s, said one to
the other, the gentleman means the Club that assembles at the
public-house on the Common. Knowing, however, that I was at the right
place, I could not avoid expressing my vexation, that the periodical
assemblage of the first men of their age, should be so entirely
forgotten by those who now reside on the spot--when one of them
exclaimed, "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the
philosopher's room."--"Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember
somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my
master sent him there." I requested then to be shewn to this room;
when I was conducted across a detached garden, and brought to a
handsome structure in the architectural style of the early part of the
last century--evidently the establishment of the Kit-Cat Club!

A walk covered with docks, thistles, nettles, and high grass, led from
the remains of a gate-way in the garden-wall, to the door which opened
into the building. Ah! thought I, along this desolate avenue the
finest geniuses in England gaily proceeded to meet their friends;--yet
within a century, how changed--how deserted--how revolting! A cold
chill seized me, as the man unfastened the decayed door of the
building, and as I beheld the once-elegant hall, filled with cobwebs,
a fallen ceiling, and accumulating rubbish. On the right, the present
proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours
into a wash-house! The door on the left led to a spacious and once
superb staircase, now in ruins, filled with dense cobwebs, which hung
from the lofty ceiling, and seemed to be deserted even by the spiders!
The entire building, for want of ventilation, having become food for
the fungus, called dry-rot, the timber had lost its cohesive powers. I
ascended the staircase, therefore, with a feeling of danger, to which
the man would not expose himself;--but I was well requited for my
pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in the
days of its glory. It is eighteen feet high, and forty feet long, by
twenty wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb
fashion of its age; but the whole was falling to pieces, from the
effects of the dry-rot.

My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hanging of the
room, whose red colour once set off the famous portraits of the Club,
that hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the
numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the gui