DEPARTED GLORIES 31 



Post coach, at two in the afternoon, arriving at Bristol 

 at eight o'clock the following morning ; and the 

 Worcester, Cheltenham, and Woodstock coaches, which 

 all travelled along the Bath road to Maidenhead. 

 Then there were the York " Highflier," a crack Light 

 Post coach, every morning, at nine o'clock ; the 

 "Princess Charlotte," to Brighton ; the Lynn, Dover, 

 Cambridge, Ipswich, and other coaches too numerons 

 to mention in detail. It will, therefore, not be sur- 

 prising to learn that the stables of this busy hostelry 

 were large enough to hold seventy horses. 



At the foot of the staircase, near the entrance, was 

 the oflice, and everywhere were long passages and 

 interminable suites of rooms. But how different the 

 circumstances in later years ! The vast apartment 

 that was the publi(; dining-room became, in fact, a 

 kind of socialistic kitchen. 



There, when his day's work was done, the kerbstone 

 merchant came to grill the cheap chop he had pur- 

 chased. There the professional cadger toasted a 

 herring, while his companions cooked scraps of meat 

 or toasted cheese. 



This part of Holborn was once famous for its old 

 inns. Indeed, on the opposite side of that main 

 artery of traffic were the " Black Bull " and the " Old 

 Bell." There is nothing left of the first now except 

 the great black effigy of a bull with a golden zone 

 about the middle of him, and beyond the archway a 

 courtyard which was once the galleried courtyard of 

 the inn, but is now just the area of a block of pecu- 

 liarly dirty ''model " dwellings. 



What Londoner did not know tlie " Old Bell " 



