Under the head of “Public Refreshment,” in Knight’s “London,” vol. iv., p. 314, appears this passage:— “There is a dingy house in a court in Fleet Street where the chops and steaks are unrivalled. Who that has tasted there that impossible thing of private cookery, a _hot_ mutton chop—a second brought when the first is despatched—has not pleasant recollections of the never-ending call to the cook of ‘two muttons to follow’?” In Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” (book ii., chap. 4), after the trial at the Old Bailey, the text proceeds: “‘I begin to think I _am_ faint.’ “‘Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to—this or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.’ “Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern.[7] Here they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine; while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.” “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,” in a letter dated from Regent Street, London, June 26, 1879, to the San Francisco _Daily Evening Post_, thus refers to the Cheshire Cheese:— “The Old Cheshire Cheese is, perhaps, at the present writing, one of the most popular of the old hostelries, and when you consider that for over two hundred years it has been in existence, and has been patronised by celebrities of every degree, rank, and station, and even royalty—for Charles II. ate a chop here with Nell Gwynne—and the genial landlord will actually show you the seats used by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, even to the marks on the wainscotted wall made by their greased wigs; the corner where the author of ‘Pendennis’ and ‘The Newcomes’ sat, or where Charles Dickens, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, and a host of others enjoyed their ’arf-and-’arf and toasted cheese. The tavern is situated up a little narrow passage called ‘WINE OFFICE COURT.’ I don’t think it can be more than three feet wide. On the right hand side of it is the entrance. Over the door is a glass lamp painted red, with the words ‘Old Cheshire Cheese’ on it. But, oh! what chops, what steaks, what cold lamb and salad, what beefsteak pudding you do get here! It is indeed a revelation! And should you be permitted to ascend to the upper part of the building you will find the walls adorned with paintings, articles of vertu, and other evidences of comfort and ease, where the proprietor dispenses his hospitality in the most genial manner; and, when I inform you that Mr. Moore is a vestryman and churchwarden of St. Bride’s, will shortly become Councilman, and probably Alderman and Lord Mayor, you will see that it is no common thing to be the landlord of the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’”