Middlesex

sounder doctrine seems to be that the ancient way, made or improved as the Romans' great North-Western Road, originally came up from the marshes at Westminster, wher

on to Edgware, and beyond, without much wavering, t

t-Up Hill, a spur of the Hampstead heights, we can soon get out to the boundary of London County at Cricklewood. On the left hand of the road here a square mile or so of new suburb has sprung up in the last few years, the best part of it being on an estate of All Souls' College, whose Fellow

set up a debt of nearly a million pounds. The large parish originally consisted of several scattered hamlets-Kilburn, Brondesbury, Cricklewood, Willesden Green, Harlesden, and Church End-which have now run together, though with gaps still shrinking every month. The Kilburn end, indeed, has long been firmly welded on to Paddington. Beside Willesden Green Station may be seen a bit of the original green; but if thereon Willesden should affect "county" airs, let her look back to the fate of Lisson Green and Lisson Gr

on the d

y thoughts and c

ew of the neighbourhood. Willesden Church, standing in the remotest corner of the parish, had once a noted image of the Virgin, which brought many pilgrims to "Our Lady of Willesden"; and though it has suffered enlar

ere on the right stands a forbidding fortress of the Midland Railway, on the other side Dollis Hill Lane is about to be overshadowed by Dollis Hill Avenue. This leafy lane leads along the brow of Dollis Hill to Neasden, passing a house of Lord Aberdeen's, more than once visited by the statesman in honour of whom its sloping grounds, now a public play-place for Willesden, have been named the Gladstone Park. Mark Twain for a time occupied the

than a mile long, formed by damming the waters of the Brent and the Silk Brook, as a store for supplying the Regent's Canal. Fishing, boating, and skating make attractions for customers of the landlord, who in hard winters must coin ice into gold; and in summer there are the tea-garden dissipation

nce, shaded by funereal evergreens set in a frame of hedgerow timber, its red roof makes a cheerful spot of colour, and the interior shows a refreshingly old-fashioned simplicity. So close to London, one might suppose it a secluded country church, but for the predominance of elegant tombstones betraying its congregation as no mere villagers. The orig

ND

way from Harrow leads into the Edgware Road at the hamlet called the Hyde. Hyde House Farm here, a little off the highway,

sed by lanes and hedgerow paths giving solitary ways across brooks and meadows, northward to Edgware, westward to Harrow, so little trodden that blackberries can grow ripe here within sound of the Metropolitan Railway whistles, and the plainest hint of London's close neighbourhood is a crop of notices to trespassers. On the north side lurk two isolation hospitals; in the centre, towards Harrow, come the hamlets of Preston and Kenton; on the south, at the foot of a bo

was once a chapelry. This, with its monuments of dignity, has the air of a true village church, and its shady churchyard overlooks green slopes. Beyond Church End comes a knot of lanes, bordered by new and old houses, one of which belonged to David Garrick. But elsewhere Hendon has grown too much "up to date," and its outskirts are beset by hug

hwards. The field-path on the west side is to be preferred for its open view on the heights of Harrow and Stanmore. After a mile it comes into a road, that bridges the Great Northern Railway branch to Edgware, and presently turns up an avenued way, from the top of which a path mounts over park-like meadows with fine backward prospects, leading into Mill Hill opposite its "King's Head." If here one turned right as far as the "Adam and Eve," beside it one could come back to Hendon b

to the south. This is Mill Hill School, founded a century ago as a Congregational seminary, and now flourishing as an undenominational public school, which has had among its pupils Judge Talfourd, Lamb's friend, and among its masters Dr. Murray, of the "Oxford Dictionary," an enterprise begun here in the "Scriptorium," that made a treasured sh

a Franciscan nunnery with an adjacent industrial school, and behind it St. Joseph's Missionary College, its tower crowned by a conspicuous gilt statue, stamped on the memory of its alumni in all parts of the heathen world

society. Highwood House, where Coventry Patmore lived in his youth, was once the home of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and of the Zoological Gardens, who had Samuel Wilberforce for a neighbour. On coming up to a little patch of green before the "Rising Sun," one can turn along by a road of grand old trees hiding these mansions, which presently reaches a stile looking over to the ridge on which Barnet stands, and here forks, the left branch going up to Barnet Gate, the right one running airily along the Totteridge ridge

path cuts across towards the station at Edgware. Turns to the left would have fetched Mill Hill Midland Station, whence a path leads to the winding lane that reaches the London

of the novelist. On the right turns off the way to the station, beyond the Church, with its ancient tower. The turning to the left, for Stanmore, leads in a few minutes to Whitchurch, where Handel was, or was not, organist for a time; and in the churchyard is the tomb of William Powell, that Edgware Vulcan whose rhythmic hammerings were understood to have suggested the melody of the "Harmonious Blacksmith"; but this legend is d

rk, another English Versailles, now a playground of East-End Londoners. The Canons household numbered over a hundred persons, including a guard to make the rounds of the park at night, and musicians for giving that despoiler of the public purse the luxury of a full choral service in his ch

heaps of lit

aboured quarr

ring muse. The Dean asserts that he lost

ipped: he tries

fiddlers to ex

quarry for less pretentious buildings, no one caring to buy a home that had cost a quarter of a mil

would find such a by-way on turning right from the tram-line at the end of the village to a house sentinelled by a spreading tree, where this broad, soft lane goes off on the left. When, after a mile of green solitude, it bends back towards the high road, he can take a path continuing its former direction, which

ot of the road, as is Highwood of the country to its right and Stanmore Common to its left. Brockley Hill is notable to

HURCH AT

ng the north side of Canons Park, then again at Brockley Hill, both for Great Stanmore, that lies about a mile to the left, Little Stanmore being an alias of Whitchurch. Hence

t Stanmore is uncommonly well off for wealthy inhabitants, to judge by its mansions. The most illustrious of these is Bentley Priory, showing stately on the side of the wooded ridge westward. This, taking its name from an ancient monastery, has had notable owners and visitors. A century ago it was the seat of the Marquis of Abercorn, who entertained here many celebrities, among them Sir Walter Scott while he was revising the proofs of

iddlesex. When the west end of the Common is left behind by the road, it rises gently to the highest point (503 feet) at the cross-roads, with an "Alpine Coffee House" for hospice. The milestone, s

varying from the tomb of Boadicea to a record of the ending of pursuit after the Battle of Barnet. The red roofs of Elstree soon come in sight, and, to the left of it, the Aldenham Lake, another canal reservoir which plays a fine part in the landscape. Elstree welcomes us int

highest point of Middlesex; by a beautiful path beginning near Stanmore Church, to wind at the foot of the ridge under the grounds of Bentley Priory; or by a field-way leaving the lowest road to