96 FAMILIAR LONDON sympathy he had for men was not for England and the English alone, but for humanity. His honesty, his denunciation of all that was selfish, untrue, or hypocritical, unveiled many shams; and amid his scathing satire and his grim humour there flashes on us the rugged tenderness he had for the poorest of his fellows. Many a time have I wandered past Paradise Row, or rather what is left of it-half a dozen quaint brick houses with tiled roofs and dormer windows, standing back from the street, with high white gateposts, on top of each of which is the oldfashioned stone ball in vogue at the end of the Jacobean period. They are mostly laundries; but, unpretending though they are, many titled and wellknown personages lived in them. Among these were the first Duke of St Albans and Hortense, Duchesse de Mazarin, who supplanted the Duchess of Portsmouth in the Merry Monarch's affections, and led the fashion for some time. She entertained largely, quite regardless of the fact that she was too deeply in debt to pay even butcher and baker; and Lysons says that at these fashionable gatherings it was usual for the nobility and others who dined at the Duchess's house to leave money under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. |