In James Street, Covent-Garden, where Garrick lodged, there resided, from 1714 to 1720, a mysterious lady, who excited great interest and curiosity. Malcolm, in his _Anecdotes of London during the Eighteenth Century_, gives some account of her. She was middle-sized, dark-haired, beautiful and accomplished, and apparently between thirty and forty years old. She was wealthy, and possessed very valuable jewels. Her death was sudden, and occurred after a masquerade, where she said she had conversed with the King. It was remembered that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne; but after that Queen's death, she lived in obscurity. "She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct; adding, that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recommendation. It seems likely enough that she was connected in some way with the Stuart family, and with their pretensions to the throne." Dr Arne was born in King Street. His father, an honest upholsterer, at the sign of the "Two Crowns and Cushions," is said to have been the original of Murphy's farce of _The Upholsterer_. He did not countenance his son's musical propensities; and young Arne had to get up in the night, and practise by stealth on a muffled spinet. The first intimation received by the worthy mattress-maker of his son's proficiency in music, was one evening at a concert, where he quite unexpectedly saw him officiating as leader of the orchestra. Voltaire, when in England, after his release from the Bastille, whither he had been sent for libel, lodged in Maiden Lane, at the White Peruke, a wigmaker's shop. When walking out, he was often annoyed by the mob, who beheld, in his spare person, polite manners, and satirical countenance, the personification of their notion of a Frenchman. "One day he was beset by so great a crowd that he was forced to shelter himself against a doorway, where, mounting the steps, he made a flaming speech in English in praise of the magnanimity of the English nation, and their love of freedom. With this the people were so delighted, that their jeers were turned into applauses, and he was carried in triumph to Maiden Lane on the shoulders of the mob." From which temporary elevation the arch-scoffer doubtless looked down upon his dupes with glee, suppressed, but immeasurable.