of paintings by Hogarth, viz. "The Modern
Midnight Conversation," and the "Hudson's Bay Company's Porters going to
Dinner," was made about three years' ago, upon the demolition of the old
Elephant public-house, Fenchurch-street.[4] The pictures were the
undoubted productions of Hogarth, something more than one hundred years
since, at which time he lodged there. The house was known as the Elephant
and Castle, where it had been customary for the parochial authorities to
have an entertainment, the celebration of which, from some cause, was
unexpectedly removed to Harry the Eighth's head, opposite, and still in
the same line of business. This removal being mentioned to our artist on
his return home at night, irritated him not a little, at what he
considered the neglect with which he had been treated in not being
invited as formerly. He therefore went over to the King's Head, where
some discussion took place, which it is supposed was not very amicable,
as he left them (as the clock indicates, at past four in the morning,)
threatening to stick them all up on the walls of the tap-room in the
Elephant and Castle, which, as an eminent modern artist said, most
emphatically, upon his first seeing the picture after it had been removed
and placed on canvass,--Hogarth had done _Con Amore_.

[4] Of this house, we have given an accurate Engraving at page 8
in the present volume.

The proposition being made to the host, he agreed to wipe out Hogarth's
score upon his completing the picture, which attracted much company; so
that, although the house lost the dinner party, it gained by persons
coming to see the parochial authorities _stuck up on the walls_. Some
time after, the score again raised its head, when mine host, for the
purpose of clearing it off, and to make the tap-room more uniform,
proposed to Hogarth the subject of the Hudson's Bay Company's porters
going to dinner; they at that time, as they still do, frequenting the
house. This picture represents Fenchurch-street as it appeared more than
a century ago, with the old Magpie and Punch Bowl public-house in the
distance, which house has not long since been taken down. The Elephant
public-house was taken down and rebuilt in 1826, and is now occupied by
Mrs. Eaton, in whose family the business has been for more than a hundred
years, and from whom these particulars have been obtained. The first
named picture is considered to be the original from which Hogarth
afterwar