on the south side of the square.  Steele lived in Bury-street, St. James’; he furnishes an illustrious precedent for the loungers in St. James’-street, where scandal-mongers of those times delighted to detect Isaac Bickerstaff in the person of captain Steele, idling before the Coffee-house, and jerking his leg and stick alternately against the pavement.  We have mentioned the birth of Ben Jonson, near Charing-cross.  Spenser died at an inn, where he put up on his arrival from Ireland, in King-street, Westminster—­the same which runs at the back of Parliament-street to the Abbey.  Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea.  Addison lived and died in Holland House, Kensington, now the residence of the accomplished nobleman who takes his title from it.  In Brook-street, Grosvenor-square, lived Handel; and in Bentinck-street, Manchester-square, Gibbon.  We have omitted to mention that De Foe kept a hosier’s shop in Cornhill; and that, on the site of the present Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, stood the mansion of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare.  But what have we not omitted also?  No less an illustrious head than the Boar’s, in Eastcheap—­the Boar’s Head Tavern, the scene of Falstaff’s revels.  We believe the place is still marked out by a similar sign.  But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar’s Head?  Have we not all been there time out of mind?  And is it not a more real, as well as notorious thing to us, than the London Tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White’s, or What’s-his-name’s, or any other of your contemporary and fleeting taps?

[2] The Temple must have had many eminent inmates.  Among them, it is believed, was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strength of an old record, to have been fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet-street.

“Before we rest our wings, however, we must take another dart over the city, as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due tenderness for boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer has existed as a piece of local humour for nearly four hundred and fifty years.  Speaking of the Prioress, who makes such a delicate figure among his Canterbury Pilgrims, he tells us, among her other accomplishments, that—­

  ‘French she spake full faire and featously;’

adding with great gravity,

  ’After the school of Stratford atte Bowe;
  For French of Paris was to her unknowe.’

* * * * *

CURIOUS FACTS RELATING TO SLEEP.

(For the Mirror.)

“Next to those nourishments that sustain the body (says Dr. Venner) moderate and seasonable sleep is most profitable and necessary.  It helps digestion, recreates the mind, repairs the spirits, and comforts and refreshes the whole body.”  It is also observed by Dr. Hufeland, that “sleep is one of the wisest regulations of nature, to check and moderate at fixed periods, the incessant and impetuous stream of vital consumption.  It forms as it were, stations for our physical and moral existence, and we thereby obtain the happiness of being daily reborn, and of passing every morning through a state of annihilation, into a new and refreshed life.”