In the magnificent summer of 1834 the brothers Chalons, as full of charm, brightness and fancy as their pictures, spent six delightful weeks at Hampstead, giving Constable an opportunity he never lost of pointing out his pet views and all the loveliest trees and best bits of his ‘Sweet Hampstead.’ I remember Mr. and Mrs. Valentine Bartholomew, who knew them well, telling me the following story of the pleasant brothers: how a very large, straggling old vine which covered the back of their house, and that of a titled neighbour in a quiet street off a then fashionable square, suddenly appeared _en papilotte_, to the astonishment of the next-door household, whose share of the vine had never developed a single blossom. A few days later a ladder was laid against the wall, and one or other of the brothers ascended it, and appeared deeply interested in examining the vintage, which, looking at the number of paper bags covering the vine, appeared to be quite wonderful. The artists’ old French manservant and the housekeeper next door were on very friendly terms, and she had essayed all her arts to discover the mystery of the one-sided behaviour of the vine; but the secret of its productiveness was his master’s, and Le Brun was impenetrable. At last—for there had been other innocent delusions and merry conceits on the part of the light-hearted brothers—this daughter of Eve fell upon the plan of pretending distress at the fruiterer’s failing to send grapes in time for dessert, conscious that, if there was any reality in appearances, this feint would discover it, and was more than ever confounded when the old Frenchman made his appearance no great while after, with messieurs his masters’ compliments, and a basket of delicious grapes—‘their own fruit.’ Doubtless there have been other residents in Well Walk of ‘mark and likelihood,’ but I am ignorant of them. The most important houses in it in my time were the Pump-House School, the Long Room, and its close neighbour, the gloomy-looking Bergh, then the officers’ quarters of the militia barracks close by. This, I am told, is now a private residence, with handsome grounds and garden, concealed by high walls. The Wells died out slowly, for outsiders still retained their faith in the potency of the waters. When Dr. Hughson in 1809 published his ‘History of London and its Neighbourhood,’ he states that Hampstead then ranked high for the number and variety of its medicinal waters; that beside the old spa of chalybeate quality, there were two other kinds of mineral water. One of them, a saline spring, was discovered by Mr. John Bliss, an eminent surgeon of Hampstead, 1802. The other owed its disclosure to Dr. Goodwin, another local practitioner; so that it would appear that, though no longer a place of amusement, the Wells continued to be resorted to by invalids.