This was written the year of the first Act (2d George III.), and was probably a groan from some one interested in the existence of the abuse. The inferior artists gained much money from this source. Mr. Wale, one of the first Academicians, painted a Shakspere five feet high[438] for a public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Covent Garden. The picture was enclosed in a sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was suspended by rich foliated ironwork. A London street a hundred years ago must have been one long grotesque picture-gallery. When the meat is all good it is difficult to know where to insert the knife. In travelling, how hard it is to turn back almost in sight of some Promised Land of which one has often dreamed! Like that traveller I feel, when I find it necessary in this chapter to confine myself strictly to the legends, traditions, and history of Charing Cross proper, leaving for other opportunities Spring Gardens, the story of the greater part of which belongs more to St. James’s Park, Whitehall, and Scotland Yard. [Illustration: THE KING’S MEWS, 1750.] [Illustration: BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE, 1826.] CHAPTER X. ST. MARTIN’S LANE. Saint Martin’s Lane, extending from Long Acre to Charing Cross, was built before 1613, and then called the West Church Lane. The first church was built here by Henry VIII. The district was first called St. Martin’s Lane about 1617-18.[439] Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., lived on the west side of this lane. Mayerne was the godson of Beza, the great Calvinist reformer, and one of Henry IV.’s physicians. He came to England after that king’s death. He then became James I.’s doctor, and was blamed for his treatment of Prince Henry, whom many thought to have been poisoned. He was afterwards physician to Charles I., and nominally to Charles II.; but he died in 1655, five years before the Restoration. He gave his library to the College of Physicians, and is said to have disclosed some of his chemical secrets to the great enameller, Petitot.[440] Mayerne died of drinking bad wine at a Strand tavern, and foretold the time of his death. A good story is told of Sir Theodore, which is the more curious because it records the fashionable fee of those days. A friend consulting Mayerne, and expecting to have the fee refused, ostentatiously placed on the table two gold broad pieces (value six-and-thirty shillings each). Looking rather mortified when Mayerne swept them into his pouch, “Sir.” said Sir Theodore, gravely, “I made my will this morning, and if it should become known that I refused a fee the same afternoon I might be deemed _non compos_.”[441]