GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



The heights of Hampstead, now easily reached by the Under- 

 ground Railway, have been invaded by the builder, and although 

 some quiet corners remain that are deliciously old-world, the 

 place is fast losing its former charming air of dignified seclusion. 

 But Highgate, twin sister to Hampstead, also seated aloft above 

 the stir and hum of London City, has been hitherto greatly pro- 

 tected by the exceeding steepness of her hill, and even now, when 

 the all- conquering electric tram ventures to climb the gradient 

 the place retains something of the character of a rural hamlet. 



Of its rustic beauty over a century ago, when Coleridge went 

 to live at the Grove, it is possible still to form some conception 

 if one stands on the summit of the hill on a clear evening in 

 summer, at the moment when the westering sun behind casts 

 one's own long shadow in front. A violet mistiness is beginning 

 to creep up the lower slopes of the incline, veiling in kindly 

 mystery, the sordid streets at its foot ; but, looking beyond and 

 above it, one catches a glorified glimpse of London when no heavy 

 pall of smoke overhangs it, and when the distant and familiar 

 landmarks are bathed in suffused and golden light. 



Some of Highgate' s former architectural dignity lingers in the 

 comfortable Queen Anne Terrace to the left, and in the fed brick 

 front of Cromwell House lower down, its rows of windows all afire 

 with the reflection from the sky ; and one can still look past the 

 clustering roofs of S. Joseph's to the ancient buttressed wall of 

 Willoughby Park once a residence of Nell Gwynne, over which 

 one gets a glimpse of a tall, picturesque dovecot among the 

 embowering trees. 



Many and many a time has the author of " Christabel " stood 

 on the same spot, at the same time of day and season looking 

 down upon a changed London arrested by its beauty. 



For in this magical light all things are transfigured, and it is 

 a new heaven and a new earth one looks upon verily a new 

 revelation of the utter peace and loveliness of Nature the Divine. 

 Distance lends enchantment ; the outlines of the ugliest buildings 

 are lost in the amber haze. The hum of the great city reaches 

 us but faintly from afar, like the heart-beats of humanity throbbing 

 in unison. That flat, grey-blue plain of houses, that, far as the 

 eye can reach, is London, seems almost to be a " no man's land," 

 so silently it sleeps in the evening sunshine ; but by and by, a 



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