Sacred to the Memory of Sarah Siddons, who departed this life, June 8th, 1831, in her 76th year. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” Mrs. Siddons lived at one time in Paddington; but Mr. Cunningham tells us, in his Hand-book for London, that the pretty little house and grounds which she occupied, were destroyed, to make room for the Great Western Railway; Desborough Lodge, however, in which I am informed she lived, still stands in the Harrow-road, a little south and east of the second Canal bridge. {183b} Poor Haydon, who devoted “forty-two years to the improvement of the taste of the English people in high art,” lived in Paddington; and his shattered corpse was placed near the spot, where Mrs. Siddons was buried. At no great distance, Collins, the painter of English coast and cottage scenery, lies. And Dr. Geddes, the “Translator of the Historical Books of the Old Testament,” was buried in Paddington Church-yard. His surviving friends could engrave on his tombstone the following sentence from his works:— “Christian is my name, and Catholic my surname; I grant that you are a Christian as well as I, and embrace you as my fellow disciple of Jesus; and if you were not a disciple of Jesus, still I would embrace you as my fellow man.” Yet, because he dared to express his honest conviction, as to the real origin of the Books he had taken so much trouble to translate, he was condemned and despised by many zealots, who thought their hatred a Christian act; and “public censure was passed upon him by the Vicar Apostolic, of the London district.” The Life of this great scholar, and good man, was published by Dr. Mason Good, in 1803. Banks the sculptor; the elder George Barret; Merlin the mechanist; the careful sculptor Nollekins, and his father; the Marquis of Lansdowne, without a word to mark his tomb, and many other notables; lie buried in this church and churchyard. But, although thoughts are to be picked up, by day as well as by night, in a ramble among the tombs, it is not my intention to copy all the grave-stones, or to encroach on the province of the biographer, or village barber, if there be one such useful gossip still remaining among us. For a sketch of a people, whether forming a parish or a nation, it is better to go to their laws, and observe the effects those laws have produced; than to rely on any description of individuals, dead or living. With the exception of the ancient customs of the place, the common law of the land was the light which guided the people of Paddington, down to the middle of the last century. Then, as we have already seen, began the enactment of special laws,—laws which altered the relations between those who had duties to perform, and those who had rights and privileges to protect.