neat stand by him, to hold his tea; or a wooden bowl, with an edge of ormolu, to hold the rouleaus.-(Fox's Memoirs, edited by Lord John Russell.) Of this club, Fox and Gibbon were members; the latter dates several letters from here. The first modern club-house was No. 86, opened as a subscription-house, called the Albion Hotel, and now the Office of Ordnance. Since the removal of Carlton-house, in 1827, Captain Morris's "sweet shady side of Pall-mall" has almost become a line of club-mansions, in their architectural character resembling Italian palaces, and in some of their decorations aspiring to the higher art of classic sculpture.

Foremost among the coffee-houses of Pall-mall was the Smyrna, of the days of the Tatler and Spectator; where subscriptions were taken in by Thomson for publishing his Seasons, &c.

At the Star and Garter Tavern, at a meeting of the Nottinghamshire Club, Jan. 26th, 1765, arose the dispute between Lord Byron and his relation and neighbour, Mr. Chaworth, as to which had the most game on his estates: they fought with swords across the dining-table, by the light of one tallow candle, when Mr. Chaworth was run through the body, and died next day. Lord Byron was tried before his peers in Westminster Hall, and found guilty of manslaughter; but claiming the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., he was discharged on payment of his fees. In the same house (the Star and Garter), Winsor made his gas-lighting experiments; he lighted the street wall of Pall-mall in 1807.

At the Queen's Arms Tavern, Lord Mohun supped with his second on the two nights preceding his fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton, in Hyde Park. At the King's Arms met the Liberty or Rump-steak Club, of peers, in opposition to Sir Robert Walpole.

Pall-mall had early its notable sights and amusements. In 1701 were shown here models of William the Third's palaces at Loo and Hunstacrdike, "brought over by outlandish men," with curiosities disposed of on public raffling days." In 1733, a holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes," were run for by four women in the afternoon, in Pall-mall; and one of its residents, the High Constable of Westminster, gave a prize laced hat to be run for by five men, which created so much riot and mischief, that the magistrates "issued precepts to prevent future runs to the very man most active in promoting them." Here lodged George Psalmanazar, when he passed for an islander of Formosa, and invented a language which baffled the best philologists in Europe. Here lived Joseph Clark, the posture-master, celebrated for personating deformities: now deceiving, by feigned dislocated vertebræ, the great surgeon, Moulins; then perplexing a tailor's measure with counterfeit humps and high shoulders. To this class of notorieties belongs Dr. Graham's "Celestial Bed," and his other impostures, at Schomberg House, advertised by two gigantic porters stationed at the entrance, in gold-laced cocked-hats and liveries. The Doctor's "Goddess of Health" was a lady named Prescott.

At the Chinese Gallery was exhibited, in 1825, "the Living Skeleton"

(Anatomie Vivante), Claude Ambroise Seurat, a native of Troyes, in Champagne, 28 years old. His health was good, but his skin resembled parchment, and his ribs could be counted and handled like pieces of cane he was shown nude, except about the loins; the arm, from the shoulder to the elbow, was like an ivory German flute; the legs were straight, and the feet well formed.-(See Hone's Every-day Book.)

In the old Star and Garter house, westward of Carlton House, was exhibited, in 1815, the Waterloo Museum of portraits and battle-scenes, cuirasses, helmets, sabres, and fire-arms, state-swords, truncheons, rich costumes, and trophies of Waterloo; besides a large picture of the battle, painted by a Flemish artist; and at No. 59, Salter spent five years in painting his great picture of the Waterloo Banquet at Apsley House. Marlborough House was built a century and a half since, by Wren, for the Great Duke of Marlborough, who died here in 1722: it is painted in the grand style with the Duke's battles, and with allegories. Here the Duchess Sarah loved to talk indecorously of "neighbour George,' and had a neighbourly quarrel with Sir Robert Walpole; and here, sitting up in her bed, Sarah received the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who called to thank her for a present of Blenheim venison. The tenancy of the mansion by the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, who married first the daughter of our Prince Regent, and next the daughter of the King of the French, belongs to our own times.

22

Then, what ill-starred associations of the Regency flit about Carlton House, originally built in the same year as Marlborough House; and what odd stories linger of Big Sam, the royal porter, nearly eight feet high, and the supper to 2000 guests, with the marble canal with gold and silver fish flowing down the table. Eastward stood Warwick House, where the Princess Charlotte, in 1814, escaped in a hackney-coach to the house of her mother, the Princess of Wales, as vividly described by Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review.

In Warwick-street is a public-house, with the old sign of "The Two Chairmen," recalling the sedans of Pall-mall :

Who the footman's arrogance can quell,

Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,

To light the midnight visits of the dame!-Gay's Trivia, book iii. Here we take leave of the Pall-mall of our forefathers, and its chequered history: with its patronymic game, its celebrity for two centuries as a gay town resort, it presents several curious pictures in little of varieties of London life which have their sweet uses, even when viewed through the patrician vista of the present Pall-mall.

WHITEBAIT.

IN certain favoured waters of Europe there dwell myriads of tiny glittering fishes, which, from their brilliancy, are called White Bait. They are of the same family as the herring, the sprat, and the pilchard, and like those fishes, visit certain of our coasts in armies, from April to September. They have long been numbered among the delicacies of our tables; for we find "Six dishes of White Bait" in the funeral feast of the munificent founder of the Charter-house, given in the Hall of the Stationers' Company, on May 28th, 1612; and, for aught we know, these delicious fish may have been served to Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, in their palace at Greenwich, off which place and Blackwall opposite, they have been for ages taken in the Thames at flood-tide. Thither, epicures, from generation to generation, have flocked to the river-side taverns to enjoy a "Whitebait Dinner,” (for, one of the conditions of success is that the fish should be directly netted out of the river into the cook's cauldron), without the actual species of the fish being understood. The little creatures, "fried silkworms," as Theodore Hook delighted to call them, were rapidly brought in myriads, with acres of their brown bread-and-butter accompaniment, and, washed down with goblets of iced punch, as rapidly disappeared. Now and then, a guest inquired of his or her neighbour at table as to the natural history of the choice morceau; but the question was blinked with perverse ingenuity. Cabinet Ministers ate their "annual fish dinners;" fellows of learned societies, Lord Mayors and aldermen, pursy citizens and purse-proud parvenus; in short, all who went to Blackwall or Greenwich were in an equally parlous state of ignorance as to the Whitebait; and it is only within these thirty years that the fish has taken its proper position; it having long been set down as the young of the Shad.

It appears that Mr. Yarrell, the able naturalist, was one morning in March struck with the early appearance of Whitebait in a fishmonger's shop in St. James's; and knowing that shads, which they were supposed to be, did not make their appearance till much later (May), he took up the matter, and persevered in a course of investigation, which lasted from March to August, 1828; and of which we give the result. Mr. Yarrell has established that the Whitebait (Clupea alba); French Blanquette; German Brietling; in its habits differs from all other species of clupea that visit our shores, or our rivers. From the beginning of April to the end of September this fish may be caught in the Thames as high up as Woolwich or Blackwall, every flood-tide, in considerable quantity, by a particular mode of fishing to be hereafter described. During the first three months of this period, neither species of the genus clupea, of any age or size, except occasionally a young sprat, can be found and taken in the same situation by the same means. The young

shad of the year are not two and a half inches long till November, when the Whitebait season is over: and these young shad are never without a portion of that spotted appearance behind the edge of the upper part of the operculum, which, in one species particularly, is so marked a peculiarity in the adult fish. The Whitebait, on the contrary, never exhibits a spot at any age; but, from two inches long up to six inches, which is the length of the largest Mr. Yarrell had seen, the colour of the sides is uniformly white.

About the end of March, or early in April, Whitebait make their appearance in the Thames, and are then small, apparently but just changed from the albuminous state of the young fry; whereas, the shad do not deposit their spawn till the end of June, or the beginning of July. During June, July, and August, immense quantities are consumed by visitors to the different taverns at Greenwich and Blackwall.

Mr. Yarrell states that the Whitebait fishery is continued "frequently as late as September; and specimens of young fish of the year, four and five inches long, are then not uncommon, but mixed, even at this late period of the season, with others of very small size, as though the roe had continued to be deposited throughout the summer; yet the parent fish are not caught, and are believed by the fishermen not to come higher up than the estuary, where, at this season of the year, nets sufficiently small in the mesh to stop them are not much in use.

"The particular mode of fishing for Whitebait, by which a constant supply during the season is obtained, was formerly considered destructive to the fry of fishes generally, and great pains were taken to prevent it by those to whom the conservancy of the fishery of the Thames was entrusted; but since the history and habits of this species have been better understood, and it has been ascertained that no other fry of any value can swim with them-which I can aver-the men have been allowed to continue this part of the occupation with little or no disturbance, though still using an unlawful net."-History of British Fishes, vol. ii. p. 204.

The rule and order of the Lord Mayor and his court was that " no person shall take at any time of the year any sort of fish usually called Whitebait, upon pain to forfeit and pay five pounds for every such offence; it appearing to this court that under pretence of taking Whitebait the small fry of various species of fish are destroyed." How the civic parties justified the infraction of this law for their Whitebait course, is another matter.

Mr. Yarrell describes the net by which Whitebait are taken as by no means large, measuring only about three or four feet in extent; but the mesh of the hose, or bag end of the net, is very small. The boat is moored in the tideway, where the water is from 23 to 30 feet deep; and the net, with its wooden framework, is fixed to the side of the boat. The tail of the hose, swimming loose, is from time to time handed into the boat, the end untied, and its contents shaken out. The wooden frame forming the mouth of the net does not dip more than four feet below the surface of the water; and, except an occasional straggling fish, the only small fry taken with the Whitebait, are sticklebacks and the spotted or freckled groby. The farther the fishermen go down towards the mouth of the river, the sooner they begin to catch Whitebait after the flood-tide has commenced. When fishing as high as Woolwich, the tide must have flowed from three to four hours, and the water become sensibly brackish to the taste, before the Whitebait will appear.

They return down the river with the first of the ebb-tide; and various attempts to preserve them in well-boats in pure fresh water have uniformly failed.

The Thames fishermen who live at and below Gravesend, know the Whitebait perfectly, and catch them occasionally of considerable size in the small meshed nets used in the Upper and Lower Hope for taking shrimps, called trinker-nets, which are like Whitebait nets, only larger. The sprat-fishers take the adult Whitebait frequently on the Kentish and Essex coasts throughout the winter.

The Hamble, which runs into the Southampton waters, is the only other southern river from which Mr. Yarrell received Whitebait; but this he believed to be owing rather to the want of a particular mode of fishing, by which so small a fish can be taken so near the surface, than to the absence of the fish itself; which, abounding as it does in the Thames, Mr. Yarrell had very little doubt might be caught in some of the neighbouring rivers on our south and east coasts. In the vicinity of the Isle of Wight, Whitebait, from their brilliancy and consequent attraction, are used by the fishermen as bait on their lines when fishing for whitings: hence the name.

Dr. Parnell has found Whitebait inhabiting the Frith of Forth in considerable numbers, during the summer months; and in the neighbourhood of Queensferry he has captured in one dip of a net, about a foot and a half square, between 200 and 300 fish, not more than two inches in length, mixed with sprats, young herrings, and fry of other fishes. "In their habits," says Dr. Parnell," Whitebait appear to be similar to the young of the herring, always keeping in shoals, and swimming occasionally on the surface of the water, where they often fall a prey to aquatic birds." Whitebait has thus been added to the delicacies of the Scottish table, and is sent to the Edinburgh market in such quantities as to render it as profitable as the sperling or smelt fishery.

It may be convenient to add that the specific distinction between the shad and Whitebait, and on which Mr. Yarrell relied as of the greatest value, is the difference of their anatomical character; and especially in the number of vertebræ, or small bones, extending from the backbone. "The number of vertebræ in the shad," he states, "of whatever size the specimen may be, is invariably fifty-five, while the number in the Whitebait is uniformly fifty-six; even in a fish of two inches, with the assistance of a lens, their exact number may be distinctly made out."

66

Having thus disposed of the scientific business, we must say a few words on the pleasures of a Whitebait Dinner. Pennant says: Whitebait are esteemed very delicious when fried with fine flour, and occasion during the season a vast resort of the lower order of epicures to the taverns contiguous to the places where they are taken." If this account be correct, there must have been a strange change in the grade of the epicures frequenting Greenwich and Blackwall since Pennant's days; for at present, the fashion of eating Whitebait is sanctioned by the highest authorities, from the Court of St. James's Palace in the West, to the Lord Mayor and his court in the East; besides the philosophers of the