Under The Garland.

as the Laureate has it , that bibulous establishment did not find itself irresistibly impelled to give large orders for mourning in the " inconsolable Avoe " department ; and I am rather inclined to think that free A * intner Wreath paid his talloAV chandler ' s account for the " dips " wherewith his windows flared on the memorable 29 th May , 1660 , with much greater cheerfulness than he liquidated his mercer's bill for the crape in which the " Garland " was ensAvathed on the 3 rd September three years before . It is human nature , after all , as I have above inferred , and the licensed victualler , at all events , may be pardoned if he adopts the impression indicated by the song , that

" Every man AA'ho don t stick to the can Can be but a scurvy patch ;" and therefore I think it highly probable that official Wreath , from his master ' s chair in Vintner ' s Hall , proposed the health of his Most Gracious Majesty , after Avorthy but vapid Richard Humpty-Duinpty , or " Tumble-down-Dick , " as he was called , had had his " great fall" with much more sincerity than when he invited his brethren to drink to

, the sanitary soundness of His Highness the Lord Protector . I believe Wreath dined at the " Mayor ' s feast" on that celebrated occasion when Sir Robert Yyner—wasn't it Sir Robert Vyner ?—Avho lived in the old Jewry , don't yon knoAv ?—entertained royalty—when at three in the morning the chief magistrate of the even then greatest city in the world , and the mighty sovereign of the even then not the smallest empire—both very drunk—hugged each other in the yard outside

Guildhall—most likely for mutual support—Avhen civic majesty hiccupped out , " Fore Gad , King , you shall go back and take t ' other bottle "—and when Imperial sovereignty cordially stammered in reply , " 'Od ' s fish , Mayor , and so I will . " I say that I believe Wreath , free vintner , assisted , as the French have it , at this symposium , but I am bound to confess that he has left no record , orally or otherwise , of that great historical incident . Probablat three in the morningafter a Lord

y , Ma 3 or ' s feast , a free vintner in the reign of His Most Gracious Majesty King Charles the Second—whatever he might be under the sceptre of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria—would not be quite equal to chronicling , if to accurately observing , so eminent an instance of princely condescension . Tracing , as I do trace lovingly , the history of the " Garland , " I think I must

conclude that the revolution was too much for the last of the Wreaths . I don't think that , Avith his Jacobite notions , he can have taken kindly to the " pot-bellied Hollander . " I fancy about this period he must have been sensible of the existence in his neighbour--hood of a rival—fancy a rival to the " Garland ! " Tradition says that a " wine and spirit vaults , " still flourishing close by , started as a mughouse about this time , and went in for Protestant principles and Orange ascendancy consumedly . Now I know

this establishment , and if a mughouse originally—as I do not say it was not—it has certainly of late years abandoned its primitive low practices . In the Rev . E . C . BreAver ' s wonderful Encycloptedia , "A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable , " I find "Mughouse" is thus defined , "An alehouse Avas so called in the eighteenth century . Some hundred persons assembled in a large taproom , to drink , sing , and spout . One of the number was made chairman . Ale was served to the guests in

their own mugs , and the place where the mug was to stand Avas chalked on the table . " Well , this particular establishment is as innocent at this day of anything to do with malt and hops as Wreath ' s itself . Have I before mentioned that never in its long and illustrious history has the " Garland " demeaned itself to the purveying of beer ? "The man who drinks beer will think beer , " Dr . Johnson is reported to have propounded . Civic Avits—mural hilosophers—who have graduated at Wreath ' s venerable counter

p , Avoidd never have rendered that academy glorious by the lustre their attainments have shed upon its founts of inspiration , had they quaffed porter instead of Nantz—nutbrown ale rather than old broAvn sherry—or—horror of horrors—a loAver depth still in the depths of degradation— " brought their OAvn mugs , " a request cheap photographers are facetiously said to make to their patrons . But I think there is some truth in the tradition that the tavern I have mentioned