as if weary of waiting for their owner to come home from the Dutch wars. Through narrow archways we catch glimpses of trees and of gardens. Turning down a rural lane we stroll into “The Vale,” and find a clump of cottages, covered with vines, grown about with greenery; flowers blow, cocks crow, an air of country unconcern covers the enclosure. The French gardeners who came here in crowds in 1685, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and set Chelsea all a-bloom with their nurseries, have left to their heirs but a diminished domain; yet although Butterfly Alley, sought by sauntering swells, has gone, King’s Road is still countrified by its florists: their famous wistarias grow on the Hospital walls and climb the houses of Cheyne Walk: you still find their fig-trees in private gardens, their vines on old-fashioned trellises: they make Chelsea streets all green and golden with their massed creepers through summer and through autumn. In unexpected corners you will stumble on a collection of cosy cottages, like Camera Square; there are a few rural nooks still left; here and there a woodland walk; and in dairies hid behind stone streets the cow is milked for you while you wait to drink the warm milk. And on the river bank, although the old Roman and the old Norman wall and walk are replaced by the broad new Embankment and its smug gardens; although the insolent affectations of the Queen Anne mania stare stonily down on Cheyne Walk; all these have not been able to vulgarise this most delightful of promenades. Starting from Chelsea Barracks we can still walk under the old plane trees:—on our right the ancient Dutch-fronted houses, so prim, so secluded, so reserved; on our left the placid flow of the storied Thames, broadened here into Chelsea Reach:—to dingy, dear old Battersea Bridge, and so on to Sand’s End. At each end of our walk are the two small rivulets which bounded the old parish east and west; one is now arched over and flows unseen beneath the tread of busy feet; the other serves as a railway cutting and carries rattling trains: so the old-time memories of the place now either flow underground, or are modernised and become part of its daily life. [Picture: The Embankment and Old Battersea Bridge]