At that period this was the chief booking-office for coaches in the West End of London, and it was to that quarter what the “Bull and Mouth” was to the City. To that commanding position it had been raised by William Horne, who came here from the “White Horse” in Fetter Lane, in 1805. He died in 1828, and was succeeded by his son, the great coach-proprietor, Benjamin Worthy Horne, who further improved the property, and was powerful enough to command respect at the councils of the early railways. Under his rule, beneath the very shadow of the Charing Cross Improvement Act, by whose provisions Trafalgar Square was ordained and eventually created, the house was rebuilt, with a frontage in the Gothic manner. Shepherd’s view of Charing Cross, published December 18th, 1830, shows this immediate successor of the Pickwickian inn very clearly, with, next door, the establishment of Bish, for whose lotteries Charles Lamb was employed to write puffs. When the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who had the Charing Cross improvement in charge, cleared the ground, the inn migrated to the new building, some distance eastwards, the present “Golden Cross,” 452, West Strand, which, like the whole of the West Strand, in the Nash, stucco-classic manner, was designed in 1832, by Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Tite. Maginn lamented these changes, in the verses “An Excellent New Ballad; being entitled a Lamentation on the Golden Cross, Charing Cross”: No more the coaches shall I see Come trundling from the yard, Nor hear the horn blown cheerily By brandy-bibbing guard. King Charles, I think, must sorrow sore, Even were he made of stone, When left by all his friends of yore (Like Tom Moore’s rose) alone. * * * * * O! London won’t be London long, For ’twill be all pulled down; And I shall sing a funeral song O’er that time-honoured town. According to a return made to Parliament of the expenses in connection with these street improvements, “10 Houses and the Golden Cross Inn, Stable Yards, &c.,” were purchased for £108,884 4_s._; the inn itself apparently, if we are to believe a statement in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1831, with three houses in St. Martin’s Lane and two houses and workshops in Frontier Court, costing £30,000 of that sum. The present building was planned with a courtyard, and had archways to the Strand and to Duncannon Street. The last remains, and is in use as a railway receiving-office, but the Strand archway, the principal entrance, was built up and abolished in 1851. [Illustration: THE “GOLDEN CROSS,” SUCCESSOR OF THE PICKWICKIAN INN, AS REBUILT 1828.]