rth End, where Richardson once lived and wrote in his garden-house. The mist of the great city hid the horizon and dulled the sound of the advancing multit

don smoke and find himself among trees. Here come De Veres of the times of old; Hollands and Davenants, of the Stuart and Cromwell times; Evelyn peering about him soberly, and Samuel Pepys in a bustle.... Here, in his carriage, is King William the Third, going from the Palace to open Parliament ... and there, from out of Kensington

you spoke of, is it? Sure, an' it's a mig

in the

purposes, as St. Albans; and "South Kensington," a dull and uninteresting quarter, but close to all the big West-end museums and collections, and where no self-respecting lady or gentleman of the professional or "middle classes" can really help living. He, or she, must, nevertheless, beware lest they stray too far from the sacred precincts. For, on the west, South Kensington degenerates into Ear

hed from London by the Knightsbridge Road, a thoroughfare that, crowded as it is to-day by the world of fashion, was, only at the end of the eighteenth century, so lonely as to be unsafe from the ravages of thieves and footpads; a road "along which," Mr. Hare remarks plaintively, "London has been moving out of town for the last twenty years, but has never succeeded in getting into the country." So solitary, indeed, was this road that, even at the close of the eighteenth century, a bell used to be rung on Sunday evenings to summon th

her still, the vast "Albert Hall," a red Colosseum of music. This, in spring, is a delightful drive; indeed, London wears here such a semi-suburban air that it is with almost the feeling of entering a new townlet that we presently approach the charming "High Street" of Old Kensington. Charming it is still, with still something of an old-world air; and yet, during the last fifty years or so, it has terribly altered. In the old days, the days when "the shabby tide of progress" had not yet spread to this quiet old suburb of which Miss Thackeray wrote so

equested to apply to the railway company, and to Mr. Taylor, the house-agent." How much, alas, is left of it now? True, Holland House, and Kensington Palace, and Gardens, are left inviolate, but Campden Hill is adorned by the aspiring chimneys of waterwork

alace and th

th convents and shops for the sale of sacred objects. No great cathedral had as yet been built there; no Newman as yet looked st

such as that where pretty Emma Penfold dispensed curds and whey,-the cottages with damask rose-trees,-the tea-gardens, rural as now those on Kew Green,-what is now their latter end? Their modern realisations-Sydney Street, Smith Street, Manor Street-are not exactly attractive or savoury byways. No, it requires palaces and big mansions to keep up the "rus-in-urbe"; mere cottages cannot do it without degenerating into drying-grounds, unspeakable back yards, or slums. But, if the old beauty has gone from Kensin

ess, it is, after all, only following out its ancient traditions. For in

le elm trees and traditions that are almost levelled away. Mr. Awl, the bootmaker in High Street, exhibited peculiar walking-shoes long after high heels and kid brodekins had come into fashion in the metropolis. The last time I was in

d, conceived in much the same pleasant minor key as the artist's-the author of School Revisited and kindred idylls,-both evoking

the different abodes of the family. The Newcomes, The Virginians, and the Four Georges were written in Onslow Square, where, says Miss Thackeray, "I used to look up from the avenue of old trees and see my father's head bending over his work in the study window, which was over the drawing-room." But Onslow Square is close to South Kensington Station, and the Young Street house, which was the earlier residence, was certainly in a prettier neighbourhood. Also, it has double-fronted b

red brick houses. At No. 6, The Terrace, Campden Hill, poor John Leech, who moved hither from Bloomsbury street afflictions, died in 1864 from spasm of the heart, at the comparatively early age of forty-seven. On Campden Hill, also, is "Holly Lodge," Lord Macaulay's residence; the place, too

the Kensington Road beyond High Street, and opposite the grounds of Holland House. Here the versatile writer, the ill starred "Skimpole" of Dickens's satire, lived with his numerous family,-now older than in th

side, and gardens and backs of houses on the other, was a curiosity which, when I first saw it, I could not account for on English principles, uniting as it did something decent, pleasant,

Leigh Hunt. In Hunt's time, Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald lived "as a boarder" at No. 4 in this terrace. Her chief claim to fame is The Simple Story, a work which few people now read, though many have heard of it. She appears to have been a charming and eccentric as well as a talented lady. Here is a diary jotting of hers, quoted by Leigh Hunt:-"On the 29th of June (Sunday) dined, drank tea, and supped with Mrs. Whit

ously. Imagine, for instance, our George Eliots of the twentieth century, our presidents of writers' unions and clubs, going out late at night to ring people's doorbells and run away! Such "eternal childishness" really out-Skimpoles Skimpole.

ed or no, seems cruel. The late Mr. George Smith, of the great publishing house, tells an enter

pany with Leigh Hunt, went off to the Bank of England. I explained our business, and we were shown into a room where three old gentlemen were sitting at tables. They kept us waiting some time, and Leigh Hunt, who had meantime been staring all round the room, at last got up, walked up to one of the staid officials, and addressing him, said, in wondering tones: 'And this is the Bank of England! And do you sit here all day, and never see the green woods and the trees and flowers and the charming country?' Then, in tones of remonstrance, he demanded: 'Are you c

le, Duchess of Portsmouth, lived, and here Mrs. Inchbald died; later it was occupied by Jesuits, who have had for long a special stronghold in this quarter. Then, at last, in 1876, the older house made way for Mr. Albe

f the old mansion being now built up into the east wall of the garden. Old Campden House dated from 1612, and was principally known as having been the residence of Queen Anne's charming and precocious little son, the Duke of Gloucester, the poor child who died at eleven,

ld-world aspect. Behind the houses are pleasant gardens, as yet-but for how long?-left untouched by the tide of progress. Thackeray, as w

's C

d "the Boltons" is a pleasant place to live in. But, on the whole, the purlieus of Kensington are depressing. While West Kensington is mainly degraded "Queen Anne," interspersed with railways,-South Kensington has one very general distinguishing mark. It is nearly always stuccoed, and usually also porticoed. Its larger streets, in sun or shine, bear a gloomy likeness to an array of family vaults, awaiting their occupants. The early nineteenth century had, in truth,

urt,-when "Ranelagh" and "Vauxhall" flourished in the neighbourhood,-and when the then fashionable race of London's "jolly

t of the day; just as "Ranelagh," with its famous "Rotunda," was the "Olympia," or winter one. Only, both the ancient pleasure resorts rejoiced in being the centre of fashion, which can hardly be said with truth of the modern ones. Also, from old novelists the reader gathers that it was very

ir twentieth-century successors of the great art of adverti

ho were walking in the Mall, that is, persons attired in the height of fashion, who every now and t

te, that the most experienced mothers often lost themselves in looking for their daughters." Part of the site of old Ranelagh is now appropriated as the

o use the words of the modest prospectus issued by a recent magazine, they "will not tolerate mediocrity." But then no one in Chelsea ever is, or at least allows himself, to be "mediocre." Perhaps the fortunate inhabitants feel, as do the denizens of the academic towns of Oxford and Cambridge, the important we

truth, that they are "near the hum of the great city, and yet not of it." Flats are increasing all over London and its immediate suburbs now to such an extent that they are, indeed, in some danger of being overdone. In Central London, the growth of flats is, perhaps, of little consequence; but in suburban or semi-suburban London, the ubiquitous builder is the great bloodsucker of our day; he wanders perpetually, seeking, like the devil, what he may devour; and, on his debatable "Tom Tiddler's Ground," eve

rence being that here the relics are purely personal. This, a real "house of pilgrimage" to the literary world, is, especially, the resort

stored to its pristine neatness and order. It is difficult to imagine any place less museum-like and more pleasantly homely than this silent, peaceful, dark

ote of the street and the h

e grounds, an unpicturesque yet rather cheerful outlook. The house itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new painted and repaired; broadish stair with massive balustrade (in the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors thick as a rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor.... Chelsea is a singular hetero

gest to those who have read and interested themselves in the long-drawn-out tragedy of those joint lives with which it was bound up. In Mrs. Carlyle's pretty "china closet," for instance, you can almost see the slender figure in neat black silk, deftly arranging and dusting; here, in the drawing-room beyond, is her work-table; you can imagine her, most thrifty of housewives, mending a hole in the carpet; there in the chimney-corner she lay on her sofa, silently suffering, while her prop

Embankment Gardens, close to the Albert Bridge. Weary, wrinkled, as Tithonus, the old man ga

ness at the doubtful

yne Row households? The Hunts were Bohemians of irrepressible type. Mrs. Carlyle, being, too, in 1834 only at the very beginning of her neat Chelsea housekeeping, and not yet "bug-bitten, bedusted, and bedevilled," was, naturally, very severe on the subject of th

table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter-books, papers, egg-shells, scissors, and, last night when I was there, the torn heart of a half-quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat, t

after her marriage to Mr. Cross. She had only recently settled into this charming London dwelling, and her voluminous library had only just been arranged for her with infinite care, "as nearly as possible in the same order as at the Priory," when the sudden stroke of Death fell. Daniel Maclise, the early-Victorian painter, a meteor of art, and the wonder of his own age, had

e site of this and the adjoining houses; from No. 18 Cheyne Walk eastward as far as Oakley street. Of the many celebrated people who have lived there, Sir Hans Sloane was the latest;-the old house was pulled down after his death. The basements and gardens of the houses in Cheyne Walk still show traces of this palace of Henry VIII. The present "Queen's House" is said to have been built by Wren, th

still, though literary, comparatively unfashionable; (for in those days the two persuasions did not as yet go hand-in-hand). The poet-painter began a joint tenancy here with Swinburne, George Meredith, and his brot

py co-tenant, 'past noon. Rossetti had not yet risen, though it was an exquisite day. On the breakfast table, on a huge dish, rested five thick slabs of bacon, upon which five rigid eggs had slowly bled to death! Presently Rossetti appeared in his dressing-gown with slip

ost was the garden, an acre in extent in his time, with an avenue of limes opening

, which had an annoying way of appearing in the neighbours' gardens. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has given from memory a tolerably long list of creatures which at one time or another figured in the menagerie at Cheyne Walk. They included a Pomeranian puppy, an Irish deerhound, a barn-owl named Jessie, another owl named Bobby, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs, two successive wombats, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an ordinary marmot, kangaroos and wallabies, a deer, two or more armadillos, a white mouse with her brood, a raccoon, squirrels, a mole, peacocks, wood-o

little house not very far away." Ghosts,-of Katherine Parr and others,-have, not unnaturally, been accredited to "Queen's House." But they do not appear to have survived Rossetti's tenancy; for Mr. Haweis, who lived and entertained here for 14 years, was not disturbed by them, "even though he unearthed the entrance of a mysterious subterranean passage, which was believed to have communicated with the Lord High Admiral's House;"-a sort of semi-royal cryptoporticus of in

by Mr. Marillier, of Rossetti an

he requested his signature. 'We are getting up a petition,' he said, 'to replace the old wooden bridge by a handsome new iron one, with gilt decorations, and I am sure that you as an artist, Mr. Rossetti, will lend us the weight of your na

aps especially devoted to his wombats.

family affe

st, and each hou

! Neither from

ined until I cl

rank Buckland the great naturalist, who, in his house, No. 34, Albany Street, Regent's Park, kept "a museum and a menagerie in one." "His house was full of crawling, creeping, barking, flying, swimming, and squeaking things." When he was at church one Sunday, "Dick, the rat," he relates, "stole away two five-pound notes from my drawers." Among other creatures Mr. Buckland kept, like Rossetti,

e Paradise Row, (now part of Queen's Road West, and converted to laundries and other uses;)-in Paradise Row, with its quaint tiled roofs, dormer windows, and high white gate-posts, many well-known people have lived; it was even connected, more or less, with royalty, for in 1692 it was the dwelling place of the first Duke of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne's son. Chelsea has always been associated with the Stuarts. When it was but a picturesque riverside village,-fishermen's huts diversified by a few old palaces,-divided yet by space of green fields from the storm and stress of the greater London,-they brought it wealth and fashion, and caused its gardens to spread in fragrant greenery down to the w

threatened with demolition. London, as we know, has ever been more utilitarian than antiquarian; and perhaps the old house owes its escape so far to the fact that "it has been used successively as farmhouse, pottery, cloth manufactory, and patent cask factory."-(Mr. Reginald Blunt, An Historical Hand-Book to Chelsea.) Nevertheless, its pilastered doorway exists yet, and, internally, it still boasts its square wainscoted hall and old staircase, much as they were

and shakes the door in vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there, as if to make a brave resistance to the moving world outside, which jars upon their slumber. It is a church of the dead." Dean Stanley greatly loved this church: he used to call it "one of the chapters of his abbey." Here Sir Thomas More worshipped in the days of his power, and here, in the chapel that he built, is his monument. More lived himself near by, in a now vanished mansion called "Beaufort House," where, in his "fair garden," he received his friend Erasmus, and also, his king-Henry walking with his arm lovingly placed about his favourite's neck-that neck he was so soon to dissever. In Chelsea Church are the famous "chained books," Sir Hans S

the growth of bricks and mortar round about them has but ill suited the delicate plants, which, it is to be feared, grow now but feebly for the most part. It is long since the days of the Stuarts,-days when the gardens of Chelsea could still grow roses. Nevertheless, the "Physick Garden" is still delightful for purposes quite other than those for which it was first made; and, fortunately, the terms of the bequest render its alienation difficult and unlikely. Perhaps, in the happy future, who knows? the garden may be opened altogether to the Chelsea public. O

l for barges, and resort of so many distinguished pleasure parties, that used to serve as goal for the annual race,-prototype of the modern Oxford and Cambridge race,-that was rowed by the young Thames watermen for the prizes of the "Doggett

ue, and who clings to relics of the old days of which we shall soon have no traces left, can recall the river strand at Chelsea, with its wharfs and its water-stairs, its barges and its altogether indescrib

elect, runs up towards Queen's Road. Tite Street is, so far as its externals go, somewhat dark and shut in by its tall houses; but it more than atones for any outside dulness by the excessive light and learning of its interiors. "The White House," nea

Royal Hospital for veteran soldiers on this site,-though local tradition, apparently without any reason at all, persists in attributing its foundation to Nell Gwynne, who, with all her frailties, was ever the people's darling, and especially a Chelsea darling. The Hospital building-an open quadrangle with wings,-was designed by

ng the resort of eighteenth-century fashion. Hither used to drive George I. and his consort, Caroline of Anspach; George III. and Queen Charlotte also came here in person to fetch th

and the gloom, as well as the splendour and the riches of the great city, are now their heritage. Never more will the waves lap peacefully at Chelsea along the river's shelving shores; never again will the streets and squares of old Kensington regain their former seclusion and calm. Instead, a modern, and, let us hope, a yearly more beautiful city will spread, graduall