This memorial has certainly been placed in a most prominent position, and challenges the attention of the passer-by along the footpath past Kew Gardens, on the opposite shore. As you approach by the ferry-boat, the crazy old stone and brick stairs leading steeply up, beside the broad and easy incline of the shingly ferry-slip, look most imposing, and group well with their surroundings. Where the old original ford across the Brent was situated no man knows, but perhaps near to its junction with the Thames, at a spot where the waters from the greater tidal river rendered the ford impassable except at the ebb. That was the awkward situation of Old Brentford, and one not for very long to be endured by travellers along the great West of England road that runs through this place. Thus it gave way at a very early period to a new ford, somewhat higher up the Brent; and around it in the course of time rose the town of New Brentford, whose being and name in this manner derived directly from the needs of travellers for a ford passable at all hours. The ford was replaced by a bridge in 1280, and that by later stone bridges, or patchings and enlargements of the original. The present representative of them is a quite recent and commodious iron affair, built over the stone arch: very much more convenient for the traffic, but not at all romantic. New Brentford church stands near by; that of Old Brentford is a good quarter of a mile along the road, back towards London, but there is nothing old or interesting about it, seeing that it was entirely rebuilt a few years ago. The Brent, as it flows through the town, is not easily to be distinguished amid the several canal cuts, where the close-packed barges lie, but it may with some patience be traced at the western end of the broad and retired road called “The Butts,” an ancient name significant of a bygone Brentford, very different from the present aspect of the place. “The Butts” is a broad open space, rather than a road, and the houses, old and new, in it are of a superior residential character that would astonish those—and they are far the greater number—who know Brentford only by passing through its narrow and squalid and tramway-infested main street. “The Butts” would appear to have been an ancient practice-ground in archery. The Brent appears at the extremity, down below a very steep bank, and barges lie in it, on the hither side of a sluice. It goes thenceforward in a pronounced curve, to fall into the docks, and passes by the backs of old houses and some still surviving gardens, with the church-tower of St. Leonard’s, New Brentford, peering over old red roofs and clustered gables.