to stigmatize it as in his 569th _Spectator_. The idea that domestic unhappiness led him to contract this dreadful habit, is then repudiated; and the opposite conclusion supported by the bequest of his whole property to his lady. "Is it conceivable," asks Miss Aikin, "that any man would thus 'give and hazard all he had,' even to his precious only child, in compliment to a woman who should have rendered his last years miserable by her pride and petulance, and have driven him out from his home, to pass his comfortless evenings in the gross indulgence of a tavern." Our amiable biographer, therefore, equally discredits the stories of Addison's unhappy marriage, and of his intemperate habits. The White Horse was taken down many years since. The tradition of its being the tavern frequented by Addison, was common in Kensington when Faulkner printed his _History_, in 1820. There was a celebrated visitor at Holland House who, many years later, partook of "the gross indulgence." Sheridan was often at Holland House in his latter days; and Lady Holland told Moore that he used to take a bottle of wine and a book up to bed with him always; the _former_ alone intended for use. In the morning, he breakfasted in bed, and had a little brandy or rum in his tea or coffee; made his appearance between one or two, and pretending important business, used to set out for town, but regularly stopped at the Adam and Eve public-house for a dram, and there ran up a long bill, which Lord Holland had to pay. This was the old roadside inn, long since taken down. When the building for the Great Exhibition of 1851 was in course of construction, Alexis Soyer, the celebrated cook from the Reform Club, hired for a term, Gore House, and converted Lady Blessington's well-appointed mansion and grounds into a sort of large _restaurant_, which our poetical cook named "the Symposium." The house was ill planned for the purpose, and underwent much grotesque decoration and _bizarre_ embellishment, to meet Soyer's somewhat unorthodox taste; for his chief aim was to show the public "something they had never seen before." The designation of the place--Symposium--led to a dangerous joke: "Ah! I understand," said a wag, "impose-on-'em." Soyer was horrified, and implored the joker not to name his witticism upon 'Change in the City, but he disregarded the _restaurateur's_ request, and the pun was often repeated between Cornhill and Kensington. In the reconstruction and renovation of the place, Soyer was assisted by his friend Mr. George Augustus Sala, who, some years after, when he edited _Temple Bar_, described in his very clever manner, what he saw and thought, whilst for "many moons he slept, and ate, and drank, and walked, and talked, in Gore House, surrounded by the very strangest of company":--