BLACKHEATH 25 



mansions which, having been built in the days of 

 Queen Anne and the earher Georges, and having long 

 housed the aristocracy who at one time frequented 

 the place, became afterwards the homes of rich City 

 merchants. Finally, when the " schools for young 

 ladies " are gone which now occupy them, and give 

 so distinct a scholastic air to this suburb, they will 

 doubtless disappear amid a cloud of dust and the 

 clinking of trowels, while on their sites will rise the 

 unchanging pattern of suburban shops ! 



Blackheath is one of the finest suburbs of London ; 

 a town girt round with many particularly beautiful 

 outskirts. Strange to say, it has not been spoiled, 

 and though thickly surrounded with hovises, remains 

 as breezy and healthful as ever ; perhaps, indeed, since 

 highwayman and footpad have disappeared, and now 

 that duels are unknown, Blackheath may be regarded 

 as even more healthy a spot than it was a hundred 

 years ago. 



The air which gave Bleak Heath its original name, 

 and nipped the ears and made red the noses of the 

 " outsides " who journeyed across it on their way to 

 Dover in the winter months, is healthful and bracing, 

 and is not so bleak as balmy in the days of June, 

 when the sun shines brilliantly, and makes a generous 

 heat to radiate from the old mellow brick wall of 

 Greenwich Park that skirts the heath on its northern 

 side. Outside the gate of that steepest of all parks 

 stood Montagu House, whence the Earl of Chesterfield 

 wrote those famous letters to his son — letters whose 

 precepts, if carefully and consistently followed, would 

 have infallibly sent their recipient to the Devil. 

 Montagu House is gone now, pulled down long ago, 

 and the site where the worldly Dormer wrote, pointing 

 out to his son the way to perdition, is now a part 

 of the Heath. Gone, too, is the garden where the 

 phenomenally vulgar and undignified Princess Caroline 

 of Wales, who lived here from 1797 to 1814, might 

 have been seen, and ivas seen one morning, sitting in 



