The grounds of Monmouth House—now built over by a great board-school—stretched back to those of the Rectory of St. Luke’s, a step to the northward. The Rectory is an irregular brick building, delightful to the eye, set in an old-fashioned lawn with great trees; its tranquillity assured by a high brick wall. It is a very old house, was built by the Marquis of Winchester, and granted by him to the parish on May 6th, 1566, at the request of Queen Elizabeth. Glebe Place, just at hand, shows the site of the glebe land given in her time, in exchange for the older parsonage, which stood still farther west, behind Millman’s Row, now Millman’s Street. The historic interest of this Chelsea Rectory, however, is dwarfed by its personal appeal to all of us, for that it was the home of three notable boys; named, in the order of their ages, Charles, George, and Henry Kingsley. They came here in the year 1836; their father, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, having received the living of St. Luke’s, Chelsea, from Lord Cadogan. So their beloved west-country life was exchanged for the prim, parochial prosiness, which made such a doleful difference to them all. For these boys were born, it seems to me, with the instant love of life and movement in their blood. Charles has shown it in almost everything he wrote; Henry gave utterance to it in his books only in a less degree, because it found vent in his years of wandering; while George—better known as “The Doctor”—appears for a little while at spasmodic intervals at his home on Highgate Hill, then plunges into space again, and is vaguely heard of, now yachting in the South Seas, now chatting delightfully in a Colorado mining-camp. Henry, the youngest, was a sensitive, shy lad, delicate in health; and the old dames in this neighbourhood tell of his quiet manner and modest bearing. Many of the poor old women about here have a vivid remembrance of “the boys,” and speak of the whole family with respect and affection. Henry was born in 1830, studied at King’s College, London, for a little over two years, 1844–6; his name was entered at Worcester College, Oxford, March 6th, 1850; where he kept ten terms, leaving at Easter, 1853, without taking his degree. The Australian “gold-digging fever” was then raging, and he started for that country with two friends. There he did all sorts of things: tried mining, tried herding, became a stockman, was in the mounted police; and after about five years of these varied vocations, returned to England with no gold in his pockets. It was all in his brain; a precious possession of experience of life and of men, to be coined into the characters and the scenes which have passed current all over the globe. All his Australian stories are admirable, and “Geoffrey Hamlyn”—his first work, produced soon after his return, in 1859—is the best tale of colonial life ever written. His parents had intended that he should take holy orders, hoping perhaps that he should succeed his