Lady Victoria Campbell

CHILDHOOD AND HOME 5
villas set on this pleasant height, the eye ranged over
many a wide grass-field, now filled by busy streets.
The Crystal Palace, recently re-erected, glittered on
the southern heights of Sydenham; but then, as
to-day, south and west, " grey Sussex fading into
blue," bounded the far-distant view.
The roar of London broke on the ear at a more
remote distance, and the children grew up amongst the
trees and on the spacious lawn, where there was suffi-
cient pasturage for a cow kept specially for the benefit
of the nursery. The glowing flower-garden, planted
in the Italian style, lay to the west of the house, gay
in summer with its bedded-out plants, and bounded
by the great forest trees of Holland Park, divided
only by Nightingale Lane from the gardens of the
Hill.
For many years a time-gun was fired at midnight
from Holland Park, and its boom was listened to with
awe by the inhabitants of the nursery. The suscep-
tible nerves of a more modern generation put an end
to this salute, but a chiming clock of peculiar sweet-
ness of tone still warns the natives of Kensington
that time has carried away the generations which
have grown up under its silvery notes. The clock was
an early instructor in the habit of complete and
perfect punctuality which was so marked a feature
in the daily life of Lady Victoria.
The Lodge was, and still is, a haunt of ancient
peace, of a character hard to find now within a much
wider radius of London. Home lands are made by the
fives lived in them. The Lodge was no mere place