We have not only destroyed the former beauty of South London: we have forgotten it. Ask a resident of Penge--one of the many thousands of Penge--what this suburban town was like seventy years ago. Do you think he can tell you anything of Penge Common? Has he ever heard of any Penge Common? Well, it is exactly seventy-one years ago--viz. in May 1827--that Mr. William Hone--the compiler of the 'Every-Day Book,' climbed up outside the Dulwich stage, proposing to visit the picture gallery of Dulwich College. Hone was one of the first of those curious and inquisitive persons who began to employ their summers in exploring the unknown villages and strange places round London. The picture gallery he could not see because it was closed; he therefore walked across the country from Dulwich to a place called Penge. At the top of a hill he found a choice of three roads. He chose that which led through Penge Common. The place was thickly wooded: it was, he says, 'a cathedral of singing birds.' At the mere recollection of that choir he bursts into verse--other people's verse. Alas! the Common had already, even then, been ravished from its owners, the people: it was enclosed; it was doomed; it was about to be built upon. Mr. Hone consoled himself, however, at the 'Old Crooked Billet,' with eggs and bacon and home-brewed ale. Again, is there anyone in Penge who now remembers the hanging woods? They hung over a hillside, and were as beautiful as the hanging woods of Cliveden. But, like the Common, they are gone. [Illustration: From the Tower of St. Saviour's] Or let us ask the resident of Norwood what he remembers of its ancient glories; whether there were any ancient glories. Has he heard of the famous Norwood oak? Of the Norwood Spa? Of the gypsies of Norwood? Why, the Queen of all the gypsies, unless there was a more powerful sovereign at Jedburgh, held her court and camp at Norwood. Has this resident heard of the views from the top of the hill, four hundred feet above the level of the sea, whither the people flocked by hundreds to see the view and to wander in the woods? All this beauty is destroyed. Of course, the destruction was inevitable. One accepts the inevitable with a sigh; we cannot have town and country together. The woods are gone, the rural life is gone, encroachments have been made upon the commons, the wayside tavern--the place was full of wayside taverns--is gone. What remains of all this beauty is a fragment here and there. Clapham Common, once a heath, now a park; Wimbledon Common, Tooting Common; these expanses are mercifully left us for breathing-places. Some of them, like Clapham, are transformed into imitations of a park, instead of being left as a heath. All of them are bereft, of course, of their old accompaniments; they have lost the wood beside the heath, the farm, the ploughed lands, the tinkle of the sheep bell, the song of the skylark.