Across Oakley Street, we come to a lately restored house which bears the old sign of the Magpie and Stump. The “Magpie Inn,” one of the oldest houses in Chelsea, was a rendezvous for the supporters of the Stuart cause in 1715 and 1745; they could slip away by water if in danger of discovery. Next come, alas! some lamentable gaps, interspersed with a few odd walls and gables still remaining, parts of old Shrewsbury House, where Mary Queen of Scots was held in custody by the Earl of Shrewsbury. The form of the house cannot be traced, though an old print gives it as a hollow square standing back from the present roadway; it was broken up in 1813, but without doubt parts of it have been built into the present small houses. By the by, the Earl of Shrewsbury who had charge of Queen Mary was also fourth husband of the notorious Bess of Hardwick, and Queen Elizabeth is reported to have pitied him for having such intimate acquaintance with “two she devils.” No. 48 was once a Quakers’ Meeting House. The Hospital for Incurable Children, of which Queen Alexandra is President, nobly fills the site of some very old, tall houses, in one of which Holman Hunt painted his “Light of the World”; the old vine was preserved, and still bears small, sweet grapes in a hot season; the children’s voices sound merrily as you pass their open windows, and the saddest inmates are those who, having been sent here as incurable, are told that they are nearly healed and must shortly return to their homes. Beyond Lombards’ Row, already noticed, where the old Archway House stood to shelter Jacobite plotters, are some new houses which are surely an anachronism in our Queen Anne Walk (the original dates hereabouts are 1710-11), but the Copper Door is a fine piece of work, and a splendid reflector of sunshine. Across Danvers Street lies the waste land surrounding the lately erected Crosby Hall, of which I do not suffer myself to write, so keenly do I resent its importation into the hallowed precincts of Sir Thomas More’s whilom garden. Those who wish to inspect it can do so by inquiring for the custodian and the keys at More’s Gardens Mansions (entrance corner of Beaufort Street). [Illustration: _Photo by Miss Charlotte Lloyd._ LINDSEY HOUSE. p. 52] ] Crossing Beaufort Street, all the houses are gracious and of good report, and the entire proportions of Lindsey House can be made out from the pavement on the riverside, sub-divided as it now is into five or six different dwellings, and at one gabled end slightly extended.