bustling air of business. It is a not unpicturesque courtyard from its very irregularity, the old wooden galleries being alternated with buildings of a different pattern, some projecting forward. The galleries are gay with paint and plenty of flowers; and altogether one might seem able to take one’s ease in one’s inn here very fairly. Even more picturesque is the “Queen’s Head,” a little lower down, a very effective gathering of irregular buildings. It has its two galleries on the left, but another portion has been boarded in for greater room and comfort. A tall archway in the centre block offers a De Hooghe-like glimpse of another court beyond, while a bow-windowed bar-parlour has been built out in front, and suggests a Captain Cuttle flavour. Here, too, is the heavy tiled roof, over which rises a little peaked cupola, not without effect. One hardly hears the hum of the Borough without. Who “puts up” at these places? What sort of “entertainment for man or beast” is there? How long do the guests stay? These are questions of high mystery. The people who dwell here must have ways of their own, and be influenced by the dispensations under which they abide. This conversing from aloft, with occasional pausing to look down and see what is going on, lends a sort of vitality to what would otherwise be a sleepy and antiquated kind of existence. To this old arrangement, as is well known, it is that we owe the form of our theatres. The old inn-yard being a favourite place of entertainment, the guests would gather in the galleries to look over; the floor suggested the later pit; while the stage was set up, facing the archway, at the far end. In Covent Garden, under Inigo Jones’s _loggia_, are found some old inns of a thoroughly Pickwickian sort, with the bars and snuggeries which are fitting background for a gathering of Dickens’s men and women. These are “The Tavistock” and “The Bedford,” in high favour with country bachelors. They must be as old almost as the colonnade itself; while the “Bedford Coffee House” has quite a history of its own, resplendent with the names of Churchill, Hogarth, the steak-ordering Duke of Norfolk, and many a son of fame besides. Still flourishes also the “Hummums,” where Parson Ford saw the ghost, as described by Dr. Johnson; but it has been rebuilt.