by ten thousand gimcracks round the room and on the
ceiling." Catalogues of the curiosities are still extant, and one of them
is preserved in the Chelsea Public Library.

Of the remaining houses none have associations. The originals were too
small for the requirements of those who wished to live in such an
expensive situation, and within the last score of years they have been
pulled down and others built on their sites. One of these so destroyed
was called the Gothic House; in it lived Count D'Orsay, and it was most
beautifully finished both inside and out. The decorative work was
executed by Pugin, and has been described by those who remember it as
gorgeous. In another there was a beautiful Chippendale staircase, which,
it is to be feared, was ruthlessly chopped up. In the last house of all
was an elaborate ceiling after the style of Wedgwood. The doorway of this
house is now at No. 1.

The garden which lies in front of these houses adds much to their
picturesqueness in summer by showing the glimpses of old walls and red
brick through curtains of green leaves. In it, opposite to the house
where he used to live, there is a gray granite fountain to the memory of
Rossetti. It is surmounted by a bronze alto-relievo bust modelled by Mr.
F. Madox Brown.

A district old enough to be squalid, but not old enough to be
interesting, is enclosed by Smith and Manor Streets, running at right
angles to the Embankment. New red-brick mansions at the end of Flood
Street indicate that the miserable plaster-fronted houses will not be
allowed to have their own way much longer. No street has changed its name
so frequently as Flood Street. It was first called Pound Lane, from the
parish pound that stood at the south end; it then became Robinson's
Lane; in 1838 it is marked as Queen Street; and in 1865 it was finally
turned into Flood Street, from L. T. Flood, a parish benefactor, in whose
memory a service is still held every year in St. Luke's Church.

Oakley Street is very modern. In a map of 1838 there is no trace of it,
but only a great open space where Winchester House formerly stood. In No.
32 lives Dr. Phene, who was the first to plant trees in the streets of
London. Phene Street, leading into Oakley Crescent, is named after him.
The line of houses on the west side of Oakley Street is broken by a
garden thickly set with trees. This belongs to Cheyne House, the property
of Dr. Phene; the house cannot be seen from the street in summe