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 red 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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