The phantom chariot of Lord Petersham dashes down the slope
nightly. Nightly Mr. Ball Hughes appears in the bow-window of White's.
At cock-crow Charles James Fox still emerges from Brooks's. Such men
as these were indigenous to the street. Nothing will ever lay their
ghosts there. But the ghost of St. James--what should it do in that
galley?... Of all the streets that have been named after famous men, I
know but one whose namesake is suggested by it. In Regent Street you
do sometimes think of the Regent; and that is not because the street
is named after him, but because it was conceived by him, and was
designed and built under his auspices, and is redolent of his
character and his time. When a national hero is to be commemorated by
a street, he must be allowed to design the street himself. The mere
plastering-up of his name is no mnemonic.
ON SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY
My florist has standing orders to deliver early on the morning of this
day a chaplet of laurel. With it in my hand, I reach by a step-ladder
the nobly arched embrasure that is above my central book-case, and
crown there the marble brow of him whose name is the especial glory of
our literature--of all literature. The greater part of the morning is
spent by me in contemplation of that brow, and in silent meditation.
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