stration: "Bits" of Old Canterbury.]

There was many a "low old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the
street," which would have served for the "umble" dwelling of Uriah Heep
and his mother, but none can be pointed out with absolute certainty as
being the veritable one.

By the kindness of Dr. Sheppard and Mr. T. B. Rosseter, F.R.M.S., we
are, however, enabled to identify two houses in Canterbury alluded to
in _David Copperfield_. The "County Inn," where Mr. Dick slept on his
visits to David "every alternate Wednesday," was no doubt The Royal
Fountain Hotel in St. Margaret's Street (formerly the Watling Street),
which is still recognized as such. A passage in the seventeenth chapter
thus refers to these visits:--

"Mr. Dick was very partial to ginger-bread. To
render his visits the more agreeable, my aunt had
instructed me to open a credit for him at a
cake-shop, which was hampered with the stipulation
that he should not be served with more than one
shilling's-worth in the course of any one day.
This, and the reference of all his little bills at
the County Inn, where he slept, to my aunt before
they were paid, induced me to think that Mr. Dick
was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to
spend it."

The "little Inn" (as recorded in the same chapter) where Mr. Micawber
"put up" on his first visit to Canterbury, and where he "occupied a
little room in it partitioned off from the commercial, and strongly
flavoured with tobacco smoke," is doubtless the "Sun Inn" in Sun Street,
which is at the opposite corner of the square where the ancient
"Chequers" in Mercery Lane--the Pilgrim's Inn of Chaucer--stood. It was
a place of resort from afar, and was altered in the seventeenth century.
Dr. Sheppard calls attention to the interesting fact that the omnibus
from Herne Bay stopped at the Sun; and probably, in his visits to
Broadstairs, Dickens would often run over for a day's trip to
Canterbury.

On their first visit to the "little Inn," Mr. and Mrs.
Micawber--notwithstanding their chronic impecuniosity--thus entertained
David Copperfield:--

"We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an
elegant dish of fish; the kidney end of a loin of
veal roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge and
a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong
ale; and after dinner M