and yet not to be late for dinner, to need no heavy knapsack or cumbersome carpet-bag, to do but slight damage to our boots, to require no guide further than a good memory, and to find our purse scarcely lighter at the end of our travels than it was at the commencement.

Our title-page has already divulged the scene of our proposed exploits. But that title-page, like a German joke, requires explanation, and that explanation can, we think, be most fitly given in Kenna's Kingdom itself. Let, then, those who propose to be our fellow-ramblers betake themselves, bodily or mentally, to the capital of Her Brittanic Majesty's dominions, and once arrived there let them proceed westward (who, indeed, save some million or so of the lowest classes ever goes in the contrary direction ?) until they reach the old Court Suburb, Kingly Kensington, where their fellow rambler is waiting for them at the south gate of the Gardens. Here we would ask our readers to step in, take a comfortable seat, say in the Flower Walk, and closing their eyes, allow themselves to drift backwards, backwards to that remote period when fairies gambolled on this island, a period

far beyond the historic era of Julius Cæsar-far beyond the time when the mythic Brutus engaged in mortal combat with the giant race. Such a train of memories will land us in the Golden Age, when all men were brave and honest, and all women fair and true. Then there was no Tichborne Claimant, no tobacco, no organ grinders, no competitive examinations, no tax-gatherers, none of the miseries of modern life. All were happy, because all were contented. The history of Kensington commences somewhere about this period.

A little to the north of where the Palace now stands, rose the dazzling domes and towers of the proud palace of the elfin king Oberon. Clustering round the dwelling place of their monarch. were the crowded streets and glittering spires of the capital of the fairy empire. Its inhabitants were more in number than the leaves of the trees which now flourish on the site of their city, while peers and princes from every portion of the Fairy state thronged hither to do homage to their sovereign. In the daytime the citizens slept, and at night trooped forth to plunder and frolic. Oberon had a beautiful daughter, heiress

to his vast demesnes, who was as straight as the pink, as soft as the blue-bell, as fair as the daisy, and as sweet as the dewdrop. The neighbouring town, we are told, derives its name from this princess. She was called Kenna. Such a peerless maiden found many admirers. One of these was Azuriel, a prince only less than royal, and the lord of ten thousand vassals. He resided on the spot where now stands Holland House. The dominions of another, whose name was Oriel, stretched along the banks of the Thames, and his wealth and generosity were boundless. The "cleanly servant," the "careful wife," and the " neat dairymaid," received many a fairy vail from his store of silver tokens. But Kenna cared for neither of these suitors; her heart had already been bestowed on another.

The king of the mortals in England at this time. was Albion, a monarch descended from old Neptune, the sovereign of the seas. It chanced one day that as Albion's wife and child lay sleeping in the palace, one of the most wily of Oberon's nymphs passed through the regal apartments, and at once bore off the unconscious infant in triumph. It became her object to

reduce him to the elfin standard of size; but in spite of all her efforts, in spite of a diet of dwarf élderberries and daisy roots, on reaching manhood he was a foot in height-two inches taller than any of the fairy nation! Besides this advantage, his skill in the tourney and the dance attracted the admiration of all observers.

This was the youth for whom Kenna languished in her high palace, maiden modesty forbidding her to declare her love otherwise than by the silent language of her eyes. But Albion, for the young prince bore the name of his father, was not slow to read her downcast looks and blushes. His courtship shows how much in these last two thousand years we have degenerated in the art of love-making. Albion presented his mistress with dew-laden flowers, with ripe fruit, with glow-worms, and with wren's eggs, and such simple gifts found ready acceptance for the sake of him who gave. Now-a-days ladye-loves reckon the value of their valentines by the jewels which accompany the love-tokens, rather than by the verses inscribed on them. Albion even gave Kenna botany lessons, nor does the little love-sick maid seem to

have considered them tedious. The lovers poured out their souls to each other in such language as we poor mortals can neither imagine nor describe. Their stolen interviews took place at noontide, the midnight of the fairy kingdom, when the "huge, wretched sons of earth" alone are stirring. At this hour the lovers sat one day "beneath a lofty tulip's ample shade." (Tulips, we may incidentally observe, are not supposed to have been introduced into England until some scores of centuries later; evidently an error on the part of botanists.) Here Albion and Kenna plighted their troth, and the enamoured boy had just sealed the compact on her rosy lips, when, to their mutual horror, the form of Oberon appeared from behind the trunk of a sunflower where he had lain in concealment. A blast from the elfin monarch's horn summons his subjects to his aid; Albion is driven from the side of the weeping Kenna, and the enraged parent orders that immediate preparations shall be made for the marriage of his daughter with Azuriel. Albion and Oriel, the two disappointed suitors, determine upon revenge. The first, remembering his descent from the ocean god, begs assistance of his