think they were all
writin' folks, weren't they? Miss Rossetti anyway writes poetry, I know
that. One of my boarders gave me one of her books for Christmas. I'll show
it to you. You don't think seven and six is too much for a room like this,
do you?"

I inwardly noted that the ceilings were much lower than those of my room
in Russell Square and that the furniture was old and worn and that the
room looked out on an army of sooty chimney-pots, but I explained that
seven and six seemed a very reasonable price, and that ninepence for
breakfast with ham and eggs was cheap enough, provided the eggs were
strictly fresh.

So I paid one week's rent in advance on the spot, and going back to
Russell Square told my landlady that I had found friends in another part
of the city and would not return for two days. My sojourn at Number
Thirty-eight Charlotte Street developed nothing further than the meager
satisfaction of sleeping for two nights in the room in which Dante Gabriel
Rossetti was born, and making the acquaintance of the worthy ticket-taker,
who knew all four of the Rossettis, as they had often passed through his
gate.

Professor Rossetti lived for twelve years at Thirty-eight Charlotte
Street; he then moved to Number Fifty in the next block, which is a
somewhat larger house. It was here that Mazzini used to come. The house
had been made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar
of Vital Statistics. This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man
named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the
name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born "The Germ,"
that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared "Hand and
Soul" and "The Blessed Damozel," written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen,
the same age at which Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis." William Bell Scott used
to come here, too. Scott was a great man in his day. He had no hair on his
head or face, not even eyebrows. Every follicle had grown aweary and quit.
But Mr. Scott was quite vain of the shape of his head, for well he might
be, since several choice sonnets had been combed out of it. Sometimes when
the wine went round and things grew merry, then sentimental, then
confidential, Scott would snatch off his wig to display to the company his
fine phrenological development, and tell a story about Nelson, who, too,
used to wear a wig just like his, and after every battle would take it off
and hand it over to h