-room.
The Merchant Tailors' Hall, in Threadneedle Street, has a wonderful
banquet-room, with portraits of most of the Kings of England, since Henry
VIII., adorning its walls.

Stationers' Hall will perhaps be of the greatest interest to readers of
this book. All who have to do with letters have a certain regard for the
mysticism which circles around the words, "Entered at Stationers' Hall."

The Stationers' Company was incorporated in 1557; it exercised a virtual
monopoly of printing almanacs under a charter of James I. until 1775, when
the judges of the Court of Common Pleas decided that their professed
patent of monopoly was worthless, the Crown having no power to grant any
such exclusive right. Doubtless many another archaic statute is of a like
invalidity did but some protestful person choose to take issue therewith.
The number of freemen of the company is about 1,100; that of the livery
about 450. Printers were formerly obliged to be apprenticed to a member of
the company, and all publications for copyright must be entered at their
hall. The register of the works so entered for publication commenced from
1557, and is valuable for the light it throws on many points of literary
history. The Copyright Act imposes on the company the additional duty of
registering all assignments of copyrights. The charities of the company
are numerous. In Dickens' time Almanac Day (November 22d) was a busy day
at the hall, but the great interest in this species of astrological
superstition has waned, and, generally speaking, this day, like all
others, is of great quietude and repose in these noble halls, where
bewhiskered functionaries amble slowly through the routine in which blue
paper documents with bright orange coloured stamps form the only note of
liveliness in the entire _ensemble_.

The Goldsmiths' Company assays all the gold and silver plate manufactured
in the metropolis, and stamps it with the "hall-mark," which varies each
year, so it is thus possible to tell exactly the year in which any piece
of London plate was produced.

The out-of-door amusements of society were at this time, as now, made much
of. The turf, cricket, and riding to hounds being those functions which
took the Londoner far afield. Nearer at home were the charms of Richmond,
with its river, and the Star and Garter, and the Great Regatta at Henley,
distinctly an affair of the younger element.

Tea-gardens, once highly popular, had fallen into disrepute