e places who laid down his penny at
the bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of
religious and political opinion had its own headquarters.

There were houses near St. James' Park, where fops congregated,
their heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not
less ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by
the Speaker of the House of Commons. The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any form than that of richly
scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of
the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole
assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him
that he had better go somewhere else.

Nor, indeed, would he have far to go. For, in general, the
coffee-houses reeked with tobacco like a guard room. Nowhere was
the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house,
situated between Covent Garden and Bow street, was sacred to polite
letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities
of place and time. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures
to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from universities,
translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great
press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate. In winter
that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it
stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his
opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic
poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an
honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast.

There were coffee-houses where the first medical men might be
consulted. Dr. John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the
largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the
Exchange was full, from his house in Bow street, then a fashionable
part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded
by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular table.

There were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath was heard, and where
lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their
noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from
Venice and Amster