Node js By Example 1st Edition Tsonev pdf

download

https://ebookname.com/product/node-js-by-example-1st-edition-
tsonev/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Node js Blueprints Tsonev

https://ebookname.com/product/node-js-blueprints-tsonev/

D3 js By Example 1st Edition Heydt

https://ebookname.com/product/d3-js-by-example-1st-edition-heydt/

Node js in Practice 1st Edition Alex R. Young

https://ebookname.com/product/node-js-in-practice-1st-edition-
alex-r-young/

The architect s portable handbook first step rules of

thumb for building design 3rd ed Edition Guthrie

https://ebookname.com/product/the-architect-s-portable-handbook-
first-step-rules-of-thumb-for-building-design-3rd-ed-edition-
guthrie/
Shamans Neo Shamans Ecstasies Alternative Archaeologies
and Contemporary Pagans 1st Edition Robert J. Wallis

https://ebookname.com/product/shamans-neo-shamans-ecstasies-
alternative-archaeologies-and-contemporary-pagans-1st-edition-
robert-j-wallis/

The Late Great State of Israel How Enemies Within and

Without Threaten the Jewish Nation s Survival 1St
Edition Edition Aaron Klein

https://ebookname.com/product/the-late-great-state-of-israel-how-
enemies-within-and-without-threaten-the-jewish-nation-s-
survival-1st-edition-edition-aaron-klein/

Migration Across Boundaries Linking Research to

Practice and Experience Parvati Nair

https://ebookname.com/product/migration-across-boundaries-
linking-research-to-practice-and-experience-parvati-nair/

The Copyeditor s Handbook A Guide for Book Publishing

and Corporate Communications 2nd Edition Amy Einsohn

https://ebookname.com/product/the-copyeditor-s-handbook-a-guide-
for-book-publishing-and-corporate-communications-2nd-edition-amy-
einsohn/

Advances in Agronomy 94 1st Edition Donald L. Sparks

(Eds.)

https://ebookname.com/product/advances-in-agronomy-94-1st-
edition-donald-l-sparks-eds/
Metamaterials with Negative Parameters Theory Design
and Microwave Applications Wiley Series in Microwave
and Optical Engineering 1st Edition Ricardo Marqués

https://ebookname.com/product/metamaterials-with-negative-
parameters-theory-design-and-microwave-applications-wiley-series-
in-microwave-and-optical-engineering-1st-edition-ricardo-marques/
www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js By Example

Learn to use Node.js by creating a fully functional

social network

Krasimir Tsonev

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js By Example

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: May 2015

Production reference: 1190515

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78439-571-1

www.packtpub.com

www.it-ebooks.info
 Credits

Author Project Coordinator

Krasimir Tsonev Harshal Ved

Reviewers Proofreaders
Danny Allen Stephen Copestake
Alex (Shurf) Frenkel Safis Editing

Commissioning Editor Indexer

Akram Hussain Priya Sane

Acquisition Editors Production Coordinator

Purav Motiwalla Shantanu N. Zagade
Llewellyn Rozario
Cover Work
Content Development Editor Shantanu N. Zagade
Shubhangi Dhamgaye

Technical Editor
Mrunal M. Chavan

Copy Editor
Vedangi Narvekar

www.it-ebooks.info
 About the Author

Krasimir Tsonev is a coder with over 10 years of experience in web development.

The author of Node.js Blueprints, Packt Publishing, he works with a strong focus on
quality and usability. Krasimir is interested in delivering cutting-edge applications.
He enjoys working in the software industry and has a passion for creating and
discovering new and effective digital experiences. Right now, he is working with
technologies such as HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, and Node.js, but he originally
started out as a graphic designer. Later, being a Flash developer, he spent several
years using ActionScript3 and frameworks such as RobotLegs. After that, as a
freelancer, he continued to deliver full-stack web services for his clients, taking care
of the graphic design and frontend and backend programming. Right now, with the
rise of mobile application development, Krasimir is enthusiastic about working on
responsive applications that target various devices. He currently lives and works
in Bulgaria. He graduated from the Technical University of Varna with both a
bachelor's and a master's degree in computer science. He loves blogging, writing
books, and giving talks on the latest trends in web development.

He has authored Node.js Blueprints, Packt Publishing (https://www.packtpub.com/

web-development/nodejs-blueprints).

I want to thank my family, who supported me in the last

several months.

www.it-ebooks.info
 About the Reviewers

Danny Allen is a full-stack web developer who focuses on usability, user

experience, localization, and accessibility issues as the founder and director of
the international user experience development consultancy Wonderscore Ltd.

Skilled in a wide range of backend and frontend technologies including Python,

Django, JavaScript, Node.js, as well as HTML5/CSS3, his recent work has involved
the design and implementation of e-learning and government projects in the
United Kingdom.

His portfolio and contact details can be found at http://dannya.uk.

Alex (Shurf) Frenkel has worked in the field of web application development
since 1998 (the beginning of PHP 3.X) and has extensive experience in system
analysis and project management. Alex is a PHP 5.3 Zend Certified Engineer and is
considered to be one of the most prominent LAMP developers in Israel. He is also a
food blogger at http://www.foodstuff.guru.

In the past, Alex was the CTO of ReutNet, one of the leading Israeli web
technology-based companies. He also worked as the CEO/CTO of OpenIview
LTD—a company built around the innovative idea of breaching the IBM mainframe
business with PHP applications. He was also the CTO and the chief architect of
a start-up, GBooking. He also provided expert consulting services to different
companies in various aspects of web-related technology.

Frenkel-Online is a project-based company that works with a number of professional

freelance consultants in Israel and abroad. Currently, their permanent staff comprises
several consultants in Israel and abroad for the company's PHP projects and a number
of specialists in other programming languages for the rest of the projects.

Foodstuff.Guru is a pet project that brings not only high-style food, but also every day
food to the Web that can be reviewed by people for people. The blog is multilingual
and you can visit it at http://www.foodstuff.guru.

www.it-ebooks.info
 www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

For support files and downloads related to your book, please visit www.PacktPub.com.

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF
and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com
and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in
touch with us at service@packtpub.com for more details.

At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign
up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt
books and eBooks.
TM

https://www2.packtpub.com/books/subscription/packtlib

Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital
book library. Here, you can search, access, and read Packt's entire library of books.

Why subscribe?
• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via a web browser

Free access for Packt account holders

If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access
PacktLib today and view 9 entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for
immediate access.

www.it-ebooks.info
 Table of Contents
Preface v
Chapter 1: Node.js Fundamentals 1
Understanding the Node.js architecture 1
Installing Node.js 3
Running Node.js server 3
Defining and using modules 4
Managing and distributing packages 7
Creating a module 7
Using modules 8
Updating our module 9
Introducing built-in modules 10
Creating a server with the HTTP module 10
Reading and writing to files 11
Working with events 11
Managing child processes 13
Summary 14
Chapter 2: Architecting the Project 15
Introducing the basic layers of the application 15
The task runner and building system 18
Introducing Grunt 19
Discovering Gulp 22
Test-driven development 24
The Model-View-Controller pattern 27
Introducing the REST API concept 30
Summary 32

[i]

www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents

Chapter 3: Managing Assets 33

Serving files with Node.js 33
CSS preprocessing 37
Packing client-side JavaScript 39
Concatenating with Gulp 39
Modularity in the browser with RequireJS 40
Moving from Node.js to the browser with Browserify 43
Delivering HTML templates 45
Defining the templates in script tags 45
Loading the template externally 46
Writing HTML inside the JavaScript 46
Precompiling templates 47
Summary 49
Chapter 4: Developing the Model-View-Controller Layers 51
Evolving the current setup 51
Directory structure 52
Forming the main server handlers 52
Implementing the router 54
Introducing Ractive.js 59
Constructing the entry point of the application 61
Defining a controller 62
Managing our views 64
Creating a model 65
Summary 68
Chapter 5: Managing Users 69
Working with the MongoDB database 69
Installing MongoDB 70
Running MongoDB 70
Connecting to the database server 71
Extending the code from the previous chapter 72
Updating our base model class 72
Updating page navigation and routing 74
Registering a new user 75
Updating the frontend 75
Updating the backend API 78
User authentication with sessions 81
Managing a user's profile 86
Summary 89

[ ii ]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Table of Contents

Chapter 6: Adding Friendship Capabilities 91

Finding friends 91
Adding the search page 91
Writing the model 94
Fetching friends from the database 97
Marking users as friends 99
Displaying the linked users on the Profile page 102
Summary 104
Chapter 7: Posting Content 105
Posting and storing text 105
Adding a form to post text messages 105
Introducing the content's model 106
Updating the controller of the home page 107
Storing content in the database 109
Showing the user's feed 110
Posting files 114
Summary 120
Chapter 8: Creating Pages and Events 121
Refactoring the API 121
Adding a form to create pages 124
Creating a record in the database 126
Showing the currently added pages 129
Showing a specific page 130
Posting a comment to a page 133
Showing the comments 135
Managing events attached to a particular page 137
Summary 140
Chapter 9: Tagging, Sharing, and Liking 141
Selecting friends and sending their IDs to the backend 141
Storing the tagged users and displaying them in the user's feed 143
Sharing a post 147
Liking posts and counting the number of likes 151
Showing the number of likes 154
Summary 155

[ iii ]

www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents

Chapter 10: Adding Real-time Chat 157

Getting to know WebSockets 157
Bringing Socket.IO to the project 159
Preparing the UI of the chat area 161
Exchanging messages between the client and the server 164
Sending messages to the user's friends only 169
Customizing the output of the chat 172
Summary 175
Chapter 11: Testing the User Interface 177
Introducing the basic testing toolset 177
The testing framework 177
The assertion library 178
Runner 178
Preparing our project to run tests 178
Running our test with PhantomJS 184
Testing user registration 185
Simulating user interaction 185
Filling and submitting the registration form 186
Tweaking the code's execution order 188
Listening to the form-submitted event 190
Testing with DalekJS 191
Installing DalekJS 191
Using the DalekJS API 192
Summary 194
Index 195

[ iv ]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Preface
Node.js is one of the present day's most popular technologies. Its growing
community is known to produce a large number of modules every day. These
modules can be used as building blocks for server-side applications. The fact that
we use the same language (JavaScript) on both the server- and client-side make
development fluent.

This book contains 11 chapters that contain a step-by-step guide to building a social
network. Systems such as Facebook and Twitter are complex and challenging to
develop. It is nice that we will learn what Node.js is capable of, but it is going to
be much more interesting if we do that within a concrete context. The book covers
basic phases such as the architecture and management of the assets' pipeline, and it
discusses features such as users' friendship and real-time communication.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Node.js Fundamentals, teaches the basics of Node.js, what stands behind the
technology, and its module management system and package manager.

Chapter 2, Architecting the Project, reveals the power of build systems such as Gulp.
Before starting with our social network, we will plan the project. We will talk about
test-driven development and the Model-View-Controller pattern. The chapter will
cover the Node.js modules that are needed to bootstrap the project.

Chapter 3, Managing Assets, covers the building of a web application. So, we have to
deal with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images. In this chapter, we will go through the
processes behind the serving of assets.

Chapter 4, Developing the Model-View-Controller Layers, is about the basic structure of

our application. We will create classes for views, models, and controllers. In the next
few chapters, we will use these classes as a base.

[v]

www.it-ebooks.info
Preface

Chapter 5, Managing Users, is about implementing user registration, authorization,

and profile management.

Chapter 6, Adding Friendship Capabilities, explains one of the main concepts behind
modern social networks—friendship. The ability to find friends and follow their
walls is an important part. This chapter is dedicated to the development of this
relationship between users.

Chapter 7, Posting Content, states that the backbone of every social network is the
content that users add into the system. In this chapter, we will implement the
process of post making.

Chapter 8, Creating Pages and Events, states that providing the ability to users to create
pages and events will make our social network more interesting. Users can add as
many pages as they want. Other users will be able to join the newly created places
in our network. We will also add code to collect statistics.

Chapter 9, Tagging, Sharing, and Liking, explains that besides posting and reviewing
content, the users of a social network should be able to tag, share, and like posts.
This chapter is dedicated to the development of these functions.

Chapter 10, Adding Real-time Chat, talks about the expectations of users, in today's
world, to see everything that is happening right away. They want to communicate
faster with each other. In this chapter, we will develop a real-time chat so that the
users can send messages instantly.

Chapter 11, Testing the User Interface, explains that it is important to get the job done,
but it is also important to cover working functionalities with tests. In this chapter,
we will see how to test a user interface.

What you need for this book

The book is based on Node.js version 0.10.36. We will also use MongoDB (http://
www.mongodb.org/) as a database and Ractive.js (http://www.ractivejs.org/) as
a client-side framework.

Who this book is for

If you have knowledge of JavaScript and want to see how you can use it in the
backend, this book is for you. It will lead you through the creation of a fairly complex
social network. You will learn how to work with a database and create real-time
communication channels.

[ vi ]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Preface

Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between
different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an
explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions,
pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "If
the Ractive component has a friends property, then we will render a list of users."

A block of code is set as follows:

<li class="right"><a on-click="goto:logout">Logout</a></li>
<li class="right"><a on-click="goto:profile">Profile</a></li>
<li class="right"><a on-click="goto:find-friends">Find
friends</a></li>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo apt-get install npm

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the
screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "It shows
their name and a Add as a friend button."

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about
this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for
us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to feedback@packtpub.com,

and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

[ vii ]

www.it-ebooks.info
Preface

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing
or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to
help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased
from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book
elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have
the files e-mailed directly to you.

Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes
do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or
the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can
save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this
book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.
com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link,
and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission
will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of
existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed
by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media.
At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you
come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please
provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can
pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at copyright@packtpub.com with a link to the suspected

pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you
valuable content.

[ viii ]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Preface

Questions
You can contact us at questions@packtpub.com if you are having a problem with
any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

[ ix ]

www.it-ebooks.info
www.it-ebooks.info
 Node.js Fundamentals
Node.js is one of the most popular JavaScript-driven technologies nowadays.
It was created in 2009 by Ryan Dahl and since then, the framework has evolved
into a well-developed ecosystem. Its package manager is full of useful modules
and developers around the world have started using Node.js in their production
environments. In this chapter, we will learn about the following:

• Node.js building blocks

• The main capabilities of the environment
• The package management of Node.js

Understanding the Node.js architecture

Back in the days, Ryan was interested in developing network applications. He found
out that most high performance servers followed similar concepts. Their architecture
was similar to that of an event loop and they worked with nonblocking input/output
operations. These operations would permit other processing activities to continue
before an ongoing task could be finished. These characteristics are very important if
we want to handle thousands of simultaneous requests.

Most of the servers written in Java or C use multithreading. They process every
request in a new thread. Ryan decided to try something different—a single-threaded
architecture. In other words, all the requests that come to the server are processed by
a single thread. This may sound like a nonscalable solution, but Node.js is definitely
scalable. We just have to run different Node.js processes and use a load balancer that
distributes the requests between them.

[1]

www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js Fundamentals

Ryan needed something that is event-loop-based and which works fast. As he

pointed out in one of his presentations, big companies such as Google, Apple, and
Microsoft invest a lot of time in developing high performance JavaScript engines.
They have become faster and faster every year. There, event-loop architecture is
implemented. JavaScript has become really popular in recent years. The community
and the hundreds of thousands of developers who are ready to contribute made
Ryan think about using JavaScript. Here is a diagram of the Node.js architecture:

In general, Node.js is made up of three things:

• V8 is Google's JavaScript engine that is used in the Chrome web

browser (https://developers.google.com/v8/)
• A thread pool is the part that handles the file input/output operations.
All the blocking system calls are executed here (http://software.schmorp.
de/pkg/libeio.html)
• The event loop library (http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libev.html)

On top of these three blocks, we have several bindings that expose low-level
interfaces. The rest of Node.js is written in JavaScript. Almost all the APIs that we
see as built-in modules and which are present in the documentation, are written
in JavaScript.

[2]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Chapter 1

Installing Node.js
A fast and easy way to install Node.js is by visiting https://nodejs.org/
download/ and downloading the appropriate installer for your operating system.
For OS X and Windows users, the installer provides a nice, easy-to-use interface.
For developers that use Linux as an operating system, Node.js is available in the APT
package manager. The following commands will set up Node.js and Node Package
Manager (NPM):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo apt-get install npm

Running Node.js server

Node.js is a command-line tool. After installing it, the node command will be
available on our terminal. The node command accepts several arguments, but the
most important one is the file that contains our JavaScript. Let's create a file called
server.js and put the following code inside:

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(9000, '127.0.0.1');
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:9000/');

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files from your account at
http://www.packtpub.com for all the Packt Publishing books
that you have purchased. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you
can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to
have the files e-mailed directly to you.

If you run node ./server.js in your console, you will have the Node.js server
running. It listens for incoming requests at localhost (127.0.0.1) on port 9000. The
very first line of the preceding code requires the built-in http module. In Node.js,
we have the require global function that provides the mechanism to use external
modules. We will see how to define our own modules in a bit. After that, the scripts
continue with the createServer and listen methods on the http module. In this
case, the API of the module is designed in such a way that we can chain these two
methods like in jQuery.

[3]

www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js Fundamentals

The first one (createServer) accepts a function that is also known as a callback,
which is called every time a new request comes to the server. The second one makes
the server listen.

The result that we will get in a browser is as follows:

Defining and using modules

JavaScript as a language does not have mechanisms to define real classes. In fact,
everything in JavaScript is an object. We normally inherit properties and functions
from one object to another. Thankfully, Node.js adopts the concepts defined by
CommonJS—a project that specifies an ecosystem for JavaScript.

We encapsulate logic in modules. Every module is defined in its own file. Let's
illustrate how everything works with a simple example. Let's say that we have a
module that represents this book and we save it in a file called book.js:
// book.js
exports.name = 'Node.js by example';
exports.read = function() {
console.log('I am reading ' + exports.name);
}

We defined a public property and a public function. Now, we will use require to
access them:
// script.js
var book = require('./book.js');
console.log('Name: ' + book.name);
book.read();

[4]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Chapter 1

We will now create another file named script.js. To test our code, we will run
node ./script.js. The result in the terminal looks like this:

Along with exports, we also have module.exports available. There is a difference

between the two. Look at the following pseudocode. It illustrates how Node.js
constructs our modules:
var module = { exports: {} };
var exports = module.exports;
// our code
return module.exports;

So, in the end, module.exports is returned and this is what require produces.
We should be careful because if at some point we apply a value directly to exports
or module.exports, we may not receive what we need. Like at the end of the
following snippet, we set a function as a value and that function is exposed to
the outside world:
exports.name = 'Node.js by example';
exports.read = function() {
console.log('Iam reading ' + exports.name);
}
module.exports = function() { ... }

In this case, we do not have an access to .name and .read. If we try to execute node
./script.js again, we will get the following output:

To avoid such issues, we should stick to one of the two options—exports or

module.exports—but make sure that we do not have both.

[5]

www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js Fundamentals

We should also keep in mind that by default, require caches the object that is
returned. So, if we need two different instances, we should export a function. Here is
a version of the book class that provides API methods to rate the books and that do
not work properly:
// book.js
var ratePoints = 0;
exports.rate = function(points) {
ratePoints = points;
}
exports.getPoints = function() {
return ratePoints;
}

Let's create two instances and rate the books with different points value:
// script.js
var bookA = require('./book.js');
var bookB = require('./book.js');
bookA.rate(10);
bookB.rate(20);
console.log(bookA.getPoints(), bookB.getPoints());

The logical response should be 10 20, but we got 20 20. This is why it is a common
practice to export a function that produces a different object every time:
// book.js
module.exports = function() {
var ratePoints = 0;
return {
rate: function(points) {
ratePoints = points;
},
getPoints: function() {
return ratePoints;
}
}
}

Now, we should also have require('./book.js')() because require returns a

function and not an object anymore.

[6]

www.it-ebooks.info
 Chapter 1

Managing and distributing packages

Once we understand the idea of require and exports, we should start thinking
about grouping our logic into building blocks. In the Node.js world, these blocks are
called modules (or packages). One of the reasons behind the popularity of Node.js is
its package management.

Node.js normally comes with two executables—node and npm. NPM is a

command-line tool that downloads and uploads Node.js packages. The official
site, https://npmjs.org/, acts as a central registry. When we create a package
via the npm command, we store it there so that every other developer may use it.

Creating a module
Every module should live in its own directory, which also contains a metadata
file called package.json. In this file, we have set at least two properties—name
and version:
{
"name": "my-awesome-nodejs-module",
"version": "0.0.1"
}

We can place whatever code we like in the same directory. Once we publish the
module to the NPM registry and someone installs it, he/she will get the same files.
For example, let's add an index.js file so that we have two files in the package:
// index.js
console.log('Hello, this is my awesome Node.js module!');

Our module does only one thing—it displays a simple message to the console.
Now, to upload the modules, we need to navigate to the directory containing the
package.json file and execute npm publish. This is the result that we should see:

We are ready. Now our little module is listed in the Node.js package manager's site
and everyone is able to download it.

[7]

www.it-ebooks.info
Node.js Fundamentals

Using modules
In general, there are three ways to use the modules that are already created. All three
ways involve the package manager:

• We may install a specific module manually. Let's say that we have a folder
called project. We open the folder and run the following:
npm install my-awesome-nodejs-module

The manager automatically downloads the latest version of the module and
puts it in a folder called node_modules. If we want to use it, we do not need
to reference the exact path. By default, Node.js checks the node_modules
folder before requiring something. So, just require('my-awesome-nodejs-
module') will be enough.

• The installation of modules globally is a common practice, especially if

we talk about command-line tools made with Node.js. It has become an
easy-to-use technology to develop such tools. The little module that we
created is not made as a command-line program, but we can still install
it globally by running the following code:
npm install my-awesome-nodejs-module -g

Note the -g flag at the end. This is how we tell the manager that we want
this module to be a global one. When the process finishes, we do not have a
node_modules directory. The my-awesome-nodejs-module folder is stored
in another place on our system. To be able to use it, we have to add another
property to package.json, but we'll talk more about this in the next section.

• The resolving of dependencies is one of the key features of the package

manager of Node.js. Every module can have as many dependencies as you
want. These dependences are nothing but other Node.js modules that were
uploaded to the registry. All we have to do is list the needed packages in the
package.json file:

{
"name": "another-module",
"version": "0.0.1",
"dependencies": {
"my-awesome-nodejs-module": "0.0.1"
}
}

[8]

www.it-ebooks.info
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The duke was very profuse in his promises, and a good story is told
of the result of his insincerity. At a Cornish election, the duke had
obtained the turning vote for his candidate by his usual assurances.
The elector, wishing to secure something definite, had asked for a
supervisorship of excise for his son-in-law on the present holder’s
death. “The moment he dies,” said the premier, “set out post-haste
for London; drive directly to my house in the Fields: night or day,
sleeping or waking, dead or alive, thunder at the door; the porter
will show you upstairs directly; and the place is yours.” A few months
after the old supervisor died, and up to London rushed the Cornish
elector.
Now that very night the duke had been expecting news of the death
of the King of Spain, and had left orders before he went to bed to
have the courier sent up directly he arrived. The Cornish man,
mistaken for this important messenger, was instantly, to his great
delight, shown up to the duke’s bedroom. “Is he dead?—is he
dead?” cried the duke. “Yes, my lord, yes,” answered the aspirant,
promptly. “When did he die?” “The day before yesterday, at half-past
one o’clock, after three weeks in his bed, and taking a power of
doctor’s stuff; and I hope your grace will be as good as your word,
and let my son-in-law succeed him.” “Succeed him!” shouted the
duke; “is the man drunk or mad? Where are your despatches?” he
exclaimed, tearing back the bed-curtains; and there, to his vexation,
stood the blundering elector, hat in hand, his stupid red face
beaming with smiles as he kept bowing like a joss. The duke sank
back in a violent fit of laughter, which, like the electric fluid, was in a
moment communicated to his attendants.[719] It is not stated
whether the Cornish man obtained his petition.
There is an agreement in all the stories of the duke, who was thirty
years Secretary of State, and nearly ten years First Lord of the
Treasury, “whether told,” says Macaulay, “by people who were
perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levées in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or by Grub Street writers, who had never more
than a glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded
coach.”[720] Smollett and Walpole mixed in different society, yet they
both sketch the duke with the same colours. Smollett’s Newcastle
runs out of his dressing-room with his face covered with soapsuds to
embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole’s Newcastle pushes his way
into the Duke of Grafton’s sick-room to kiss the old nobleman’s
plaisters. “He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a
shuffling trot, his utterance a rapid stutter. He was always in a hurry
—he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in
hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow—it
was nonsense effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. ‘Oh
yes, yes, to be sure—Annapolis must be defended; troops must be
sent to Annapolis. Pray, where is Annapolis?’—‘Cape Breton an
island! Wonderful! Show it me on the map. So it is, sure enough. My
dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the king
that Cape Breton is an island.’ His success is a proof of what may be
done by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul to one object.
His love of power was so intense a passion, that it almost supplied
the place of talent. He was jealous even of his own brother. Under
the guise of levity, he was false beyond all example.” “All the able
men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child, who
never knew his own mind for an hour together, and yet he
overreached them all round.” If the country had remained at peace,
this man might have been at the head of affairs till a new king came
with fresh favourites and a strong will; “but the inauspicious
commencement of the Seven Years’ War brought on a crisis to which
Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years, the
spirit of the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths.”
This is strongly etched, but Macaulay was too fond of caricature for
a real lover of truth. Walpole, recounting this greedy imbecile’s
disgrace, reviews his career much more forcibly, for in a few words
he shows us how great had been the power which this chatterer’s
fixed purpose had attained. The memoir-writer describes the duke as
the man “who had begun the world by heading mobs against the
ministers of Queen Anne; who had braved the heir-apparent,
afterwards George I., and forced himself upon him as godfather to
his son; who had recovered that prince’s favour, and preserved
power under him, at the expense of every minister whom that prince
preferred; who had been a rival of another Prince of Wales for the
chancellorship of Cambridge; and who was now buffeted from a
fourth court by a very suitable competitor (Lord Bute), and reduced
in his tottery old age to have recourse to those mobs and that
popularity which had raised him fifty years before.”
Lord Bute was mean enough to compliment the old duke on his
retirement. The duke replied, with a spirit that showed the vitality of
his ambition: “Yes, yes, my lord, I am an old man, but yesterday was
my birthday, and I recollected that Cardinal Fleury began to be
prime-minister of France just at my age.”[721]
Newcastle House, now occupied by the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, was, for forty years or more, inhabited by Sir
Alan Chambre, one of King George III.’s judges. The society, then
lodged in Bartlett’s Buildings, in Holborn, derived its first name from
that place, and at Sir Alan’s death they purchased the house and
site.
About the centre of the west side of the square, in Sir Alan’s time,
lived the Earl and Countess of Portsmouth. The earl was half-witted,
but was always well-conducted and quite producible in society under
the guidance of his countess, a daughter of Lord Grantley.
Near Surgeons’ Hall, at the same epoch, lived the first Lord Wynford,
Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, better known as Serjeant
Best. A quarrel between this irritable lawyer and Serjeant Wilde,
afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro, one of the most stalwart gladiators
who ever won a name and title in the legal arena, gave rise to an
epigram, the point of which was—“That Best was wild, and Wilde
was best.”
In 1774, when Lord Clive had rewarded Wedderburn, his defender,
with lacs of rupees and a villa at Mitcham, the lawyer had an elegant
house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, not far from the Duke of Newcastle’s,
—“a quarter,” says Lord Campbell, “which I recollect still the envied
resort of legal magnates.”
Wedderburn, afterwards better known as Lord Chancellor
Loughborough, had a special hatred for Franklin, and loaded him
with abuse before a committee of the Privy Council, for having sent
to America letters from the Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts,
urging the Government to employ military force to suppress the
discontents in New England.[722] The effect of Wedderburn’s brilliant
oratory in Parliament was ruined, says Lord Campbell, by “his
character for insincerity.”[723] When George III. heard of his death,
he is reported to have said, “He has not left a greater knave behind
him in my dominions;” upon which Lord Thurlow savagely said, with
his usual oath, “I perceive that his majesty is quite sane at present.”
Wedderburn was a friend of David Hume; his humanity was
eulogised by Dr. Parr, but he was satirised by Churchill in the
Rosciad.
Montague, Earl of Sandwich, the great patron of Pepys, lived in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, paying £250 a year rent.[724] Pepys calls it “a
fine house, but deadly dear.”[725] He visits him, February 10, 1663-4,
and finds my lord very high and strange and stately, although Pepys
had been bound for £1000 with him, and the shrewd cit naturally
enough did not like my lord being angry with him and in debt to him
at the same time. The earl was a distant cousin of Pepys, and on his
marriage received him and his wife into his house, and took Pepys
with him when he went to bring home Charles II., when he was
elected one of the Council of State and General at Sea. He brought
the queen-mother to England and took her back again. He also
brought the ill-fated queen from Portugal, and became a privy-
councillor, and was sent as ambassador to Spain. He seems to have
been not untainted with the vices of the age. He was in the great
battle where Van Tromp was killed, and in 1668 he took forty-five
sail from the Dutch at sea, and that is the best thing known of him.
He died in 1672, and was buried in great state.
Inigo Jones built only the west side of the square. No. 55 was the
residence of Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles.
It is described in 1708 as a handsome building of the Ionic order,
with a beautiful and strong Court Gate, formed of six spacious brick
piers, with curious ironwork between them, and on the piers large
and beautiful vases.[726] The open balustrade at the top bore six
urns.
The Earl of Lindsey was shot at Edgehill in 1642, when a reckless
and intemperate charge of Rupert had led to the total defeat of the
unsupported foot. His son, Lord Willoughby, was taken in
endeavouring to rescue his father. Clarendon describes the earl as a
lavish, generous, yet punctilious man, of great honour and
experience in foreign war. He was surrounded by Lincolnshire
gentlemen, who served in his regiment out of personal regard for
him. He was jealous of Prince Rupert’s interference, and had made
up his mind to die. As he lay bleeding to death he reproved the
officers of the Earl of Essex, many of them his old friends, for their
ingratitude and “foul rebellion.”[727]
The fourth Earl of Lindsey was created Duke of Ancaster, and the
house henceforward bore that now forgotten name. It was
subsequently sold to the proud Duke of Somerset, the same who
married the widow of the Mr. Thynne whom Count Königsmarck
murdered.
In the early part of George III.’s reign Lindsey House became a sort
of lodging-house for foreign members of the Moravian persuasion.
The staircase, about 1772, was painted with scenes from the history
of the Herrnhuthers. The most conspicuous figures were those of a
negro catechumen in a white shirt, and a missionary who went over
to Algiers to preach to the galley-slaves, and died in Africa of the
plague. There was also a painting of a Moravian clergyman being
saved from a desert rock on which he had been cast.[728]
Repeated mention of the Berties is made in Horace Walpole’s
pleasant Letters. Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert the first
Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven. He was a general in the army, a
colonel in the Guards, and a lord of the bedchamber. He married
Lady Raymond in 1762, and died in 1782.
The proud Duke of Somerset, in 1748, left to his eldest daughter,
Lady Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, three thousand a
year, and the fine house built by Inigo Jones in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
which he had bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess,
hoping that his daughter would let her mother live with her.[729] In
July 1779 the Duke of Ancaster, dying of drinking and rioting at two-
and-twenty, recalls much scandal to Walpole’s mind. He had been in
love with Lady Honoria, Walpole’s niece; but Horace does not regret
the match dropping through, for he says the duke was of a turbulent
nature, and, though of a fine figure, not noble in manners. Lady
Priscilla Elizabeth Bertie, eldest sister of the duke, married the
grandson of Peter Burrell, a merchant, who became husband of the
Lady Great Chamberlain of England, and inherited a barony and half
the Ancaster estate.[730] “The three last duchesses,” goes on the
cruel gossip, “were never sober.” “The present duchess-dowager,” he
adds, “was natural daughter of Panton, a disreputable horse-jockey
of Newmarket. The other duchess was some lady’s woman, or young
lady’s governess.” Mr. Burrell’s daughters married Lord Percy and the
Duke of Hamilton.
In 1791 Walpole writes to Miss Berry to describe the marriage of
Lord Cholmondeley with Lady Georgiana Charlotte Bertie: “The men
were in frocks and white waistcoats. The endowing purse, I believe,
has been left off ever since broad pieces were called in and melted
down. We were but eighteen persons in all.... The poor duchess-
mother wept excessively; she is now left quite alone,—her two
daughters married, and her other children dead. She herself, I fear,
is in a very dangerous way. She goes directly to Spa, where the new
married pair are to meet her. We all separated in an hour and a
half.”[731]
Alfred Tennyson in early life had fourth-floor chambers at No. 55,
and there probably his friend Hallam, whose early death he laments
in his In Memoriam spent many an hour with him. There, in the airy
regions of Attica, in a low-roofed room, the single window of which
is darkened by a huge stone balustrade—a gloomy relic of past
grandeur—the young poet may have recited the majestic lines of his
“King Arthur,” or the exquisite lament of “Mariana,” and there he may
have immortalised the “plump head-waiter of the Cock,” in Fleet
Street. Mr. John Foster, the author of many sound and delightful
historical biographies, had also chambers in this house.
No. 68, on the west side, stands on the site of the approach to the
stables of old Newcastle House. Here Judge Le Blanc lived, and at
his death the house was occupied by Mr. Thomas Le Blanc, Master of
Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
At No. 33, on the same side as the Insolvent Debtors’ Court, dwelt
Judge Park, a man much beloved by his friends; in his early days, as
a young and poor Scotch barrister, he had lived in Carey Street till
his house there was burnt down. He used to say that his great
ambition in youth had been to one day live at No. 33 in the Fields, at
that time occupied by Chief Justice Willis; but in later days, as a
judge, leaving the former goal of his ambition, he migrated to
Bedford Square, where he died.
Nos. 40 and 42, on the south side, form the Museum of the College
of Surgeons, incorporated in 1800. The Grecian front is a most
clever contrivance by Sir John Soane. The building contains the
incomparable anatomical collection of the eminent John Hunter,
bought by the Government for £15,000 and given to the College of
Surgeons on condition of its being opened to the public. John Hunter
died in 1793; and the first courses of lectures in the new building
were delivered by Sir Everard Home and Sir William Blizard, in 1810.
The Museum was built by Barry in 1835, and cost about £40,000.
[732] It is divided into two rooms, the normal and abnormal. The
total number of specimens is upwards of 23,000. The collection is
unequalled in many respects; every article is authentic and in perfect
preservation. The largest human skeleton is that of Charles O’Brien,
the Irish giant, who died in Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, in 1783,
aged twenty-two. It measures eight feet four inches. By its side, in
ghastly contrast, is the bony sketch of Caroline Crachami, a Sicilian
dwarf who died in 1824, aged ten years. There is also a cast of the
hand of Patrick Cotter, another Irish giant, who measured eight feet
seven and a half inches. Nor must we overlook the vast framework
of Chunee, the elephant that went mad with toothache at Exeter
Change, and was shot by a company of riflemen in 1826. The sawn
base of the inflamed tusk shows a spicula of ivory pressing into the
nervous pulp. Toothache is always terrible, but only imagine a
square foot of it!
Very curious too, are the jaw of the extinct sabre-toothed tiger, and
the skeleton of a gigantic extinct Irish deer found under a bed of
shell-marl in a peat bog near Limerick. The antlers are seven feet
long, eight feet across, and weigh seventy-six pounds. The height of
the animal (measured from his skull) was seven feet six inches.
Amongst other horrors, there is a cast of the fleshy band that united
the Siamese twins, and one of a woman with a long curved horn
growing from her forehead. There are also many skulls of soldiers
perforated and torn with bullets, the lead still adhering to some of
the bony plates of the crania. But the wonder of wonders is the iron
pivot of a trysail-mast that was driven clean through the chest of a
Scarborough lad. The boy recovered in five months, and not long
after went to work again. It is a tough race that rules the sea.
There are also fragments of the skeleton of a rhinoceros discovered
in a limestone cavern at Oreston during the formation of the
Plymouth Breakwater. In a recess from the gallery stands the
embalmed body of the wife of Martin Van Butchell, an impudent
Dutch quack doctor. It is coarsely preserved, and is very loathsome
to look at. It was prepared in 1775 by Dr. W. Hunter and Mr.
Cruikshank, the vascular system being injected with oil of turpentine
and camphorated spirits of wine, and powdered nitre and camphor
being introduced into the cavities. On the case containing the body
is an advertisement cut from an old newspaper, stating the
conditions which Dr. Van Butchell required of those who came to see
the body of his wife. At the feet of Mrs. Van Butchell is the shrunken
mummy of her pet parrot.
The pictures include the portrait of John Hunter by Reynolds, which
Sharp engraved: it has much faded. There is also a posthumous bust
of Hunter by Flaxman, and one of Clive by Chantrey. Any Fellow of
the College can introduce a visitor, either personally or by written
order, the first four days of the week. In September the Museum is
closed. It would be much more convenient for students if some small
sum were charged for admission. It is now visited but by two or
three people a day, when it should be inspected by hundreds.
That great surgeon, John Hunter, was the son of a small farmer in
Lanarkshire. He was born in 1728, and died in 1793. In early life he
went abroad as an army-surgeon to study gunshot-wounds; and in
1786 he was appointed deputy surgeon-general to the army. In 1772
he made discoveries as to the property of the gastric juice. He was
the first to use cutting as a cure for hydrophobia, and to distinguish
the various species of cancer. He kept at his house at Brompton a
variety of wild animals for the purposes of comparative anatomy,
was often in danger from their violence, and as often saved by his
own intrepidity. Sir Joseph Banks divided his collection between
Hunter and the British Museum. Unequalled in the dissecting-room,
Hunter was a bad lecturer. He was an irritable man, and died
suddenly during a disputation at St. George’s Hospital which vexed
him. His death is said to have been hastened by fear of death from
hydrophobia, he having cut his hand while dissecting a man who had
died of that mysterious disease. Hunter used to call an operation
“opprobrium medici.”
In Portugal Row, as the southern side of the square used to be
called, lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the translator of the Lusiad of
Camoens, and of Guarini’s Pastor Fido. Sir Richard was our
ambassador in Spain; but Charles, wishing to get rid of Lord
Sandwich from the navy, recalled Fanshawe, on the plea that he had
ventured to sign a treaty without authority. He died in 1666, on the
intended day of his return, of a violent fever, probably caused by
vexation at his unmerited disgrace. Sir Richard appears to have been
a religious, faithful man and a good scholar, but born in unhappy
times and to an ill fate. Charles I. had very justly a great respect for
him. His wife was a brave, determined woman, full of affection, good
sense, and equally full of hatred and contempt for Lord Sandwich,
Pepys’s friend, who had supplanted her husband in the embassy.
On one occasion, on their way to Malaga, the Dutch trading vessel in
which she and her husband were was threatened by a Turkish galley
which bore down on them in full sail. The captain, who had rendered
his sixty guns useless by lumbering them up with cargo, resolved to
fight for his £30,000 worth of goods, and therefore armed his two
hundred men and plied them with brandy. The decks were partially
cleared, and the women ordered below for fear the Turks might
think the vessel a merchant-ship and board it. Sir Richard, taking his
gun, bandolier, and sword, stood with the ship’s company waiting for
the Turks.[733] But we must quote the brave wife’s own simple
words:—“The beast the captain had locked me up in the cabin. I
knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy
came and opened the door. I, all in tears, desired him to be so good
as to give me the blue thrum cap he wore and his tarred coat, which
he did, and I gave him half-a-crown; and putting them on, and
flinging away my night-clothes, I crept up softly and stood upon the
deck by my husband’s side, as free from fear as, I confess, from
discretion; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never
master. By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so
well satisfied with speech and sight of each other’s forces, that the
Turks’ man-of-war tacked about and we continued our course. But
when your father saw me retreat, looking upon me, he blessed
himself and snatched me up in his arms, saying, ‘Good God! that
love can make this change!’ and though he seemingly chid me, he
would laugh at it as often as he remembered that journey.” This
same vessel, a short time after, was blown up in the harbour with
the loss of more than a hundred men and all the lading.[734]
This brave, good woman showed still greater fortitude when her
husband died and left her almost penniless in a strange country. She
had only twenty-eight doubloons with which to bring home her
children, and sixty servants, and the dead body of her husband. She,
however, instantly sold her carriages and a thousand pounds’ worth
of plate, and setting apart the queen’s present of two thousand
doubloons for travelling expenses, started for England. “God,” she
says, in her brave, pious way, “did hear, and see, and help me, and
brought my soul out of trouble.”
In 1677 Lady Fanshawe took a house in Holborn Row, the north side
of the square, and spent a year lamenting “the dear remembrances
of her past happiness and fortune; and though she had great graces
and favours from the king and queen and whole court, yet she found
at the present no remedy.”[735]
Lord Kenyon lived at No. 35 in 1805. Jekyll was fond of joking about
Kenyon’s stinginess, and used to say he died of eating apple-pie
crust at breakfast to save the expense of muffins; and that Lord
Ellenborough, who succeeded on Kenyon’s death to the Chief
Justiceship, always used to bow to apple-pie ever afterwards which
Jekyll called his “apple-pie-ety.” The princesses Augusta and Sophia
once told Tom Moore, at Lady Donegall’s that the king used to play
tricks on Kenyon and send the despatch-box to him at a quarter past
seven, when it was known the learned lord was in bed to save
candlelight.[736] Lord Ellenborough used to say that the final word in
“Mors janua vitæ” was mis-spelled vita on Kenyon’s tomb to save the
extra cost of the diphthong.[737] George III. used to say to Kenyon,
“My Lord, let us have a little more of your good law, and less of your
bad Latin.”
Lord Campbell, who gives a very pleasant sketch of Chief Justice
Kenyon, with his bad temper and bad Latin, his hatred of newspaper
writers and gamblers, and his wrath against pettifoggers, describes
his being taken in by Horne Tooke, and laughs at his ignorantly-
mixed metaphors. He seems to have been a respectable second-rate
lawyer, conscientious and upright. “He occupied,” says Lord
Campbell, “a large gloomy house, in which I have seen merry doings
when it was afterwards transferred to the Verulam Club.” The
tradition of this house was that “it was always Lent in the kitchen
and Passion Week in the parlour.” On some one mentioning the spits
in Lord Kenyon’s kitchen, Jekyll said, “It is irrelevant to talk about
the spits, for nothing turns upon them.” The judge’s ignorance was
profound. It is reported that in a trial for blasphemy the Chief
Justice, after citing the names of several remarkable early Christians,
said, “Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian,
who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian virtue that
he was called Julian the Apostle?”[738] On another occasion, talking
of a false witness, he is supposed to have said, “The allegation is as
far from truth as ‘old Boterium from the northern main’—a line I
have heard or met with, God knows where.”[739]
Lord Erskine lived at No. 36, in 1805, the year before he rose at
once to the peerage and the woolsack, and presided at Lord
Melville’s trial. He did not hold the seals many months, and died in
1823. This great Whig orator was the youngest son of the Earl of
Buchan. He was a midshipman and an ensign before he became a
student at Lincoln’s Inn. He began to be known in 1778; in 1781 he
defended Lord George Gordon, in 1794 Horne Tooke, Hardy,
Thelwall, and afterwards Tom Paine.
The house that contains the Soane Museum, No. 13 on the north
side, was built in 1812, and, consisting of twenty-four small
apartments crammed with curiosities, is in itself a marvel of fantastic
ingenuity. Every inch of space is turned to account. On one side of
the picture-room are cabinets, and on the other movable shutters or
screens, on which pictures are also hung; so that a small area, only
thirteen feet long and twelve broad, contains as much as a gallery
forty-five feet long and twenty feet broad. A Roman altar once stood
in the outer court.
It is a disgrace to the trustees that this curious museum is kept so
private, and that such impediments are thrown in the way of visitors.
It is open only two days a week in April, May, and June, but at
certain seasons a third day is granted to foreigners, artists, and
people from the country. To obtain tickets, you are obliged to get,
some days before you visit, a letter from a trustee, or to write to the
curator, enter your name in a book, and leave your card. All this
vexatious hindrance and fuss has the desired effect of preventing
many persons from visiting a museum left, not to the trustees or the
curator, but to the nation—to every Englishman. In order to read the
books, copy the pictures, or examine the plans and drawings, the
same tedious and humiliating form must be gone through.
The gem of all the Soane treasures is an enormous transparent
alabaster sarcophagus, discovered by Belzoni in 1816 in a tomb in
the valley of Beban el Molook, near Thebes. It is nine feet four
inches long, three feet eight inches wide, two feet eight inches deep,
and is covered without and within with beautifully-cut hieroglyphics.
It was the greatest discovery of the runaway Paduan Monk, and was
undoubtedly the cenotaph or sarcophagus of a Pharaoh or Ptolemy.
It was discovered in an enormous tomb of endless chambers, which
the Arabs still call “Belzoni’s tomb.” On the bottom of the case is a
full-length figure in relief, of Isis, the guardian of the dead. Sir John
Soane gave £2000 for this sarcophagus to Mr. Salt, Consul General
of Egypt and Belzoni’s employer. The raised lid is broken into
nineteen pieces. The late Sir Gardner Wilkinson considered this to be
the cenotaph of Osirei, the father of Rameses the Great. But the
forgotten king for whom the Soane sarcophagus was really executed
was Seti, surnamed Meni-en-Ptah, the father of Rameses the Great;
he is called by Manetho Séthos.[740] Dr. Lepsius dates the
commencement of his reign b.c. 1439. Dr. Brugsch places it twenty
years earlier. Mr. Sharpe, with that delightful uncertainty
characteristic of Egyptian antiquaries, drags the epoch down two
hundred years later. Seti was the father of the Pharaoh who
persecuted the Israelites, and he made war against Syria. His son
was the famous Rameses. All three kings were descended from the
Shepherd Chiefs. The most beautiful fragment in Karnak represents
this monarch, Seti, in his chariot, with a sword like a fish-slice in one
hand, while in the other he clutches the topknots of a group of
conquered enemies, Nubian, Syrian, and Jewish. The work is full of
an almost Raphaelesque grace.
After this come some of Flaxman’s and Banks’s sketches and models,
a cast of the shield of Achilles by the former, and one of the Boothby
monument by the latter. There is also a fine collection of ancient
gems and intaglios, pure in taste and exquisitely cut, and a set of
the Napoleon medals, selected by Denon for the Empress Josephine,
and in the finest possible state. We may also mention Sir Christopher
Wren’s watch, some ivory chairs, and a table from Tippoo Saib’s
devastated palace at Seringapatam, and a richly-mounted pistol
taken by Peter the Great from a Turkish general at Azof in 1696. The
latter was given to Napoleon by the Russian emperor at the treaty of
Tilsit in 1807, and was presented by him to a French officer at St.
Helena. The books, too, are of great interest. Here is the original
MS. copy of the Gierusalemme Liberata, published at Ferrara in
1581, and in Tasso’s own handwriting; the first four folio editions of
Shakspere, once the property of that great actor and Shaksperean
student John Philip Kemble; a folio of designs for Elizabethan and
Jacobean houses by the celebrated architect John Thorpe;
Fauntleroy the forger’s illustrated copy of Pennant’s London,
purchased for six hundred and fifty guineas; a Commentary on Paul’s
Epistles, illuminated by the laborious Croatian, Giulio Clovio (who
died in 1578), for Cardinal Grimani. Vasari raves about the minute
finish of this painter.
The pictures, too, are good. There are three Canalettis full of that
Dutch Venetian’s clear common sense; the finest, a view on the
Grand Canal—his favourite subject—and “The Snake in the Grass,”
better known as “Love unloosing the Zone of Beauty,” by Reynolds.
There is a sadly faded replica of this in the Winter Palace at St.
Petersburg. This one was purchased at the Marchioness of
Thomond’s sale for £500. The “Rake’s Progress,” by Hogarth, in eight
pictures, was purchased by Sir John in 1802 for £598. These
inimitable pictures are incomparable, and display the fine, pure,
sober colour of the great artist, and his broad touch so like that of
Jan Steen.
The Soane collection also boasts of Hogarth’s four “Election”
pictures, purchased at Garrick’s sale for £1732 10s. They are rather
dark in tone. There is also a fine but curious Turner, “Van Tromp’s
Barge entering the Texel;” a portrait by Goma of Napoleon in 1797,
when emaciated and haggard, and a fine miniature of him in 1814,
when fat and already on the decline, both physically and mentally,
by Isabey the great miniature-painter, taken at Elba in 1814. In the
dining-room is a portrait of Soane by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in
the gallery under the dome a bust of him by Chantrey.
Sir John Soane was the son of a humble Reading bricklayer, and
brought up in Mr. Dance’s office. Carrying off a gold and silver medal
at the Academy, he was sent as travelling student to Rome. In 1791
he obtained a Government employment, in 1800 enlarged the Bank
of England, and in 1806 became Professor of Architecture at the
Royal Academy. He built the Dulwich Gallery, and in 1826 the
Masonic Hall in Great Queen Street. In 1827 he gave £1000 to the
Duke of York’s monument. At the close of his life he left his
collection of works of art, valued at £50,000, to the nation, and died
in 1837,[741] leaving his son penniless. In 1835 the English architects
presented Sir John with a splendid medal in token of their
approbation of his conduct and talents.
The Literary Fund Society, instituted in 1790, and incorporated in
1818, had formerly rooms at No. 4 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The society
was established in order to aid authors of merit and good character
who might be reduced to poverty by unavoidable circumstances, or
be deprived of the power of exertion by enfeebled faculties or old
age. George IV. and William IV. both contributed one hundred
guineas a year to its funds, and this subscription is continued by our
present Queen. The society distributed £1407 in 1846. The average
annual amount of subscriptions and donations is about £1100. The
Literary Fund Society moved afterwards to 73 Great Russell Street.
Some years ago a split occurred in this society. Charles Dickens and
Mr. C. W. Dilke, the proprietor of the Athenæum, objecting to the
wasteful expense of the management, seceded from it; the result of
this secession was the founding of the Guild of Literature, and the
collection of £4000 by means of private theatricals—a sum which,
unfortunately, still lies partly dormant. The Fund is now domiciled in
Bloomsbury.
Both Pepys and Evelyn praise the house of Mr. Povey in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields as a prodigy of elegant comfort and ingenuity. The
marqueterie floors, “the perspective picture in the little closet,” the
grotto cellars, with a well for the wine, the fountains and imitation
porphyry vases, his pictures and the bath at the top of the house,
seem to have been the abstract of all luxurious ease.
Names were first put on doors in London in 1760, some years before
the street-signs were removed. In 1764 houses were first numbered;
the numbering commenced in New Burlington Street, and Lincoln’s
Inn Fields was the second place numbered.
In Carey Street lived that excellent woman Mrs. Hester Chapone,
who afterwards removed to Arundel Street. She was a friend of Mrs.
Carter, who translated Epictetus, and of Mrs. Montagu, the Queen of
the Blue Stockings. She was one of the female admirers who
thronged round Richardson the novelist, and she married a young
Templar whom he had introduced to her. It was a love match, and
she had the misfortune of losing him in less than ten months after
their marriage. Her celebrated letters on The Improvement of the
Mind, published in 1773, were written for a favourite niece, who
married a Westminster Clergyman and died in childbed. Though Mrs.
Chapone’s letters are now rather dry and old-fashioned, reminding
us of the backboards of a too punctilious age, they contain some
sensible and well-expressed thoughts. Here is a sound passage:
—“Those ladies who pique themselves on the particular excellence of
neatness are very apt to forget that the decent order of the house
should be designed to promote the convenience and pleasure of
those who are to be in it; and that if it is converted into a cause of
trouble and constraint, their husbands’ guests would be happier
without it.”[742]
Gibbons’s Tennis Court stood in Vere Street, Clare Market; it was
turned into a theatre by Thomas Killigrew. Ogilby the poet, started a
lottery of books at “the old theatre” in June 1668. He describes the
books in his advertisements as “all of his own designment and
composure.”
“The Duke’s Theatre” stood in Portugal Street, at the back of
Portugal Row. It was pulled down in 1835 to make room for the
enlargement of the Museum of the College of Surgeons. Before that
it had been the china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.
[743] There had been, however, frailer things than china in the house
in Pepys’s time. Here, the year of the Restoration, came Killigrew
with the actors from the Red Bull, Clerkenwell, and took the name of
the King’s Company. Three years later they moved to Drury Lane.
Davenant’s company then came to Portugal Street in 1662, deserting
their theatre, once a granary, in Salisbury Court. They played here
till 1671, when they returned to their old theatre, then renovated
under the management of Charles Davenant and the celebrated
Betterton, the great tragedian. They afterwards united in Drury
Lane, and again fell apart. In 1695 a company, headed by Betterton,
with Congreve for a partner, re-opened the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields. It then became celebrated for pantomimes under Rich, the
excellent harlequin. On his removal to Covent Garden it was
deserted, re-opened by Gifford from Goodman’s Fields, and finally
ceased to be a theatre about 1737, so that its whole life did not
extend to more than one generation.
Actresses first appeared in London in Prynne’s time. Soon after the
Restoration a lady of Killigrew’s company took the part of
Desdemona. In January 1661 Pepys saw women on the stage at the
Cockpit Theatre: the play was Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggars’
Bush.” The prologue to “Othello” in 1660 contains the following line:
[744]—

“Our women are defective and so sized,

You’d think they were some of the guard disguised;
For, to speak truth, men act that are between
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen,
With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant,
That, when you call Desdemona, enter giant.”
The Puritans were now happily in the minority, and so the attempt
succeeded. Davenant did not bring forward his actresses till June
1661, when he produced his “Siege of Rhodes.” Kynaston, Hart,
Burt, and Clun, famous actors of Charles II.’s time, were all excellent
representatives of female characters.
It was at the Duke’s Theatre, in 1680, that Nell Gwynn who was
present, being reviled by one of the audience, and William Herbert,
who had married a sister of one of the king’s mistresses, taking up
Nell’s quarrel—a sword fight took place between the two factions in
the house. This hot-blooded young gallant Herbert grew up to be
Earl of Pembroke and first plenipotentiary at Ryswick.
The chief ladies at the Duke’s House were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs.
Davies, and Mrs. Saunderson. The first of these ladies, generally
known as “Roxalana,” from a character of that name in the “Siege of
Rhodes,” resisted for a long time the addresses of Aubrey de Vere,
the last Earl of Oxford, a wicked brawling roysterer, and a disgrace
to his name, who at last obtained her hand by the cruel deception of
a sham marriage. The pretended priest was a trumpeter, the witness
a kettle-drummer in the king’s regiment. The poor creature threw
herself in vain at the king’s feet and demanded justice, but gradually
grew more composed upon an annuity of a thousand crowns a year.
[745]

As for Mrs. Davies, who danced well and played ill, she won the
susceptible heart of Charles II. by her singing the song, “My lodging
is on the cold, cold ground.” “Through the marriage of the daughter
of Lord Derwentwater with the eighth Lord Petre,” says Dr. Doran,
“the blood of the Stuarts and of Moll Davies still runs in their lineal
descendant, the present and twelfth lord.”[746]
Mrs. Saunderson became the excellent wife of the great actor
Betterton. For about thirty years she played the chief female
characters, especially in Shakspere’s plays, with great success. She
taught Queen Anne and her sister Mary elocution, and after her
husband’s death received a pension of £500 a year from her royal
pupil.
In 1664 Pepys went to Portugal Street to see that clever but
impudent impostor, the German Princess, appear after her acquittal
at the Old Bailey for inveigling a young citizen into a marriage,
acting her own character in a comedy immortalising her exploit.
In February 1666-7 Pepys goes again to the Duke’s Playhouse, and
observes there Rochester the wit and Mrs. Stewart, afterwards
Duchess of Richmond, the same lady whose portrait we retain as
Britannia on the old halfpennies. “It was pleasant,” says the tuft-
hunting gossip, “to see how everybody rose up when my Lord John
Butler, the Duke of Ormond’s son, came into the pit, towards the end
of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. Mallett, and now smiled upon
her and she on him.”[747]
The same month, 1667-8, Pepys revisits the Duke’s House to see
Etherege’s new play, “She Would if She Could.” He was there by two
o’clock, and yet already a thousand people had been refused at the
pit. The fussy public-office man, not being able to find his wife, who
was there, got into an eighteenpenny box, and could hardly see or
hear. The play done, it being dark and rainy, Pepys stays in the pit
looking for his wife and waiting for the weather to clear up. And
there for an hour and a half sat also the Duke of Buckingham,
Sedley, and Etherege talking; all abusing the play as silly, dull, and
insipid, except the author, who complained of the actors for not
knowing their parts.
In May 1668 Pepys is again at this theatre in the balcony box, where
sit the shameless Lady Castlemaine and her ladies and women; on
another occasion he sits below the same group, and sees the proud
lady look like fire when Moll Davies ogles the king her lover. In
another place he observes how full the pit is, though the seats are
two shillings and sixpence a piece, whereas in his youth he had
never gone higher than twelvepence or eighteenpence.[748]
Kynaston, the greatest of the “boy-actresses,” was chiefly on this
stage from 1659 to 1699. Evadne was his favourite female part.
Later in life he took to heroic characters. Cibber says of him: “He
had something of a formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed
to the stately step he had been so early confined to. But even that in
characters of superiority had its proper graces; it misbecame him not
in the part of Leon in Fletcher’s ‘Rule a Wife,’ which he executed with
a determined manliness and honest authority. He had a piercing eye,
and in characters of heroic life a quick imperious vivacity in his tone
of voice that painted the tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays
of Dryden in which he shone with uncommon lustre; in ‘Arungzebe,’
he played Morat, and in ‘Don Sebastian’ Muley Moloch. In both these
parts he had a fierce lion-like majesty in his port and utterance that
gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration.”[749] Kynaston
died in 1712, and left a fortune to his son, a mercer in Covent
Garden, whose son became rector of Aldgate.
James Nokes was Kynaston’s contemporary in Portugal Street. Leigh
Hunt calls him something between Liston and Munden. Dryden
mentions him, in a political epistle to Southerne, as indispensable to
a play. Cibber says, “The ridiculous solemnity of his features was
enough to have set the whole bench of Bishops into a titter.” In his
ludicrous distresses he sank into such piteous pusilanimity that one
almost pitied him. “When he debated any matter by himself he
would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full
eye into a vacant amazement.”[750] He died in 1692, leaving a
fortune and an estate near Barnet.
But the great star of Portugal Street was Betterton, the Garrick of his
age. His most admired part was Hamlet; but Steele especially dilates
on his Othello. He acted his Hamlet from traditions handed down by
Davenant of Taylor, whom Shakspere himself is said to have
instructed. Cibber says that there was such enchantment in his voice
alone that no one cared for the sense of the words; and he adds, “I
never heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my
judgment, my ear, and my imagination, were not fully satisfied.” This
great man, who created no fewer than 130 characters, was a friend
of Dryden, Pope, and Tillotson. Kneller’s portrait of him is at Knowle;
[751] A copy of it by Pope is preserved in Lord Mansfield’s gallery at
Caen Wood. When he died, in 1710, Steele wrote a “Tatler” upon
him, in which he says “he laboured incessantly, and lived
irreproachably. He was the jewel of the English stage.” He killed
himself by driving back the gout in order to perform on his benefit
night, and his widow went mad from grief. Betterton acted as
Colonel Jolly in Colman’s “Cutter of Coleman Street,” as Jaffier in
Otway’s chef d’œuvre, as fine gentlemen in Congreve’s vicious but
gay comedies, as a hero in Rowe’s flatulent plays, and as Sir John
Brute in Vanbrugh’s great comedy.
Mrs. Barry was one of the best actresses in Portugal Street. She was
the daughter of an old Cavalier colonel, and was instructed for the
stage by Rochester, whose mistress she became. Dryden
pronounced her the best actress he had ever seen. Her face and
colour varied with each passion, whether heroic or tender. “Her mien
and motion,” says Cibber, “were superb and gracefully majestic, her
voice full, clear, and strong.” In scenes of anger, defiance, or
resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out
the sentiment with an enchanting harmony. She was so versatile
that she played Lady Brute as well as Zara or Belvidera. For her King
James II. originated the custom of actors’ benefits. After a career of
thirty-eight years on the boards, she died at Acton in 1713. Kneller’s
picture represents her with beautiful eyes, fine hair drawn back from
her forehead, “the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect,”[752] but
her mouth a little awry.[753]
Mrs. Mountfort also appeared in Portugal Street before the two
companies united at Drury Lane in 1682. She was the best of male
coxcombs, stage coquettes, and country dowdies, a vivacious mimic,
and of the most versatile humour. Cibber sketches her admirably as
Melantha in “Marriage à la Mode:”—“She is a fluttering, finished
impertinent, with a whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motions. When
the gallant recommended by her father brings his letter of
introduction, down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if
she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions;
then she launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still
playing her chest forward in fifty falls, and rising like a swan upon
waving water; and to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly
fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to praise it;
[754] and at last she swims from him with a promise to return in a
twinkling.”
The virtuous, good, and discreet Mrs. Bracegirdle was another
favourite in Portugal Street. For her Congreve, who affected to be
her lover, wrote his Araminta and Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria,
and his Millamant in “The way of the world.” All the town was in love
with her youth, cheerful gaiety, musical voice, the happy graces of
her manner, her dark eyes, brown hair, and expressive, rosy-brown
face. Her Statira justified Nat Lee’s frantic Alexander for all his rant;
and “when she acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and affectation
of that agreeable tyrant were venially melted down into so many
charms and attractions of a conscious beauty.” Mrs. Bracegirdle was
on the stage from 1680 to 1707. She lived long enough to warn
Cibber against envy of Garrick, and died in 1748.
Three of Congreve’s plays, “Love for Love,” “The Mourning Bride,”
and “The Way of the World,” came out in Portugal Street. Steele, in
the Tatler, No. 1, mentions “Love for Love” as being acted for
Betterton’s benefit—Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Doggett taking
parts. He describes the stage as covered with gentlemen and ladies,
“so that when the curtain was drawn it discovered even there a very
splendid audience.” “In Dryden’s time,” says Steele, “You used to see
songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every person you met
[at the theatre]; now you have only a pack of cards, and instead of
the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of style and
the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game.”
Poor Mountfort, the most handsome, graceful, and ardent of stage
lovers, the most admirable of courtly fops, and the best dancer and
singer of the day, strutted his little hour in Portugal Street till run
through the body by Lord Mohun’s infamous boon companion. His
career extended from 1682 to 1695. He was only thirty-three when
he died.
The last proprietor of the theatre was Rich, an actor who, failing in
tragedy, turned harlequin and manager, and became celebrated for
producing spectacles, ballets, and pantomimes. Under the name of
Lun he revelled as harlequin, and was admirable in a scene where he
was hatched from an egg.
Pope, always sore about theatrical matters, describes this manager’s
pompousness in the Dunciad (book iii.):—
“At ease
’Midst storm of paper fierce hail of pease,
 And proud his mistress’ order to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.”
Rich’s great success was the production of Gay’s Beggars’ Opera in
1727-8. This piece brought £2000 to the author, and for a time
drove the Italian Opera into the shade. It ran sixty-three nights the
first season, and then spread to all the great towns in Great Britain.
Ladies carried about the favourite songs engraved on their fan-
mounts, and they were also printed on fire-screens and other
furniture. Miss Lavinia Fenton, who acted Polly, became the idol of
the town; engravings of her were sold by thousands: her life was
written, and collections were made of her jests.[755] Eventually she
married the Duke of Bolton. Sir Robert Walpole laughed at the satire
against himself, and “Gay grew rich, and Rich gay,” as the popular
epigram went. Hogarth drew the chief scene with Walker as
Macheath, and Spiller as Mat o’ the Mint. Swift was vexed to find his
Gulliver for the time forgotten.
The custom of allowing young men of fashion to have chairs upon
the stage was an intolerable nuisance to the actors before Garrick.
In 1721 it led to a desperate riot at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre.
Half-a-dozen beaux, headed by a tipsy earl, were gathered round
the wings, when the earl reeled across the stage where Macbeth and
his lady were then acting, to speak to a boon companion at the
opposite side. Rich the manager, vexed at the interruption, forbade
the earl the house, upon which the earl struck Rich and Rich the
earl. Half-a-dozen swords at once sprang out and decreed that Rich
must die; but Quin and his brother actors rushed to the rescue with
bare blades, charged the coxcombs, and drove them through the
stage-door into the kennel. The beaux returning to the front, rushed
into the boxes, broke the sconces, slashed the hangings, and
threatened to burn the house; upon which doughty Quin and a party
of constables and watchmen flung themselves on the rioters and
haled them to prison. The actors, intimidated, refused to re-open the
house till the king granted them a guard of soldiers, a custom that
has not long been discontinued. It was not till 1780 that the habit of
admitting the vulgar, noisy, and turbulent footmen gratis was
abandoned.[756]
Macklin, afterwards the inimitable Shylock and Sir Pertinax, played
small parts at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre till 1731, when a short
speech as Brazencourt, in Fielding’s “Coffee-house Politicians,”
betrayed the true actor. He lived till over a hundred, so long that he
did not leave Covent Garden till after Braham’s appearance, and
Braham many of our elder readers have seen.[757]
Macklin, an Irishman, and in early life a Dragoon officer, was
irritable, restless, and pugnacious; he obtained his first triumph at
Drury Lane, as Shylock in 1741. In stern malignity, no one has
surpassed Macklin. His acting was hard, but manly and weighty,
though his features were rather rigid. He naturally condemned
Garrick’s action and gesture as superabundant. His Sir Pertinax was
excellent in its sly and deadly suppleness. He was also admirable in
Lovegold, Scrub, Peachem, Polonius, and many Irish characters.
Quin was at Portugal Street as early as 1718-19. There he first
“delighted the town by his chivalry as Hotspur, his bluntness as
Clytus, his fieriness as Bajazet, his grandeur as Macbeth, his calm
dignity as Brutus, his unctuousness as Falstaff, his duplicity as
Maskwell, and his coarse drollery as Sir John Brute.”[758] It was just
before this, that locked in a room and compelled to fight, he had
killed Bowen, who was jealous of his acting as Bajazet. When Rich
refused to give Quin more than £300 a year, he joined the Drury
Lane company, where he instantly got £500 per annum.
When Rich grew wealthy enough to hire a new theatre in Covent
Garden, he left Portugal Street. Almost the last play acted there was
“The Anatomist,” by Ravenscroft, a second-rate author of Dryden’s
time.
The mob attributed the flight of Rich from the old theatre to the
appearance of a devil during the performance of the pantomime of
“Harlequin and Dr. Faustus,” a play in which demons abound. The
supernumerary spirit ascending by the roof instead of leaving by the
door with his paid companions, was believed to have so frightened
manager Rich that, taking the warning against theatrical profanity to
heart, he never had the courage to open the theatre again.[759] The
legend is curious, as it proves that even in 1732 the old Puritan
horror of theatricals had not quite died out, and that at that period
the poorer part of the audience was still ignorant enough to attribute
mechanical tricks to supernatural interference.
Garrick, in one of his prologues, speaks of Rich, under the name of
Lun—
“When Lun appeared with matchless art and whim,
He gave the power of speech to every limb;
Though masked and mute, convey’d his quick intent,
And told in frolic gestures all he meant;
But now the motley coat and sword of wood
Require a tongue to make them understood.”
Every motion of Rich meant something. His “statue scene” and
“catching the butterfly” were moving pictures. His “harlequin
hatched from an egg by sun-heat” is highly spoken of; Jackson calls
it “a masterpiece of dumb show.” From the first chipping of the egg,
his receiving of motion, his feeling the ground, his standing upright,
to his quick harlequin trip round the broken egg, every limb had its
tongue. Walpole says, “His pantomimes were full of wit, and
coherent, and carried on a story.” Yet Rich was so ignorant that he
called a ‘turban’ a ‘turbot,’ and an ‘adjective’ an ‘adjutant.’
Spiller, who died of apoplexy in Portugal Street, in 1729-30 as he
was playing in the “Rape of Proserpine,” was inimitable in old men.
This was the year that Quin played Macheath for his benefit, and
Fielding brought out his inimitable “Tom Thumb” at the Haymarket,
to ridicule the bombast of Thomson and Young.
King’s College Hospital, which occupies a large portion of the
southern side of Carey Street, is connected with the medical school
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com