Middlesex

not tired of each other. We have viewed Middlesex from its most familiar eminence, and we have radiated through it by its highroads from London. There rem

trong ale or mead to the next in any direction. A more creditable explanation refers such irregularity to spiritual rather than spirituous influences, the lands of two bishops, we are told, having thus dovetailed into each other in the days when bishops had power to bind and loose on earth. Here it must be no trivial sport to beat the parish bounds-on the outside coincident with those of the county-as to which the oldest inh

ards, at one point touching the Colne Brook, as the branch is called that, from the village of this name, straggles down to the Thames opposite Egham. A pool in the Thames used to bear the nickname of "Colnbrook Churchyard," the point of the grim jest being that this frontier village had no churchyard, and that the robbers who infested the surrounding moors were in the way of flinging the bodies of their victims into the river. "Moorish" is

rim with d

ooks and r

he canal's straighter march. On the Middlesex side, here, the world is too much with us, and we must not be tempted over to the woods and heaths of Iver, in Bucks. So let us hasten up the canal bank

er it for nearly half a dozen miles extends the name of Harefield, associated with that of the Newdigate family, which has such a good chance of fame through their annual vates sacer at Oxford. One of them chose an "Adam Bede" for land agent, whose daughter would widely renown, under an alias, their Warwickshire seat, at which George Eliot had glimpses of squirely life. Another of the Newdigates was

olic chapel was being consecrated in the neighbourhood, the mason brought duly to wall up the relics in its altar turned out to bear the name of Nicholas Breakspear. At a social function which followed there was naturally some talk of such a coincidence, and an inconsiderate Catholic suggested that the man must be a descendant of his great namesake. "Don't be taking away a Pope's character!" cried one

as yet a real country village with quiet inns and roomy green, but ominous placards hold out a threat of "villa residences." Nothing, indeed, could at present be more unsuburban than the byroad which, at the school-house, turns off along Harefield Park and by the hamlet of Hill

se clear shallows the Miltons of to-day must beware how they come angling after poetic images, as these are preserves for the "True Waltonians" of Rickmansworth. At the ford on the further branch, near the village of Mill En

s and pine-clumps, are jealously fortified by wire and placards; but part of the heath is still open, where we come to the gates of Moor Park, looking over such a fine view southward and eastward. The border-line here passes through the garden of the "Prince of Wales," crosses the highroad mounting up from Northwood, then for a little is roughly represented by the byroad which drops from the Moor Park gates, making towards a height crowned by the Oxhey Woods; but soo

to Harrow Weald Common, and from that to the highest point of Middlesex at the edge of Bushey Heath. Its course now is on the north-west side of Stanmore Common, to touch the Aldenham reservoir, whence it ascends to Elstree, over a

paliers, the Villages interspers'd, look'd like so many several Noble Seats of Gentlemen at a Distance. In a Word it was all Nature, and yet look'd all like Art; on the left Hand we see the West-End of London, Westminster-Abbey and the Parliament-House, but the Body of the Cit

, so as to bring the former ridge into Herts. On the road mounting it, the boundary is marked by a half-buried post, economically abbreviating our county's style as D.D.X. I stray only some few hundred yards from my diocese in pointing out the beautiful walk along this ridge-a long mile of broad-swarded road, or stretched-out common, bordered by ponds, farms, cottage gardens and trees, through which one gets fine glimpses of Barnet to the north and Mill Hill to the south. Then comes the village and it

outh by the Great Northern Railway, till it ends its maddest deviation in this direction near Colney Hatch Asylum, only about eight miles from the Thames. Crossing the railway beyond New Southgate station, and walking on eastwards to the next cross roads, one reaches the invisible hea

e takes a westward course along Hadley Common, at the further end of which it wanders round the outskirts of High Barnet, so as to fall in again with the road from Elstree; but soon it starts off on a fresh northward tack along the county's north-eastern headland. It would now seem to be tired of freakish tricks, and in the woods below North M

e sees how this lower course of the Lea has been fouled into a dull Lethe, suggesting few poetical images, unless those of Browning's "Childe Roland to the dark tower came." Its meadows, on which nowadays one will hardly find a "milkmaid singing like a nightingale," or "young Corydon, the shepherd, play

Tottenham Marshes till the other day it lit them up in its moment of glory as a gigantic bonfire. The cheerfullest sight here is the football scrimmages of would-be Hotspurs, played on gateless flats. The creeks and channels of the river-bed are still frequented by local Izaak Waltons, in whose breasts springs eternal hope of roach or dace. Very hot weather tempts venturesome youth to bathe in the Stygian stream. The sophisticated main chan

od to my too long discourse." It is as well we are not bound to enter the County of London, since there the Lea would bring us to Hackney Marsh, perhaps the

ne can find much pleasant and not a little charming scenery of a truly English type. If a jury of my fellow-countymen and gentle readers be not now ready to give a verdict o

fresh woods an

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NS, LTD., PRIN

SEX." PAINTED BY JOHN FU

rs corrected by th

Palace=> the Alexa

Lanes=> continuing th

es=> suburban a