HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS 
days, have I turned up Holland Walk to the spot whence, standing 
on the public pathway, it was possible, at that time, to catch 
a glimpse across the stately avenue, of the courtyard and principal 
entrance, and I have wondered, and wondered, what lay beyond ! 
Nor was this in the least from idle curiosity ; I cared not who 
came out. Had any done so it would have destroyed the spell 
of romance and of mystery that Holland House, its gables, its 
turrets, and all that could at that period be seen of its terraces 
and arcades, had, almost all my life, laid upon me. That glimpse 
of the interior at such times vouchsafed, was a glimpse into the 
world of romance—for I then knew little or nothing of the actual 
history of the place. It was the positive architectural charm 
and picturesqueness of that particular corner, added to its mystery, 
that always fascinated me—so that returning under the stately , 
trees, where the twisted roots of the giant elms still push them- 
selves up through the soil, and their branches interlace overhead 
—to the dusty pavements, the dull brick and mortar of Kensing- 
tonia—to the daily round, the common task (for an artist’s 
serious training has its irksome side), was much like receiving 
a chilling welcome from the Present after an excursion into the 
fanciful Past. 
And Lord Holland himself ? Looking very lonely and solitary 
as he sits there behind his iron grid—as though counting the "buses 
that pass the boundaries of his ancestral acres—not the real Lord 
Holland, of course, but his counterpart in bronze. 
Stationary, unmoved, and immovable—hatless, whether in 
_ summer heat or winter’s frost. Why is he there? Does he watch 
the realization of much he had dreamed of and striven for—the 
freeing of the slave, Catholic Emancipation, Reform—reform of, 
and for, the masses—the greater happiness of the greater number ? 
If not, what else can he see in these new men and women with 
their new-fangled manners and dress? these hurrying, hustling 
crowds of the twentieth century, who, whether of the leisured 
or the working classes, pay no heed to him? Why does he not 
turn his back on the long, unlovely street ? 
The reader will know before this chapter closes. 
The air of aloofness, of mystery and repose, in which Holland 
House is now more than ever enveloped—for new and thick plan- 
tations of trees are growing up rapidly between the old house and 
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