Really, nothing marks the change of manners more than the fact that fifty years ago men used to meet together every evening and sing songs over their pipes and grog. Not young men only, but middle-aged men, and old men, would all together join in the chorus, and that joyfully, banging the tables with their fists, and laughing from ear to ear--the roysterers are always represented as laughing with an absence of restraint impossible for us quite to understand. The choruses, too, were of the good old ‘Whack-fol-de-rol-de-rido’ character, which gives scope to so much play of sentiment and lightness of touch. [Illustration: OLD ENTRANCE TO THE COCK, FLEET STREET] Beer, of course, was the principal beverage, and there were many more varieties of beer than at present prevail. One reads of ‘Brook clear Kennett’--it used to be sold in a house near the Oxford Street end of Tottenham Court Road; of Shropshire ale, described as ‘dark and heavy;’ of the ‘luscious Burton, innocent of hops;’ of new ale, old ale, bitter ale, hard ale, soft ale, the ‘balmy’ Scotch, mellow October, and good brown stout. All these were to be obtained at taverns which made a _spécialité_ as they would say now, of any one kind. Thus the best stout in London was to be had at the Brace Tavern in the Queen’s Bench Prison, and the Cock was also famous for the same beverage, served in pint glasses. A rival of the Cock, in this respect, was the Rainbow, long before the present handsome room was built. The landlord of the Rainbow was one William Colls, formerly head-waiter at the Cock, predecessor, I take it, of Tennyson’s immortal friend. But he left the Cock to better himself, and as at the same time Mary--the incomparable, the matchless Mary, most beautiful of barmaids--left it as well, gloom fell upon the frequenters of the tavern. Mary left the Cock about the year 1820, too early for the future Poet Laureate to have been one of the worshippers of her Grecian face. Under Colls’s management the Rainbow rivalled the Cock in popularity. The Cider Cellar, kept by Evans of Covent Garden, had gone through a period of decline, but was again popular and well frequented. Mention may also be made of Clitter’s, of Offley’s, famous for its lamb in spring; of the Kean’s Head, whose landlord was a great comic singer; of the Harp, haunt of aspiring actors; of the Albion, the Finish, or the Royal Saloon, Piccadilly, where one looked in for a ‘few goes of max’--what was max?--in the very worst company that London could supply.