We have seen in the course of these chapters some of the associations of South London. I confess that, for my own part, I am not happy in considering associations connected with rows of terraces and villas. Here, you say, was once the house, with the park, of such and such a great man. Really! I dare say. But it is now covered with gentility. If I am taken to a slum--such a slum as that on the west of St. Mary Overies, and am told that in this place was Winchester House, I am at once interested. Why should the memory of the past appeal to our imagination more in a slum than in a brand new, spick and span collection of pleasant country villas? Is it from a feeling that all things tend to decay, and that the new suburb speaks not of decay? Who, for instance, stepping from the south-east corner of Tooting Common into the place which was once Streatham Park, can think of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson among these roads and villas? At Tooting itself, one might remember, were it not for the houses, Daniel De Foe, who founded the first Independent chapel there. At Wandsworth, if it were not so much built upon, I might see Voltaire walking about. At Putney, but for the villas, I should look for Pitt. Oh! there are a thousand people once living, and walking, and playing their parts in their villages, whose wraiths and spectres would willingly haunt them still, but cannot for the bricks and the walls, the chimneys and the smoke, the roads and the trams. We have destroyed the beauty of South London: we have also made its historical associations impossible. [Illustration: RED CROSS GARDENS, Southwark]