sical Clock," Christopher Pinchbeck, an ingenious
musical-clockmaker, who invented the "cheap and useful imitation of
gold," which still bears his name. (Watt's, in his "Dictionary of
Chemistry," says "pinchbeck" is an alloy of copper and zinc, usually
containing about nine parts copper to one part zinc. Brandt says it is
an alloy containing more copper than exists in brass, and consequently
made by fusing various proportions of copper with brass.) Pinchbeck
often exhibited his musical automata in a booth at Bartholomew Fair,
and, in conjunction with Fawkes the Conjuror, at Southwark Fair. He
made, according to Mr. Wood, an exquisite musical clock, worth about
L500, for Louis XIV., and a fine organ for the Great Mogul, valued at
L300. He died in 1732. He removed to Fleet Street (between Bolt and
Johnson's courts, north side) from Clerkenwell in 1721. His clocks
played tunes and imitated the notes of birds. In 1765 he set up, at the
Queen's House, a clock with four faces, showing the age of the moon, the
day of the week and month, the time of sun rising, &c.

No. 161 (north) was the shop of Thomas Hardy, that agitating bootmaker,
secretary to the London Corresponding Society, who was implicated in the
John Horne Tooke trials of 1794; and next door, years after (No. 162),
Richard Carlisle, a "freethinker," opened a lecturing, conversation, and
discussion establishment, preached the "only true gospel," hung effigies
of bishops outside his shop, and was eventually quieted by nine years'
imprisonment, a punishment by no means undeserved. No. 76 (south) was
once the entrance to the printing-office of Samuel Richardson, the
author of "Clarissa," who afterwards lived in Salisbury Square, and
there held levees of his admirers, to whom he read his works with an
innocent vanity which occasionally met with disagreeable rebuffs.

"Anderton's Hotel" (No. 164, north side) occupies the site of a house
given, as Mr. Noble says, in 1405, to the Goldsmiths' Company, under the
singular title of "The Horn in the Hoop," probably at that time a
tavern. In the register of St. Dunstan's is an entry (1597), "Ralph
slaine at the Horne, buryed," but no further record exists of this
hot-headed roysterer. In the reign of King James I. the "Horn" is
described as "between the 'Red Lion,' over against Serjeants' Inn, and
Three-legged Alley."

[Illustration: AN EVENING WITH DR. JOHNSON AT THE "MITRE" (_see page
51_).]

[Illustration: OLD HOUSES (STI