down his hat and sword with great dignity, and, the challenger strutting after the challenged, both descended into the courtyard. The bespattered foreigners, finding a duel was in progress, crowded the window for good places to see the sight, till it was quite full. The combatants took their ground, drew, and began a very furious-looking assault; one fought retreating, the other pushing him back till they were at the end of the court in St. Martin’s Lane, when they took off their hats, bowed gracefully to the astonished Frenchmen, and walked away arm in arm, laughing and kissing their hands to the company they had left, leaving them to enjoy their spoiled dinner and well-greased clothes as they were best able. The great dread of the peaceful citizens who frequented taverns and coffee-houses was an incursion by members of the clubs known as Bold Bucks and Hell-Fires—for the most part composed of deliberately abandoned villains. The Bold Bucks were given up to licentiousness of an unbridled kind; blind and bold love was their motto, and their main object seems to have been the assimilation of man to brute. The Hell-Fires, as may be gathered from their appellation, aimed at an even more transcendent malignity, and derided the forms of religion as a trifle. A regular code of etiquette was observed at coffee-houses. At most of these, though not at the fashionable West End ones, a penny was usually laid on the bar on entering, which entitled the guest to the use of the room and of the news-sheet. Every rank of life, except perhaps the very lowest, was represented at one or other of these houses. Men met there to transact business, talk politics, discuss the latest play or poem, to play dice or cards. To one man the coffee-house was an office for business, where he received, and from which he dated, his letters; to another, a place in which to push his fortunes among patrons; to most, a lounging-place in which to discuss the news and pass away the time. The advertisements of the day are full of allusions to them. One gentleman loses his watch or his sword, and will give a reward if they are returned to Tom’s or Button’s, “and no questions asked.” Another, one Brown, “late City Marshall,” will settle all affairs that he had in his hands while holding that office, if the persons interested will repair to “Mr. Gibbon’s Coffee-House at Charing Cross.” The first coffee-house—that is, the first house where coffee was sold to the public in England—is said to have been the George and Vulture, in George Yard, Lombard Street, a house still in existence.