The Scene Changes--A City River--Battersea--Chelsea--The Old Church--Sir T. More and Sir Hans Sloane--Cheyne Walk--Don Saltero's Coffee-house and Thomas Carlyle--The Botanical Gardens--Chelsea Hospital--The Pensioners--Battersea Park--The Suspension Bridge--Vauxhall--Lambeth--The Church and Palace--Westminster Palace and the Abbey--Its Foundation and History--Westminster Hall--Westminster Bridge--The Victoria Embankment--York Gate--Waterloo Bridge and Somerset House--The Temple--Blackfriars Bridge--St. Paul's--Southwark Bridge--The Old Theatres--Cannon Street Bridge--London Bridge and its Traffic. It is at Battersea and Chelsea that the Thames first acquires unmistakably the character of a metropolitan stream. Hamlets there are, higher up, which announce the proximity of a great capital; but here is the capital itself, though only the rudimentary beginnings, or, to speak more correctly, the scattered ends. Looking down the channel from this point of view, we see on both sides abundant evidence of crowded life--of industry on the one bank, and of wealth on the other. The omnibus of the river--the penny steamboat--plies to and fro on its frequent errands. On shore, the vehicles of London bring something of its noise. Yet there is plenty of quiet in both these old-fashioned suburbs; and, although innovation has been at work here as elsewhere, nooks may be found, both in Battersea and Chelsea, which have all the character of a sleepy old county town. Battersea, in particular, is the most straggling oddity in the neighbourhood of London--a grave, slow, otiose place, lulled with the lapping of waves, soothed with the murmur of trees in unsuspected gardens, troubled but little with the clamour of passing trains, and dreaming, perhaps, of eighteenth-century days, when there were mansions in the land, and my Lord Bolingbroke had his family seat near the church. The river here makes a somewhat abrupt curve, and gives a dubious outline to the whole locality. Small inlets run up between old walls, dark with the sludge of many years; and the streets and buildings have had to accommodate themselves to the caprices of the stream. Hence it is that, when walking about Battersea, you speedily lose your bearings, and, after following a devious lane which you suppose to be parallel with the river, suddenly find yourself on a bit of shingly strand, with a barge on the limits of the tide, and a general appearance as if the end of all things had been reached. [Illustration: OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE, 1890.]