Cork Street, joining Clifford Street and Burlington Gardens, was named after Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, and its chief feature was the fine house, or, rather one should perhaps say, externally fine house, for Walpole affirms that “all its beauty was outside”--which Lord Burlington designed, in 1723, for Field-Marshal Wade, on whose death, in 1748, it was sold by public auction. In Cork Street lived Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift, and one of the three “Yahoos of T’witnam”; he appears to have come here in 1729, and here he died six years later. Another one-time resident was Mrs. Abigail Masham, who replaced Sarah of Marlborough in the affections and confidence of Queen Anne. Cork Street has always been notable for its hotels, from the time when Gibbon speaks of the Cork Street Hotel, to the later days of the Burlington, where the Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes, was wont to put up. [Sidenote: CONDUIT STREET.] Conduit Street can be reached from Savile Row by one the quaintest little alleys in the West End, called Savile Place, a tiny thoroughfare which I never go through without expecting to see a Sedan chair waiting at the other end, and a bewigged and besworded gentleman or a hooped and patched lady passing through on their way to it. If we followed them we should find ourselves in the middle of Conduit Street, but, as for my purpose it is more convenient to enter at its western end, let us pass along Bond Street until we come to this its largest tributary. The width of Conduit Street is accounted for when we know that it originally consisted of private houses, although you shall seek long enough nowadays ere you find one that has not been transformed into a business establishment of some sort or another. The street was completed in 1713, and takes its name from a conduit of water which stood in what was then known as Conduit Mead, a field of 27 acres, described in the vaguest of vague ways as lying between Piccadilly and Paddington, and of which Lord Clarendon had obtained in 1666 a lease of 99 years at the nominal rental (oh! those rents of former days, are they not alone sufficient to stamp that far-gone period as the “good old times”?) of £8 per annum.