By far the most beautiful and the most frequented of all London Commons is Hampstead Heath. The original Heath measured 240 acres, but, with the addition of Parliament Hill, there are now over 500 acres of wild open country for ever preserved for the benefit of Londoners. ’Appy ’Ampstead, the resort not only of ’Arrys and ’Arriets, but poets, artists, and people of every rank in life, is too well known to demand description. The view from it seems more beautiful every time the occasional visitor ascends the hill, and gazes down on London and away over the lovely country of the Thames valley. The County Council, the present holders of this public trust, have mercifully refrained from turning it into a park--the original intention of those who first wished to preserve it. The bracken still flourishes, the gorse still blooms, and there is yet a wild freshness about it that has not been “improved” away. Hampstead has had periods of fashion as a residence. In the eighteenth century it is described as “a village in Middlesex, on the declivity of a fine hill, 4 miles from London. On the summit of this hill is a heath, adorned with many gentlemen’s houses.... The water of the [Hampstead] Wells is equal in efficacy to that of Tunbridge, and superior to that of Islington.” These Wells appear to have first attracted notice in the time of Charles II. In 1698, Susanna Noel and her son, third Earl of Gainsborough (then the owner of the soil), gave the Well, with six acres of ground, to the poor of Hampstead. For more than thirty years the Wells, with all the attendant attractions of the pump-room, with balls and music, drew the fashionable world up to Hampstead. It was said to be “much more frequented by good company than can well be expected, considering its vicinity to London; but such care has been taken to discourage the meaner sort from making it a place of residence, that it is now become ... one of the Politest Public Places in England.” Here Fanny Burney made her heroine, Evelina, attend dances, and it plays a part in the fortunes of Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe; and here all the wits and poets of the time mingled in the gay throng. Many have been the celebrated residents in Hampstead--Lord Chatham, Dr. Johnson, Crabbe, Steele, Gay, Keats, William Blake, Leigh Hunt, Romney and Constable, John Linnell, and David Wilkie among the number. The site of the pump-room is all built over, but some fine old elm trees in Well Walk, still have an air of romance and faded glory about them. The houses near the Heath--such as Shelford, afterwards Rosslyn House, with a celebrated avenue of Spanish chestnuts, The Grove, Belsize Park, the residence of Lord Wotton, and then of Philip, Earl of Chesterfield--have all been consumed by the inroads of bricks and mortar. It is more than likely that the Heath would have shared the same fate, had not the inhabitants taken active steps to arouse public attention to preserve this wild heath, unequalled near any great city.