such could ever have been the case. The breezy slopes of Hampstead Heath are far better suited for the purposes of a military review, and a prettier sight cannot easily be imagined than a sham fight here on a Volunteer field day.

At the farther end of the Heath, adjoining Lord Mansfield's property of Caen Wood, and overlooking Hendon and Finchley, stands a well-known inn, called The Spaniards, from the fact of its having been once inhabited by a family connected with the Spanish Embassy; it has been a place of entertainment for a century, or even more. Leaving the open Heath, and the unceasing touting of the donkey-drivers, and passing back townwards in a southern direction, by a broad road, which seems to have been artificially raised along the ridge of the hill, we arrive at Jack Straw's Castle, where we get a fine view of St. Paul's, with the whole of the eastern part of the metropolis spread out at our feet, and the valley of the Thames stretching away in the hazy distance, as far as Gravesend. The private residence which we pass on the left, on quitting the Heath, is the well-known Upper Flask, formerly the place of meeting in the summer months for the members of the Kit-Kat Club, and noted by Richardson in his novel of " Clarissa Harlowe," as the place to which the fashionable villain, Lovelace, under the promise of marriage, lured away the heroine from her tyrannical family. George Steevens, the celebrated commentator of Shakspeare, lived and died at the Upper Flask.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, owing to the discovery of a chalybeate spring, Hampstead had gained the reputation of a watering place," and was fast rivalling the glories of Epsom and Tunbridge Wells; but even prior to this it had grown gradually into a place of fashionable resort, on account of its healthy and invigorating air. As early as 1698, "The Wells" were spoken of by that name; and two or three years afterwards the virtues of the "chalybeate waters of Hampstead" were loudly trumpeted by a physician of eminence and local celebrity, Dr. Gibbons, as well as by one Dr. John Soame; they were also duly advertised in the Post-boy of the period. The "quality" flocked to "Wellwalk" to drink the waters, to flirt and to gamble; and, according to Mr. Howitt, even dice and cards were not the worst or most objectionable of the dissipations there offered to the youth of both sexes, for "houses of amusement and dissipation now started up on all sides, and the public papers teemed with advertisements of concerts at the 'Long-room,' raffles at the Wells,' races on the Heath, and 'private marriages at Sion Chapel."" The character of Hampstead and its fashionable adjunct, Belsize, however, may be even more accurately gathered from Baker's comedy, entitled "Hampstead Heath,"

brought out at Drury Lane Theatre, about the period of which we have just spoken, as the following passage will show :

"Act I. Scene 1.-HAMPSTEAD.

"Smart. Hampstead for awhile assumes the day. The lively season o' the year; the shining crowd assembled at this time, and the noble selection of the place, gives us the nearest show of Paradise.

"Bloom. London now indeed has but a melancholy aspect, and a sweet rural spot seems an adjournment o' the nation, where business is laid fast asleep, variety of diversions feast our fickle fancies, and every man wears a face of pleasure. The cards fly, the bowls run, the dice rattle; some lose their money with ease and negligence, and others are well pleased to pocket it. But what fine ladies does the place afford?

"Smart. Assemblies so near the town give us a sample of each degree. We have city ladies that are over dressed and no air; court ladies that are all air and no dress; and country dames with broad brown faces like a Stepney bun; besides an endless number of Fleet Street sempstresses, that dance minuets in their furbeloe scarfs, and their clothes hang as loose about them as their reputation.

"[ENTER Driver.]

"Smart. Mr. Deputy Driver, stock-jobber, state-botcher, the terror of strolling women, and chief beggar-hunter, come to visit Hampstead!

"Driver. And d'you think me so very shallow, Captain, to leave the good of the nation, and getting money, to muddle it away here 'mongst fops, fiddlers, and furbeloes, where everything's as dear as freeholder's votes, and a greater

imposition than a Dutch reckoning. I am come hither, but 'tis to ferret out a frisking wife o' mine, one o' the giddy multitude that's rambled up to this ridiculous assembly.

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Bloom. I hope, Mr. Deputy, you'll find her in good hands: coquetting at the Wells with some Covent Garden beau; or retired to piquet with some brisk young Templar."

The wells continued to be more or less a place of resort for invalids, real and imaginary, down to the early part of the present century; but the visit of George III. and the Court to Cheltenham set the tide of fashion in a different direction. The chalybeate waters of Hampstead soon after lost their medicinal reputation, and now merely serve to supply a public drinking fountain in what still bears, as though in mockery, the name of "Well Walk."

But we must now pass across the fields, by way of the "Ponds," and skirting Caen Wood, to Highgate, which almost adjoins Hampstead on its eastern side. Around this spot, as around Hampstead, there are many houses which have an historic interest. Such are Caen Wood, the noble residence of Lord Mansfield, whither Guy Faux's comrades are said to have retreated upon the failure of their

attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament; Cromwell House, once the home of Ireton; and Andrew Marvel's house which once belonged to the rapacious Earl of Lauderdale; and Arundel House, once the suburban residence of the Earls of Arundel, and afterwards of the noble family of Cornwallis. The walls and timbers of each of these houses are redolent of the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and associated with names which will never die out of English history,-such as Arabella Stuart, Lord

Bacon, and poor Nell Gwynne. In the Grove at Highgate, the house is still pointed out where Samuel Taylor Coleridge resided and died; and long will the pleasant walks round Highgate be connected with his memory.

The story of Dick Whittington, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," is known to every one; but his connection with Highgate will be a sufficient excuse for quoting from Mr. Howitt's work already alluded to, the following paragraph relating to "Whittington Stone:"-" Descending the hill from Lauderdale House,

towards Holloway, and not far before we come to the Archway Tavern, we arrive at a massive stone, standing on the edge of the footpath, which seems to give reality to the tales of our nurseries. It bears this inscription :

So Dick Whittington was a real man of flesh and blood, flourishing in an historic period, and not the creation of some old storyteller, who delighted to amuse children. Here he really sat and listened to Bow Bells,' which rang him back to be thrice Lord Mayor of London.' Whatever of fable has wreathed itself like ivy round this old story, there was a bona fide substantial tree for it to twine round. Here Dick sat on a stone (which appears to

have been the base of an ancient cross) and listened to that agreeable recall. The stone, we are told, is not the actual one on which Dick sat. That had been thrown down and broken to pieces in an age which ignored the worship of relics; and its fragments were removed years ago, and placed as kerb-stones against the posts at the corner of Queen's Head-lane. But this stone was erected on or near the spot as a proper memorial of the fact that the hero of this story-no longer plain Dick, but Sir Richard Whittington-loved to ride out in this direction, and to dismount, in order to walk up the hill, at this stone, and by it to remount his horse again-a very characteristic trait of Whittington's humanity."

GOOD AND BAD.

IN men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men pronounce divine,
I find so much of sin a blot,-
I hesitate to draw a line

Between the two, where God has not.

JOACHIM MILLER.