THREATENED ENCLOSURE OF HAMPSTEAD HEATH.
A BILL renewing the attempt, unavailingly made some thirteen years ago, to enclose Hampstead Heath, is said to be before the House of Lords.* This attempt also must fail; for surely no sufficient number of legislators can be found to deprive London of its Hampstead. Almost any other deprivation of the kind would be less deplorable and irreparable.
Hampstead is the loftiest ground within a walk of London. It lies to windward of the great city in the most healthful of all winds, the North-west. Its soil is in great part sandy and dry. Its bracing air is well known : on its terrace, in favourable winds,
• ik letter, signed" W. Lvnoorr," has appeared in the Times, referring to the report of a meeting at Hampstead, an4 stating, by way of correction, that the bill is not called "Wilson's Enclosure Bill," but "Wilson's Estate Bill "; that " it is not a bill to enclose Hampstead Heath, or any part of it "; and implying that other statements at the meeting "may be" false. There is an appearance of reservation in this denial that the bill is not to enclose the heath : is the heath to be touched at all? is it to be built upon ? it should slot only suffer no encroachment, but it should not even he euvirtined by a town of
squares and terraces. the Sunday Londoner may quaff large draughts of an air pouring unsullied from the distant country—it is as good as going twenty or thirty miles out of town. It is a real and well-known source of health to the enervated Londoner. The elevation of the ground is even a defect for mere squares and streets, as the owners.of oar- riage.horees can tell the promoters of the enclosure.
Sneer, if you please, at the narrowness of Cockney views and the humbleness of Cockney tastes ; but no sneering in the world can do what this hill would—destroy the true beauty of Hampstead. Other parts of England may produce different beauties ; not many which are greater-; very few such a combination of peculiar points of interest. Let us describe it for the benefit of those who, not being Cockneys, have never visited that suburban Arcadia. It is approached by a hill that will try the breath of the sedentary man ; thus being to him in the relation of highlands to a country low- lander. Town-like villas and pretty nursery-grounds give place to houses with grounds and trees of some size ; so that the entrance to the village has something of the park-like character imparted by neat plant-enclosures, pretty buildings, grass, and trees. The branching. off of roads and the undulating ground add to that effect. Enter the town, and you might fancy yourself in a village in the midst of Kent ; there are so many old houses, and there is so much up and down hill. Pursuing the main road, you arrive on a lofty terrace, with a descent on either side which makes the road a kind of natural parapet, swept by all winds. Further on, the road forks, and you may go by a very pleasing way to the more cultivated beauties of Highgate or to the meadow scenery ofGolder's Green and Hendon. But the great beauty of Hampstead is its heath, which lies on each side of the terrace, the ground sinking abruptly; intersected by many winding paths ; clothed in furze, and ferns, andheather ; alive with birds and crickets; and glowing in the season with the living gold of the fume-bushes and broom. In one part of the heath is a group of trees, saved from the axe, if we remember rightly, by Lord HOLLAND in another is a noble groupe of pines. Not a small element in the beauty of the heath is the extreme broken sur- face, and the endless variety in the colour of the sands,—yellows, tawny and golden ; browns and greys ; which relieve in the most picturesque manner the greens of the whin, and grass, and trees. Many little patches of water add brilliancy to the scene.
Another beauty, dear to the confined citizen, is the perfect free- dom of the heath: there are no enclosures, no grass to be warned off, no set paths, no level circumscribed view : you may literally "ramble" about it. No other piece of open ground near town has equal beauties : Blackheath is pretty, but not so wild ; Clap- ham is a mere patch of heath in town.; Wimbledon is free, but less various ; Barnes is an ugly waste. You may travel the Scottish Highlands—the Appenines—the Lower Appenines, round and "nubbly," which, as you approach Val d'Arno, took like so many green bald heads in a theatre-pit—the Alps themselves—and not meet with a scene so piquant and so pleasing; and that within an omnibus-ride of London. From the terrace, too, the travelled Cockney may turn round and view the town—the greatest in the world; a vast smoky mystery, the busy hum of its ceaseless traffic even there haunting his fancy if not his ear. Even the traveller from more distant abodes will be struck with the scene; which is, in sober earnestness, a feature such as few cities can boast.
This feature is threatened with destruction! While we talk of making parks and pleasure-grounds for the recreation of the mil- lion, we are asked to destroy the best bit of country-land that Nature has endowed the city withal ! Be it remembered, that, once destroyed, it never can be restored. We may turn a town into a park—into a meadow even; but we cannot make such a life- some and freakish landscape as Nature has dashed off in Hamp- stead. Once reduced to the level of the squares and crescents which are commonplaces about London, and we never shall look upon its like again. In another generation, these things will be even more prized ; and what worthy Peer will incur the reproach of being one of those that proposed to expunge Hampstead heath?
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