"In old days ... the hawthorn spread across the fields and market gardens that lay between Kensington and the river. Lanes ran to Chelsea, to Fulham, to North End, where Richardson once lived and wrote in his garden-house. The mist of the great city hid the horizon and dulled the sound of the advancing multitude; but close at hand ... were country corners untouched--blossoms instead of bricks in spring-time, summer shade in summer."--_Miss Thackeray, Old Kensington._ "There is not a step of the way, from ... Kensington Gore to ... Holland House, in which you are not greeted with the face of some pleasant memory. Here, to 'mind's eyes' ... stands a beauty, looking out of a window; there, a wit, talking with other wits at a garden gate; there, a poet on the green sward, glad to get out of the London smoke and find himself among trees. Here come De Veres of the times of old; Hollands and Davenants, of the Stuart and Cromwell times; Evelyn peering about him soberly, and Samuel Pepys in a bustle.... Here, in his carriage, is King William the Third, going from the Palace to open Parliament ... and there, from out of Kensington Gardens, comes bursting, as if the whole recorded polite world were in flower at one and the same period, all the fashion of the gayest times of those sovereigns, blooming with chintzes, full-blown with hoop-petticoats, towering topknots and toupées.... Who is to know of all this company, and not be willing to meet it?"--_Leigh Hunt._ "Faith, and it's the old Court suburb that you spoke of, is it? Sure, an' it's a mighty fine place for the quality."--_Old Play._ [Illustration: _Anglers in the Parks._]