ot much regarded by
the people of Battersea. I mentioned to her the names of several of
his contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet,
who, she said, she had often seen walking about in the village, while
he was visiting at Bolingbroke House. The unassuming dwelling of this
gentlewoman affords another proof of the scattered and unrecorded
wealth of Britain, in works of superior art. I found in her retired
parlour, a fine historical picture, by Vandyke, for which she said she
had been offered 500l. but which she refused to part with, not less
from a spirit of independence, than from a tasteful estimate of the
beauties of the picture.

It was in the warm alluvial plain adjoining this village, the very
swamp into which the Britons retreated before Caesar, that the first
asparagus was cultivated in England. I could learn no particulars of
this circumstance, but such vast quantities are still grown here, that
one gardener has fifty acres engaged in the production of this
vegetable, and there are above two hundred acres of it within a mile
of Battersea church.

Proceeding onward between some ancient walls which bound the grounds
of various market gardeners, I was told that here resided the father
of Queen Anne Boleyn; but I could not fix any thing with precision on
the subject, though it appears from the monument of Queen Elizabeth,
in Battersea church, that the Boleyns were related to the St. John's.

A manufacturer of pitch and turpentine politely shewed me over his
works. I trembled as I passed among his combustible cauldrons, and not
without cause, for the place had recently been burnt to the ground,
and it experienced the same fate a second time, but a few weeks after
my visit. May we not hope that the applicable powers of heated gas
will enable such manufactories to be carried on without the inevitable
recurrence of such conflagrations.

This walk brought me to a large distillery, which still bears the name
of York House, and was a seat of the Archbishops of York, from the
year 1480 to its alienation. Here resided Wolsey, as Archbishop of
York--here Henry VIII. first saw Anne Boleyn--and here that scene took
place which Shakespeare records in his play of Henry VIII; and which
he described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of
Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have
known living witnesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than
probable, that Si