CHAPTER VII. HIGH STREET-COLBY HOUSE, AND DEATH OF A MISER -KENSINGTON PALACE GARDENS THE ROOKERY KENSINGTON SQUARE-DUCHESS OF MAZARIN-BLACK MORE BISHOPS HOUGH AND HERRING-TALLEYRAND. MAWSONARCHBISHOP We have now come to Kensington High Street, and shall take our way on the lefthand side of it, continuing to do so through the whole town, and noticing the streets and squares that branch out of it as we proceed. We shall then turn at the end of the town, and come back by Holland House, Campden House, and Kensington Palace and Gardens. On our right hand, over the way, is the Palace Gate with its sentinels; and opposite this gate, where we are halting, is a sturdy, good-sized house, a sort of undergrown mansion, singularly so for its style of building, and looking as if it must have been the work of Vanbrugh, one of whose edifices will be noticed further on. It is just in his "no nonsense" style; what his opponents called "heavy;" but very sensible and to the purpose; built for duration. It is only one story high, and looks as if it had been made for some rich old bachelor, who chose to live alone, but liked to have everything about him strong and safe. Such was probably the case, for it is called Colby House, after a baronet of that name, who lived in the time of George the First, and who appears to have been a man of humble origin, and a miser. A spectator of the house might imagine, that the architect was stopped, when about to commence a third story, in order to save the expense. Dr. King, the Jacobite divine, who knew Colby, and who thinks he was a commissioner in the Victualling Office, says (in his "Literary and Political Anecdotes of His Own Times") that the baronet killed himself by rising in the middle of the night, when he was in a profuse perspiration (the consequence of a medicine taken to that effect), and going down stairs for the key of the cellar, which he had inadvertently left on the table. "He was apprehensive that his servants might seize the key, and rob him of a bottle of his port wine." "This man," adds the Doctor "died in testate, and left more than £200,000 in the funds, which was shared among five or six day-labourers, who were his nearest relations." "Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store, The High Street of Kensington, though the place is so near London, and contains so many new buildings, has a considerable resemblance to that of a country town. This is owing to the moderate size of the houses, to their general style of building (which is that of a century or two ago), and to the curious, though not obvious, fact, that not one of the fronts of them is exactly like another. It is also neat and clean; its abutment on a palace associates it with something of an air of refinement; and the first object that presents itself to the gra attention, next after the sentinels at the Palace Gate, is a white and pretty lodge, at the entrance of the new road leading to Bayswater. The lodge, however, is somewhat too narrow. The road is called Kensington Palace Gardens, and is dually filling with mansions, some of which are in good taste and others in bad, and none of them have gardens, to speak of; so that the spectator does not well see why anybody should live there, who can afford to live in houses so large. Pleasant, however, as the aspect of High Street is on first entering it, the eye has scarcely caught sight of the lodge just mentioned, when it encounters a sore in the shape of some poor Irish people hanging about, at the corner of the first turning on the left hand. They look like people from the old broken up establishment of Saint |