Wroth narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure.  In the hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea.  One of its frequenters, Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to the gallows.  Few visitors’ lists could stand such a strain as Miss Shaftoe put upon hers.  In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead.  ‘The Peerless Pool’ has a Stevensonian sound.  It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long known as ‘The Parlous or Perilous Pond’ ’because divers youth by swimming therein have been drowned.’  In 1743 a London jeweller called Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, happily enough, ‘The Peerless Pool.’  It was a fine open-air bath, 170 feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep.  ’It was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool came bubbling up.’  Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond.  The enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons skaters, flocked to ‘The Peerless Pool.’  Hone describes how every Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to plunge into its depths.  You ask its fate.  It has been built over.  Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of divers youths.  The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not places to be lightly passed over.  In Mr. Wroth’s book you may read about them and trace their fortunes—­their fallen fortunes.  After all, they have only shared the fate of empires.

Of the most famous London gardens—­Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest of them all, Vauxhall—­Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming length.  Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 acres.  Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site.  Music was the main feature of Marylebone.  A band played in the evening.  Vocalists at different times drew crowds.  Masquerades and fireworks appeared later in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of the week.  Dr. Johnson’s turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of his frequent visits, will easily be remembered.  Marylebone, at no period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the universal popularity of Vauxhall.  In 1776 the gardens were closed, and two years later the builders began to lay out streets.  Ranelagh is, perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century.  Its Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room of the British Museum.  No need to give its dimensions; only look at the print,