Another carving of a mitre surmounts a tablet, with initials T F and the date 1786, which is built into the front of that well-known tavern, the Goose and Gridiron, and indicates that this property is or was attached to the See of London, or that near this site stood the residence of the Bishops of London, before the Great Fire, which destroyed it. This mitre, by a coincidence, also suggests the supposed former sign. Within the memory of man, the Goose and Gridiron was a celebrated house-of-call for coaches to Hammersmith, and the villages west of London. Its sign, a sculptured goose standing by a veritable gridiron, still appears on a lamp in front. Before the Great Fire, there was a house with the sign of the Mitre hereabouts, perhaps on this very spot, where in the year 1642 were to be seen, among other curiosities, ‘a choyce Egyptian with hieroglyphicks, a Rémora, a Torpedo, the Huge Thighbone of a Giant,’ etc., as advertised in the _News_; and again, in 1644, Robert Hubert, _alias_ Forges, ‘Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty,’ exhibited a museum of natural rarities. The catalogue describes them as ‘collected by him with great industrie; and thirty years’ travel into foreign countries; daily to be seen at the place called the Musick-house at the Mitre, near the west end of St. Paul’s Church.’ Concerts were, no doubt, among the attractions the house afforded, till the Great Fire in September, 1666, destroyed all. It has been suggested that on the rebuilding of the premises, the new tenant, to ridicule the character of the former business, chose as his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with her foot, and wrote below, ‘The Swan and Harp.’ Larwood and Hotten think that it was a homely rendering of a charge in the coat of arms of the Musicians’ Company. That the Swan and Harp was an actual sign, I learn from the _Little London Directory_ of 1677, where one is mentioned in Cheapside. At the Goose and Gridiron, Sir Christopher Wren presided over the St. Paul’s Lodge of Freemasons for upwards of eighteen years.[51] It is said that he presented the Lodge with three carved mahogany candlesticks, and the trowel and mallet which had been used in laying the first stone of the Cathedral. In the ‘Vade Mecum for Malt-worms,’ there is a rude drawing of the sign, and we are told in doggerel as rude that, ‘Dutch carvers from St. Paul’s adjacent dome, Hither to whet their whistles daily come.’ Also that ‘the rarities of the house are; 1, the odd sign; 2, the pillar which supports the chimney; 3, the skittle ground upon the top of the house; 4, the watercourse running through the chimney; 5, the handsome maid, Hannah.’ Foote mentions the Goose and Gridiron in his ‘Comedy of Taste.’ [Illustration]