It is but a step to the spacious, many-windowed brick building in the King’s Road; on the pediment of which, in Cheltenham Terrace, we read: “The Royal Military Asylum for the Children of Soldiers of the Regular Army.” It is popularly known as the “Duke of York’s School,” and is devoted to the training of the orphan boys of poor soldiers. It is a pleasant sight to watch them going through their manœuvres in their gravel ground; or, off duty, playing football and leap-frog. They bear themselves right martially in their red jackets and queer caps, a few proudly carrying their corporal’s yellow chevrons, a fewer still prouder of their “good conduct stripes.” It was “B 65,” big with the double dignity of both badges of honour, who unbent to my questioning; and explained that the lads are entered at the age of ten, can remain until fourteen, can then become drummers if fitted for that vocation, or can give up their army career and take their chances in civilians’ pursuits. We may not pause long before the iron gates which let us look in on the mansion named Blacklands; now a private mad-house, and the only remnant of the great estate once owned by Lord Cheyne, and which covered more than the extent of Sloane Street and Square, Cadogan and Hans Place: all these laid out and built by Holland in 1777, and by him called Hans Town. We might have stopped, a while ago, in front of the vast Chelsea barracks, just to the south, to look at the faded plaster-fronted shop, opposite. “The Old Chelsea Bun-House,” its sign assured us it was, before its demolition last year; yet it was only the descendant of the original house, which stood a little farther east up Pimlico Road, formerly Jews’ Road. That once mal-odorous street is yet fragrant with the buns baked there in the last century, when the little shop was crowded with dainty damsels in hoops and furbelows, with gallants in wigs and three-cornered hats, while stately flunkies strode in the street below. “Pray, are not the fine buns sold here in our town as the rare Chelsea buns? I bought one to-day in my walk”—Swift tells Stella in his journal for 1712. Half-mad George III. and Queen Charlotte—she popularly known as “Old Snuffy”—were fond of driving out to Chelsea Bun-House, to sit on its verandah munching buns, much stared at by the curious crowd. The old building was torn down in 1839, “to the general regret in London and its environs,” its crazy collection of poor pictures, bogus antiques, and genuine Chelsea ware being sold by auction; all of which is duly chronicled in “The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction” of April 6, 1839.