RETURNING from the church into the , there presents itself, not many yards further, on the right side of the way, a curious looking brick edifice, at once slender and robust (if the reader can imagine such a combination); or, tall and sturdy; or, narrow, compact, and thick in the walls. Over the

It is the old Kensington Charity School, built by Sir John Vanbrugh; now a savingsbank, with a new school-room by the side of it.

Sir John, as is well known, was a wit full of mirth in his comedies, and an architect full of gravity in his buildings. He was the son of a Dutchman by a French mother. A certain Dr. Evans, who was addicted to the like extremes in literature, though neither his mirth nor his gravity was so good, wrote a

" Lie heavy on him, earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee."

Next to Sir John Vanbrugh's old edifice is the new , a building lately erected in the style that prevailed in the reign of James the First, and which has acquired a natural popularity in this suburb from the presence of . There is something in the style, too, very suitable to the British climate, its bay-windows largely admitting the light, while the comparatively blind and solid walls are characteristic of warmth and comfort. The warm colours, also, of yellow and red, that prevail in the exterior of these buildings, and the bricks of which they are composed, in preference to stone and stucco, are far better for us than the cold whites of the latter. Honest old red is the best of all. The miserablest object in England on a

Nearly opposite the new , in the house now occupied by Mr. Wright, an ironmonger, lived for some years the once celebrated political writer, William Cobbett.

Cobbett, as some of our readers may remember, was a self-taught man of great natural abilities, who, from excess of selfesteem, defect of sympathy out of the pale of his own sphere, and a want of that scholarly " discipline of humanity," of which such men stand particularly in need, went from one extreme in politics to another with anything but misgiving; injured the good which he otherwise did to Reform, by a long course of obloquy and exaggeration; brought his courage and even his

Hazlitt said of him, that had everything been done as he desired in church and state, he would have differed with it all next day, out of the pure pleasure of opposition.

Cobbett's worst propensity was to exult over the fallen. His implied curses of the hapless George the Third, who had nothing to do with the fine and imprisonment which produced them, are too shocking to be repeated. He crowed unmercifully over the suicide of Lord Castlereagh; and, ridiculously as ungenerously, pronounced Walter Scott, during his decline, and after the bankruptcy which he laboured so heroically to avert, to have been nothing but a "humbug."

But the vigour which he thus abused was not to be denied. Bating an occasional parade of the little scholarship which he had acquired, and which sometimes betrayed him into incorrectness, even of the grammar which he professed to teach, nothing could surpass the pure, vigorous, idiomatical style of his general writing, or

At the back of his house at , in ground now devoted to other purposes, and also at a farm, which he possessed at the same time, not far off (at Barn-Elm), Cobbett cultivated his Indian corn, his American Forest Trees, his pigs, poultry, and butchers' meat, all which he pronounced to be the best that was ever beheld; but the aristocratic suburb did not prove a congenial soil, and he quitted it, a bankrupt. He appears, nevertheless, to have succeeded,

Cobbett said little of , considering the time he lived there. It was not to be expected, indeed, that he could be fond of a place that had a palace at one end of it, the mansion of a Whig lord at the other, and in which he did not find himself either welcome or prosperous. What he does say, chiefly concerns his corn and his trees. There are but one or two passages characteristic of the locality, and those are more so of himself, and not unamusing. In one of them he speaks of the poor Irish, who stand at the corners of the streets, " their rags dancing with the wind ;" but he does it rather to rebuke than to pity

The other passage gives us his opinion of the reviews in Hyde Park, and their consumption of gunpowder. His compliments to American economy in the use of that material, are hardly flattering to a great nation; but everything was excessive in the

Speaking of the Duke of Clarence's appointment to the office of Lord High Admiral, he says, that when he first heard of it, he was "very much pleased, because he thought it would tend to break up the Scotch phalanx, which appeared to him to be taking the whole navy by storm." He adds:

"The manner of executing the office was a thing which I had little time to attend to; but I must confess, that I soon became tired of the apparent incessant visiting of the seaports, and the firing of salutes. I see the Americans getting forward with a navy, fit to meet us in war, without more noise than is made by half-a-dozen mice, when they get into my pantry or cupboard. These Yankees

Fancy our young Nelsons and Jervises going to America to learn how to shoot; and their unerring teachers, man or boy, holding their hands before they begin, till they counted the relative values of the charge and the cock-sparrow.

Never, we verily believe, was gunpowder expended at less cost, or to better purpose, than in our reviews and royal salutes; for the sounds reach the ears of despots. Nobler spectacles of warlike power were never beheld, than those which were presented to the world the other day under the presidency of a sovereign, who being a wife and mother, must needs represent peace itself, and hatred of wars; but being a queen also, must also represent the power, which warns, and is prepared to punish, the infractors of peace. Most desirable is peace; most horrible and detestable is war; and no

Cobbett's premises at the back, neighboured those of a small mansion, Scarsdale House, which he must have considered an eyesore, for it belonged to a noble family, and was then a boarding-school; a thing which he hated, for its inducing tradesmen's

Each mortal has his pleasure;-none deny Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie.

Do not most fragrant Earl disclaim Thy bright, thy reputable flame To Bracegirdle the brown; But publicly espouse the dame, And say, G- d- the town.

Earl Leake, by other accounts besides these, does not appear to have been a person whom "Bracegirdle the brown," the charmer of the age, would have thought it any very desirable honour to marry. We hope, therefore, that the more respectable Scarsdales, the Curzons, were always possessors of the house, and that, in displacing the boarding-school, they illustrate, as in greater instances, the injunction of their curious motto, "Let Curzon hold what Curzon held."

The corner, above-mentioned, of Wright's Lane, contains a batch of good old family houses, one of which belonged to Sir Isaac Newton, though it is not known that he ever lived in it. A house in which he did live we shall come to by-and-bye.

The Workhouse to which you arrive in turning by this corner, is a large, handsome,

[1] Political Register, Vol. 66, p. 267.