feared from that quarter.

Indoors, | years, and little Peter became big too, all was equally favorable to the Peter, and then he understood what carrying out of little Peter's deep-laid his grandfather had meant.

From The Contemporary Review. HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

scheme. Grandfather really was older than ever to-day. He had not stirred from the big chair since he came down in the morning, and when he was spoken to he said nothing, he only smiled and fell into a doze. He was fast asleep now, and little Peter's heart beat with joy to think what a fine surprise he was preparing for his grandfather. What would the old man think when he felt the stiffness and trembling going out of his legs and back, his eyes growing clear and bright again, and his deafness leaving him? all which would be sure to happen if rhododendrons and iris in full bloom, the clock would only stop ticking.

I HAD never been to Hampstead Heath, so finding myself the other day on "the Northern Heights," disappointed in an engagement that I had thought had been made, and with the day all before me, I went up on the hill, and by a charming approach I came out from under some beautiful old elms on to a roadway brilliant with

and so upon the famous 'Eath. Hardly Grandfather was so fast asleep, with a soul was in sight; the day was his head leaning forward on his breast, perfect, with an unclouded sun and that little Peter was not afraid of wak- scarcely a breath of wind, and I had ing him. He summoned all his courage all the landscape to myself. And what to his aid and stepped cautiously up to a beautiful landscape it is. Standing the great clock, with its menacing tick on the crest of the hill I could look tack, unlocked its front door, opened it away across Middlesex into Hertfordwide, and peeped into the resonant shire, lying tranquil and green under cavern in its inside, with the heavy the sunlight, and over the spires and iron weights hanging and the bright towers of churches, with here and brass pendulum swaying to and fro with its everlasting tick tack, tick tack. Then, without giving himself time to take fright at his own daring, he seized hold of the swinging pendulum and, after a brief struggle, held it in his hand, a silent, motionless thing.

Then little Peter loosed his hold, and glanced over his shoulder at the old man, but he was still quietly sleeping. He cautiously closed the door of the tall clock towering above him in silence, and seated himself on a stool at his grandfather's feet, waiting to tell him when he awoke how he had stopped the ticking of the clock that made him such an old, old man.

There his mother found him sitting when she returned from the garden, and neither daughter nor grandson could rouse the old man from the sleep that knows no waking. When the pendulum was set swinging once more, the clock began to tick again as though nothing had happened, and it ticked out the minutes till they grew into

there a housetop showing among the noble groups and groves of trees, and I could not help thinking of the Pilgrims when in their Progress they came to the hill that is called Delectable, and from its summit, overlooked the pleasant valleys. It was on such occasions that the worthy Christiana used to thank the Lord.

Close by was a little pond. A single yacht becalmed in the middle and one retriever swimming hopefully about in search of a stick that had never been thrown, had the pond all to themselves, till a butcher's boy, "all in Neptune's azure garb," came with his cart and drove through it, giving the yacht a friendly shove on its voyage with his whip as he passed and the retriever a renewal of its dwindling hope by deceitful gestures of stick-throwing. The butcher's horse took its pleasure, a sensible beast, very slowly, and like Pharaoh's chariots in the fatal sea, the wheels drave heavily. But at last it reached the "splash," and creeping

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emergent out from the deep all glis- put a penny in his slot, and he could tening wet like some sea-horse cart- not help answering - "Round the corAnd monster, started refreshed along the ner." "round the corner 99 highway. And a terrier came to look found it, the inn of wicked highwayman at the retriever, and barked at it fame. And as I drank my ale in the exceedingly. Why do the dogs out of low-roofed, sanded room, I complithe water always bark so excitedly at mented myself on my sagacity in being the dogs that are in it? Is it that they born a little Victorian-era child instead are rejoicing over the chances of the of a wight in Elizabeth's spacious days swimmer being drowned, or are they when roysterers on the public ways, exhorting him to save himself from a Nyms and Bardolphs and Pistols, watery grave by coming out on to dry called you rogue and fat chuff and land? Or is it from mere excitement, cracked your costard for you, “i' such as possesses human beings at a faith" and robbed you. No. They horse-race or a fire? This is one of were 66 good old" days those, and Enthe few occasions on which a dog barks gland was 66 merry England" then; unintelligibly. You cannot understand but for myself I had rather at night what the little dog on the bank is say-meet ten policemen on Hampstead ing about the big one in the water. Heath than one highwayman. That he means something, and means freshed, I sallied forth to explore the it very much, is out of all question. Heath. What a queer feeling it is that Sometimes it sounds like pure joy, for comes over one visiting it for the first its voice is as that of a dog going out time, when you see how threadbare for a walk with its master, but if so, and seamy the ground is with people why should the little dog on the bank sitting on it and the countless feet that be joyous? What is there in the spec- tread it. Once upon a time it must tacle of another dog swimming about have been sweetly pretty with its little and snuffing like a porpoise, to conduce dells and dingles filled with ferns and to such immoderate gaiety in the on- wild flowers, with the small patches looker? At other times the bark is of boggy ground bright with marshquarrelsome and assertive, as if the plants, its turf all underlaid with moss dog in the water were doing something and patterned with heather. Fine that was outrageous and contrary to trees, too, once grew upon it no doubt. the peace and law, and ought to be But what a change popularity has suppressed. And when the swimmer worked. Every foot of the ground comes out, note the attitude of the seems polished by friction and only the other dog. He approaches the wet one hardiest of the grasses survive. Not stiffly as if about to put some serious even the sweet fresh air seems able to question to him, but the big dog sud- conceal the odor of clothes and boots. denly shakes himself all over him, and, The whole place seems to sniff of Bank while the little dog retires sneezing Holiday. Boys with canes have and feeling snubbed, bounds into the switched off the heads of everything, water again with a fine, full-chested, so that nothing dares to grow above a spread-eagle splash about which there few inches off the ground, except the is no reserve, and which immediately fierce furze and, in the cage-like holsends the little bank-dog off into fran- lows, the retaliating brambles. There tic transports again. is not a flower to be seen on the ground. At the corner, just where a superb Yet beauty has not utterly departed horse-chestnut, holding out upright a from the Heath, for here grow wontorch of blossom at the end of every drous crab-trees and clumps of dwarfed bough like tapers on a Christmas tree, but charming birch, and as you go cast a cool shade, stood a resident-down the steepy hillside you notice looking policeman. He knew appar- that the dimples in the ground still ently what I was going to ask before I hold bracken, and the whins and broom spoke, and answered just as if I had are, as ever, golden.

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But the crab-trees were a revelation would think of lying down under a to me. It was not because they were crab-tree? We only know the tree as literally veiled in blossom, solid domes growing in hedges, or as a straggling, of pink and white, though this rare thin-branched thing that makes It was beauty was notable enough. more canopy than an umbrellathe wonderful manner of their growth. frame before it is covered. Walking The crab-tree nowadays has, I take it, across the meadows from Bidford now been banished from most open spaces we should, if compelled to the choice, to the hedgerows and coppice, and, choose an umbrageous elm, or oak, or where seen, looks like an ordinary sycamore. Certainly not a crab-tree, orchard apple-tree, but of meaner kind. any sooner than a rose-bush. Now, Now these on Hampstead Heath have here we see the danger of trying to nothing near them to cramp them. talk of the past from the knowledge Each stands fairly alone, with its full only of the present. In Shakespeare's share of sun and nourishment on every day the crab-tree was a very important side alike, and what is the result? tree. It was not only "conserved" for Each tree carries its branches down to eating as dessert, for spicing hot drinks the very turf, forming symmetrical in winter time, for the making many circles with its boughs, the most per- sauces, for which from its sharpness it fect arbors that, unassisted by art, can was considered particularly suitable, be possibly imagined. I was so struck but its juice was used for the manufacby them that I went inside several and ture of "verjuice," as common a conin each case found myself in a circular diment" then as vinegar is now, and chamber of foliage and bloom, and so was the main ingredient in, and gave dense as to make me quite invisible to its name to, the original "pomatum.” passers-by. A perfect 66 canopy' "I In Elizabethan times then "the humsaid to myself. And I had no sooner ble crab-apple" of modern poets was thought the thought than there flashed into my mind the tradition of "Shakespeare's Canopy." As everybody knows, Shakespeare, coming home with Ben Jonson from an ale-house at Bidford, outside Stratford-upon-Avon, their branches tent-like to the ground found himself, what with sun and strong ale together, unable to get home, and so lay down under a crabtree by the way, and there caught the chill that killed him. So goes the tradition, and within the century there used to be shown on the Bidford Road the stump of a crab-tree which was called Shakespeare's canopy. The tradition is almost universally accepted as representing a real incident, but it must have always had, for those of the present century at least (it certainly had for me) an element of suspicion in the fact of the poet lying down in such a puny shade, so exposed to public view, as under a crab-tree. Any other tree might have saved the tradition altogether an oak, a sycamore, or an elm- but a crab-tree seemed so inappropriate. Which of us, surprised by strong ale on a summer's afternoon,

a tree of value, and being so would be given, as those of Hampstead Heath have got to-day, free space for growth. This being so, they would droop, as the crab-trees on Hampstead Heath do,

one

all round and offer to the passer-by, both for shade and concealment, a perfect canopy." So that, curiously enough, the survival in the tradition of this one word “ canopy goes a long way to assure us of its authenticity. No modern tradition-monger would have thought of it, still less have connected the word with a crab-treeunless he had happened to see growing in luxury. And if for nothing else I am glad I went to the Heath, as it has, for me, substantiated, beyond all contradiction, the fidelity of the old story; and had I, in Shakespeare's day, been overtaken in my cups walking from Bidford I should certainly, given my choice between oak and elm, and sycamore and crab tree, have chosen the crab-tree for the pavilion of my infirmity.

But to-day on the Heath it canopies

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only small birds, and what a surprising | wherein the brambles, as if overflowing number of them there are. What do from some lake of blackberries on the they do, where do they go, on holidays other side, fell in a cascade over the and Sundays? I can hear (chance hedges, and where, in an afternoon, travellers these) the chiff-chaff calling, he could crowd a collecting-box with and the great-tit, and as I pass a brake Grapta C. album; and how, on a cerof blackberries a querulous whitethroat tain strip of hillside, with a quarry on complains of me passing. I catch sight the one hand and a hazel-copse on the of a redstart flitting among the furze other, he could catch" marbled whites " on the sandy banks, and stopping un- by the score; or, going over the hill der a hawthorn to watch it, I surprise and dropping down into the wood bea willow-wren that is busy among the yond, he could find all the larger fritilmay-blossom. From the distance, be- laries fighting for places on the pink yond the road, comes the chuckling, clusters of the agrimony, and with luck choking noises of young rooks being might take both "white admiral" and fed, the hammering of a woodpecker, "wood-white." And no wonder if the voices of purring ringdove and they were incredulous, for there is a fluting thrush. Once upon a time, no veritable abyss between such schoolboy doubt, these larger birds made a home, experiences of Thecla betulæ and Sinapi too, upon the Heath, and the clumps-how the old names came back to me, of Scotch fir on the eminences were sitting among the furze and talking to the castles of sparrow-hawks, over- the lads with their nets, names problooking the brambled villages of the ably all obsolete in their later nomenhedge - sparrow and yellow - hammer.clature and the Hampstead hunters But now they have gone outside pub- who speak of the "painted lady" as lic limits into the Wild-Wood grounds, a rarity. But if there are no butterflies leaving the Heath to such small folk there are plenty of “bumble-bees,” and as, from inconspicuous plumage and in particular the beautiful, little, foxymouse-like, creeping habits, dare to red one that comes out early in spring live where crowds so frequently come. and sinks its little shafts wherever it Except the hedge-sparrow, the white- finds soft and sandy soil. This part of throat, and the willow-wren, I doubt if Hampstead Heath suits it, as one might any of the birds I saw would venture say, "down to the ground," for those to build their nests on the Heath. The who have eyes for objects on lower redstart is a bold bird, and in spite of levels than each other's faces cannot its fiery plumage, will venture upon it, help seeing this pretty bee sitting, apand at nesting-time all birds are liable parently asleep, upon every little open, to betray uncharacteristic rashness, so sunny patch of sand. But it is not there is really no saying what wild asleep; on the contrary, it is working things, in spite of holiday-seekers, may hard, making cement for its egg-cell, not pitch their tents within the County and if you try to find out his home by Council's protection. Butterflies there watching one of these little plasterers, are none, except a chance straggling your patience will tire before his in66 copper; ;" and two youths with nets dustry. The way to find out where told me that, though they had hunted he lives is to wait till you catch the Heath for some years, the "rarest sight of a bee with legs of buttercupbutterfly they had ever caught was a yellow. Once caught sight of it is 'painted lady.'" And I suppose they very easy to follow, for the pollenthought the old gentleman was romanc-loaded thighs glint about almost like =ing when he told them how, as a boy, fire-flies. The insect you can see is and within three miles of a public burdened and, even if he does loiter school, he had given Stainton new lo- a while here and there, you may be calities for "the great blue," and the sure he is always homeward-bound; rarest of our native "hair-streaks; "and all of a sudden, settling on the how he used to go into a certain lane ground, the glittering legs disappear.

seat.

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For the bee settled on the very edge of "sailed yesterday from the West India his shaft and has vanished down it. docks in one of those rotten trading You can easily dig him out if it is near ships, instead of going by the the edge of the bank, for the shaft only (full stop). And so they came by, goes down a few inches, and then turns these youngsters, all of the upper class at right angles for an inch or so, and evidently, and going in the same direchere are the cells, with neatly plastered tion, to some garden party, perhaps, walls, that the small couple for they and I felt a wretch to sit there and jot are "solitary" bees these earth-folk- down their conversation as they passed have built, and are now filling with me, but I could not help doing it, for it food against the hatching of the eggs. filled me with astonishment to hear And so the morning wore away such children talking among themselves among the furze and sand, and then I of Orchardson and comic opera, Yancrossed a steep-sunk road and found kee "notions," the value of newspaper that I was still on 66 Hampstead Heath," information, and the relative dignity of as the County Council notices on the different passenger steamers. I am crab-trees and the hawthorns still sure when I was their age my ideas threatened me with a penalty of twenty- of the stage went no further than five pounds if I should be found the pantomime, and my art no further picking their blossoms, and wandering than Punch. And thus moralizing, I uphill through a charming brake, just found myself on the heights again, and such a one as Bottom and Quince and lo! at the end of the road there was his fellows chose for rehearsing their the horse-chestnut-tree and the permaplay in, came upon a most alluring uent policeman, and the inn of wicked As I sat, I was invisible to those memory "round the corner." who came up the path until they then I foregathered with a delightful plumped upon me, and it was very aucient of the place, who took ale with diverting to sit there, hear the scraps me, and thereafter, with faltering step of talk, and note the sudden cessation and the help of two mighty sticks, a of voice and the start with which each "whole cow's horn" in each handle party discovered me. The variety was and "a whole crab slip" in each staff, endless, but what struck me at once so he told me, he took me down a little was the extraordinary development of passage between garden walls and inmodern children. The first I heard troduced me to, possibly, one of the distinctly was : "That picture you finest views in the whole of this round know of Orchardson's, where he is world of ours. I have seen more of "(dead stop on seeing me); the its surface than most men, but I canspeaker, a child of about ten, with hair not remember any view to beat it. Beall down her back; then, "teaching fore me, sloping down to some ponds us a kind of square dance; I don't the East Heath-for so my ancient know what it is, but it's awfully pretty, still called it stretched like a great and then they tried to teach us 'Iolan- green drapery of rumpled velvet, and the,' ,' which is all sorts of dauces mixed opposite me, sloping upward from the up, and we made such an awful mud-pound, were Parliament Fields, like the dle " (full stop); two more little same velvet smoothed and without a girls; then two boys, "ought to kill crease. On the crest stood grouped them all, for at this time of the year some noble trees, and away behind they are all queens. How do you were the wooded heights of Highgate, know? The papers say so. Oh! but out of which emerged, to break the you know you ought not to believe sky-line just where they could do it (full stop); then another with the best effect, some great gables, couple, "and filed it down with one of a spire, and a cupola. On my left the those little American bull-doze thing-view was shut in by trees, but on the um-a-bobs and got an endless screw, right what a royal scene! a valley of (full stop); then two more, grass that widened into a plain, and

and