Dr. Johnson lived many years either in Fleet Street, in Gough Square, in the Temple, in Johnson’s Court, in Bolt Court, &c., &c.; and in Bolt Court he died. William Cobbett, and Ferguson the astronomer, were also among the dwellers in that court. John Murray (the elder) began the publishing business in Falcon Court. Some of the early meetings of the Royal Society and of the Society of Arts took place in Crane Court. Dryden and Richardson both lived in Salisbury Court. Shire Lane (now Lower Serle’s Place), close to Temple Bar on the north, can count the names of Steele and Ashmole among its former inhabitants. Izaak Walton lived a little way up Chancery Lane. At the confectioner’s shop, nearly opposite that lane, Pope and Warburton first met. Sir Symonds D’Ewes, ‘Praise-God Barebones,’ Michael Drayton, and Cowley the poet, all lived in this street. Many of the courts, about a dozen in number, branching out of Fleet Street on the north and south, are so narrow that a stranger would miss them unless on the alert. Child’s Banking House, the oldest in London, is at the western extremity of Fleet Street, on the south side, and also occupies the room over the arch of Temple Bar. St. Bride’s Church exhibits one of Wren’s best steeples. St. Dunstan’s Church, before it was modernized, had two wooden giants in front, that struck the hours with clubs on two bells—a duty which they still fulfil in the gardens belonging to the mansion of the Marquis of Hertford in the Regent’s Park. North of Fleet Street are several of the _Inns of Court_, where lawyers congregate; and southward is the most famous of all such Inns, the large group of buildings constituting the _Temple_. In the cluster of buildings lying east from the Temple once existed the sanctuary of Whitefriars, or _Alsatia_, as it was sometimes called, a description of which is given by Scott in the _Fortunes of Nigel_. The streets here are still narrow and of an inferior order, but all appearance of Alsatians and their pranks is gone. The boundary of the city, at the western termination of Fleet Street, is marked by Temple Bar, consisting of a wide central archway, and a smaller archway at each side for foot-passengers. There are doors in the main avenue which can be shut at pleasure; but, practically, they are never closed, except on the occasion of some state ceremonial, when the lord mayor affects an act of grace in opening them to royalty. The structure was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and erected in 1672. The heads of decapitated criminals, after being boiled in pitch to preserve them, were exposed on iron spikes on the top of the Bar. Horace Walpole, in his _Letters_ to Montague, mentions the fact of a man in Fleet Street letting out “spy-glasses,” at a penny a peep, to passers-by, when the heads of some of the hapless Jacobites were so exposed. The last heads exhibited there were those of two Jacobite gentlemen who took part in the rebellion of