in what they hoped to find a congenial wilderness. Mr. Birkett Foster and Mr. Edmund Evans, the colour-printer, were, so far as I know, the first colonists who built adjoining houses for themselves beside Witley station. George Eliot came to live close by them at the "Heights," after long searching for a home on the Surrey commons. The neighbourhood began to be so much affected by literary and scientific people, that the nickname _Mindhead_ was suggested. More than one leading London consultant made his holiday retreat hereabouts, not keeping to himself the secret of the dry clear air in which delicate invalids can sit out of doors under winter sunshine. The merits of Hindhead as a health resort were advertised by Professor Tyndall building a house near the top, where he found himself able to spend the winter as well as on the Bel Alp. Mr. Grant Allen deserted the Riviera for Hindhead, from which he dated his "Hill-Top" novels, and here found many hints for "Moorland Idylls." The local colour of one of Sir A. Conan Doyle's romances betrays how he joined a colony where only successful novelists may now aspire to find house-room. Twenty years ago, Hindhead had a loose scattering of villas and cottages round the Royal Huts Inn at the cross-roads, its post-office being at Grayshott over the Hants border, which was the only thing like a village. Now mansions and bungalows are more or less thickly strung upon those old roads, and on new ones, with shops appearing here and there in what before long may be spoken of as streets. The "Huts," improved into an hotel, has half a dozen rivals, from the mansion-like "Beacon" to the "Fox and Pelican" model public-house; and Glen Lea, oldest of Hindhead _pensions_, sees fresh competitors springing up every year. Houses are dear and lodgings hard to find in the fine season. As in the case of Davos and other health resorts whose merit lay in their untainted air, the place has been overbuilt from the curative point of view; and it begins to attract a gayer society than the early Crusoes of this bracing heath, on which such notable persons have staved off their latter end; while the works of so many writers show how they have been at least sojourners hereabouts.