convulsed the house.[83] Mr. W. H. Ireland in later life was editor of the _York Herald_, and died in 1835.[84] Another eminent historical antiquary, Dr. Birch, lived in Norfolk Street. The son of a Quaker tradesman at Clerkenwell, he became a London clergyman and an historian, famous for his Sunday evenings’ conversaziones, and was killed by a fall from his horse in 1766. He seems to have been a most pleasant, generous, and honest man. He edited Bacon’s _Letters and Speeches_, and Thurloe’s _State Papers_, etc. His chief work was his _Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_. He left books, manuscripts, and money to the British Museum, for which let all scholars bless the good man’s memory. He appears to have been a student of boundless industry, as from the Lambeth Library alone he transcribed with his own hand sixteen quarto volumes. He was rector of St. Margaret Pattens in Fenchurch Street. Dr. Birch must have been a kind husband, for his wife on her deathbed wrote him the following tender letter:-- “This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere, hearty thanks for every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife, HANNAH BIRCH.” We leave it to the watchful cynic to remark that the doctor had been married only one year. It was of this worthy book-worm that Johnson said--“Yes, sir, he is brisk in conversation, but when he takes up the pen it benumbs him like a torpedo.” Strype describes Surrey Street as replenished with good buildings, especially that of Nevison Fox, Esq., towards the Strand, “which is a fine, large, and curious house of his own building,” and the two houses that front the Thames, that on the east side being the Hon. Charles Howard’s, brother to the Duke of Norfolk. Both of these houses had pleasant though small gardens towards the Thames.[85] In 1736 died here George Sale, the useful translator of the Mohammedan Bible, the Koran, that strange compound of pure prayers and impure plagiarisms from the laws of Moses. Sale had published his Koran in 1734, and in the year of his death he joined Paul Whitehead, Dr. Birch, and Mr. Strutt, in founding a “Society for the Encouragement of Learning.” He spent many years in writing for the _Universal History_, in which Bayle’s ten folio volumes were included. Edward Pierce, a sculptor, son of a painter of altar-pieces and church-ceilings, and a pupil of Vandyke, lived at the corner of Surrey Street, and was buried in the Savoy. He helped Sir Christopher Wren to build St. Clement’s church, and carved the four guardian dragons on the Monument of London. The statue of Sir William Walworth at the fishmongers’ Hall is from his hand, and so is the bust of Thomas Evans in the hall of the painters and stainers. He executed also busts of Cromwell, Wren, and Milton.[86]