You step through it into a remote space where a medieval building stands in the midst of the little rock gardens planted by the Belgian refugees to while away their anxious, tedious hours. Many men have passed through the old hall since Sir John Crosby built it, for at different times it had belonged to the Duke of Gloucester (Richard III.), Sir Thomas More, his son-in-law William Roper, and various ambassadors and nobles. In 1609 it was the home of that Countess of Pembroke whose charms evoked from William Browne the epitaph so often attributed to Ben Jonson:

Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse;

Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death! ere thou hast slain another
Fair and learned and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

One wonders what they would all have thought of these latest comers to the old mansion which carried on the English tradition of hospitality so well that the poet among the visitors wrote, and you may see his words on a brass tablet opposite the fireplace:

Je sens dans l'air que je respire

Un parfum de Liberté,

Un peu de cette terre hospitalière,

The reconstitution of Crosby Hall was never finished; first because of the death of King Edward, who took a great interest in the

scheme, and then owing to the war; but there it stands, its perpendicular lines, mullioned windows and oriel and the wonderful oaken roof making it one of the best examples that remain to us of fifteenth-century domestic architecture.

Chelsea is full of memories of every period since Sir Thomas More's day.

Queen Elizabeth as a child stayed at her father's manor house here, and later, as a girl of thirteen, she is said to have lived for a time at Sir Thomas More's house, when it had passed into the hands of her stepmother, Catherine Parr.

The charming Georgian houses of the Cheyne Walk of to-day carry on the tradition of the beautiful Chelsea homes of those times, such as Shrewsbury House which stood on the west side of Oakley Street before it was pulled down in 1813. It was owned by the husband of the famous Bess of Hardwicke, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who guarded Mary Queen of Scots in her captivity.

The delightful little houses in Paradise Row with their dormer windows and tiled roofs were pulled down only a few years ago. Pepys said that one of them was "the prettiest contrived house that ever I saw in my life." Ormonde Court now reigns in their stead, so there is no trace to-day of the little house in Paradise Row that the fair but frail Duchesse de Mazarin, niece of Anne of Austria's Cardinal Prime Minister, rented from Lord Cheyne when she had fallen on such evil days that her aristocratic

guests used to leave money under their plates to pay for their dinner. She was not the only favourite of Charles II. to have a summer home in Chelsea. Nell Gwynne lived at the Sandford Manor House and the route by which the Merry Monarch rode to visit her is still called the King's Road.

I hesitate to tell that Nell Gwynne's very house is still in existence for fear of taxing too much the ready courtesy of the occupants, two members of the staff of The Imperial Gas Works Co., owners of the property, who divide the house between them.

My kindly guide had disquieting doubts as to whether Nell ever really lived there, but he admitted that a thimble, unquestionably hers, and a masonic, jewel belonging to the King, were found in the house when it was being repaired. Thimbles are not usually associated with the memory of "pretty witty Nellie," but the Chelsea air may have moved her to industry. At all events there is the Jacobean house, shorn now of its top story to lessen the weight on the bulging walls, and with its brick carving but faintly seen under successive coats of rough plaster. But not even the Queen Anne door can destroy the picture any lively imagination may summon of the nonchalant Nell tripping up and down the same staircase to be seen to-day, its design of six steps and a door repeated to the top of the house, belying the legend that Charles once rode his pony up the stairs. The

walnut trees Nell planted have disappeared, but what is left of the old house stands in a pleasant green hollow, an oasis in the acrid surroundings of a gas factory, the paling of which separates it from the outside world not a stone's throw from unsuspecting passengers on a No. II bus.

Joseph Addison lived for a time in the old Manor House, and two of his letters, written to the Lord Warwick whose mother he afterwards married, describe the bird concerts in the neighbouring woods.

If anyone wants to know exactly what the place looked like in Nell Gwynne's day, a very interesting account of it may be found in a book written by a French London-lover, called Fulham Old and New. It is now out of print, but may be consulted at the Fulham Public Library, reached by any of the buses travelling westward along the Fulham Road.

All this is ancient history, of which there is little trace to-day. The shades of Sir Robert Walpole, Dean Swift, Fielding and Smollett, and good Dr. Burney, Fanny's father, who was organist of Chelsea Hospital and buried in its now closed cemetery, may still haunt Chelsea; but the actual homes of the people of living memory make a more vivid appeal. Chelsea still keeps up the reputation of being the haunt of famous people. Unlike the inhabitants of the Paris Latin Quarter, artists and poets who have once breathed her air do not remove to more

And what a brilliant band of them were found in the Chelsea of the nineteenth century! Meredith wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverel at No. 7 Hobury Street; Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their youth in the old rectory in Church Street when their father was rector of Chelsea Old Church; George Eliot moved her household gods to No. 4 Cheyne Walk, the beautiful house where Daniel Maclise, the early Victorian painter, had lived, only three short weeks before her death; and Cecil Lawson, the painter of The Harvest Moon in the Tate Gallery, lived at No. 15.

A volume might be written about Cheyne Walk alone; those pleasant red-brick houses with their wrought-iron railings were the homes of some of the greatest geniuses of the Victorian age. Turner lived at 118 for the four years before his death in 1851: Rossetti lived at No. 16 with Swinburne and W. M. Rossetti. Meredith had some idea of joining this ménage, but recoiled at the sight of Rossetti's oft-quoted poached eggs "bleeding to death" on cold bacon very late in the morning. He paid a quarter's rent and decided to live by himself. The Rev. Mr. Haweis was a later tenant of this famous house, which, in spite of popular tradition, has no connection with Catherine of Braganza. Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress of Cranford, was born at No. 93. Whistler spent