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128 so that this famous bun factory ought to stand fresh in the recollection of all Londoners who are more than thirty years of age. I find it recorded, that the bun trade began to decline when there was an end of Ranelagh. Now Ranelagh came to an end contemporaneously with the pseudo Peace rejoicings at the beginning of this century. The Peace fête was the last of its glories—that was in 1803. It had a run of about sixty years, having been opened in the year 1742. As some persons may be curious to know its exact site, I may mention that it was situated just to the east of Chelsea Hospital, and part of the ground is now included in the old men’s garden of that institution. The old veterans of the Hospital are again amongst the few unchanged features in London life. Just what I remember them when I was a little boy, just the same were the gnarled old relics of the wars whom I saw lounging and sauntering about in front of the Hospital the other day. Whatever may be the subjects to which we are indifferent, most people—or they must be very miserable dogs indeed—care about the duration of human life. Now if the records of Chelsea Hospital are true, here the true temple of longevity is to be found. What think you of the following dates, which Mr. Timbs obtained from careful inspection of the Hospital burial-ground:—

The ages of the pensioners seem to vary from sixty to ninety, and in 1850 there were said to be two old fellows in the Hospital who had attained the age of 104. I wonder what kind of certificates of birth these aged pensioners could have produced, for from the ages which they claim, their reckonings must have run from periods when it was exceedingly difficult to arrive at satisfactory conclusions as to the date of birth. When we remember further that the claimants were for the most part taken from the very humblest classes of society, amongst whom you could scarcely derive assistance from family Bibles, and similar records, the difficulty becomes enormously increased. Be this, however, as it may, Chelsea Hospital and the old pensioners are amongst the unchanged things of London.

The suburb of Kensington Proper seems to have varied less than most of the others of which I have made passing mention. Some rows of modern houses have indeed grown up about Camden Hill; but the High Street, and the square, and the turning up by the old church are pretty much about what I remember them thirty years ago. To be sure, in the road from Hyde Park Corner to Kensington Church there is a notable change. That little low row of houses close to Saint George’s Hospital, and in one of which lived and died Liston the comedian, is indeed one of the monuments of London as it was thirty years ago; but we knew nothing of palatial residences and Gibraltar Houses, and Princes Gates. I cannot say I recall to mind the exact aspect of the place. There were nursery gardens, and a large mansion or two, Gore House being one of them of course, and there was a little row of houses just before you came to the turning known in these, our later days, as Hyde Park Gate South; but there was no approach to continuity as at present, even in the year 1830. It is said that within the memory of man a bell used to be rung at Kensington to call the people together who intended returning to town, so that they might travel together, and afford each other mutual aid and protection against the highwaymen. Only conceive Claude Duval, or Sixteen String Jack, operating in front of Sir C. Cresswell’s house, or Stratheden House, at the present day! The story of Gore House is one of the most melancholy memorabilia of this district, on account of poor Lady Blessington and her ruin. I had considerable respect for Alexis Soyer, but living, as I did, close to the spot at the time, I was not altogether displeased to see that the scheme for turning the place into a kind of Suburban Restaurant did not succeed, and that the more, as the speculation was said to be mainly the concern of some Liverpool Jews, of whom Soyer was only the paid agent. A good deal of old Kensington and Chelsea remain what they were, not much of Brompton; but if my life is extended to something like the length of the usual human tether, I shall have lived through the inception and growth of Tyburnia, Belgravia, and South Kensington. In point of fact London—the London in which people live—will almost have changed its site in my time. The districts in which the fewest changes have occurred are May Fair, Marylebone, and Bloomsbury. The City has been all pulled to pieces. A steady old merchant who had been in the habit of making his appearance on ’Change some forty years ago would be not a little surprised with new London Bridge, and King William Street, and the new Exchange, and the new Fish Market, and new Cannon Street, and the removal of the market from the middle of Farringdon Street opposite the Debtors’ Prison, and more recently of that abominable old nuisance, Smithfield Cattle Market. I remember old London Bridge very well, and the fall of the water at particular periods of the tide; but all that has been changed in a very effectual way. In Bloomsbury we have the new front of the British Museum, and a parcel of bran-new squares, such as Gordon Square, &c. As I could not call to mind what had stood in the place of University College, Upper Gower Street, I referred to the books, and find that the first stone was laid by the Duke of Sussex in the year 1827, and the building was opened in 1828—consequently I know not what were the antecedents of its site. The Regent’s Park, I think, remains much what it was—a few rows of terraces may have been added, but the recollection of most of my contemporaries will, I suppose, agree with my own, that even in those days the Regent’s Park was the place to which we were driven by our cruel parents before breakfast for the benefit of our constitutions, and to the grievous annoyance