Nowadays the needs or the greed, I know not which, of their successive Graces have caused the land along either side of Duke’s Avenue to be let for building upon; and although, as already remarked, the trees remain, and are indeed finer than of yore, numerous very nice villas may be found there; a little dank perhaps in autumn and in wet weather generally, when those trees hold much moisture in suspense, but still, quite desirable villas. The wonderfully fine old wrought-iron gates were really much finer in the artistic way than one ever suspected, as a schoolboy, and they were flanked by rusticated stone piers surmounted by sphinxes. Exactly what they were like you may see any day in London, for they were removed in recent years to Piccadilly, there to ornament the entrance to the Duke’s town house, and to render the exterior of that hideous building, if it might be, a thought less hideous. They have had their adventures, having originally formed the chief entrance to Heathfield House, Turnham Green, inhabited about the middle of the eighteenth century by Viscount Dunkerron. A Duke of Devonshire acquired them in 1837. There were very frequent grand spreads and entertainments of various gorgeous kinds at Chiswick House in the distant days when one went to school at Turnham Green. His late Majesty Edward the Seventh, of blessed memory, occasionally, as Prince of Wales, had Chiswick House in summer-time between 1866 and 1879. He was not perhaps so universally popular then; for those were the days when Sir Charles Dilke was posing as a red-hot Radical, and furious persons of that kidney talked of republics and all that kind of nonsense. But at anyrate, rank and fashion were to be observed flocking to the princely garden-parties here; and very stunning the carriages and the horses, the harness and the liveries looked; and very beautiful, it seemed, the ladies with their sunshades and dainty toilettes. Those were days long before any one could have predicted the present motor-car era, and no one could ever have imagined that the daughters of those daintily attired ones would be content to drive along amid dust and stinks, and to tie up their countenances with wrappings that sometimes look like fly-papers, and at others like dishclouts. And those, too, were the days not only before electric tramways, but also before even horsed trams, along the Chiswick high road; and Turnham Green (the worthy proprietor of our school called it “Chiswick,” because it looked better) was a quite rustic place, and the distance of five miles to home in London seemed to one person at least a very far cry.