Gone for ever is the great, gloomy brick facade of Northumberland House, the town residence of the noble Percies. It was not a bad specimen of late Jacobean architecture, and you will remember that, from the centre of the pediment, there rose a stone pedestal [-165-] surmounted by the effigy of a lion, which, I believe, was removed at the demolition of Northumberland House to the Duke's mansion, Sion House, Isleworth. The only interest of a metropolitan character which attached to the image of the regal beast at the top of Northumberland House was, that it had led to the circulation of a more or less apocryphal story of a bet of a large sum being laid by a speculative gentleman that, merely by the utterance of two words, he would cause in the space of twenty minutes a crowd of five hundred persons to assemble in front of Northumberland House. All he did was to take up his station by the side of King Charles's equestrian statue at Charing Cross, and, lifting his head, gaze fixedly at the Northumbrian lion. Gradually groups began to form around him. They increased and increased until quite a dense little crowd assembled, and from this gathering there arose loud cries of, "What is it?" "What is it?" "What are you looking at?" The wagerer turned towards the crowd, and pointing at the lion of Northumberland House, quietly said, "It wags." Strange to relate, there was an immediate shout from the mob, "So it does!" and even at this day there may be some very elderly people ready to come into court and make affidavit that they did, with their own eyes, see the lion on the top of Northumberland House wag its tail. There was a secret door of copper, painted to imitate brickwork, in the facade of Northumberland House, on the side towards the Strand; and many and many a time, as a boy, have I speculated on the uses of that [-166-] secret door, destitute as it was of handles, or steps, or lintel-who came in or who came out of it. It does not matter now. On the site of the ducal palace the sumptuous Grand Hotel has been built; lower down there is a towering political club; on the other side of Northumberland Avenue, built on the site of the ducal gardens, are two more sumptuous hotels, the Victoria and the M?tropole, and beyond these prodigious structures I behold the turrets of the National Liberal Club, and at the end of the long vista of Whitehall and Parliament Street, I discern the horizon of the towers and pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament and the venerable walls of Westminster Abbey.