GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



of Essex ; they encamped on Turnham Green, thus obliging the 

 King to withdraw to Kingston-on-Thames. 



The old posting and coaching road to the west and south-west 

 of England, passes through Brentford ; and since, even as late as 

 the end of the eighteenth century, Horace Walpole, at Twickenham, 

 described the dangerous condition of the highways round about, 

 and the Lord Mayor of London, in 1777, in his coach and four, was 

 stopped on Turnham Green and robbed by a single highwayman, 

 it is conceivable that many an episode picturesque and dramatic 

 enough when we read of it now, but most uncomfortable, and often 

 tragic, to the actors therein may have disturbed the quiet of Sion 

 during the five hundred years of its history. For, five hundred 

 stormy centuries have indeed elapsed, since that day in February, 

 1416, when Harry the King, laid, in person, the dedication stone 

 of that first monastery of the Bridgetines at Twickenham, which 

 they so soon after left for Isleworth ; and three hundred and seventy 

 years have now passed over Sion itself, since Protector Somerset 

 began his rebuilding operations there, and yet it does not look old ! 

 Viewed from the opposite bank of the Thames, whence details 

 are blurred or even lost sight of, it is indeed difficult to realize that 

 it is an ancient house at all ! This is partly owing to the clean, 

 new effect of the Bath Stone, with which it is faced, and which is 

 innocent of ivy or Virginian creeper. But truth to say, time has 

 dealt lightly with the old home of the Percys, who have themselves 

 done much to preserve it. The devastating tide of our tumultuous 

 modern existence has swept past Sion, leaving it strangely silent 

 and solitary, except on the occasional visits of its noble owner ; 

 leaving its white walls, its green lawns, and its avenues wonderfully 

 unsmirched, although they are so comparatively near the smoke 

 of London, and the Metropolitan boundary. 



Protected on its east side by the river, from which, owing to 

 formidable defences, no trespasser can land, it is safeguarded else- 

 where, and effectually concealed from vulgar curiosity, by broad 

 intervening spaces of park-land, by its lovely gardens, and by what 

 Wordsworth calls : 



" A brotherhood of venerable trees." 



Venerable they undoubtedly are, but only comparatively so ; 

 they are not nearly as ancient as the house, though there is in the 



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