Hampstead, midway in the nineteenth century, was still a picturesque little town, possessed of several stately old houses—one known as Sir Harry Vane's—whose gardens were in some cases entered through tall, wide, iron gates of elaborate design which now would be accounted priceless. It was still the resort of artists, many of whom visited the pleasant house of Edwin Wilkins Field, conspicuous among the public-spirited men who rescued from the builder-fiend the Heath, and made of it a London “lung” and a joy for ever; himself a lawyer, the inspirer of the Limited Liability Act, and an accomplished amateur water-colour painter. His first wife was a niece of Rogers, the banker-poet, famous for his breakfast parties and table talk. At Mr Field's house we came first to know Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., the famous sea-scape painter, and his family, who were musical as well as artistic, and gave delightful parties. It was said that Stanfield was familiar with the build and rig of a ship down to its minutest detail, because he and his lifelong friend and fellow Royal Academician, David Roberts, ran away from school together to sea at a time when life on the ocean wave seemed to most boys the ideal existence. To the last, Stanfield looked like an old sea-dog, and was bluff, hearty and genial. Hampstead still remembers him with pride; and “Stanfield House,” wherein the first really good local Free Library was sheltered, is so called because for nearly twenty years it was his dwelling. At the Fields' house, among other celebrities, artistic, literary and legal, we also met Turner; and it was to “Squire's Mount,” and at a crowded evening party there that a characteristic anecdote of this eccentric, gifted painter belongs. The taciturn, gloomy-looking guest had taken an early farewell of host and hostess, and disappeared, only to return some minutes later, wonderfully and fearfully apparelled, and silently commence a search about the drawing-room. Suddenly he seemed to recollect, approached a sofa on which sat three handsomely-attired ladies, whose indignant countenances were a sight for gods and men when the abruptly-mannered artist called on them to rise. He then half dived beneath the seat, drew forth a dreadfully shabby umbrella of the “Gamp” species, and, taking no more notice of the irate three than if they had been so many chairs, withdrew—this time for good. Turner had a hearty contempt for the Claude worship, and was resolved to expose its hollowness. He bequeathed to the nation two of his finest oil paintings on condition that they were placed in the Trafalgar Square Gallery beside two of Claude's which already hung there, and to this day act as foils. A custodian of the Gallery once told me that he was present when Turner visited the room in which were the two Claudes, took a foot-rule from his pocket and measured their frames, doubtless in order that his own should be of like dimensions.