of the then Quakers' Meeting House,
which was a long, barn-like building, standing lengthwise to the street,
and not having a window on that side to break the dreary expanse of
brickwork. Mr. Benson was in those days as celebrated for beef and
civility as he is now. Mr. Page had just opened the shawl shop still
carried on by his widow. Near the Coach Yard was the shop of Mr. Hudson,
the bookseller, whose son still carries on the business established by
his father in 1821. In 1837, Mr. Hudson, Sen., was the publisher of a
very well conducted liberal paper called _The Philanthropist_. The paper
only existed some four or five years. It deserved a better fate. Next
door to Mr. Hudson's was the shop of the father of the present Messrs.
Southall. All these places have been materially altered, but the wine
and spirit stores of Mrs. Peters, at the corner of Temple Row, are
to-day, I think, exactly what they were forty years ago. The Brothers
Cadbury--a name now celebrated all over the world--were then, as will be
seen by reference to the frontispiece, shopkeepers in Bull Street, the
one as a silk mercer, the other as a tea dealer. The latter commenced in
Crooked Lane the manufacture of cocoa, in which business the name is
still eminent. The Borough Bank at that time occupied the premises
nearly opposite Union Passage, which are now used by Messrs. Smith as a
carpet shop. In all other respects--except where the houses near the
bottom are set back, and the widening of Temple Row--the street is
little altered, except that nearly every shop has been newly fronted.

High Street, from Bull Street to Carrs Lane, is a good deal altered. The
Tamworth Banking Company occupied a lofty building nearly opposite the
bottom of Bull Street, where for a very few years they carried on
business, and the premises afterwards were occupied by Mrs. Syson, as a
hosier's shop. The other buildings on both sides were small and
insignificant, and they were mostly pulled down when the Great Western
Railway Company tunneled under the street to make their line to Snow
Hill. "Taylor and Lloyd's" Bank was then in Dale End. The passage
running by the side of their premises is still called "Bank Alley."
Carrs Lane had a very narrow opening, and the Corn Exchange was not
built. Most of the courts and passages in High Street were then filled
with small dwelling houses, and the workshops of working bookbinders.
Messrs. Westley Richards and Co. had their gun factory