Then arose fair mansions, chiefly upon the southern side, giving upon the river, for the sake of the airy gardens, as well as of easy access to the stream which remained London's great and easy highway until long after the Strand had been paved and rendered practicable for wheels. It was upon the water, then, that the real pageant of London life--a fine and well-coloured pageant it must often have been--was to be seen. By water it was that the people of the great houses went to their plots, their wooings, their gallant intrigues, to Court, or to Parliament. Also it was by water that not infrequently they went, by way of Traitor's Gate, to Tower Hill, or at least to dungeons which were only saved from being eternal by policy or expediency. This long Strand of palaces became the theatre of a vast volume of history which marked the rise and extension of some of the grandest houses that had been founded in feudalism, or have been built upon its ruins. Some of the families which lived there in power and pomp are mere memories now; but the names of many of them are still familiar in Belgravia as once they were in the Strand. There was, to start with, the original Somerset House, more picturesque, let us hope, than the depressing mausoleum which now daily reminds us that man is mortal. Then there was the famous York House, nearer to Charing Cross, of which nothing but the water-gate is left. On the opposite side of the way was Burleigh House, the home of the great statesman who, under God and Queen Elizabeth, did such great things for England. Burleigh is one of the earliest recorded cases of a man being killed by over-work. "Ease and pleasure," he sighed, while yet he was under fifty, "quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." The site of Burleigh House is kept in memory, as those of so many other of the vanished palaces of the Strand, by a street named after it; and the office of this magazine stands no doubt upon a part of Lord Burleigh's old garden. When Southampton House, Essex House, the Palace of the Savoy, and Northumberland House, which disappeared so lately, are added, we have still mentioned but a few of the more famous of the Strand houses. [Illustration: The Strand as we know it, looking west]