el, whose "Letters" give us many curious pictures of his time,
saw a huge monument to four of the Oxenham family, at the death of each
of whom a white bird appeared fluttering about their bed. These
miraculous occurrences had taken place at a town near Exeter, and the
witnesses names duly appeared below the epitaph. No. 197 was afterwards
Rackstrow's museum of natural curiosities and anatomical figures; and
the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign.
Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet
long. Donovan, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with
his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the
office of the _Albion_ newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this
journal from the _Morning Post_. The editor, John Fenwick, the "Bigot"
of Lamb's "Essay," was a needy, sanguine man, who had purchased the
paper of a person named Lovell, who had stood in the pillory for a libel
against the Prince of Wales. For a long time Fenwick contrived to pay
the Stamp Office dues by money borrowed from compliant friends. "We,"
says Lamb, in his delightful way, "attached our small talents to the
forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write
treason." Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and
Whitehall tribunals were covered with flowers of so cunning a
periphrasis--as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the _thing_ directly--that
the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the
lurking snake among them.

At the south-west corner of Chancery Lane (No. 193) once stood an old
house said to have been the residence of that unfortunate reformer, Sir
John Oldcastle, Baron Cobham, who was burnt in St. Giles's Fields in
1417 (Henry V.). In Charles II.'s reign the celebrated Whig Green Ribbon
Club used to meet here, and from the balcony flourish their periwigs,
discharge squibs, and wave torches, when a great Protestant procession
passed by, to burn the effigy of the Pope at the Temple Gate. The house,
five stories high and covered with carvings, was pulled down for City
improvements in 1799.

Upon the site of No. 192 (east corner of Chancery Lane) the father of
Cowley, that fantastic poet of Charles II.'s time, it is said carried on
the trade of a grocer. In 1740 a later grocer there sold the finest
caper tea for 24s. per lb., his fine green for 18s. per lb., hyson at
16s. per lb., and bohea at 7s. per lb.

No ho