Already have I spoken of the Leicester Square gold and silver smith’s style and titles. It is meet that you should peruse them in full:— [Illustration] So to Cranbourn Street, Leicester Fields, is William Hogarth bound for seven long years. Very curious is it to mark how old trades and old types of inhabitants linger about localities. They were obliged to pull old Cranbourn Street and Cranbourn Alley quite down before they could get rid of the silversmiths, and even now I see them sprouting forth again round about the familiar haunt; the latest ensample thereof being in the shop of a pawnbroker—of immense wealth, I presume, who, gorged and fevered by multitudes of unredeemed pledges, has suddenly astonished New Cranbourn Street with plate-glass windows, overflowing with plate, jewellery, and trinkets; buhl cabinets, gilt consoles, suits of armour, antique china, Pompadour clocks, bronze monsters, and other articles of _virtù_. But don’t you remember Hamlet’s in the dear old Dædalean, bonnet-building Cranbourn Alley days?—that long low shop whose windows seemed to have no end, and not to have been dusted for centuries; those dim vistas of dish-covers, coffee biggins and centre-pieces. You must think of Crœsus when you speak of the reputed wealth of Hamlet. His stock was said to be worth millions. Seven watchmen kept guard over it every night. Half the aristocracy were in his debt. Royalty itself had gone credit for plate and jewellery at Hamlet’s. Rest his bones, poor old gentleman, if he be departed. He took to building and came to grief. His shop is no more, and his name is but a noise. In our time, Cranbourn Street and Cranbourn Alley were dingy labyrinths of dish-covers, bonnets, boots, coffee-shops, and cutlers; but what must the place have been like in Hogarth’s time? We can have no realizable conception; for late in George the Third’s reign, or early in George the Fourth’s, the whole _pâté_ of lanes and courts between Leicester Square and St. Martin’s Lane had become so shamefully rotten and decayed, that they half tumbled, and were half pulled down. The labyrinth was rebuilt; but, to the shame of the surveyors and architects of the noble landlord, on the same labyrinthine principle of mean and shabby tenements. You see, rents are rents, little fishes eat sweet, and many a little makes a mickle. Since that period, however, better ideas of architectural economy have prevailed; and, although part of the labyrinth remains, there has still been erected a really handsome thoroughfare from Leicester Square to Long Acre. As a sad and natural consequence, the shops don’t let, while the little tenements in the alleys that remain are crowded; but let us hope that the example of the feverish pawnbroker who has burst out in an eruption of jewellery and art fabrics, may be speedily followed by other professors of _bricabrac_.