A step farther westward along Cheyne Walk and we turn into Lawrence Street; at the upper end of which, at the corner of Justice Walk, we shall find, in the cellars of “The Prince of Wales” tavern and of the adjoining houses, the remains of the ovens and baking-rooms of the famous Chelsea China factory. For it stood just here during the short forty years of its existence, having been established in 1745. Why it failed and why the factory was torn down, no one seems to know; for its work was extremely fine, and its best ware—turned out from 1750 to 1765—was equal to that of Sèvres. Skilled foreign artizans had been brought over, and an extraordinary specimen of unskilled native workman appeared in Dr. Samuel Johnson. The old scholar conceived the idea that he could make china as admirably as he could make a dictionary; but he never mastered the secret of mixing, and each piece of his cracked in the baking! He used to come out here twice a week, his old housekeeper carrying his basket of food for the day; and was made free of the whole factory, except the mixing-room. They presented him with a full service of their own make, properly baked, however; which he gave or bequeathed to Mrs. Piozzo, and which, at the sale of her effects, was bought by Lord Holland. In “Holland House by Kensington”—to use its good old title—I have seen it, carefully preserved among the other famed _curios_. [Picture: A Chelsea corner] “This is Danvers Street, begun in ye Yeare 1696,” says the quaint old lettering in a corner house of Cheyne Walk; and this street marks the site of Danvers House, which had formed part of More’s property—perhaps the “new buildinge”—and which had gone to his son-in-law, Roper. It came afterward to be owned by Sir John Danvers, a gentleman-usher of Charles I., and he made a superb place of it; of which the deep foundations and the fallen columns now lie under Paultons Square, at the upper end of the street. Sir John Danvers was the second husband of Magdalen Herbert, a woman notable for her famous family of boys: her first son was that strong and strange original, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; her fifth son was George Herbert, of undying memory. The poet lived here for a while. Donne, the preacher, then at Oxford, used to stop at her house on his visits to London; and when he became Vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, in the Strand, near Isaac Walton’s old shop in Chancery Lane, and had converted the Gentle Angler, these two certainly strolled often out here together. Donne preached Lady Danvers’ funeral sermon in Old Chelsea Church in 1627; notable as one of his most touching discourses. * * * * *