house and museum DON SALTERO'S.

SQUIRE'S was in Fulwood's Rents, Holburn, running up to Gray's Inn. It
was one of the receiving houses of the _Spectator_. In No. 269 the
_Spectator_ accepts Sir Roger de Coverley's invitation to "smoke a pipe
with him over a dish of coffee at Squire's. As I love the old man, I
take delight in complying with everything that is agreeable to him, and
accordingly waited on him to the coffee-house, where his venerable
figure drew upon us the eyes of the whole room. He had no sooner seated
himself at the upper end of the high table, but he called for a clean
pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle and the
'Supplement' (a periodical paper of that time), with such an air of
cheerfulness and good humour, that all the boys in the coffee room (who
seemed to take pleasure in serving him) were at once employed on his
several errands, insomuch that nobody else could come at a dish of tea
until the Knight had got all his conveniences about him." Such was the
coffee room in the _Spectator's_ day.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE

From the frontispiece to "The Coffee House--a dramatick Piece" (see
chapter XXXII)]

THE COCOA-TREE was originally a coffee house on the south side of Pall
Mall. When there grew up a need for "places of resort of a more elegant
and refined character," chocolate houses came into vogue, and the
COCOA-TREE was the most famous of these. It was converted into a club in
1746.

[Illustration: THE GRECIAN COFFEE HOUSE, DEVEREUX COURT

It was closed in 1843. From a drawing dated 1809]

WHITE'S chocolate house, established by Francis White about 1693 in St.
James's Street, originally open to any one as a coffee house, soon
became a private club, composed of "the most fashionable exquisites of
the town and court." In its coffee-house days, the entrance was
sixpence, as compared with the average penny fee of the other coffee
houses. Escott refers to WHITE'S as being "the one specimen of the class
to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost the same roof,
and always bearing the same name, whether as coffee house or club, the
same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred
years."

Among hundreds of other coffee houses that flourished during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the following more notable ones are
deserving of mention:

[Illustration: DON SALTERO'S COFFEE HOUSE, CHEYNE WALK

From a steel engravi