The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-24 00:00:00

at flit Volict.

Ax Action of considerable importance was tried
in the Court of Queen's Bench on Wednesday. The
question involved was the right of money-changers
to take Bank of England notes in disregard of
notices that they had been stolen. The action was
brought by Messrs. Adam Spielmann and Co., of
London, as correspondents of Messrs. Meyer Spiel-
mann and Co.' of Paris, to recover the amount of two
Bank of England notes for 5001. each, which had
formed portions of notes for the value in all of 3,000 f.
stolen from Messrs. Brown, Shipley, and Co. of
Liverpool. The notes were stolen in November,
1852, and it was proved that notices of the robbery
were delivered at the places of business of both
firms. One of the notes was alleged to have been
received by Meyer Spielmann and Co., in Paris,
from a person giving the name of G. F. Howard,
and the other from A. Monteux, a money-changer
in Paris, which note also had the name of G. F.
Howard upon it. Both notes were remitted by
Messrs. Meyer Spielmann and Co. to Messrs. Adam
Spielmann and Co., and received by them in London
on the 27th of June last. On behalf of the plaintiff
it was contended that the notes having been taken
in the ordinary course of business, he was entitled
to recover upon them. Lord Campbell left to the
jury the question whether Meyer Spielmann took
the notes bond fide and for value; whether Adam
Spielmann received them bond fide as a remittance ;
and whether the notices were left at the places
of business of both parties. The jury found that
Meyer Spielmann and Co. did not take the notes
bond fide for value ; that Adam Spielmann and Co.
did take them bond fide as a remittance ; and that
the notices were duly received. Upon this finding
Lord Campbell directed a verdict to be entered for
the Bank of England.
THE final examination of Charles King, the ex-
policeman and thief.trainer, took place at Bow street
on Thursday. Mr. Bodkin attended as before, on
behalf of the Crown ; and, after the production of
some further evidence, the prisoner was fully com-
mitted for trial.

THE girl Elizabeth Avis Law, charged with the
murder of Mrs. Bacon, at Chatham, was examined
on Monday before the county magistrates at Roches-
ter. The evidence was much the same as that given
before the coroner. Two pawnbrokers proved that
the prisoner had pledged dresses and other property
belonging to the deceased. The magistrates com-
mitted the prisoner for trial on the two charges of
murder and robbery.

ESCAPE OF CONVICTS FROM NEROATE.-011 Satur-
day last the officials of Newgate were thrown into a
state of great alarm by the discovery of the escape of
three most notorious criminals, who, having been
convicted and sentenced, were serving their proba-
tionary term prior to being drafted to their several
destinations of transportation or penal servitude. It
appeared that all the prisoners were called over at
eight o'clock, and at nine o'clock three men were
found to be missing, viz., John Berry, who was sen-
tenced to be transported for fifteen years for passing
forged st. notes ; a man named Brown, convicted and
sentenced to fourteen years' transportation for a
burglary committed in the neighbourhood of and
during the late great fire at Shoreditch ; and Spier+,
the Bank clerk, who was sentenced to fifteen years'
transportation for committing a forgery on Spooner
and Attwood's bank. At the east end of the site
occupied by the prison is an open space of ground,
abutting upon the yard of an empty house in War-
wick square, and it is supposed that by means of a
rope supplied to them from the outside the prisoners
were enabled to scale the wall; and once in the yard,
they found no difficulty in getting in at the window
of the first floor of the house in Warwick square, and
thus making their way into the street, their escape
being materially assisted by the circumstance of
their not having on the prison dress. Within a very
few hours some of the most experienced detectives,
and those officers who had a personal knowledge of
the escaped convicts, were on the alert, and scouring
every haunt of such characters in and about London,
but for the present without success.
A CURIOUS SCENE took place on Thursday night,
on the frozen surface of the Serpentine. Several
hundred persons, bearing torches, and accompanied
by a brass•band, took possession of the river soon
after dark, tents were then pitched, barrels of beer
displayed, and a body of gentlemen, each having a
lantern buckled to the front of his belt, performed
sundry dextrous evolutions on skates, amidst a pro-
fuse display of fireworks. The band afterwards
struck up several quadrilles and polkas, which were
kept time to by those
present, amongst whom were
not a few ladies. The whole performance passed off
without any accident beyond that of a young person
fracturing his arm by a fall.
Sin JOHN Ooitvv, BART., will, it is said, offer him.
self as a candidate for the Montrose Burghs, vacant
by the death of Mr. Hume.

11

168

flitraturt.

Curiosities of London. Exhibiting the most
Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in
the Metropolis. With nearly Fifty Years'
Personal Recollections. By John Timbs.
London : Bogue.
THE title of this book hardly does justice to
its contents. "We took a ramble together,"
writes Addison, in one of those pleasant papers
condemned to indifference by the witty sar-
casm of Steele, " We took a ramble together to
" see the curiosities of this great town." But
the Freeholder did not mean that he and his
friend took a ramble together to read the his
tory of London, or explore its institutions.
Mr. Timbs should have adopted a more com-
prehensive title to express the variety and
extent of the materials he has collected ; for,
although the volume falls short of being as
complete as it might have been rendered, it
undoubtedly embraces a wider range of infor-
mation than can be properly included under
the exceptional term, " curiosities."
" Twenty-seven years since," says Mr.
Timbs, " I wrote in the parlour of the house
" No. 3, Charing-cross (then a publisher's), the
" title and plan of a volume to be called
" Curiosities of London ; and the work here
" submitted to the public is the realisation of
" that design." This little anecdote might have
been improved by the addition of the fact that
in a house exactly opposite to that in which
Mr. Timbs suggested his project, Milian, the
publisher, a hundred years before, launched
the project of the " Seasons ;" and that it was
in the room over Millan's shop Thomson
wrote the chief part of " Winter," which, after
being offered in vain to other booksellers,
Millen was induced at last to purchase for the
sum of five guineas. The neighbourhood of
Charing-cross is storied groun, and presents
an excellent starting-point for a collector of
metropolitan memoribilia. Close at hand
Verrio was housed by the King, and at a short
distance was the Aviary, whose keeper be-
queathed his name to Storey's-gate ; here,
also, nearer to Pall-mall, was the mews for the
King's hawks, from whence the term has come
down to us in a different application ; not far
off was the last Maypole seen in the streets of
London ; and the whole of the surrounding
district, starred over with coffee-houses, tilt-
grounds, cockpits, tennis-courts, and bowling-
greens, bears an inexhaustible harvest of tra-
ditions.
No other city in the world is so rich in re-
collections as London. It hail an existence
before what is called the Roman period, and
enjoyed the distinction of a name, not noted
in this volume, before it received the appella-
tions of Londinium or Augusta. Its remote
history is an integral and important part of the
early history of the kingdom, and its progress
through centuries of change to its present
magnitude, comprising a population conside-
rably exceeding that of some of the small
States of Europe, represents every phase of
the general progress in arts, commerce, litera-
ture, and government. The rapidity of its
Frowth, and the circumstances connected with
its constant extension, indicate an infinite
variety of points of interest, marking the
course and development of the national power.
Upon its monuments are inscribed the vicissi-
tudes of successive dynasties, and in its
archives are to be traced the origin and strut
ture of nearly all our civil and political insti-
tutions. A survey of its living features would
be of little value beyond that of a mere street
directory, unless it also comprehended the
features of the past ; nor can its actual condi-
tion at any period be rendered thoroughly in-
telligible without reference to its former
aspects and historical antecedents. To be
enabled to estimate trtily its present state, we
must be shown how this " great town" grew
up and accumulated ; how the transitions of
habits and the intermixture of races modified
from time to time its social characteristics;
how the conquests of science, and the adapta•
tion of the useful arts to the revolutions of
civilisation, influenced its destinies; and by
what means, and through what channels of
discovery and improvement, the energies of

THE PRESS.

the people ultimately contributed to the for-
mation of that vast human hive which excites
even more wonder in the denizen who is most I
familiar with its marvels, than in the stranger
who treads its mazes with bated breath and
bewildered eyes. The sources from whence this
kind of information may be drawn are ample
and accessible. Chronicles and statistical
tables, legends and ballads, fugitive tracts,
registers and records of every conceivable de-
scription are to be had in abundance ; and
there is no reason why a book upon London
should not be full and satisfactory. Yet, al-
though a multitude of such volumes have
been compiled, and the tempting theme has
attracted the labours of many competent men,
the history of London, social, civil, and politi-
cal, remains yet to be written. We are at no
loss for descriptive-books, guide-books, and
books into which antiquarian details, and
incidental particulars, personal, literary, and
picturesque, have been poured with liberality
and profusion ; but a book based upon syste-
matic researches, and working out the phi-
losophy of the subject, is still a desideratum.
Mr. Timbs' -volume does not profess to aim
at any higher object than that of bringing
together a miscellaneous collection of local
facts and illustrations ; and it is not, therefore,
to be tried by the standard we have suggested.
The book is creditable to the toil that has
been bestowed upon it ; but this acknowledg-
ment must be accompanied by an expression
of regret that the toil visible in the compila-
tion of materials was not guided by a sounder
judgment in the use made of them. The
work is a striking example of industry without
method, exhibiting elaborate means employed
upon the production of insufficient results.
The plan of the book is not clear. The form
is alphabetical ; but a subdivision into classes,
not in themselves very definite, perplexes the
reader in his pursuit of particular trains of
information. An index is added to assist him
out of his difficulties ; but here ho discovers
that the facts he is in search of are frequently
scattered over different places, so that he
must combine them into a whole for himself.
These objections apply to the plan generally.
On the other hand, when the facts supplied
are sufficiently grouped together to become
available as far as they go, they are for the
most part so slightly treated as to be useful
only for the purposes of cursory inquiry. If a
larger view be required of the history of lo
calities, or of those popular elements which
impart vitality to local history, it must be
sought elsewhere.
The principal object of the volume is to pre-
sent rapid and succinct outlines of existing
erections and institutions. In this direction lies
its chief success, although these matters are not
investigated fully, nor with any attempt at sym-
metry in the proportions assigned to the several
topics. Mr. Timbs appears to have given the
greatest space to the subjects with which he
was best acquainted, rather than to the sub-
jects which were best entitled to expansion.
Nevertheless, in spite of a defective plan, and
a somewhat capricious mode of treatment, the
volume is, upon the whole, one of the most
valuable, and certainly one of the most care-
ful and painstaking, of its class. It contains
a great mass of desultory facts ; it bears almost
in every page the fruits of discursive reading
and indefatigable research; and, if we look in
vain for many things essential to complete-
ness, we also find in it much that is curious,
interesting, and new.
The manifest defect of the work is in the
historical part. Here we are tantalised by
omissions or scanty allusions, and constantly
disappointed by the deficiency of data and ex
planatory details. The early foundations are
dismissed with brevity, while the modern in-
stitutions which have sprung out of them are
sometimes enlarged upon with vexatious pro-
lixity. We seldom catch the colours of the
ages that are past, and are nowhere able to
fix the vanishing tints of habits and manners.
The social history, in which is concentrated so
much of the charm, and, in a still higher point
of view, the utility of such works, is very
meagrely dealt with.
When it was thought worth while to inform
the reader that he can dine at a table dkOte at
Billingsgate on three kinds of fish, with meat,
&c., for one shilling and sixpence, room might

SATURDAY,

have been found for some account of the
Dark House, which was one of its conspicuous
features at no very remote date. A paragraph
is properly given to the Folly on the Thames ;
but nothing is said of the Tilt Boat at
Gravesend, an equally remarkable illustration
of the usages of the time. Having gone out of
town so far as Dulwich for a description of
Alleyn's College and the Picture Gallery, a
glance down the river could not be considered
foreign to the main objects of the book. Of
Taylor, the water-poet, we are told that he
knew Ben Jonson, to which is added Mr.
Knight's ingenious conjecture that he "pro-
" bably had the good fortune to ferry Shak-
" speexe from Whitehall to Paris Garden." If
Taylor deserved the distinction of being pre=
served amongst the few worthies of the river
embalmed in these pages, the least he was en-
titled to was to be chronicled somewhat more
accurately. Under the head of " Coffee-
houses " we have a catalogue as short of the
demands of the subject as if a compiler were
to cluster together some half-dozen chapels of
ease, and call it an account of the churches of
London. There is hardly a single aspect of
the life of London so crowded with materials
of interest ; but the history of the coffee-
houses is wholly ignored, and the space given
up almost exclusively to an enumeration of
some of the principal establishments of that
kind now existing. We find no record of the
chocolate-houses that preceded them, or of
the still earlier ordinaries so prominent in the
literary and social annals of the days of Nash,
Peale, and. Green. Upon the taverns of the
metropolis, the haunts of generations of
celebrities, the book is silent. A section is
devoted to amusements, and, although cock-
fighting, and fireworks, and hear-baiting, and
duck-hunting, and bowls, and cricket, are duly
registered, the details are brief, and fail either
to mark the chronology of popular pastimes,
which is indispensable as the stamp of their
historical value, or to suggest any considera-
tions concerning the relation between the
pleasures of the people and the progress of
taste and knowledge. It is unnecessary
to indicate how much more might have been
done to render this chapter both instructive
and entertaining. What might have been
said, for example, about the royal frivolities of
Whitehall under the Restoration, the games,
and tricks, and childish fancies, in which
Ministers and maids of honour were mixed
up in a braid of romps and cross-questions,
such as " Hunt the slipper," and " I love my
" love with an A"? Card playing, we are in-
formed, was early a favorite pastime with the
Londoners ; but we are left to till up the outline
as we best may. Not a word about Gleek, so
famous in the comedies of the seventeenth
century; or of Ombre, immortalised by Pope;
or of the gambling excesses to which even
ladies committed themselves, and which were
lashed by Suckling and Sedley, and formed a
frequent topic of satire in the prologues and
epilogues. Of lotteries, the shame of the
palace at one period, and the vice of the com-
monalty at another, we find no account in
these pages. The places of resort, garden. a,
promenades, public walks, are dismissed with
notices so scanty that a foreigner could never
gather from the book the slightest notion of
the importance once attached to these scenes.
" Here, too," says Mr. Timbs, speaking of
Goring-house, the site of Buckingham Palace,
" was a grove of mulberry trees, planted bz
" James 1., afterwards the Mulberry Garden.
And this is all we learn of that famous mul-
berry garden to which Sedley dedicated a
comedy, and to which a thousand allusions ar©
made in the plays of the period—a spot
familiar to us in the diary of Pepys, and in
that well-known anecdote which brings
Dryden before us, as in a picture, eating tar. tarts
in an arbour with Madame Reeve. The
absurd fabrication about Dryden's funeral,
long since disproved, is, we Are surprised to
see, admitted here as a piece of veritable
.bio-
graphy. The curiosity-shops of the metropolis
have a niche to themselves; but we find, 0?-
thing about the china-shops, which in the.ir
day played a much more prominent paxt
the inner life of London intrigue and licen-
tiousness. The railway termini of the metro-
polis, no doubt very useful information, are
described, and the hackney-coaches and cabs