so long and still love so well, this giant dwelling, staring
with its whited walls and balconied roof over the tangled gardens which
seemed to cut it off from all communication with the world, was
associated with our "Hero Worship" of Oliver Cromwell. We were told he
had lived there (what neighborhood has not its "Cromwell House?")--that
the ghastly old place had private staircases and subterranean
passages--some underground communication with Kensington--that there
were doors in the walls, and out of the walls; and, that if not careful
you might be precipitated through trap-doors into some unfathomable
abyss, and encounter the ghost of old Oliver himself. These tales
operated upon our imagination in the usual way; and many and many a
moonlight evening, while wandering in those green lanes--now obliterated
by Onslow and Thurloe Squares--and listening to the nightingales, have
we watched the huge shadows cast by that solitary and melancholy-looking
house, and, as we have said, associated it with the stern and grand
Protector of England. Upon closer investigation, how grieved we have
often been to discover the truth, for it destroyed not only our castles
in the air, but their inhabitants; we found that Oliver never resided
there, but that his son, Richard, had, and was a rate payer to the
parish of Kensington for some time. To this lonely sombre house Mr. and
Mrs. Burke and their son removed, in the hope that the soft mild air of
this salubrious neighborhood might restore his failing strength; the
consciousness of his being in danger was something too terrible for them
to think of. He had just received a new appointment--an appointment
suited to his tastes and expectations; he must take possession of it in
a little time. He was their child, their friend, their treasure, their
all! Surely God would spare him to close their eyes. How could death and
he meet together? They entreated him of God, by prayer, and
supplication, and tears that flowed until their eyes were dry and their
eyelids parched--but all in vain. The man, in his prime of manhood, was
stricken down; we transcribe, from an article in the _Quarterly Review_,
on "Fontenelle's Signs of Death," the brief account of his last moments:

"Burke's son, upon whom his father has conferred something of his own
celebrity, heard his parents sobbing in another room at the prospect of
an event they knew to be inevitable. He rose from his bed, joined his
illustrious father, and