What remains of the old village of Chiswick lies considerably to the east of all these developments, and beside the river. There, past Hogarth House, where that famous painter lived and worked—now a museum and showplace at sixpence a head, in memory of him—stands old Chiswick church. Restorations and additions have left really very little of the original building, but it wears a very plausible appearance of age. The weather-vane exhibits a figure of St. Nicholas, to whom the church is dedicated, standing in a boat and holding a staff surmounted by a cross. A strange inscription may be seen on the churchyard wall, at the east end. It seems to tell of a time when Chiswick was a village in every rustic circumstance: This wall was made at ye charges of Ye right honourable and Truly pious Lorde Francis Russell, Earle of Bedford, out of true zeale and care for ye keeping of this church yarde and ye wardrobe of godds saints whose bodies lay theirin buryed from violating by swine and other prophanation so witnesseth William Walker V. A.D. 1623. Rebuilt 1831. Refaced 1884. No one appears to know who was William Walker the Fifth, and history is equally silent on the subject of the others of that dynasty. The neighbourhood is now one of remarkably striking contrasts. By the church stands the “Burlington Arms,” an old inn claiming a remote origin, early in the fifteenth century, and with obvious honesty, for the ancient oaken timbers remain to bear witness to the fact. It is a quite humble, but cosy, little inn, astonishingly dwarfed by a great towering fortress-like brewery at the back; as though Beer had withdrawn itself into a final stronghold, there to defend itself to the last vat. Opposite the inn and this Bung Castle stands a stately red-brick mansion of early in the eighteenth century, with fine wrought-iron garden-gates. Up the street are other fine old mansions, mingled with squalid streets; and round by the riverside is Chiswick Mall, with other noble houses of the olden times. Osiers are cut even to this day on Chiswick Eyot, the reedy island opposite. Such are the contrasts of Chiswick, one of the last outposts of rural things in these parts. To find the last we must travel on through the Mall and on to the more sophisticated Mall of Hammersmith; thence proceeding across the bridge and along the Hammersmith Bridge Road to Barnes. That is the very last village. Near by is Mortlake. No one has ever satisfactorily explained that place-name, nor attempted to define the _mortuus lacus_—the dead, or stagnant lake—that would seem to have originated it. Nowadays it is rather to a dead level of commonplace that Mortlake is descending, in the surrounding jerry-building activities. All that is left of the old church is the tower, apparently restored in the time of Henry the Eighth, for a tablet on the western face is inscribed “Vivat R.H. 8, 1543.” [Illustration: TOMB OF EDWARD ROSE, BARNES.]