rooms devoted to the national collection, the remainder being used by the Royal Academy of Arts. The Academy, however, betook itself to Burlington House in 1869, and subsequently the National Gallery was enlarged, and is now well worthy of its name. The English are taunted with not being an artistic nation; this may be, but they recognise merit when they see it, and the national collection need fear comparison with no other in the world. The sections of the gallery include Italian schools, schools of the Netherlands and Germany, Spanish, French, and British schools; in the last named the Turner Collection claims two rooms.

St. Martin's Church was founded by Henry VIII., who disliked to see the funerals of the inhabitants passing through Whitehall on their way to St. Margaret's, Westminster, but there had probably been an ecclesiastical building on or near this site from a very early date. In 1222 there was a controversy between the Bishop of London and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's on the one hand and the Abbot and Canons of Westminster on the other, as to the exemption of the chapel and convent of the latter from the jurisdiction of the former. The matter was settled in favour of Westminster. It is probable that this chapel was for the use of the monks when they visited their convent garden.

In 1721 the old church was pulled down, and a new one built from the designs of Gibbs the architect, whose bust stands in the building near the entrance. A rate was levied on the parish for expenses, but money poured in so liberally that a gift of £500 toward the enrichment of the altar was declined.

The building has been derided, but it has the merit of a bold conception. Ralph in "Publick Buildings" says: "The portico is at once elegant and august, and the steeple above it ought to be considered one of the most tolerable in town. The east end is remarkably elegant, and very justly challenges a particular applause; in short, if there is anything wanting in this fabric, it is a little more elevation."

The only original features in the interior are the two royal pews, not now used, which look down on the altar. St. Martin's is the royal parish, including in its boundaries Buckingham Palace and St. James's, but the births of the Royal Family are not registered here, as has been frequently stated. There is no monument in the church of any intrinsic interest, and the only other noticeable details are two beautiful mosaic panels on either side of the chancel, put up by Lady Frederick Cavendish to the memory of her husband.

Among the names of those buried in the old church is that of Vansomer, a portrait-painter. Nell Gwynne, Roubiliac, and Jack Sheppard—whose first theft took place at Rummer's Tavern, near Charing Cross—lie in the burial-ground. There is a large crypt, with vaulted roof, below the church, and here are several monuments from the old building, and also the ancient whipping-post.

Before the erection of the palaces along the riverside the fishermen of the Thames lived beside the river bank at Charing Cross. A piece of ground in the churchyard of St. Martin's was set apart for their use and kept separate. Meantime, as one after the other of the Bishops' town-houses were built, the fishermen found themselves pushed farther up the river, until finally they were fairly driven away, and established themselves at Lambeth, where the last of them lived in the early part of the nineteenth century. Their burial-ground, meantime, was preserved even after they had disappeared. The churchyard of St. Martin's was curtailed in 1826, and the parish burial-ground removed to Pratt Street, Camden Town.

Behind the National Gallery is the National Portrait Gallery, opened in 1896, and opposite to it St. Martin's Town Hall, with the parish emblem—St. Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar—in bas-relief on the frontage.

Charing Cross Road is very modern. It was opened in 1887, and swept over a number of narrow courts and alleys.

For St. Martin's Lane, see p. 16.

In this is the Public Library, where some watercolours and old prints of vanished houses are hung on the staircase. There is also the eighteenth-century plan from Strype's Survey, well worth studying.

Leicester Square, at first known as Leicester Fields, is associated with the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, who had a town-house on the north side, where the Empire Music-hall is now. This was a large brick building, with a courtyard before it and a Dutch garden at the back. During the reign of Charles I. and in the time of the Commonwealth the Sidneys tenanted it, but later it was occupied by foreign Ambassadors. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, took it in 1662, and afterwards it was aptly described by Pennant as "the pouting-place of Princes"; for George, son of George I., established here a rival Court when he had quarrelled with his father, and his son Frederick, the Prince of Wales, did precisely the same thing. During the latter tenancy a large building adjoining, called Savile or Ailesbury House, was amalgamated with Leicester House. George III. was living here when hailed King. Savile House stood until the Gordon Riots, when it was completely stripped and gutted by the rioters. The square was presented to the public in 1874 by Baron Albert Grant, M.P. The gift is recorded on the pedestal of the statue of Shakespeare standing in the centre.

The square was for long a favourite place for duels. A line drawn diagonally from the north-east to the south-west corner roughly indicates the boundary of St Martin's parish, the upper half of the square being in St. Anne's, Soho.

The associations of this part are numerous and very interesting. The busts of the four men standing in the corners of the centre garden have all some local connection. They are those of Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Hunter. Hogarth's house was on the east, on the site of Tenison's School, and next to it was that of John Hunter, the famous surgeon. Sir Joshua Reynolds bought No. 47 on the west side in 1760, and lived in it until his death. Sir Isaac Newton lived in the little street off the south side of the square, at the back of the big new Dental Hospital. His house is still standing, and bears a tablet of the Society of Arts. It is quite unpretentious—a stucco-covered building with little dormer-windows in the roof. The great scientist came here in 1710, when he was nearly sixty, and his fame was then world-wide. Men from all parts of Europe sought the dull little street in order to converse with one whose power had wrought a revolution in the methods of scientific thought. In the same house Miss Burney afterwards lived with her father. Sir Thomas Lawrence took apartments at No. 4, Leicester Square, in 1786, when only seventeen, but he had already begun to exhibit at the Royal Academy. The square was for long a favourite place of residence with foreigners, and has not even yet lost a slightly un-English aspect.

Archbishop Tenison's School is at the south-east corner of the square. Its founder, who was successively Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury, intended that it should counterbalance a flourishing Roman Catholic school in the Savoy precincts. Among old boys may be mentioned Postlethwaite, afterwards Master of St. Paul's; Charles Mathews, when very young; Horne Tooke a former Lord Mayor of London; and Liston who was for a time usher.

As stated above, the northern half of the square is in the parish of St. Anne's, Soho, a parish now tenanted to a very large extent by