Some of London's finest mansions are now to be found in this Knightsbridge Road. On the left, as you go towards Kensington, are Kent House (Louisa, Lady Ashburton), once lived in by the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father; Stratheden House, and Alford House,--this last a fine modern building of brick and terra-cotta, with high roofs. Beyond Kensington Gore (so called from "Old Gore House," that once occupied the site of the Albert Hall), is the attractive and strangely rural-looking Lowther Lodge, now so cruelly dominated by tall "mansions"; and further still, the vast "Albert Hall," a red Colosseum of music. This, in spring, is a delightful drive; indeed, London wears here such a semi-suburban air that it is with almost the feeling of entering a new townlet that we presently approach the charming "High Street" of Old Kensington. Charming it is still, with still something of an old-world air; and yet, during the last fifty years or so, it has terribly altered. In the old days, the days when "the shabby tide of progress" had not yet spread to this quiet old suburb of which Miss Thackeray wrote so lovingly;--had not yet engulfed "one relic after another, carrying off many and many a landmark and memory,"--there were "gardens, and trees, and great walls along the high road that came from London, passing through the old white turnpike.... In those days the lanes spread to Fulham, white with blossom in spring, or golden with the yellow London sunsets that blazed beyond the cabbage-fields.... There were high brown walls along Kensington Gardens, reaching to the Palace Gate: elms spread their shade and birds chirruped, and children played behind them." Yet, even for sweet Dolly Vanborough, Miss Thackeray confesses, Old Kensington was already vanishing. Already for her "the hawthorn bleeds as it is laid low and is transformed year after year into iron railings and areas, for particulars of which you are requested to apply to the railway company, and to Mr. Taylor, the house-agent." How much, alas, is left of it now? True, Holland House, and Kensington Palace, and Gardens, are left inviolate, but Campden Hill is adorned by the aspiring chimneys of waterworks, the peace of quiet Kensington Square is invaded by model lodging-houses, the underground railway defiles the pleasant High Street, and where of old the hawthorn bloomed, tall placards now advertise "Very Desirable Mansions to be Let on Exceptional Terms." [Illustration: _Kensington Palace and the Round Pond._] But Kensington has not changed in essentials. In those old days it was already, as it is now, a great Roman Catholic quarter, with convents and shops for the sale of sacred objects. No great cathedral had as yet been built there; no Newman as yet looked steadfastly from his marble alcove over the noisy Brompton Road; the tendencies in that direction were, however, already paramount.