grant was discontinued by William IV., and the Society has since become an ordinary Transaction Society. The Society, in its earlier existence, awarded gold medals to eminent writers, and published some valuable works on Egyptian hieroglyphics and on the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods of English literary history. The Society occupied a house in St. Martin's Place until this was required for the enlargement of the National Gallery and the opening for the new Charing Cross Road.

Royalty Theatre (New), DEAN STREET, SOHO, is a small house built in 1840 by Miss Kelly for her school of acting, and then and afterwards much used for amateur performances. It is now chiefly devoted to burlesque and farce.

Royalty Theatre, WELL STREET, WELLCLOSE SQUARE, was built by John Wilmot for John Palmer, the actor. The first stone was laid with great ceremony on Monday, December 26, 1785, the inscription declaring that "The ground selected for the purpose being situated within the Liberty of His Majesty's Fortress and Palace of the Tower of London, It has been resolved that in honour of the Magistrates, the Military Officers and Inhabitants of the said Fortress and Palace, the edifice when erected shall be called the Royalty Theatre." It was opened June 20, 1787, with a prologue by Murphy, and burnt down April 11, 1826. It was originally intended for the performance of five-act pieces, and opened with As You Like It; but the patentees of the other theatres memorialising the Lord Chamberlain on the subject, the new theatre was confined to pantomimes and still smaller entertainments until the restrictions on the "minor theatres" were removed. The ill-starred Brunswick Theatre was erected on its site.

December 5, 1806.—Having never seen the Royalty Theatre I determined that day should be devoted to that purpose. The theatre is very plain but neat : the house seemed to me something larger than the Haymarket: the pit is small, but I was told the middle gallery would contain a thousand people.-George Fred. Cooke's Journal.

Cooke seems to have thought that Wellclose Square was at the other end of the world, for he started at eight o'clock in the morning to make his visit. At one of the public-houses into which he went for refreshment the landlady told him that she had been obliged to remove the leaden weights from the clock to save them from the thieves who resorted there ! John Braham commenced his career as a singer at the Royalty Theatre; and here Clarkson Stanfield, the future R.A., after quitting the sea, started on his artistic course as a scene-painter. The site is now occupied by the Sailors' Home.

Ruffian's Hall, a cant name for West Smithfield, "by reason it was the usual place of frayes and common fighting during the time that sword and bucklers were in use."1

1 Howes, ed. 1631, p. 1023.

As if men will needes carouse, conspire and quarrel, that they may make Ruffian's Hall of Hell.-Pierce Penilesse, 4to, 1592 (Collier's Reprint, p. 35).

Beat down their weapons! My gate Ruffian's Hall?
What insolence is this?

Massinger, The City Madam, Act. i. Sc. 2. Rummer Tavern (The). A famous tavern, two doors from Locket's, between Whitehall and Charing Cross, removed to the waterside of Charing Cross in 1710, and burnt down November 7, 1750. No traces exist. It was kept in Charles II.'s reign by Samuel Prior, uncle of Matthew Prior, the poet. The Prior family ceased to be connected with it in 1702.

My uncle, rest his soul! when living,
Might have contriv'd me ways of thriving:
Taught me with cider to replenish
My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish.

So when for hock I drew prickt white-wine,
Swear't had the flavour, and was right wine.

Prior to Fleetwood Shepheard.

There having been a false and scandalous report that Samuel Pryor, vintner at the Rummer, near Charing Cross, was accused of exchanging money for his own advantage, with such as clip and deface his Majesty's coin, and that the said Pryor had given bail to answer the same. This report being false in every part of it, if any person who shall give notice to the said Pryor, who have been the fomenters or dispersers of this malicious report, so as a legal prosecution may be made against them, the said Pryor will forthwith give 10 guineas as a reward.-London Gazette, May 31 to June 4, 1688.

Col. Standard. If you are my friend meet me this evening at the Rummer.Farquhar, The Inconstant Couple, Act i. Sc. 1.

And again

Col. Then meet me in half an hour hence at the Rummer.-Ibid., Act. iv. Sc. 3. Here Jack Sheppard committed his first robbery by stealing two silver spoons. The Rummer is introduced by Hogarth into his picture of "Night." There were Rummer Taverns in Henrietta Street,1 Covent Garden, and Queen Street, Cheapside; also a Swan and Rummer in Finch Lane, and a Rummer and Horse-shoe in Drury Lane.

Rupert Street, HAYMARKET, east side of Coventry Street to Great Crown Court, built in 1667, and so called in compliment to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, son of the King of Bohemia, and nephew to Charles I.

18 Russell Court, DRURY LANE, a narrow passage for foot-passengers only, leading from Drury Lane into Catherine Street, Covent Garden. [See Will's; Rose.]

Towards the defraying the charge of repairing and fitting up the Chapel in Russell Court, Drury Lane, will be presented at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, this present Tuesday, being the 18th of June, the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. With Singing by Mr. Hughes and entertainment of Dancing by Mons. Cherier, Miss Lambro, his scholar, and Mr. Evans.-Daily Courant, June 18, 1706, quoted in Burton's Hist. of Queen Anne, vol. iii. p. 309.

1 Cockburn's Letters, vol. ii. p. 225.

This curious benefit performance called forth much comment, and Defoe, making merry with it in his Review, recommended that when the chapel was re-edified a tablet should be set up, 66 as is very frequent in like cases," stating when and by whose charitable aid the work was accomplished, and testified by "Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Church wardens."-Review, June 20, 1706.

Russell House, on the south side of the STRAND, was inhabited by the Russells, Earls of Bedford, prior to the erection of their house on the north side of the Strand, between it and the great square of Covent Garden. Stow, 1598, speaks of it as "Russell or Bedford House."

Russell House, near Ivye bridge, seytuate upon the Thamise now [1592] in the use of the right honorable Sir John Puckering, knight, Lord Keeper of the Prevye Seale. Norden's Speculum Brit. Harl. MSS., p. 570.

September 13, 1595.—I dyned with the Erle of Derby at Russell Howse. Mr. Thymothew, and Mr. John Hatfeldt, German, being there: [and again Sept. 22].— Dr. Dee's Diary, p. 53.

Russell Institution, GREAT CORAM STREET, RUSSELL SQUARE, a subscription library and reading-room. The house was erected in 1800 on speculation, for the purpose of holding assemblies and balls, and was purchased in 1808 from Mr. James Burton, the builder, by the managers of the institution, of which Sir Samuel Romilly was one of the original trustees. E. W. Brayley, author of Londiniana and many topographical works, was librarian from 1825 to his death in 1854.

Not Palmyra, not the Russell Institution in Great Coram Street, present more melancholy appearances of faded greatness [than the Cork Reading Room].Thackeray, Irish Note-Book, p. 140.

Russell Row, SHOREDITCH, a row of houses built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by one Russell, a draper, on the site of certain tenements, called from their decayed appearance "Rotten Row." Originally Rotten Row "was one row of proper small houses, with gardens, for poor decayed people, there placed by the Prior of the hospital [of St. Mary, Spital]; every one tenant whereof paid one penny rent by the year at Christmas, and dined with the Prior on Christmas Day." 1

Russell Square, BLOOMSBURY, north of Bloomsbury Square, with which it is united by Bedford Place, built circ. 1804, and so called after the Russells, Earls and Dukes of Bedford. Each side of the square is about 670 feet in length. The area was laid out by Humphrey Repton. On the south side is the statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford (the hero of Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, 1796), by Sir Richard Westmacott, R.A., looking down Bedford Place on the statue of Charles James Fox which, exactly opposite to it, adorns the north side of Bloomsbury Square.

March 18, 1807.—Young Faulder and I walked over all the Duke of Bedford's new feuing grounds, Russell Square, Tavistock Place, Brunswick Square, etc. The extent of these, and the rapidity of the buildings, is beyond all comprehension. Their

1 Stow, p. 158.

houses very inferior in appearance to our new town at Bellevue; but their squares (the areas I mean) are all most tastefully laid out with shrubs, walks, etc., which has an admirable effect.-A. G. Hunter to A. Constable (A. Constable and his Literary Correspondents, vol. i. p. 112).

Eminent Inhabitants.—Sir Samuel Romilly in No. 21, where, body and mind utterly prostrated by his wife's death on October 29, he died by his own hand, November 2, 1818. Russell Square was long in much favour with members of the bench and bar. No. 28 was the residence of Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, who died there November 4, 1832. The houses at the south corner of Guilford Street formed Baltimore House, built in 1763 (before Russell Square was formed) for George Calvert, the last Baron Baltimore, who was tried in 1768 for decoying a young milliner named Sarah Woodcock to his house in the previous year. It was afterwards occupied by the Duke of Bolton, who gave his name to the house. He was succeeded by Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough, and the name Rosslyn House, which it sometimes bore, was taken from his subsequent title, Earl of Rosslyn. No. 67, part of Baltimore House, was the residence of Sir Vicary Gibbs, C. J. of the Common Pleas, who died there February 8, 1820, "where Heath had lived and died and Talfourd afterwards held his convivialities." No. 67 was Sir T. N. Talfourd's last London residence. Charles Grant, the old East India Director and father of Lord Glenelg and Sir R. Grant, lived in No. 40. Here Francis Horner dined on May 28, 1803, and met Sir William Grant, Wilberforce and Mackintosh. Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., in No. 65, for the last twenty-five years of his life; he died here January 7, 1830.

We shall never forget the Cossacks mounted on their small white horses, with their long spears grounded, standing centinels at the door of this great painter, whilst he was taking the portrait of their General, Platoff.-Rev. John Mitford, Gentleman's Mag. for January, 1818.

Russell Street (Great), BLOOMSBURY, was built about 1670. In 1720 it was described as a very handsome, large, and well-built street with the best buildings in all Bloomsbury, and the best inhabited by the nobility and gentry, especially the north side, as having gardens behind the houses, and the prospect of the pleasant fields up to Hampstead and Highgate."1 When the first edition of this work was published it was "a street of shops," but for some years past many of the shops have been undergoing the process of reconversion into "private houses."

January 31, 1750.-People are almost afraid of stirring out after dark. My Lady Albemarle was robbed the other night in Great Russell Street by nine men.— Walpole to Sir Horace Mann.

Eminent Inhabitants.-Sir Christopher Wren erected a mansion for himself in this street, which was afterwards inhabited by his son and his grandson; and then by Shelden the surgeon and anatomist. Its "noble front, with its majestic cantalever cornice," writes Elmes,

1 Strype, B. iv. p. 85.

"has now (1823) been taken down by a speculative builder, and common Act of Parliament fronts run up" for four houses in its stead. Ralph, first Duke of Montague (d. 1709) in Montague House [which see], afterwards the British Museum. William, Earl Cowper (d. 1723).

November 30, 1714. This day was employed in packing for removing from Russell Street (where I had a delightful house, with the finest view backwards of any house in town) to the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I had lived before, when my Lord had the seals, and which my Lord Harcourt lived in whilst he was Chancellor.-Lady Cowper's Diary.

Francis Sandford, author of the Genealogical History.1 John Le Neve, author of Monumenta Anglicana, was born "in the house facing Montague Great Gate, December 27, 1679." Lewis Theobald, in Wyan's Court, Great Russell Street. Speaker Onslow; he died here in February 1768. John Philip Kemble, in No. 89, on the north side. The house was built by Lord St. Helen's, and destroyed in 1847 to make way for the eastern wing of the British Museum. During the height of the O. P. riots, the song of "Heigh Ho, says Kemble," written by Horace Smith, was sung by ballad-singers under the windows, accompanied by "shouts and other sounds," which, Mrs. Inchbald says, nearly frightened Mrs. Kemble to death. It is of this house that Talfourd speaks when he tells us that the great actor extended his high-bred courtesy even to authors with MSS., whom he invariably attended to the door, and bade them "beware of the steps." Topham Beauclerk.

November 14, 1779.—Mr. Beauclerk has built a library in Great Russell Street that reaches half way to Highgate. Everybody goes to see it. It has put the Museum's nose quite out of joint.-Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory.

Beauclerk died in this house, March 11, 1780. Opposite Dyot Street was Thanet House, the residence of the Earls of Thanet. It was latterly divided into two houses. Lord Mansfield took a house in this street in 1780, after the destruction of his mansion in Bloomsbury Square. Benjamin Wilson, a portrait painter of some merit, and master painter to the Board of Ordnance, died at his house, No. 56 in this street in 1788, and there his more celebrated son, Sir Robert Wilson, was born in 1777. No. 88 was built by William Battie, M.D., the celebrated physician of St. Luke's, and author of a well-known treatise on Mental Madness (d. 1776). In the Gentleman's Magazine for April 1809 is printed a characteristic letter from Dr. John Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, dated "Great Russell Street, July 8, 1808." Sir Sidney Smith, the hero of Acre, was living in No. 72 in 1828.4 Charles Mathews (the elder) died at No. 62, June 28, 1835. At No. 105 lived, 1829, the well known publisher of works on Gothic architecture, Augustus Pugin, and there he had many pupils who became eminent in their profession. His more celebrated son, Augustus Welby Pugin, was born in Store Street, March 1, 1812.

1 London Gazette of 1688, No. 2339.

2 Nichols's Lit. Anec., vol. i. p. 128.

VOL. III

3 Letters of Charles Lamb, p. 123.

4 Barrow's Life, vol. ii. p. 348.