spacious, and once superb, staircase--now in ruins. The entire building, for want of ventilation, having become food for the fungus, called dry-rot, the timbers had lost its cohesive powers. I ascended the staircase, therefore, with a degree of danger to which my conductor would not expose himself, but was well requited for my pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in the days of its glory. It is 18 feet high, and 40 feet long, by 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of its age, but the whole was falling to pieces from the effects of the dry-rot. My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hangings of the room, whose red colour once set off the famous portraits of the club that hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and their numbers and names remained, as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger. Thus was I, as it were, brought into contact with Addison and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with many hereditary nobles, remembered only because they were patrons of those natural nobles. I read their names aloud--I invoked their departed spirits--I was appalled by the echo of my own voice. The holes in the floor, the forest of cobwebs in the windows, and a swallow's nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past age; that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious career of man. On rejoining Mr. Hoare's servant in the hall below, he informed me that his master intended to pull the building down, and form of it a riding-house. I learn that this design has since been executed. The Kit-Cat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth century, and about the year 1710 were brought to this spot, but the room I have been describing was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards. They were 42 in number, and are now in the possession of a Mr. Baker, of Hertingford-bury, where I lately saw them splendidly lodged, and in fine preservation. It may be proper to observe, that the house of Mr. Hoare was not the house of Mr. Tonson, and that Mr. Tonson's house stood nearer to the Kit-Cat club-rooms, having a few years since been taken down." A person died in this place, leaving in his will an annual sum, to be laid out in roses to be planted on his grave. The spot is distinguished by a stone tablet on the outside of the wall of the church, enclosed by pales, with some rose-trees planted on each side of it. This tablet is dedicated to the memory of Edward Rose, citizen of London, who died in 1653, and left L20. to the poor of Barnes, for the purchase of an acre of land, on condition that the pales should be kept up, and the rose-trees preserved. [Sidenote: Kit Cat Club house.] [Sidenote: As described by Sir Richard Phillips in 1817.]