saw the originals grinning, or scowling, or planted in blank amazement before the pictorial libels on the walls. "In the gardens Sir Charles Fox built for us a huge barrack of wood, glass, and iron, which we called the 'Baronial Hall,' and which we filled with pictures and lithographs, and flags and calico, in our own peculiar fashion. We hired a large grazing-meadow at the back of the gardens, from a worthy Kensington cowkeeper, and having fitted up another barrack at one end of it, called it the 'Pré D'Orsay.' We memorialized the Middlesex magistrates, and, after a great deal of trouble, got a licence enabling us to sell wines and spirits, and to have music and dancing if we so chose. We sprinkled tents and alcoves all over our gardens, and built a gipsies' cavern, and a stalactite pagoda with double windows, in which gold and silver fish floated. And finally, having engaged an army of pages, cooks, scullions, waiters, barmaids, and clerks of the kitchen, we opened this monstrous place on the first of May, 1851, and bade all the world come and dine at SOYER'S SYMPOSIUM." However, the ungrateful public disregarded the invitation, and poor Alexis Soyer is believed to have lost 4000_l._ by this enterprise. He died a few years after, at the early age of fifty. His friend Mr. Sala has said of him with true pathos:--"He was a vain man; but he was good and kind and charitable. There are paupers and beggars _even among French cooks_, and Alexis always had his pensioners and his alms-duns, to whom his hand was ever open. He was but a cook, but he was my dear and good friend." We remember to have heard Soyer say of the writer of these truthful words, in reply to an inquiry as to the artist of the figures upon the staircase-walls, "He is a very clever fellow, of whom you will hear much,"--a prediction which has been fully verified. Brompton, with its two centuries of Nursery fame, lasted to our time; southward, among "the Groves," were the Florida, Hoop and Toy, and other tea-garden taverns; there remains the Swan, with its bowling-green. KNIGHTSBRIDGE TAVERNS.