The river proudly bridged; the dizzy top And Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's. Wordsworth.

White Conduit House. A publichouse on the extreme verge of London. It derived its name from the conduit near by, which was built for the use of the Charter-house. It had, both in and around it, ample accommodations for tea-drinking, and was a very popular place of resort in the early part of this century. It was celebrated for its White Conduit rolls.

All public dinners in London, from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the Chimney-sweepers' anniversary at White Conduit House; from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers', from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victuallers' - are amusing scenes. Dickens.

White Convent. A monastery of Coptic Christians in Upper Egypt, standing upon the edge of the desert, supposed to be of the time of the Empress Helena, but probably of a later date.

White Hart. 1. An ancient tavern situated in Southwark, London, near London Bridge. It was the headquarters of Jack Cade and his rebel forces in 1450. It was partly demolished and partly burnt. Dickens in the "Pickwick Papers" has described the modern building of this name.

Hath my sword therefore broke through London gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart, in Southwark?

Shakespeare.

is a vale called the "Vale of the White Horse." It takes its name from a colossal figure of a galloping horse rudely fashioned on the side of a steep chalk hill (893 feet high) by removing the overlying turf. The figure is about 374 feet in length, and can be seen 10 or 12 miles in a fair day, when the sun is shining upon it. At what period or by whom it was cut, is not known. It has been variously ascribed to the Saxons, to the Danes, and to the Druids. Local tradition attributes it to King Alfred, and regards it as a monument of the victory won by him over the Danes in the great battle of Ashdown, in 871. He is said to have carved a horse, rather than any other object, because that was the device borne on the Saxon standard. The earliest historical notice of the White Horse is contained in a cartulary, or register of the Abbey of Abingdon, written in the year 1171, and preserved in the British Museum. As, in the course of time, the trench which forms the figure of the horse would naturally get filled up and grown over, the people living in the neighborhood have a custom of meeting for the purpose of "scouring" or cleaning it; and they make this the occasion of a "pastime," or festival, at which manly games and sports, with prizes, are exhibited. Thomas Hughes has written a work called "The Scouring of the White Horse," which gives, in story form, an interesting account of a great pastime held on the 18th of September, 1857, and embodies all the scattered legends and traditions of the vicinity, and all the authentic historical notices relating to the old monument. White House. The executive or presidential mansion at Washington. It is a large freestone building, painted white, from which latter circumstance it derives its name. It is said to have been modelled after the palace of the Duke of Leinster. The executive mansion was first occu

J. J. Piatt.

White House. See CASA BLANCA. White Tower. See TowER, THE. Whitechapel. A wide and spacious street in London.

In spirituals and temporals, in field and workshop, from Manchester to Dorsetshire, from Lambeth Palace to the Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meet and toil and traffic together,-Anarchy, Anarchy. Carlyle.

Two sticks and an apple, Say the bells at Whitechapel. Mother Goose. Whitefield Church. A name by which the Old South (Presbyterian) church in Newburyport, Mass., is sometimes known. The remains of George Whitefield (1714-1770), the founder of Calvinistic Methodism, rest in a vault under the pulpit of this church. In this church is a noted whispering- gallery, said to be equalled only by that at St. Paul's, London.

Long shall the traveller strain his eye
From the railroad-car, as it plunges by,
And the vanishing town behind him
search

For the slender spire of the Whitefield
Church.
Whittier.

"Yonder spire
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire;
What is it, pray?"-"The Whitefield
Church!

Walled about by its basement stones, There rest the marvellous prophet's bones." Whittier.

Whitefriars. A district in London, which long possessed the privileges of sanctuary, and hence became the asylumn of debtors, cheats, and gamblers, who were here protected from arrest. From this circumstance it derived the cant name of Alsatia, perhaps from the Landgraviate of Alsace, which stood in much the same relation to France as Whitefriars did to the Temple. In the Temple students were studying to observe the law, and in Alsatia, adjoining, debtors to avoid and violate it. Alsatia, or Whitefriars, has been immortalized by Sir Walter. Scott in "The Fortunes of Nigel;" and here is laid the scene of Shadwell's comedy of "The Squire of Alsatia."

"Though the immunities legal. ly belonging to the place extended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desper ate no peace-officer's life was in safety. At the cry of Rescue!' bullies with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pun.ped upon." Macaulay.

"It is not unlikely that the Landgraviate of Alsace [Ger. Elsass, Lat. Alsatia]· -now the frontier province of France [at present (1881) a part of the German empire], long a cause of contention, often the seat of war, and familiarly known to many British soldiers- suggested the application of the name Alsatia to the precinct of Whitefriars." Cunningham.

We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horseboys, gamblers, and bravos, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies were never tolerated.

Macaulay. Whitehall. A district of Westminster, London, and the site of the Royal Palace of Whitehall from 1530 to 1697. It was formerly called York Place from having been the town residence of the Archbishops of York. Cardinal Wolsey lived here for a

WHITE'S.

"Little did James think that he was raising a pile from which his son [Charles I.] was to step from the throne to a scaffold." Pennant.

"Poetry, painting, music, and architecture were all called in to make them rational amusements: and I have no doubt that the celebrated festivals of Louis the Fourteenth were copied from the shows exhibited at Whitehall, in its time the most polite court in Europe. Ben Jonson was the laureate, Inigo Jones the inventor of the decora tions; Laniere and Ferabosco composed the symphonies; the king, the queen, and the young nobility danced in the interludes.' Walpole.

"Whitehall, when he [Charles the Second] dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of fashionable gayety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on under his roof." Macaulay.

You must no more call it York-place, that is past:

For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost:

"Tis now the king's, and call'd Whitehall. Shakespeare.

The king, with wonder and surprise,
Will swear the seas grow bold;
Because the tides still higher rise
Than e'er they did of old,

But let them know it is our tears
Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs.
Lord Dorset.

I see, I see, where two fair cities bend
Their ample bow, a new Whitehall ascend!
Pope.
The furious German comes, with his clar-
ions and his drums,

His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall. Macaulay.

All the town was in an uproar of admiration of his poem, the "Campaign,' which Dick Steele was spouting at every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent Garden. Thackeray.

"I have heard that the late Earl of Oxford, in the time of his ministry, never passed by White's Chocolate-house (the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies) without bestowing a curse upon that famous Academy, as the bane of half the English nobility." Swift.

"The Club, which is at this time limited to 500 members, was formerly composed of the high Tory par ty, but, though Conservative principles may probably prevail, it has now ceased to be a political club, and may rather be termed 'aristocratic.' Several of the present members have belonged to the Club upwards of half a century, and the ancestors of most of the noblemen and men of fashion of the present day who belong to the Club were formerly members of it. The Club has given magnificent entertainments in our time. On June 20, 1814, they gave a ball at Burlington House to the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and the allied sovereigns then in England: the cost was £9,849, 2s. 6d. Three weeks after this, the Club gave to the Duke of Wellington a dinner, which cost £2,480, 10s. 9d." Timbs.

Gambling he (Harley] held in aversion: and it was said that he never passed White's, then the favorite haunt of noble sharpers and dupes, without an exclamation of anger. Macaulay.

Aimwell. Pray, sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffee-house?

Gibbet. Yes, sir, and at White's too. Farquhar, Beaur Stratagem. While softer chairs the tawdry load con

vey

To court, to White's, assemblies, or the play,

Rosy-complexioned Health thy steps at

tends,

And exercise thy lasting youth defends. Gay.

His grace will game: to White's a bull be led,

With spurning heels and with a butting head:

To White's be carried, as to ancient games, Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames.

Pope.

Or chair'd at White's, amidst the doctors sit,

Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit. Pope.

"It was Dryden who made Will's Coffee-house the great resort of the wits of his time."

Pope, Spence's Anecdotes.

"That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical jus tice and the unities of place and time.

...

Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen, -earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert templars, sheepish lads from the universities, transla tors and index-makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate." Macaulay.

And, upon my going into Will's, I found their discourse was gone off, from the death of the French King, to that of Monsieur Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other poets, whom they regretted on this occasion as persons who would have obliged the world with very noble elegies on the death of so great a prince, and so eminent a patron of learning.

Addison, Spectator.

The loose atheistical wits at Will's might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court: but did it become a minister of the gospel to copy the evil fashions of the world? Macaulay.

His fame travelled to London: he [Charles Montague] was thought a clever lad by the wits who met at Will's; and the lively parody which he wrote, in concert with his friend and fellow-student Prior, on Dryden's Hind and Panther, was received with great applause. Macaulay.

Be sure at Will's the following day
Lie snug, and hear what critics say.
Swift.

There was another Will's at the corner of Serle and Portugal Streets, London.

Wilton House. A famous mansion, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke, and in which Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Arcadia." It adjoins the town of Wilton, in England.

66

My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers,

In my low cell, how cheat the sullen hours? Thomas Warton. Winchester Cathedral. A noted church in Winchester, England, of great size and magnificence. The nave, 250 feet in length, is regarded as one of the finest in England. William Rufus was buried in this church, and also Izaak Walton. It contains also a celebrated painting by West of the "Raising of Lazarus." Winds, Cave of the. See CAVE OF THE WINDS.

Windsor Castle. A royal residence, and the principal seat of the British sovereigns, in the town of Windsor, near London. It surpasses in antiquity and in beauty of situation all the other palaces of Europe. The date of the old castle is uncertain. It undoubtedly belongs to a period much earlier than the Conquest. The history of the present castle, which was founded by William the Conqueror, begins with Edward III., by whom it was almost rebuilt. The castle stands upon a promontory overlooking the valley of the Thames. Edward IV. re-erected St. George's Chapel nearly as it now stands, one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in the country. Henry VII. also erected a fine though small chapel, which is still standing. Queen Elizabeth caused the terrace to be made which is one of the grand characteristics of the place, and regarded as the noblest walk of its kind in Europe. Charles II. added what is known as the Star-building, which contains the rooms shown to the public. The state apartments contain valuable pictures, ancient decorative furniture, Gobelin tapestries, plate, and other articles of value.

"It is a place full of storied and poetical associations.... I have visited Vaucluse with as much enthusiasm as a pilgrim would visit the shrine at Loretto; but I have never felt more poetical devotion than when contemplating the old Tower and the little garden at Windsor, and musing over the ro