eated aristocracy is
still called Kensington Gore. Men of Hammersmith will not fail to
remember that the very name of Kensington originated from the lips of
their hero. For at the great banquet of reconciliation held after the
war, when the disdainful oligarchs declined to join in the songs of
the men of the Broadway (which are to this day of a rude and popular
character), the great Republican leader, with his rough humour, said
the words which are written in gold upon his monument, 'Little birds
that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing.' So that the
Eastern Knights were called Cansings or Kensings ever afterwards. But
you also have great memories, O men of Kensington! You showed that you
could sing, and sing great war-songs. Even after the dark day of
Kensington Gore, history will not forget those three Knights who
guarded your disordered retreat from Hyde Park (so called from your
hiding there), those three Knights after whom Knightsbridge is named.
Nor will it forget the day of your re-emergence, purged in the fire of
calamity, cleansed of your oligarchic corruptions, when, sword in
hand, you drove the Empire of Hammersmith back mile by mile, swept it
past its own Broadway, and broke it at last in a battle so long and
bloody that the birds of prey have left their name upon it. Men have
called it, with austere irony, the Ravenscourt. I shall not, I trust,
wound the patriotism of Bayswater, or the lonelier pride of Brompton,
or that of any other historic township, by taking these two special
examples. I select them, not because they are more glorious than the
rest, but partly from personal association (I am myself descended from
one of the three heroes of Knightsbridge), and partly from the
consciousness that I am an amateur antiquarian, and cannot presume to
deal with times and places more remote and more mysterious. It is not
for me to settle the question between two such men as Professor Hugg
and Sir William Whisky as to whether Notting Hill means Nutting Hill
(in allusion to the rich woods which no longer cover it), or whether
it is a corruption of Nothing-ill, referring to its reputation among
the ancients as an Earthly Paradise. When a Podkins and a Jossy
confess themselves doubtful about the boundaries of West Kensington
(said to have been traced in the blood of Oxen), I need not be ashamed
to confess a similar doubt. I will ask you to excuse me from further
history, and to assist me with your encourage