Hunt, and their friends, loved Hampstead. Cole- had written to his old friend, requesting him to ridge, who lived many years at Highgate, was no see him before he set out for Italy. Haydon stranger to "The Spaniards" or the "Vale of describes in his journal the powerful impression Health," with its toy-like cluster of cottages in the which the visit made upon him-" the very little hollow where we are gazing down. Keats colouring of the scene struck forcibly on the (whom the author of "Childe Harold" styled, in painter's imagination. The white curtains, the his Ravenna letter to the elder Disraeli, "a tadpole white sheets, the white shirt, and the white skin of the lakes," but to whom he made the amende of his friend, all contrasted with the bright hectic honorable by a magnificent compliment a year flush on his cheek, and heightened the sinister later) was residing in lodgings at Hampstead when effect; he went away, hardly hoping." And he he felt the first symptoms of the deadly consump- who hardly hoped for another, what extent of hope tion which shortly afterwards laid the most fervid had he for himself? From the poet's bed to the genius of this century in the Protestant burying-painter's studio is but a bound for the curious ground at Rome. The name of John Keats has many associations with Hampstead. At Leigh Hunt's house Keats wrote one of his finest sonnets, and in a beautiful spot between Millfield Lane and Lord Mansfield's house, as we have already narrated, occurred that one short interview between Keats and Coleridge, in which the latter said that death was in the hand of the former after they had parted. These words soon proved true. In a recent volume of the Gentleman's Magazine there is a very interesting passage touching the author of "The Eve of St. Agnes." "I see," says Miss Sabilla Novello, "that Sylvanus Urban declares himself an unmeasured admirer of Keats; I therefore enclose for your acceptance the photograph of a sketch made of him, on his death-bed, by his friend Joseph Severn, in whose diary at that epoch are written, under the sketch, these words: 28th January, 3 o'clock, morning-Drawn to keep me awake. A deadly sweat was on him all this night.' I feel you will be interested by the drawing." The sketch is, indeed, a most touching memento of the youth who, having his lot cast in the golden age of modern English poetry, left us some of the finest, and purest, and most perfect poetry in the language, and died at twenty-five. So excellent a work is this little picture, and so accurately does it suggest the conditions under which it was drawn, that no doubt the time will come when it will be regarded as the best personal relic of the author of "Endymion." Severn's portrait of Keats, taken at Hampstead, is in the National Portrait Gallery; and hard by, in the South Kensington Museum, Severn's merits as an artist may be seen in his poetic transcription of Ariel on the bat's back. Connected with Keats's illness and death may be mentioned two incidents that for the living reader contain a mournful and a striking interest. Among the earliest friends of Keats were Haydon, the painter, and Shelley, the poet. When Keats was first smitten, Haydon visited the sufferer, who and eager mind. Keats, pitied and struck down by the hand of disease, lies in paradise compared with the spectacle that comes before us-genius weltering in its blood, self-destroyed because neglected. Pass we to another vision! Amongst the indignant declaimers against the unjust sentence which criticism had passed on Keats, Shelley stood foremost. What added poignancy to indignation was the settled but unfounded conviction that the death of the youth had been mainly occasioned by wanton persecution. Anger found relief in song. "Adonais: an Elegy on the Death of John Keats," is among the most impassioned of Shelley's verses. Give heed to the preface:-"John Keats died at Rome of a consumption in his twenty-fourth year, on the of 1821, and was buried in the romantic and lovely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.” Reader, carry the accents in your ear, and accompany us to Leghorn. A few months only have elapsed. Shelley is on the shore. Keats no longer lives, but you will see that Shelley has not forgotten him. He sets sail for the Gulf of Lerici, where he has his temporary home; he never reaches it. A body is washed ashore at Via Reggio. If the features are not to be recognised, there can be no doubt of the man who carries in his bosom the volume containing "Lamia" and "Hyperion.” The body of Shelley is burned, but the remains are carried-whither? You will know by the description, "The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.” There he lies! Keats and he, the mourner and the mourned, almost touch each other! All the later years of Keats's life, until his departure for Rome, were passed at Hampstead, and here all his finest poetry was written. Leigh Hunt says:-"The poem with which his first volume begins was suggested to him on a delightful summer day, as he stood by the gate which leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood; and the last poem, the one on 'Sleep and Poetry,' was occasioned by his sleeping in the Vale of Health." There are, perhaps, few spots in the neighbourhood of Hampstead more likely to have suggested the following lines to the sensitive mind of poor Keats than the high ground overlooking the Vale of Health : "To one who has been long in city pent And open space of heaven-to breathe a prayer Watching the sailing cloudlets' bright career, 459 the plague was raging in London, the sittings of the Courts of Law were transferred for a time from Westminster to Hampstead, and that the Heath was tenanted by gentlemen of the wig and gown, who were forced to sleep under canvas, like so many rifle volunteers, because there was no accommodation to be had for love or money in the village. But we do not guarantee the tradition as well founded. Making our way towards the village of Hampstead, but before actually quitting the Heah, we pass on our left, at the corner of Heath Meu..! and East Heath Road, the house which marks the spot on which, in former times, stood the "Upper Flask’ tavern, celebrated by Richardson, in his novel of "Clarissa Harlowe." A view of the old house, formerly the rendezvous of Pope, Steele, and others, and subsequently the residence of George Steevens, the commentator on Shakespeare, will be found in Mr. Smith's "Historical and Literary Curiosities." The "Upper Flask was at one time called the "Upper Bowling-green House," from its possessing a very good bowling-green. We have given an engraving of it on page 456. When the Kit-Kat Club was in its glory, its members were accustomed to transfer their meetings in the summer time to this tavern, whose walls—if No wonder that great painters as well as poets have loved this spot, and made it hallowed ground. | walls have ears-must have listened to some rare Romney, Morland, Haydon, Constable, Collins, Blake, Linnell, Herbert, and Clarkson Stanfield have all in their turn either lived in Hampstead, or, at the least, frequented it, studying, as artists and poets only can, the glorious "sunset effects" and wondrous contrasts of light and shade which are to be seen here far better than anywhere else within five miles of St. Paul's or Charing Cross. Linnell, the painter of the "Eve of the Deluge" and the "Return of Ulysses," made frequently his abode at a cottage beyond the Heath, between North End and the "Spaniards." To this quiet nook very often resorted, on Sunday afternoons, his friend William Blake, that "dreamer of dreams and seer of visions," and John Varley, artist and astrologer, who were as strange a pair as ever trod this earth. Goldsmith, who loved to walk here, describes the view from the top of the hill as finer than anything he had seen in his wanderings abroad; and yet he wrote "The Traveller," and had visited the sunny south. Between the Heath and the western side of the town is a double row of noble lime-trees, the gravel path under which is "still called the Judge's Walk, or King's Bench Avenue." The story is, that when and racy conversation. We have already spoken at some length of the doings of this celebrated club in a previous volume.* In 1712, Steele, most genial of wits and most tender of humorists, found it necessary to quit London for a time. As usual, the duns were upon him, and his "darling Prue" had been, we may suppose, a little more unreasonably jealous than usual. He left London in haste, and took the house at Hampstead in which Sir Charles Sedley had recently died. Thither would come Mr. Pope or Dr. Arbuthnot in a coach to carry the eminent moralist off to the cheerful meetings of the Kit-Kat at the "Flask." How Sir Richard returned we are not told, but there is some reason to fear that the coach was even more necessary at the end of the eve...ng than at its beginning. These meetings, however, did not last long. We shall have more to say of Sir Richard Steele when we reach Haverstock Hill. Mr. Howitt, in his "Northern Heights of London," gives a view of the house as it appeared when that work was published (1869). The author states that the members of the Kit-Kat Club used "to sip their ale under the old mulberry-tree, which See Vol. I., p. 79. still flourishes, though now bound together by iron "Or when, Apollo-like, thou'st pleased to lead Since that time the house has been much altered, years by Mr. Thomas Sheppard, M.P. for Frome, and afterwards by Mrs. Raikes, a relative of Mr. Thomas Raikes, to whose "Journal" we have frequently referred in these pages. On her death the house passed into the hands of a Mr. Lister. The old house is still kept in remembrance by a double row of elms in front of it, forming a shady grove. With the interest attached to the place through the pages of "Clarissa Harlowe," it would be wrong not to make more than a passing allusion to it. We will, therefore, summarise from the work those portions having special reference to the "Upper Flask " and its surroundings : Richardson represents the fashionable villain Lovelace as inducing Clarissa-whom he had managed, under promise of marriage, to lure away from her family-to take a drive with him in company with two of the women of the sponging-house into which he had decoyed her. Lovelace, afterSteevens is stated to have been a fine classical wards writing to his friend Belford, says :—“ The scholar, and celebrated for his brilliant wit and coach carried us to Hampstead, to Highgate, smart repartee in conversation, in which he was to Muswell Hill; back to Hampstead, to the "lively, varied, and eloquent," so that one of his 'Upper Flask.' There, in compliment to the acquaintances said that he regarded him as a speak-nymphs, my beloved consented to alight and take ing Hogarth. He possessed a handsome fortune, which he managed, says his biographer, "with discretion, and was enabled to gratify his wishes, which he did without any regard to expense, in forming his distinguished collections of classical learning, literary antiquity, and the arts connected with it. He possessed all the grace of exterior accomplishment, acquired when civility and politeness were the characteristics of a gentleman. He received the first part of his education at Kingston-upon-Thames; he went thence to Eton, and was afterwards a fellow-commoner of King's College, Cambridge. He also accepted a commission in the Essex militia, on its first establishment. The latter years of his life he chiefly spent at Hampstead in retirement, and seldom mixed in society except in booksellers' shops, or the Shakespeare Gallery, or the morning conversations of Sir Joseph Banks." "Steevens," says Cradock, in his "Memoirs," "was the most indefatigable man I had ever met with. He would absolutely set out from his house at Hampstead, with the patrol, and walk to London before daylight, call up his barber in Devereux Court, at whose shop he dressed, and when fully accoutred for the day, generally resorted to the house of his friend Hamilton, the well-known editor and printer of the Critical Review.” Steevens, it is stated, added considerably to the house. It was subsequently occupied for many a little repast; then home early by Kentish Town.” Clarissa no sooner discovers the nature of the vile place into which Lovelace has brought her, than she at once sets about endeavouring to effect her escape. By one of Lovelace's accomplices she is tracked to a hackney coach, and from her directions to the driver it is at once made clear that Hampstead is her destination. The fellow then disguises himself, and making his way thither, discovers her at the "Upper Flask," which fact he communicates to Lovelace in the following words: "If your honner come to the 'Upper Flax,' I will be in site (sight) all day about the Tapphouse' on the Hethe." Lovelace pursues his victim in all haste, and arrives at the "Upper Flask," but only to find that she had been there, but had since taken up her abode somewhere in the neighbourhood. We next find Lovelace writing from the "Upper Flask :"-" I am now here, and have been this hour and a half. What an industrious spirit have I." But all that he could learn with any certainty respecting the runaway was, that "the Hampstead coach, when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it; but she made the fellow go off directly, paying for the vacant places. The two passengers directing the coachman to set them down at the Upper Flask,' she bid them set her down there also." Clarissa has in the meantime taken up her abode in the lodging-house of a Mrs. Moore, as she herself Hampstead.] CLARISSA HARLOWE. 461 Lovelace. The governor's wife seized the book, and the secretary waited for it, and the chief justice could not read it for tears. He acted the whole scene as he paced up and down the Athenæum Library; I daresay he could have spoken pages of the book." genius as by Othello, except by 'Clarissa Harlowe.' I read seventeen hours a day at 'Clarissa,' and held up the book so long, leaning on my elbows in an arm-chair, that I stopped the circulation, and could not move. When Lovelace writes, 'Dear Belton, it is all over, and Clarissa lives,' I got up in a fury, and wept like an infant, and cursed Lovelace till I was exhausted. This is the triumph of genius over the imagination and heart of the readers." tells us in one of her epistles :-"I am at present at one Mrs. Moore's, at Hampstead. My heart misgave me at coming to this village, because I had been here with him more than once; but the coach hither was such a convenience that I knew not what to do better." She, however, is not allowed to rest quietly here, but is soon surrounded The following is the testimony of R. B. Haydon by Lovelace's tools and spies. She attempts to to the merits of "Clarissa Harlowe" as a work of escape, and, making her way to the window, ex-fiction:-"I was never so moved by a work of claims to the landlady-"Let me look out! Whither does that path lead to? Is there no probability of getting a coach? Cannot I steal to a neighbouring house, where I may be concealed till I can get quite away? Oh, help me, help me, ladies, or I am ruined!' Then, pausing, she asks'Is that the way to Hendon? Is Hendon a private place? The Hampstead coach, I am told, will carry passengers thither?'" Richardson writes: "She, indeed, went on towards Hendon, passing by the sign of the 'Castle' on the Heath; then stopping, looked about her, and turned down the valley before her. Then, turning her face towards London, she seemed, by the motion of her handkerchief to her eyes, to weep; repenting (who knows?) the rash step that she had taken, and wishing herself back again. Then, continuing on a few paces, she stopped again, and, as if disliking her road, again seeming to weep, directed her course back towards Hampstead." Hannah More bears testimony to the fact that, when she was young, "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison" were the favourite reading in any English household. And her testimony to their excellence is striking. She writes: "Whatever objection may be made to them in certain respects, they contain more maxims of virtue, and more sound moral principle, than half the books called 'moral.'' At the end of a century, Macaulay tells us that the merits of "Clarissa Harlowe" were still felt and acknowledged. On one occasion he said to Thackeray: "If you have once thoroughly entered on 'Clarissa,' and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India, I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the governorgeneral, and the secretary of the Government, and the commander-in-chief, and their wives. I had 'Clarissa' with me; and as soon as they began to read it, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and the scoundrel Richardson, by all accounts, was one of the vainest of men, and loved to talk of nothing so well as his own writings. It must be owned, however, that he had something to be vain and proud about when he wrote "Clarissa Harlowe,” which at once established itself as a classic on the bookshelves of every gentleman and lady throughout England. 99 66 "The great author," writes Thackeray, in his "Virginians," was accustomed to be adored-a gentler wind never puffed mortal vanity; enraptured spinsters flung tea-leaves round him, and incensed him with the coffee-pot. Matrons kissed the slippers they had worked for him. There was a halo of virtue round his nightcap." So great is the popularity of the author of "Pamela," "Pamela," "Clarissa," and "Sir Charles Grandison," that foreigners of distinction have been known to visit Hampstead, and to inquire with curiosity and wonder for the "Flask Walk," so distinguished as a scene in "Clarissa's" history, just as travellers visit the rocks of Mellerie, in order to view the localities with which they have already been familiarised in Rousseau's tale of passion. The "Lower Flask" tavern, in Flask Walk, is mentioned in "Clarissa Harlowe" as a place where second-rate persons are to be found occasionally in a swinish condition. The “Flask Inn," rebuilt in 1873, is still here, and so is Flask Walk, but both are only ghosts of their former selves! Description of the Town-Heath Street-The Baptist Chapel-Whitefield's Preaching at Hampstead-The Public Library-Romney, the PainterThe "Hollybush "-The Assembly Rooms-Agnes and Joanna Baillie-The Clock House-Branch Hill Lodge-The Fire Brigade Station -The "Lower Flask Inn"-Flask Walk-Fairs held there-The Militia Barracks-Mrs. Tennyson-Christ Church-The Wells-Concerts and Balls-Irregular Marriages-The Raffling Shops-Well Walk-John Constable-John Keats-Geological Formation of the Northern Heights. THE town of Hampstead is built on the slope of the hill leading up to the Heath, as Mr. Thorne, in his "Environs" styles it, "in an odd, sidelong, tortuous, irregular, and unconnected fashion. There are," he adds, "the fairly-broad winding High Street, and other good streets and lanes, |