day a quarter of a century old.

Even now much of the old pewter, crockery, and glass can be found on the time-worn shelving, while the floor, as in the old days, is bare of a carpet, and the time-honoured tables still smile back at you from out of the polish made and kept bright by the elbows of a hundred celebrities.

It was to one of these very tables that Pepys, to his wife's great aggravation, conducted the pretty Mrs. Knipp, and here they drank, ate a lobster, and sang and were "mighty merry till almost midnight."

On another table Tennyson wrote "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue," beginning:

"O plump head waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,

How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock.
Go fetch a pint of port."

At still another table Thackeray was accustomed to take his chop and stout it being but a step from Punch's "Round Table," with its discussions, plans, and piles of proofs, to a quiet corner in The Cock. And then he loved a good dinner:

"I am a diner-out, and live in London," he writes in one of "Mr. Brown's" letters. "'I

protest, as I look back at the men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good they have been! how admirable the entertainments! how worthy the men!

"Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and who have all done their duty. "Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet — I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man.

"On another day it was a celebrated literary character. It was beautiful to see him at his dinner: cordial and generous, jovial and kindly, the great author enjoyed himself as the great statesman may he long give us good books and good dinners!

"Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Right Reverend Bishop. My lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good thing disappear before you, and think no man ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was; how kind! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Church.

How

“And then the men learned in the law: they dine! what hospitality, what splendour,

what comfort, what wine! As we walked away very gently in the moonlight, only three days since, from the 's, a friend of my youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude: 'Dear sir,' we breathed fervently, 'ask us soon again.' One never has too much at those perfect banquets - no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future — but contentment with all the world, light slumbers, joyful waking to grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose family table if I could see you seated, my desire in life would be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself agreeable, there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls: men go to dinners."

Often when he was supposed to be dining at these tables of the great, he was tucked away in some quaint tavern.

"Instead of dancing at Almack's," writes Walter Besant, in his "Fifty Years Ago," "he was taking his chop and stout at The Cock; instead of gambling at Crockford's, he was writing 'copy' for any paper which would take it."