character of vinegar, and was also sold; as much as thirty gallons of this “verjuice” was produced in one year. Extra hands were hired to weed and dress the vineyard, and apparently the vineyard entailed a good deal of trouble, and for many years it was let. Think of a warm day in early autumn, clusters of grapes hanging from the twisted vines, men and women in gay colours carrying baskets of ripe fruit to the vats where they were trodden, and the crimson juice squeezed out; the mellow rays of the sinking sun light up the high walls and many towers of the City, and the distant pile of Westminster is half hidden by the mists rising from the river, while there, too, the vintage is in full swing, and the song[4] of the grape-gatherers breaks the stillness of the October evening. Away to the north the landscape is bounded by the wooded heights of Hampstead and Highgate. Most of the country round London then was forest land, and in spite of the changes of centuries a few acres of the original forest remain in Highgate Woods to this day, now owned by the Corporation of London. Between the hills and the city on the north-east lay the marshy ground known as Moorfields, for some 800 years the favourite resort of Londoners wishing to take the air. Gradually this open space has been built over, although a few green patches, such as Finsbury Square, the Artillery Ground, or the more distant Bunhill Fields, have remained through the changes time has wrought. This space might have been like one of the other heaths or commons of London, a beautiful open space in the heart of the town, but the supposed exigencies of modern civilisation, with the usual want of foresight, have banished the life-giving fresh air, and the Corporation of London has had to go far afield, to Burnham Beeches and Epping Forest, to supply what once was at its door. Literally at its door, as the busy street of Moorgate recalls the Mayor, Thomas Falconer by name, who in 1415 “caused the wall of the citie to be broken neere unto Coleman Street, and there builded a posterne now called _Moorgate_, upon the Mooreside, where was never gate before. This gate he made for ease of the citizens, that way to passe upon cawseys into the Field for their recreation.”[5] The fields in question were at that time a marsh, and though some fifty years later “dikes and bridges” were made, it was many years before the whole moor was drained. The task at one time seemed so difficult that the chronicler Stowe, in 1598, feared that even if the earth was raised until it was level with the city walls it would be “but little dryer,” such was the “moorish” nature of the ground. Moorfields was the scene of many curious dramas during its history. It was the great place for displays, sham fights, and sports of the citizens. Pepys notes in his Diary, July 26, 1664, that there was much discourse about “the fray yesterday in Moorfields, how the butchers at first did beat the weavers (between whom there hath been