Upon the modern building of the Bull and Mouth has been conferred the more elegant name of the Queen's Hotel. Now the former is a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, and the sign was put up to commemorate the destruction of the French flotilla at the mouth of Boulogne harbour in the reign of Henry VIII. This absurd corruption has been perpetuated by a carving in stone of a bull and a human face with an enormous mouth. The Bull and Gate, palpably, has the like origin; as at the _Gate_ of Boulogne the treaty of capitulation to the English was signed. The Spread Eagle, which constitutes the arms of Austria and Russia, originated with Charlemagne, and was in England introduced out of compliment to some German potentate. The oddest sign we know is now called The Mischief, in Oxford-street, and our remembrance of this dates over half a century, when the street was called Oxford-road, then unpaved, is truly Hogarthian. It was at that time called the Man loaded with Mischief, _i.e._ a wife, two squalling brats, a monkey, a cat, a jackdaw, etc. The perpetrator of this libel on the other sex, we suppose, was some poor henpecked individual.[59] On the subject of sign combinations, a writer in _Notes and Queries_ says:--"This subject has been taken up by a literary contemporary, and some ingenious but farfetched attempts at explanation have been made, deduced from languages the publican is not likely to have heard of. The following seem at least to be undoubtedly English: The Sun and Whalebone, Cock and Bell, Ram and Teazle, Cow and Snuffers, Crow and Horseshoe, Hoop and Pie,--_cum multis aliis_. I have some remembrance of a very simple solution of the cause of the incongruity, which was this: The lease being out of (say) the sign of The Ram, or the tenant had left for some cause, and gone to the sign of The Teazle; wishing to be known, and followed by as many of his old connexion as possible, and also to secure the new, he took his old sign with him, and set it up beside the other, and the house soon became known as The Ram and Teazle. After some time the signs required repainting or renewing, and as one board was more convenient than two, the 'emblems,' as poor Dick Tinto calls them, were depicted together, and hence rose the puzzle."