It was delightful to Constable, as it was to Collins, to point out the beauty of the scene (than which there are few more lovely spots in England), and to do, as it were, the honours of the Heath to friends and visitors less intimate with it than himself—to surprise them with new effects, and hear the praise of his ‘sweet Hampstead,’ repeated at every fresh point of view. Such sympathetic appreciation doubled his own pleasure in the prospects. We can imagine him and the brothers Chalon, who in the delicious weather of the summer of 1834-35 spent six weeks at Hampstead, standing here,[130] near the Flagstaff, from whence on a clear day one may see the towers of Windsor, on the one hand, and across the Thames to Shooter’s Hill and Hanging Woods on the other; while to the south-west rises the spire-crowned hill of Harrow, with all the broad lands lying between. Blake, too, though he could not relish the brisk air of the Upper Heath, must in his visits to Linnell’s have met with visions on its summit. It may have been here that he saw ‘The moon like a flower In heaven’s high bower With silent delight Sit and smile on the night.’ Who knows? And Varley, with his portfolio of mingled horoscopes and drawings, must have added many a rapid sketch to these latter from this fair neighbourhood.[131] [Illustration: _Jack Straw’s Castle._] [Illustration: _Flagstaff._] At this point the well-known tavern, Jack Straw’s Castle, claims the distinction of occupying the highest of the London levels, standing, as I have elsewhere said, 400 feet (local historians say 443 feet) above the level of the Thames. The tavern, according to a fast-fading tradition, has its name from a robber who assumed it, and who lived on this spot, where, of course, he commanded a good look-out on all footpaths leading to or crossing the Heath. A cave on the premises is said to have been the depository of his spoils. In all probability it had been the site of a rude fort or mound, thrown up as a defence either against or by Jack Straw’s and Wat Tyler’s rebel army.[132] At present Jack Straw’s Castle is best known as a pleasant resort of summer visitors to the Heath, and of late years as the scene of the Christmas Court Leets, one of the rare occasions when the red-crossed flag of St. George, the Lord of the Manor’s flag, waves from the adjacent flagstaff. From this spot two roads fork off, that to the left leading to North End, the other to the Spaniards, an inn standing at the entrance of the Heath on the road to Highgate, on the site of an ancient toll-gate which formerly divided the Bishop of London’s park from Hampstead Heath. It was primitively known as the Gate-house or Park Gate-house, and has its present name from its first landlord, a Spaniard, who converted the lodge into a house of entertainment. So the story runs, but how it grew to a plural is not explained. It is quite outside the precincts of Hampstead, being really