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96 storms of later years, but none like unto these.

Hetor.—The formation of Corporation Street, and the many handsome buildings erected and planned in its line, have improved off the face of the earth, more than one classic spot, noted in our local history, foremost among which we must place the house of Mr. Hector, the old friend and schoolfellow of Dr. Samuel Johnson. The great lexicographer spent many happy hours in the abode of his friend, and as at one time there was a slight doubt on the matter, it is as well to place on record here that the house in which Hector, the surgeon, resided, was No. 1, in the Old Square, at the corner of the Minories, afterwards occupied by Mr. William Scholefield, Messrs. Jevons and Mellor's handsome pile now covering the spot. The old rate books prove this beyond a doubt. Hector died there on the 2nd of September, 1794, after having practised as a surgeon, in Birmingham, for the long period of sixty-two years. He was buried in a vault at Saint Philip's Church. Birmingham, where, in the middle aisle, in the front of the north gallery, an elegant inscription to his memory was placed. Hector never married, and Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow, Hector's own sister, and Johnson's "first love," resided with him, and appears by the burial register of St. Philip's to have died in October, 1788, and to have been buried there, probably in the vault in which her brother was afterwards interred. In the month of November, 1784, just a month before his own decease. Johnson passed a few days with his friend. Hector, at his residence in the Old Square, who, in a letter to Boswell, thus speaks of the visit:—"He" (Johnson) "was very solicitous with me, to recollect some of our most early transactions, and to transmit them to him, for I perceived nothing gave him greater pleasure than calling to mind those days of our innocence. I complied with his request, and he only received them a few days before his death." Johnson arrived in London from Birmingham on the 16th of November, and on the following day wrote a most affectionate letter to Mr. Hector, which concludes as follows:—"Let us think seriously on our duty. I send my kindest respects to dear Mrs. Careless. Let me have the prayers of both. We have all lived long, and must soon part. God have mercy upon us, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!"

This was probably nearly the last letter Johnson wrote, for on the 13th of the following month, just twenty-seven days after his arrival in London from Birmingham, oppressed with disease, he was numbered with the dead.

Hinkleys.— Otherwise, and for very many years, known as "The Inkleys," the generally-accepted derivation of the name being taken from the fact that one Hinks at one time was a tenant or occupier, under the Smalbroke family, of the fields or "leys" in that locality, the two first narrow roads across the said farm being respectively named the Upper and the Nether Inkleys, afterwards changed to the Old and New Inkleys. Possibly, however, the source may be found in the family name of Hinckley, as seen in the register of Harborne. A third writer suggests that the character of its denizens being about as black as could be painted, the place was naturally called Ink Leys. Be that as it may, from the earliest days of their existence, these places teem to have been the abode and habitation of the queerest of the queer people, the most aristocratic resident in our local records having been "Beau Green," the dandy—[see "Eccentrics"]—who, for some years, occupied the chief building in the Inkleys, nicknamed Rag Castle," otherwise Hinkley Hall. The beautiful and salubrious neighbourhood, known as "Green's Village," an offshoot of the