Chelsea is becoming fashionable along the river frontage; but, although the stately red-brick mansions recently erected on the Embankment are sumptuous and noble, the chief interest of the locality is in the older parts. Advancing in the direction of town, historic Chelsea begins about the spot represented in our view of Cheyne Walk. The fine old house at the corner of Beaufort Street is an excellent specimen of the kind of suburban dwelling our forefathers used to build, when, the land being far less valuable than now, they spread out broadly and roomily, and were not constrained to pile storey upon storey, until the roofs seemed desirous of making acquaintance with the clouds. It is at this point that the Chelsea Embankment commences--a splendid promenade between avenues of plane-trees, which every season will make more umbrageous. Several years ago, before the late Sir Joseph Bazalgette began to reclaim the river-bank, there was no more picturesque spot in Chelsea, of the dirty, out-at-elbows order, than the bit extending eastward from Battersea Bridge to the old church. Its fantastic irregularity of roof and gable, its dormer windows, its beetling chimney-stacks, its red and brown, its look of somnolent old age and grave experience, had something of a Dutch character; but it was certainly not Dutch in point of cleanliness. Picturesque it is still; but the Embankment has swept away that side of the street which was towards the river, while the ragged tenements on the other side await the hands of the destroyer. [Illustration: CHEYNE WALK.]