reet Printers--Hoare's Bank and the "Golden
Bottle"--The Real and Spurious "Mitre"--Hone's Trial--Cobbett's
Shop--"Peele's Coffee House."

There is a delightful passage in an almost unknown essay by Dr. Johnson
that connects him indissolubly with the neighbourhood of Temple Bar. The
essay, written in 1756 for the _Universal Visitor_, is entitled "A
Project for the Employment of Authors," and is full of humour, which,
indeed, those who knew him best considered the chief feature of
Johnson's genius. We rather pride ourselves on the discovery of this
pleasant bit of autobiography:--"It is my practice," says Johnson, "when
I am in want of amusement, to place myself for an hour at Temple Bar, or
any other narrow pass much frequented, and examine one by one the looks
of the passengers, and I have commonly found that between the hours of
eleven and four every sixth man is an author. They are seldom to be seen
very early in the morning or late in the evening, but about dinner-time
they are all in motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their faces,
which gives little opportunity of discerning their hopes or fears,
their pleasures or their pains. But in the afternoon, when they have all
dined, or composed themselves to pass the day without a dinner, their
passions have full play, and I can perceive one man wondering at the
stupidity of the public, by which his new book has been totally
neglected; another cursing the French, who fright away literary
curiosity by their threat of an invasion; another swearing at his
bookseller, who will advance no money without copy; another perusing as
he walks his publisher's bill; another murmuring at an unanswerable
criticism; another determining to write no more to a generation of
barbarians; and another wishing to try once again whether he cannot
awaken the drowsy world to a sense of his merit." This extract seems to
us to form an admirable companion picture to that in which we have
already shown Goldsmith bantering his brother Jacobite, Johnson, as they
looked up together at the grim heads on Temple Bar.

[Illustration: DR. TITUS OATES.]

That quiet grave house (No. 1), that seems to demurely huddle close to
Temple Bar, as if for protection, is the oldest banking-house in London
except one. For two centuries gold has been shovelled about in those
dark rooms, and reams of bank-notes have been shuffled over by practised
thumbs. Private banks originated in the stormy days before t