Hampstead Heath! What a world of delight seemed concentrated in that name in the days of childhood, when donkey-riding was not yet too undignified an amusement, and a gallop ‘cross country’ through the bracken and furze struck terror into the heart of nurse or parent, and covered the rider with glory! Such feats of horsemanship now belong to the irrevocable past; but yet no part of the great ‘province of houses’ known as London brings such pleasant memories as the quaint old village on its northern outskirts and the wild breezy heath that bounds it.

Even now, Hampstead is rather in London, than of it, and keeps up customs that have died out elsewhere. There, on the fifth of November, a gallant procession takes its way through its steep winding streets, and the centuries mingle with as little regard to accuracy as they might do in a schoolboy’s dream the night before an examination in history

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