Returning through Portsmouth Street, we come into _Lincoln’s Inn Fields_; and, keeping on its western side—passing Sardinia Street, with its old archway, on the left—we may note Mr. John Forster’s House, No. 58. At this house resided the friend and biographer of Dickens, and here our author was, of course, a frequent visitor. On December the 2nd, 1844, Charles Dickens here first read his new Christmas book, “The Chimes,” to a select and critical audience, including Messrs. Forster, Maclise, Douglas Jerrold, Carlyle, Laman Blanchard, Fox, Stanfield, Harness, and Dyce. The house is itself described in the pages of “Bleak House” (chapter 10) as the RESIDENCE OF MR. TULKINGHORN. “In a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now; and in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie, like maggots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still remain; and even its painted ceiling, where Allegory in Roman helmet and celestial linen sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache, as would seem to be Allegory’s object always, more or less.” As in the time spoken of, the house is still in legal possession, being let out as solicitors’ offices; but the old Allegory has disappeared beneath modern whitewash. Within two minutes’ distance northward, the weary rambler may reach the central thoroughfare of HOLBORN, where (turning to the left), close at hand, will be found the _Holborn Restaurant_, at which Sam Weller’s advice on the subject of a “little dinner” (or luncheon) may be worth practical consideration:— “Pair of fowls and a weal cutlet; French beans, ’taturs, tart, and tidiness.” Certain it is that everything at this establishment will be found “werry clean and comfortable,” on reasonable terms. RAMBLE II _Lincoln’s Inn to the Mansion House_