PRINCE'S GATE.

and that I am only Colonel Wellesley."

27

It

is not impossible that, from old habit and a little bit of civil grudge against military ascendency (but all in a spirit of kindliness, which the sensible Duke would understand and indulge) the elder brother did not dislike to keep up his privileges of primogeniture.

A curious local pre-eminence attends Kingston House, little suspected by those who pass it. It stands on the highest ground between London and Windsor Castle.

Next to this mansion is a row of new houses, each too high for its width, called Prince's Gate. They resemble a set of tall thin gentlemen, squeezing together to look at something over the way.

The old wall containing their neighbour, Park House, indicates the northern boundary of the once famous Kensington or Brompton Park Nursery, which figures in the pages

of

the "Spectator" as the establishment of Messieurs London and Wise, the most celebrated gardeners of their time. It commenced in the reign of Charles the Second; furnished all England with plants; and is only now giving up its last green ghost before the rise of new buildings.

CHAPTER III.

KENSINGTON GORE MODERN-MRS. INCHBALD-COUNT

D'ORSAY-WILKES AND JUNIUS (SIR PHILIP FRANCIS.)

WE have said that Kensington Gore, in Red Books and Directories, is understood to begin at Kingston (or Ennismore) House. And such is the case. But as the only rows of houses, till of late years, that is to say, of houses in actual conjunction, were that which you pass just before reaching the Cabinet Exhibition, and another lower down the road,

the former of these rows is still inscribed, "Kensington Gore," and is the spot emphatically so called. It is also, to distinguish it from the other, sometimes called the Upper Gore. We notice it the more particularly, because it is remarkable, among other respects, for its style of building. It consists but of five houses, four of which are faced with white stucco, all of them very small, and Nos. 2 and 3 apparently consisting but of one room (a drawing-room) with six windows. Yet they have an air of elegance, and even of distinction. They look as if they had been intended for the out-houses, or lodge, of some great mansion which was never built; and as if, upon the failure of that project, they had been divided into apartments for retainers of the Court. You might imagine that a supernumerary set of maids of honour had lived there (if maids of honour could

MRS. INCHBALD.

31

live alone); or that five younger brothers of lords of the bed-chamber had been the occu

pants-all being bachelors and expecting places in reversion. The two houses which seem to be nothing but one drawing-room, possess, however, parlours and second stories at the back, and have good gardens; so that what with their flowers behind them, the park in front, and their own neatness and elegance, the miniature aristocracy of their appearance is not ill borne out.

In the year 1816, Mrs. Inchbald (of whom more hereafter) knocked at the door of one of these houses, in hopes of getting the apartments that were to let; but the lodginghouse lady was so fine a personage, and so very unaccommodating, besides reserving all the prospect for herself, and charging a round sum for the rooms which had no prospect, that the authoress of the "Simple