Dr. Wollaston was living in Cecil Street (No. 28) in the year 1800. This eccentric philosopher, originally a physician, was born in 1766, and died of brain disease in 1828. He discovered two new metals--palladium and rhodium--and acquired more than £30,000, by inventing a plan to make platinum malleable. He improved and invented the camera lucida, and was the first to demonstrate the identity of galvanism and common electricity. He carried on his experiments with the simplest instruments, and never allowed even his most intimate friends to enter his laboratory. When a foreign philosopher once called on him and asked to see his study, he instantly produced, in his strange way, a small tray, on which were some glass tubes and a twopenny blow-pipe. Once, shortly after inspecting a grand galvanic battery, on meeting a brother philosopher in the street he led him by the button into a mysterious corner, took from his pocket a tailor’s thimble, poured into it some liquid from a small phial, and instantly heated a platinum wire to a white heat.[157] Salisbury Street, in the Strand, was originally built about 1678, but was extensively rebuilt by Payne in the early part of the reign of George III. Old Salisbury House stood on the sites of Salisbury and Cecil Streets, between Worcester House, now Beaufort Buildings, and Durham House, now the Adelphi. It was so called after Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and Lord High Treasurer to James I., who died 1612. Queen Elizabeth was present at the house-warming. This Cecil was the bad minister of a bad king. He was Raleigh’s enemy and Bacon’s; he was the foe of reform, and the friend of Spain, from whom he received bribes, and the slave of vice. Bacon painted this vicious hunchback in his _Essay on Deformity_. The house was divided subsequently into Great and Little Salisbury House--the latter being let to persons of quality. About 1678 it was pulled down, and Salisbury Street built; but it proved too steep and narrow, and was not a successful speculation.[158] The other part, next to Great Salisbury House and over the Long Gallery, was turned into the “Middle Exchange.” This eventually gave way to Cecil Street,--a fair street, with very good houses, fit for persons of repute.[159]