This house has a large staircase, curiously painted, of figures viewing a procession, which was executed for the famous Dr. Misaubin, about the year 1732, by a painter of the name of Clermont, a Frenchman, who boldly charged one thousand guineas for his labour; which charge, however, was contested, and the artist was obliged to take five hundred. Behind the house there is a large room, the inside of which Hogarth has given in his _Rake’s Progress_, where he has introduced portraits of the doctor and his Irish wife.” Passing on beyond St. Martin’s Lane, we enter that curious street dedicated to bird and dog fanciers and frame makers, Great St. Andrew Street, but which in truth popularly ranges itself under the designation of “The Dials.” We stop before a mouldy shop, No. 42, whose window is filled with as disagreeable a category of objects as was found in the establishment of the apothecary in _Romeo and Juliet_--skulls, jaw and thigh bones, skeletons of monkeys, stuffed birds, horns of all kinds, prepared skins, and everything unpleasant in the anatomical line. When Dickens was busy with his _Mutual Friend_, a _confrère_--Mr. Wilkie Collins, I think--described to him a strange character, a bird-stuffer--and “articulator” of bones and skeletons--and the idea so “tickled” the writer that he at once put in “Mr. Venus,” the intimate of Wegg. This original character excited much attention; and a friend of the great writer, as well as of the present chronicler, Mr. C. Kent, passing through this street, was irresistibly attracted by this shop and its contents--kept by one J. Willis. When he next saw Mr. Dickens he said, “I am convinced I have found the original of ‘Venus’;” on which said Mr. Dickens, “You are right.” Anyone who visits the place will recognize the dingy gloomy interior, the articulated skeleton in the corner, the general air of thick grime and dirt. In full view of St. Martin’s Lane, and next to where the old Northumberland House stood, stood the house that was remarkable as having been the first that was numbered in London. Readers of old letters will notice with surprise how readily a person’s residence was found by the post; “To Mr. Sterne, in ye Pall Mall,” was sufficient. This seems almost a mystery. [Illustration: St. Anne’s Church Soho. ]