And now, having explained that if an old frequenter of the Cheshire Cheese sometimes grumbles at changes it is only through affection for the old house, let us go into the dining-room and sit down and look around us. We will leave Doctor Johnson's seat at the long table, with its brass tablet and his portrait above it, for the Shade of the great man. You shall sit in Oliver Goldsmith's seat with your back to the windows looking out into Cheshire Cheese Court, roofed in now to make a second dining-room; I will sit opposite to you, and we will take note of our surroundings. The approval of the old Doctor can be safely guaranteed. The sawdust on the floor; the wide grate with a shining copper kettle on the hob; the old mirror; the churchwarden pipes on the window-sill; the green-curtained cosy corner by the door, just like the squire's pew in many old churches; the black-handled knives and forks arranged in a row of black oak hutches; the willow-patterned plates and dishes; the queer old receptacle for umbrellas in the middle of the floor; the wire blinds, and the old tables and oak high-backed settles are to-day exactly as they were when Johnson in the flesh frequented the tavern. The "greybeard" and the leathern jack, gifts from Mr Seymour Lucas, R.A., are quite in keeping with the room, and such of the pictures as are not old deal with incidents in Johnson's life or are sketches of the room and of the worthies who have frequented it. The manager of to-day keeps the house just as it used to be a century and a half ago, and being so, it is one of the most interesting old buildings in London. Upstairs are the kitchen, where the woman cook responds to the verbal shorthand shouts of the waiters by putting chops and steaks on to the grill and clanging the oven door as good things to bake go into its recesses, and other old rooms, in which are some interesting relics of the old lexicographer, the chair in which he always sat at the Mitre, and other things curious and quaint, but they must await inspection till after lunch, for to-day is a pudding day, and the fat waiter with a moustache is waiting for our orders.