The temptation is irresistible to give two more quotations from Mr. Austin Dobson's Life of Fielding. After telling us that "Tom Jones was written here and there, at all times, and in all places, with the dun at the door, and the wolf not very far from the gate," Mr. Austin Dobson adds, " But what a brave wit it is, what a wisdom after all that is contained in this wonderful novel! Where shall we find its like for richness of reflexion, for inexhaustible good humour, for large and liberal humanity? Like Fontenelle, Fielding might fairly claim, that he had never cast the smallest ridicule upon the most infinitesimal of virtues; it is against hypocrisy, affectation, insincerity of all kinds, that he wages war." Writing of another of Fielding's novelsAmelia, published in 1751-Mr. Austin Dobson lingers upon the figure of the heroine. "There is no more touching portrait in the whole of fiction, than this heroic and immortal one, of feminine goodness and forbearance;" and he recalls for us "that famous scene where Amelia is spreading for the recreant, who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the historic little supper of hashed mutton, which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, while her husband was paying a debt of several guineas, incurred by the Ace of Trumps being in the hands of his adversary. A scene impossible to read aloud without a certain huskiness in the throat." "

2

Well-nigh a century and a half has passed since Henry Fielding quitted Fordhook, to die abroad; but to-day Ealing is honoured by being the home of the distinguished writer, whose sketch of Fielding, from which the above extracts have been taken, is not the least happy of the author's fine prose works. Mr. Austin Dobson has attained a foremost place in the world of letters, and he stands out above all others, the unrivalled lyric poet of this age.

1 Fielding, p. 133.

2 lbid., p. 150.

E E

CHAPTER XVI.

Some Old Ealing Homes.

(Continued.)

Ealing House.-Dr. John Owen.-Bulwer Lytton's Description.— Ealing Grove.-Lady Byron's School.-Joanna Baillie's Visit to the School. The Vicarage.-Beveridge's Study.-Old Ealing Vicars.—The Old Grange and General Elliott.—Other Illustrious Inhabitants.-Ealing Park.

JOT far from the Green, almost on the site of the present Congregational Chapel and Manse, there was standing not many years ago, a large and gloomy looking mansion— so Brewer describes it-known as Ealing House, "late in the occupation of Colonel Douglas, but now without a tenant ", he adds. The description agrees with that given of the house at a later date by Bulwer Lytton, who for a time, as a youth of sixteen, was here at school. The famous Puritan divine, Dr. John Owen, is reputed to have lived here during his Ealing residence, his second wife, a lady of fortune, having owned the property. Owen died at Ealing, Aug. 24, 1683, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. We are told that no fewer than sixty noblemen followed in their coaches to the grave. In 1691 Ealing House belonged to the Bonfoy family, whom Blome includes in his list of the nobility and gentry of London in 1673; in 1715 it was the property of Sir James

Montague, Baron of the Exchequer, and afterwards it passed successively to Sir Thomas Grey, 1724; Nathaniel Oldham, Esq.,' 1728; Slingsby Bethell, Esq., 1748; General Huske; William Adair, Esq.; Edward Payne, Esq.'; and the Earl of Galloway. William Melmoth, son of the author of the well-known work, Importance of a Religious Life, and himself a man of letters, resided at Ealing House for many years, and it was here that he produced his translation of Pliny and Cicero. In spite of his literary labours, he found time to devote much attention to the parish, particularly to educational matters. Melmoth was an active member of the committee for re-building the Parish Church, and he was one of the original trustees. For a time he was joint treasurer of the Ealing Charity Schools, and from 1755 to 1760 he held the office alone. He died in 1799.

Some time later, the house was occupied as a school. It stood in what was then known as Love Lane, and one of the pupils was Edward Bulwer Lytton. The school was kept by the Rev. Charles Wallington, and an interesting sketch has been preserved of the school and its master. "We drew up in front of a massive old-fashioned arched door in a high brick wall, above which nothing but the chimneys and projecting gables of the attic windows of Mr. Wallington's house were visible. It was a large, ancient, time-worn edifice, in which the lord of the manor, or other great man of the parish, might be supposed to have lived in the time of William and Mary, or Queen Anne; but it had been disfigured by a mean looking brick building tacked to its northern side, possibly by its present proprietor. I was not long in dis

The virtuoso and collector of prints.

2 William Adair bequeathed £100 to the poor of Ealing.

3 Edward Payne bequeathed £100 to the poor of Ealing.

5

Ealing and its Vicinity, by D. F. E. Sykes. LL.B., p. 24.

covering that Mr. Wallington was not the scholar I had hoped to find him. Not only had he no objection. to our preparing our lesson by the help of English translations, but at lessons he used a like 'crib' and, even with its assistance, failed as often as not, to explain the grammatical structure, or throw light upon the meaning of some passage in Sophocles or Thucydides which had baffled Gore, by far the most advanced student of our lot. Nevertheless, by being always at his post, in cheerful readiness to take his share in our tasks, he kept us up so well to our work that there was no falling off in our previously acquired knowledge of Latin and Greek. In Mr. Wallington, we had always before us the example of one who in principles, as well as manners, was a gentleman in the best sense of the word; courteous in bearing, pleasant in speech, with patience, fine temper, and a tender regard for the feelings of others. Mr. Wallington rode 'Bonnie Bess', formerly a favourite hackney of George III, for whose service she had been specially trained, and, in order to protect him against sudden assaults had been taught to rear and trample down anyone who put out a hand to seize her bridle whenever she had a rider on her back. The story ran that Queen Charlotte, a lady of frugal mind, had sold her husband's stud as soon as his malady had reached the stage, that there was no hope that he would ever mount his horse again."

In My Novel, Brent river runs merrily, and the fascinating one-eyed perch surely had existence outside the realm of fancy. Alas, in these days a spell more potent than that which drew the angler to the banks of Brent, warns would-be pilgrims off. While a school-boy at Ealing, Lytton fell in love, and his own pen has told the story. 'The country around where my good preceptor resided was rural enough for a place so near the metropolis. A walk of somewhat less than a mile through lanes that were themselves retired

and lonely, led to green sequestered meadows through which the humble Brent crept along its snake-like way. How palpably, even in hours the least friendly to remembrance, there rises before my eyes, when I close them, that singular dwarfed tree which overshadowed the little stream, throwing its boughs half way to the opposite margin! I wonder if it still survives. I dare not revisit that spot. And there we were wont to meet (poor children that we were!) thinking not of the world we had scarce entered, dreaming not of fate and chance, reasoning not on what was to come, full only of our first-born, our ineffable love. Along the quiet road between Ealing and Castlebar, the lodge gates stood (perhaps they are still standing) which led to the grounds of a villa once occupied by the Duke of Kent. To the right of those gates, as you approached them from the common, was a path. Through two or three fields, as undisturbed and lonely as if they lay in the heart of some solitary land far from any human neighbourhood, this path conducted to the banks of the little rivulet, overshadowed here and there by blossoming shrubs and crooked pollards of fantastic shape. Along that path once sped the happiest steps that ever bore a boy's heart to the object of its first innocent worship." "Lord Lytton," writes Mr. Sykes, "does not disclose the name of his youthful and unhappy love. He was then 17, and she was, he informs us, one or two years older than he. Lord Lytton, had soon to part from the nymph, who, his Life, by his son, asserts, was forced into an early and uncongenial marriage. For three years, in obedience to duty, she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and when she sank under the conflict, and death was about to release her from the obligations of marriage and life itself, she wrote a letter to her youthful adorer, and with her dying hand informed him of the suffering which she had passed, and of her unconquerable devotion to him, and intimated