forming part of the present Exchequer Office,the old water entrance, and probably some of the apartments of the Treasury, are all, we believe, that remain of the ancient palace.

On the site of the present Treasury and part of the Board of Trade, stood, as has already been mentioned, the famous Cock-pit,—the spot where our sovereigns gazed complacently on the cruel sports which were the delight of a past age,-where afterwards arose the celebrated structure, where the ministers of Queen Anne transacted the affairs of the realm, and which, though considerably changed and altered, has continued, from that day to the present, to be the Treasury of Great Britain. Several of the old offices were taken down in 1733, in order to erect the present building which faces the parade in the Park; the expense of which was estimated at 90007.

The Cock-pit, once a portion of the ancient palace, is associated with many illustrious names. Here were the apartments of George Monk, Duke of Albemarle; and here that celebrated man breathed his last. After his death, they were conferred by Charles the Second on his own niece, the Princess Anne of Denmark, afterwards Queen Anne. From hence it was, on the approach of the Prince of Orange to London, in 1688, that she fled at midnight down the back-stairs in "her night-gown and slippers," with only the Duchess of Marlborough for her companion, to join the deadly enemies of her unfortunate father. A few

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years afterwards, the harsh conduct of King William, and of her sister, Queen Mary, compelled her to quit the Cock-pit under very different circumstances. Lord Dartmouth, speaking of the compulsory removal of the Princess from Whitehall, observes, " She was carried in a sedan to Sion, being then with child, without any guard or decent attendance; where she mis-carried, and all people forbid waiting; which was complied with by everybody but the Duke of Somerset, whose house she was in, and Lord Rochester, who was her uncle." The Princess subsequently removed to Berkeley House, Piccadilly, where she remained till the death of her sister, when she became reconciled to King William, and probably returned to her old apartments at the Cock-pit.

In 1708, we find the Treasury spoken of as being "kept at the Cock-pit near Whitehall." Here, during the reign of Queen Anne, was the office of the celebrated Godolphin, and of the no less celebrated Harley, Earl of Oxford. Here, in full council, Guiscard made his attempt on the life of Harley; here the assassin himself fell pierced with many wounds, of which he afterwards died in Newgate; and, lastly, here it was that Bishop Atterbury underwent his memorable examination before the Privy Council, previous to his committal to the Tower. From Dodsley we learn, that as late as 1761, the Treasury retained its ancient name of the Cock-pit.

THE THAMES AT LONDON.

THE THAMES IN ANCIENT TIMES. THAMES BY MOONLIGHT. — OLD PALACE OF WHITEHALL. NORTHUMBERLAND, YORK, DURHAM, SALISBURY, WORCESTER, AND SOMERSET HOUSES.TEMPLE GARDEN. ALSATIA. - BRIDEWELL. - BAYNARD'S CASTLE.— QUEENHITHE.

BANKSIDE.-WATER PROCESSIONS.

LET us take boat at Whitehall Stairs and pass down the river to the Tower, noting, as we glide along, a few of the more remarkable places associated with the history of the past. Let us recall to mind the time when the Thames was the great thoroughfare, the "silent highway," as it has been styled, between London and Westminster; when its banks were adorned with a succession of stately palaces and fair gardens; when it was crowded with gilded barges covered with silken awnings, and with a thousand wherries freighted with hooded churchmen, and grave merchants, and laughing beauty, in all the glittering or fantastic costume of a past age.

Heave and how, rumbelow,

was the ancient chorus of the London watermen in the days of the Plantagenets, and, as late as the reign of Charles the First, we find this peculiar race still famous for keeping time to their oars with some characteristic song.

THE THAMES BY MOONLIGHT.

Row the boat, Norman, row to thy leaman,

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was the first line of a song composed by the Londonwatermen in honour of John Norman, Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Henry the Sixth, who, in 1454, first introduced the custom of the Lord Mayor proceeding on state occasions, by water from London to Westminster instead of on horseback.

To the philosopher, the Thames, as it presents itself in our own time,- with its immense commerce, its its crowded navigation, its magnificent bridges, its busy wharfs and its forest of masts at London Bridge, - presents matter of reflection of deep and varied interest. Such reflections may be indulged even when we are jostled along the crowded bridges; and even the smoke from ten thousand furnaces and manufactories, which usually obscures the mid-day in London, may furnish additional food for meditation, as evincing the wealth of the mighty city. But to the poet, the painter, and the lover of past history, it is not at such a time that the Thames wears its most inviting aspect. Those only, indeed, have witnessed it in its full perfection, who have stood, on a summer morning, on one of its glorious bridges, when the inhabitants of the vast human hive are asleep, and when every object is rendered distinct, and picturesque, and beautiful, from the meanest wharf to the magnificent dome of St. Paul's, with its golden cross glittering in the early sunrise.

But I confess that to me it is on a moonlight

He will hear no

night that the Thames at London wears its fairest aspect. If the reader has any taste for what is beautiful in nature or in art; if, like the author, he is sometimes willing to forget the turmoil of the present to live in the silent world of the past, let him, on a fair night, pass from the noisy streets of Westminster into Dean's Yard, and thence into the still and solemn cloisters of the old Abbey. There, standing on the tombs of mitred abbots and nameless monks, with the massive walls and buttresses of the venerable cathedral steeped in the moonlight, and with all its innumerable associations crowding on his mind, he will witness a scene of almost unequalled interest and beauty. Let him then take boat at Westminster Bridge. sound but the splash of his own oars; he will see the light reflected in long lines of radiance from the different bridges; he will call to mind the many gorgeous processions, or the many illustrious prisoners who were led along the same "silent highway" to their dungeons in the Tower, and their pillow on the block; he will rest on his oars at each remembered spot of interest or beauty, and at midnight he will hear the iron tongues of a thousand clocks answering each other over the sleeping city, and, far louder than the rest, the solemn and deep-toned knell of St. Paul's. The days have gone by when the oar of the London waterman was entangled in the stems of the water-lily; when, as described by Paulus Jovius in 1552, the river "abounded in swans, swimming in flocks;" or when, as men