of a smaller class than the ordinary square barges of the Thames, and provided with a foresail only.

A mill and miller's house near the river (reached by the second gateway from the church in the direction of the bridge) contain all that remains of the old manorhouse where Bolingbroke died.

Battersea Park, formed in 1856-57, faces Chelsea Hospital. It is pretty in summer, and its sub-tropical garden, of four acres, is beautiful. Two bridges, Albert Bridge and New Chelsea Bridge, connect it with the opposite shore. It was in Battersea Fields that the Duke of Wellington fought a duel with the Earl of Winchilsea in 1829.

Maitland* considers that this is the place where the Britons, after being defeated by Claudius, were compelled to ford the river, and were followed by the Emperor, who completely routed them. He also thinks that Julius Cæsar effected the passage of the Thames at this spot.

"History of London."

K

CHAPTER XI.

KENSINGTON AND HOLLAND HOUSE.

NIGHTSBRIDGE, till lately a suburb, now part of

London, skirts the southern side of Hyde Park. It is supposed to derive its name from two knights who quarrelled on their way to receive the Bishop of London's blessing, and, fighting, killed each other by the bridge over the West Bourne. The brook called the West Bourne has shared the fate of all London brooks, and is now a sewer, but it still works its way under ground from Hampstead, after giving its name to a district in Bayswater, and passes under Belgravia to the Thames. Pont Street has its name from a bridge over the West Bourne.

At the crossways, where the Brompton Road turns off to the left, is Tattersall's, the most celebrated auction mart for horses in existence, and the headquarters of horse-racing, established in 1774 by Richard Tattersall, stud-groom to the last Duke of Kingston. Sales take place every Monday throughout the year, and every Thursday during the season. The business of the firm is confined to the selling of horses; they have nothing to do with the betting.

Following the Knightsbridge Road on the left are several of the handsomest houses in London-Kent House (Louisa, Lady Ashburton), on the site of a house once inhabited by the Duke of Kent; Stratheden House, where Lord Campbell wrote his "Lives of the Lord Chancellors ;" and Alford House (Lady Marian Alford), an admirable building of brick, with high roofs, and terra-cotta ornaments.

Beyond this are Rutland Gate and Prince's Gate.

No. 49 Prince's Gate, the house of Mr. Leyland, contains the Peacock Room, decorated by Mr. Whistler in 1876-77. The walls and ceiling are entirely covered with peacock iridescence, while the separate peacocks on the shutters are full of nature and beauty, and still more those in defiance over the sideboard, which express a peacockdrama.

The tall brick chimneys and gables on the left belong to

the highly picturesque Lowther Lodge (Hon. W. Lowther), an admirable work of Norman Shaw.

All along this road London has been moving out of town for the last twenty years, but has never succeeded in getting into the country.

At Kensington Gore, where Wilberforce resided from 1808 to 1821, and held his anti-slavery meetings, and where Lady Blessington lived afterwards, the centre of a

brilliant circle, the line of houses and villas is broken by the Albert Hall, a vast elliptical building of brick, with terracotta decorations. It was commenced in 1867, and is used as a music-hall. This huge pile has no beauty, except in the porches, which are exceedingly grandiose in form, and effective in shadow and colour.

[Behind the Albert Hall is a vast quadrangular space, occupied (1877) by the Horticultural Gardens, and sur

rounded by Exhibition Galleries. At its south-eastern angle, facing Cromwell Road, is the South Kensington Museum. See Ch. XII.]

Opposite the Hall, marking the site of the Crystal Palace of 1851, and of the Exhibition whose success was SO greatly due to his exertions, is the Albert Memorial, erected from designs of Sir Gilbert Scott to the ever-honoured memory of the Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe Gotha (ob. Dec. 14, 1861). Here, beneath a somewhat flimsy imitation of a Gothic shrine of the thirteenth century, the seated statue of the Prince is barely distinguishable through the dazzlement of a gilded glitter. The pedestal, whose classic forms so strangely contrast with the Gothic structure above, is decorated with a vast number of statuettes in high relief, representing different painters, sculptors, and musicians, from Hiram and Bezaleel, Cheops and Sennacherib, to Pugin, Barry, and Cockerell!

The Iron Gates of the Park near this were made at Colebrook Dale for the south transept of the Crystal Palace of 1851.

Beyond the Albert Memorial, on the right, are Kensington Gardens, the pleasantest and most picturesque of the London recreation-grounds, occupying 261 acres. They were begun by William III. near Kensington Palace, and enlarged by Queen Anne and Queen Caroline of Anspach. The earlier gardens still retain traces of the Dutch style in which they were originally laid out. Near the high road to the south is "St. Govor's Well." The portion nearer Hyde Park has noble groves and avenues of old trees, crowded with people sitting and walking on Sunday afternoons. The pleasantest and broadest of these walks ends in an iron