beth, Charles II., and William III. were found Tottenham. It was he who showed forcibly the under the flooring. "Upon the old panellings, when the canvas covering was removed," Mr. Howitt tells us, "were seen the words written, 'To-morrow last day of Holidays!!! 1769.' At first it was supposed that Lord Chesterfield's son, to whom the 'Letters' were addressed, might have inscribed this pathetic sentence; but the date shuts out the possibility. Lord Chesterfield died in 1773, and this his only son five years before him." The main body of the avenue still exists, and amongst its trees are some very fine Spanish chestnuts; they are supposed to have been planted about the close of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His abuses and wastefulness of the old system of highpriced postage, and it is to him that the middle classes of this country mainly owe the introduction of the penny post, which superseded that system in 1840, as well as the improvements of the MoneyOrder Office, and the use of postage-stamps. next public benefit was the establishment of cheap excursion trains on our railways on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, an experiment first made when Sir Rowland Hill was chairman of the Brighton Railway Company. In 1854 he was recalled to assist in the Control of the General Post Office, first as Assistant Joint-Secretary, and afterwards as Chief Secretary. He was rewarded for his great On the south side of Rosslyn House there is a public services by a knighthood, with the Order of narrow thoroughfare called Belsize Lane, which, the Bath, Civil Division, coupled with a pension down to about the year 1860, had a truly rural on his retirement. But the reward which he appearance, its sides being in part bordered by valued the most was the sum of £13,000 which hedge-rows, and overhung by tall and flourishing was presented to him, and which was largely conPart of these trees and hedgerows still re-tributed from the pence of the poor. In 1876, main. In it, too, was a turnpike gate, which stood when he was upwards of eighty, it was resolved to close to the farm-house which still stands about the erect in his honour a public statue at Kidderminster, centre. The Queen was driving up this lane on where he was born. The veteran philanthropist one occasion to look at Rosslyn House, with the was a man who never spared himself from hard idea of taking it as a nursery for the royal children. work, and as a schoolmaster, as a postal reformer, A little girl, left in charge of the gate, refused to as an officer of "my Lords of the Treasury," as allow Her Majesty to pass. The Queen turned a railway reformer, and as a social reformer, he back, according to one account; according to did good work in his day. He died here in another, she was much amused, and one of her 1879. equerries advanced the money necessary to satisfy the toll; but however that may have been, Her Majesty did not become the owner or the tenant of Rosslyn House. trees. At the foot of Rosslyn Hill, on the left, next to Pilgrim's Lane, is Downshire Hill, so called after one of the ministers in Lord North's cabinet, Lord Hillsborough, afterwards first Marquis of Downshire. At the foot of Downshire Hill, where John Street branches off, stands a plain heavy structure, which has long served as a chapel of ease to Hampstead, and known as St. John's Chapel. Hampstead Green, as the triangular spot at the junction of Belsize Lane and Haverstock Hill was called till it was appropriated as the site for St. Stephen's new church, has many literary associations. In one of the largest houses at the southern end, now called Bartram's, Sir Rowland Hill, the philanthropic deviser of our penny post system, spent the declining years of his useful and valuable life. Born of yeoman parents, at Kidderminster, in December, 1796, in early life he became a schoolmaster, and, together with his brothers, he established the large private school which for more than half a century has flourished at Bruce Castle, Next door to Sir Rowland Hill lived Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian of the Norman Conquest, &c. He was of Jewish extraction, and at an early age became connected with the Office of Public Records, of which he became the Deputy Keeper in 1838. His name is well known as the author of the "History of the Norman Conquest," "Calendars of the Treasury of the Exchequer," and of many antiquarian essays, and also of a work of a lighter character, the "Merchant and the Friar." Two of his sons, who spent their childhood here, have since attained to eminence-Mr. Francis T. Palgrave, of the Privy Council Educational Department, as a poet and art-critic; and Mr. William Gifford Palgrave, as an Eastern traveller, and the author of the best work that has been published of late years on Arabia. Kenmore House, a little lower down, has attached to it a large room originally built for the Rev. Edward Irving, who would here occasionally manifest to his followers the proofs of his power of speaking in the "unknown tongues." St. Stephen's Church, mentioned above, was built in 1870, from the designs of Mr. S. S. Teulon. It is of the early semi-French style of architecture, of very irregular outline, and unusually rich in external ornament. Altogether, the church has a very handsome and picturesque appearance. In the lofty campanile tower there is a beautiful peal of bells and a magnificent carillon, the gift of an inhabitant of the place. The "George" Inn, on Hampstead Green, once a quaint old roadside public-house, is now resplendent with gas-lamps, and all the other accessories of a modern hotel. Close by this hotel is the church belonging to the religious community known as the Sisters of Providence; their house, formerly Bartram's Park, was the residence of Lord S. G. Osborne. Hampstead Green, at the lower or eastern end, gradually dies away and is lost in Pond Street, which leads to the bottom of the five or six ponds on the Lower Heath. Pond Street has been, at various times, the temporary home and haunt of many a painter and poet. Leigh Hunt at one time lived in lodgings here; John Keats occupied, at the same date, a house near the bottom of John Street, immediately in the rear, almost facing the ponds. Among the more recent residents of Pond Street may be enumerated Mr. George Clarkson Stanfield, who inherited much of his father's talent, and the late Mr. C. E. Mudie, the founder of the great circulating library. Near one of the lower ponds on the East Heath, nearly opposite the bottom of Downshire Hill and John Street, is a singular octagonal dome-crowned building, built about the reign of Queen Anne; it is connected with the Hampstead Water-works, and forms a picturesque object to the stranger as he approaches Hampstead from Fleet Road and Gospel Oak. At the commencement of the present century another mineral spring was discovered on the clay soil, between the bottom of Pond Street and the lower end of the Heath. It was called the "New Spa," and is so marked on a map which appears in a small work published in 1804 by a local practitioner, Thomas Goodwin, M.D., and a Fellow of the College of Surgeons, under the title of "An Account of the Neutral Saline Waters lately discovered at Hampstead." The work includes an essay on the importance of bathing in general, and an analysis of the newly-found waters; but the New Spa never displaced or superseded the older "Wells" near Flask Walk; and its memory and all traces of its site have perished, though, no doubt, its existence caused the erection of so many modern houses at the foot of the slope of Pond Street. Close to Hampstead Green, on the eastern slope looking down upon Fleet Road and Gospel Oak, is 491 an irregular structure, which at the first view resembles barracks hastily thrown up, or a camp of wooden huts. This structure was first raised under the authority of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, as a temporary Fever Hospital, about the year 1867; it has since been used for the accommodation of pauper lunatics; and in 1876-7 it was appropriated to patients suffering from an outbreak of small-pox, very much to the discomfort and annoyance of the residents of Hampstead, who petitioned Parliament for its removal, but in vain. Its location here, in the midst of a population like that of Hampstead, and close to two thoroughfares which during the summer are crowded by pleasure-seekers, cannot be too strongly censured, as tending sadly to depreciate the value of property around the entire neighbourhood. On the right of Haverstock Hill the visitor can scarcely fail to remark a fine old avenue of elms, which, as we shall see presently, once formed the approach to Belsize House. At the corner of this avenue is a drinking-fountain, most conveniently placed for the weary foot-passenger as he ascends the hill; and close by it stands a handsome Town Hall, in red brick and stone, in the Italian style, erected in 1876-7, at the cost of £10,000. It is used for the meetings of the Hampstead clubs and for concerts, balls, etc. Lower down the road, on the opposite side of the way, and just by the top of the somewhat sharp hill, is the "Load of Hay," which occupies the place of a much older inn, bearing witness to the once rural character of the place. Its tea-garden used to be a favourite resort of visitors on their way to Hampstead Heath, who wished to break the long and tedious walk. The entrance to the gardens was guarded by two painted grenadiers-flat boards cut into shape and painted-the customary custodians of the suburban tea-gardens of former times. The house itself was a picturesque wooden structure until about the year 1870, when, shorn of most of its garden, and built closely round with villas, it degenerated into a mere suburban gin-palace. On the opposite side of the road were the poplars that stood before the gate of Sir Richard Steele's cottage, over the site of which Londoners now drive in cabs and carriages along Steele's Road. A view of Sir Richard Steele's cottage on Haverstock Hill, standing in the midst of green fields, and apparently without even a road in front of it, from a drawing taken in 1809, is to be found in Smith's "Historical and Literary Curiosities," and it is also shown in our illustration above, on p. 295. It may be interesting to know that it was much the prayed same in outward appearance until its demolition, would rather have had it said of him that he about the year 1869, though close in front of it ran the road to Hampstead, from which it was sheltered by the row of tall poplars alluded to above. Sir Richard Steele was living on Haverstock Hill in June, 1712, as shown by the date of a letter republished in fac-simile in Smith's "Historical and Literary Curiosities." "I am at a solitude," he 'O thou my voice inspire Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire.'" Nichols somewhat unkindly suggests that there were too many pecuniary reasons for the temporary solitude" in which Steele resided here. We have already spoken at some length of Sir Richard Steele in our account of Bury Street, St. 66 James's,* but still something remains to be told about him. "The life of Steele," writes his biographer, was not that of a retired scholar; hence his moral character becomes all the more instructive. He was one of those whose hearts are the dupes of their imaginations, and who are hurried through life by the most despotic volition. He always preferred his caprices to his interests; or, according to his own notion, very ingenious, but not a little absurd, 'he was always of the humour of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune.' The result of this principle of moral conduct was, that a man of the most admirable qualities was perpetually acting like a fool, and, See Vol. IV., p. 202. for citizens' sleeping boxes. too, was a frequent visitor here. He was a member | been "converted into two small ornamental cottages of the Kit-Cat Club, and notorious for his indolence. One night, when sitting at the "Upper Flask," he accidentally betrayed the fact that he had half-a-dozen patients waiting to see him, and Steele, who sat next him, asked him, in a tone of banter, why he did not get up at once and visit them. "Oh, it's no great matter," replied Garth; "for one-half of them have got such bad constitutions that all the doctors in the world can't save them, and the others such good ones that all the doctors could not possibly kill them." Here Steele spent the summer days of 1712, in the company of many of his "Spectators," returning generally to town at night, and to the society of his wife, who, as we have stated, at that time had lodgings in Bury Street. Fortune seems to have Opposite to it," he adds, "the famous 'Mother' or 'Moll' King built three substantial houses; and in a small villa behind them resided her favourite pupil, Nancy Dawson. An apartment in the cottage was called the Philosopher's Room, probably the same in which Steele used to write. In Hogarth's 'March to Finchley' this cottage and Mother King's house are seen in the distance . . . Coeval with the Spectator and Tatler, this cottage must have been a delightful retreat, as at that time there were not a score of buildings between it and Oxford Street and Montagu and Bloomsbury Houses. Now continuous rows of streets extend from London to this spot." Steele's cottage was a low plain building, and the only ornament was a scroll over the central window. It was pulled down in 1867. The site of the house and its garden is marked by a row of houses, called Steele's Terrace, and the "Sir Richard Steele" tavern. A house, very near to Steele's, was tenanted by an author and a wit of not dissimilar character. When Gay, who had lost his entire fortune in the South Sea Bubble, showed symptoms of insanity, he was placed by his friends in retirement here. The kindly attentions of sundry physicians, who visited him without fee or reward, sufficed to restore his mental equilibrium even without the aid of the famous Hampstead waters. Nancy Dawson died at her residence here in May, 1767. Of this memorable character Mr. John Timbs writes thus in his "Romance of London:" -"Nancy Dawson, the famous hornpipe dancer of Covent Garden Theatre, in the last century, when a girl, set up the skittles at a tavern in High Street, Marylebone. She next, according to Sir William Musgrove's Adversaria,' in the British Museum, became the wife of a publican near Kelso, on the borders of Scotland. She became so popular a dancer that every verse of a song in praise of her declared the poet to be dying in love for Nancy Dawson, and its tune is as lively as that of 'Sir Roger de Coverley.' In 1760 she transferred her services from Covent Garden Theatre to the other house. On the 23rd of September, in that year, the Beggar's Opera was performed at Drury Lane, when the playbill thus announced her: 'In Act 3, a hornpipe by Miss Dawson, her first appearance here.' It seems that she was engaged to oppose Mrs. Vernon in the same exhibition at the rival house; and there is a full-length print of her in that character. There is also a portrait of her in the Garrick Club collection." She lies buried behind the Foundling Hospital, in the ground belonging to St. George the Martyr, where there is a tombstone to her memory, simply stating, "Here lies Nancy Dawson." Both Rosslyn and Haverstock Hills, it may here be stated, have had tunnels carried through them at a very heavy cost, owing to the fact that the soil hereabouts is a stiff and wet clay. The northernmost tunnel connects the Hampstead Heath station with the Finchley Road station on the branch of the North London Railway which leads to Kew and Richmond. The other tunnel, which is one mile long, with four lines of rails, passes nearly under the centre of the hill; it was made by the Midland Railway in 1862-3. " "Estates are landscapes gazed upon awhile, Then advertised, and auctioneered away." Grant of the Manor of Belsize to Westminster Abbey-Belsize Avenue-Old Belsize House-The Family of Waad-Lord Wotton-Pepys' Account of the Gardens of Belsize-The House attacked by Highway Robbers-A Zealous Protestant-Belsize converted into a Place of Public Amusement, and becomes an 'Academy" for Dissipation and Lewdness-The House again becomes a Private Residence-The Right Hon. Spencer Perceval-Demolition of the House-The Murder of Mr. James Delarue-St. Peter's Church-Belsize Square-New CollegeThe Shepherds' or Conduit Fields-Shepherds' Well-Leigh Hunt, Shelley, and Keats-Fitzjohn's Avenue-Finchley Road - Frognal Priory and Memory-Corner Thompson-Dr. Johnson and other Residents at Frognal-Oak Hill Park-Upper Terrace-West End-Rural Festivities-The Cemetery-Child's Hill-Concluding Remarks on Hampstead. On our right, as we descend Haverstock Hill, lies the now populous district of South Hampstead, or Belsize Park. It is approached on the eastern side through the beautiful avenue of elms mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter; on the west it nearly joins the "Swiss Cottage," which, as we have seen, stands at the farthest point of St. John's Wood. It is traditionally stated that the manor of Belsize had belonged to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster from the reign of King Edgar, nearly a century before the Conquest; but it is on actual record that in the reign of Edward II. the Crown made a formal grant to Westminster Abbey of the manor of Belsize, then described as consisting of a house and 284 acres of land, on condition of the monks finding a chaplain to celebrate mass daily for the repose of the souls of Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and of Blanche, his wife. This earl was a grandson of Henry III.; he had taken up arms against Edward, but was captured and beheaded. His name survives still in Lancaster Road. About 1870 the Dean and Chapter of Westminster gave up the fine avenue above-mentioned, called Belsize Avenue, to the parish of Hampstead, on condition of the vestry planting new trees as the old ones failed. A row of villas is now built on the north side, and at the south-east corner, as |