In a series of sketchy, ill-considered papers—the very memory of which makes my ears tingle—I helped to give currency to this belief, but subsequently, on reading the letters of Leigh Hunt, and the literary recollections of his friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, I found, both from description and allusion, that Vale Lodge could not possibly be the ‘little packing-case, by courtesy called a house,’ which Leigh Hunt himself describes as his home at Hampstead, where he had gone for the sake of his ‘health, and his old walks in the fields.’ It seemed a case for the ‘oldest inhabitant,’ and I was fortunately referred to Mr. Paxon, of High Street, rate collector, etc., as his father had been before him. An old and ailing man, but intelligent, courteous, and communicative, he at once gave me the information I sought for, and was at pains to point out the white, weather-boarded cottage where, when a lad, as his father’s clerk, he had often delivered the rate-papers to Mr. or Mrs. Hunt, whom he well remembered, and their children also. Even then the cottages—a row of four, if I remember aright—their prospect bounded by the margin of what is now the Spaniards Road, with a space of unspoiled sward before them, coming down to the garden rails, had an air of mild gentility, the effect, probably, of their retired situation, and the cared-for little garden plots before them, not much bigger than an old sea-captain’s bandanna handkerchief, and quite as flowery. Some resident had named the one Leigh Hunt had tenanted Rose Cottage. It had then a little green trellised veranda smothered in roses and scented clematis above the French window that opened on the garden. My informant told me that Lord Byron had at one time lodged in another of these cottages, and had written with a diamond on a pane of one of the windows two lines which afterwards appeared in ‘Childe Harold.’ The pane existed in his time, but had either been broken, or cut out and removed. This was before Leigh Hunt’s residence there. When, in 1895, after a prolonged absence from Hampstead, I again visited it for the purpose of reviving my impressions of certain localities, I naturally desired to revisit Leigh Hunt’s cottage; but time and the alterations in the neighbourhood had confused my recollection of the way to it, and upon inquiring, I am obliged to confess there is some truth in the accusations of certain American magazine writers, that the people generally are not well up in the traditions of their neighbourhood, nor greatly interested in the homes of the poets, painters, and other celebrities, the memory of whose fame has enriched it. My quest was met by a frank ignorance: neither the cottage nor its memorable occupant had been heard of by the ordinary dwellers in the neighbourhood.