made her the friend of sovereigns. And the
Pope figured in her will.

Marquis Wellesley redeems Kingston
House from the disgrace of its origin; for
he was a highly refined personage. Some
thought him too refined; and stories were
told of the care which he took of his complexion.
Fastidious he certainly was; fond
of pomp and show, when he governed India;
and a little too superfine perhaps in his tastes
always. There was a curious difference in
these, as well as in some other respects,
between him and his brother, the great
soldier. But we must not lightly believe
stories to the disparagement of those who
mingle infirmities with great qualities. What
is certain of the Marquis Wellesley is, that
with all his aristocratic drawbacks, he was a
man of gentle and kindly manners in private;
very generous; an energetic, judicious, and
upon the whole singularly liberal statesman
for an extender of empire; and that the
passion in him which survived all others, was
a love of the classical studies of his boyhood.
This was so strong, that he directed himself
to be buried at Eton College, where he had
been brought up; a triumphant testimony
surely to the natural goodness of his heart. It
is affecting to our common humanity to see
one of the most public of statesmen, and one of
the most sequestered of poets (Gray, in his
Ode) thus meeting on the same good old
ground of boyish reminiscence.

     Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
     Ah fields belov'd in vain!
     Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
     A stranger yet to pain!

Not in vain, however, if their influence thus
accompanies us through life, and greets our
approaches to the grave.

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.

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
numbers two and three 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 outhouses, 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 live alone); or that five younger brothers
of Lords of the Bedchamber had been the
occupants — 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 eighteen hundred and sixteen,
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 lodging-house 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 Story indignantly walked off. She
says that the furniture was crazy; that she
would not have accepted the first floor had it
been offered her for nothing; and that one of
her big trunks would have taken up half the
bedroom.

Since that day, there is reason to believe
that the furniture has much improved; for
besides the air of taste which is diffused over
all the little stuccoed houses, they have
boasted divers inhabitants of worship; and
at number five lived Count D'Orsay, whose
name is publicly synonymous with elegant
and graceful accomplishment, and who, by
those who knew him well, is affectionately
remembered and regretted, as a man whose
great abilities might have raised him to any
distinction, and whose gentle heart even a
world of fashion left unspoiled.

Number two, in this row, now called
Hamilton Lodge, was the occasional
residence of the once famous demagogue, Wilkes
— a man as much over-estimated perhaps
by his admirers for a patriotism which
was never thoroughly disinterested, as he