter to the royal family;"

and No. 6 as the residence of the Right Hon. David R. Pigot, the late Solicitor-General for Ireland, while (in 1824, 25) studying in the chambers of the present Lord Chief-Justice Tindal, for the profession of which his pupil rapidly became an eminent member.

BROMPTON was formerly an airy outlet to which the citizen, with his spouse, were wont to resort for an afternoon of rustic enjoyment. It had also the reputation of being a locality favourable to intrigue. Steele, shrewdly writing on the 27th July, 1713, says,

"Dear Wife,-If you please to call at Button's, we will go together to Bromp

ton.

"Yours ever,

"RICHARD STEELE."

Now is Brompton all built or being built over, which makes the precise locality of crescents and rows puzzling to old gentlemen. Its heath is gone, and its grove represented by a few dead trunks and some unhealthylooking trees which stand by the road-side, their branches lopped and their growth restrained by order of the district surveyor; and Brompton National School, nearly opposite to New Street, a building in the Tudor style, was, in 1841, wedged in there "for the education of 400 children after the design of Mr. George Godwin, jun. ;" so at least the newspapers of the day informed the public.

BROMPTON Row on the north, or right-hand side of the main Fulham road, now consists of fifty-five respectable-looking houses, uniform, or nearly so, in appearance; and, according to the statements in the Gentleman's Magazine and Mr. Faulkner's History of Kensington, here died Arthur Murphy. But although this was not the case, in Brompton Row have lived and died authors, and actors, and artists, Correspondence, vol. i. p. 293.

No. 14 BROMPTON ROW

Iwas the abode for more than ten years (1820 to 1831) of John Vendramini, a distinguished engraver. He was born at Roncade, near Bassano, and died 8th February, 1839, aged seventy. Vendramini was a pupil of Bartolozzi, under whom he worked for many years, and of the effect he produced upon British art much remains to be said. In 1805 Vendramini visited Russia, and on his return to England engraved "The Vision of St. Catherine," after Paul Veronese; the "St. Sebastian," after Spagnoletti; "Leda," after Leonardo de Vinci; and the "Raising of Lazarus," from the Sebastian del Piombo in the National Gallery.

No. 14 Brompton Row, in 1842, was the residence of Mr. George Herbert Rodwell, a favourite musical and dramatic composer, whose fame has been popularly spread in England by the air of Nix my Dolly Pals, and the Irish acting of Power in Rodwell's farce of Teddy the Tiler.

At No. 23 Brompton Row resided Mr. Walter Hamilton, who, in 1819, published, in two volumes 4to, A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of Hindostan and the Adjacent Country; according to Lowndes' Bibliographers' Manual, "an inestimable compilation,

+ Vol. lxxv. Part I.p. 590.