Passages From the Life of Charles Knight

quare, houses had grown up, which were terminated towards Charing Cross by the Union Club. But there was as yet no Nelson's column; no fountains in the centre, to be ridiculed as dumb-waiters. During the first years of my residence in Pall Mall East, Saint James's Park was getting rid of its old squalidness. The road after nightfall had ceased to be a place of danger and licentiousness. "There is gas in the Park." At the time of the Stuarts the Mall had been the lounging place of the highest?the favourite ground of assignation of the Comedies in which Wit and Profligacy long maintained a flourishing co-partnership. Forty years ago the fashionable idlers had given place to happy children and smart nursery-maids. Mechanics out of work, and street vagabonds, always formed acrowd to see the relief of the Guard. Gapers from the country stood wonderingly upon the Parade, watching the working of the Telegraph at the top of the Admiralty. The old machine, which told its story by the opening and closing of shutters, was superseded by a greater wonder, the Semaphore, which threw out an arm, first on one side and then on another, and at varying heights. Very tedious was the transmission of the message, even by this improved instrument; sometimes impossible from, the state of the atmosphere. About 1824 I was summoned as a witness upon a trial in which Mr. Croker was also required to give his testimony. I walked with him for an hour or more up and down Westminster Hall. So ful...