of shops,
authors, wits, poets, and memorable persons of all kinds, still
inhabited the "closes" and alleys that branch from the main
thoroughfare. Nobles and lawyers long dwelt round St. Dunstan's and St.
Bride's. Scholars, poets, and literati of all kind, long sought refuge
from the grind and busy roar of commerce in the quiet inns and "closes,"
north and south. In what was Shire Lane we come upon the great Kit-Kat
Club, where Addison, Garth, Steele, and Congreve disported; and we look
in on that very evening when the Duke of Kingston, with fatherly pride,
brought his little daughter, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and,
setting her on the table, proposed her as a toast. Following the lane
down till it becomes a nest of coiners, thieves, and bullies, we pass on
to Bell Yard, to call on Pope's lawyer friend, Fortescue; and in
Chancery Lane we are deep among the lawyers again. Ghosts of Jarndyces
_v._ Jarndyces, from the Middle Ages downwards, haunt this thoroughfare,
where Wolsey once lived in his pride and state. Izaak Walton dwelt in
this lane once upon a time; and that mischievous adviser of Charles I.,
Earl Strafford, was born here. Hazlitt resided in Southampton Buildings
when he fell in love with the tailor's daughter and wrote that most
stultifying confession of his vanity and weakness, "The New Pygmalion."
Fetter Lane brings us fresh stores of subjects, all essentially
connected with the place, deriving an interest from and imparting a new
interest to it. Praise-God-Barebones, Dryden, Otway, Baxter, and Mrs.
Brownrigg form truly a strange bouquet. By mutual contrast the
incongruous group serves, however, to illustrate various epochs of
London life, and the background serves to explain the actions and the
social position of each and all these motley beings.

In Crane Court, the early home of the Royal Society, Newton is the
central personage, and we tarry to sketch the progress of science and to
smile at the crudity of its early experiments and theories. In Bolt
Court we pause to see a great man die. Here especially Dr. Johnson's
figure ever stands like a statue, and we shall find his black servant at
the door and his dependents wrangling in the front parlour. Burke and
Boswell are on their way to call, and Reynolds is taking coach in the
adjoining street. Nor is even Shoe Lane without its associations, for at
the north-east end the corpse of poor, dishonoured Chatterton lies still
under some neglected ru