It is said Lord Mansfield never forgot his indebtedness to his publican neighbour. And now—for this talk of the inn has lured us straight to it—we must turn back if we mean to keep within the precincts of Hampstead. The house—the end one of three at the east corner of the Heath as we enter it from the Spaniards—with a deep portico projecting to the road, was once the residence of the famous Lord Erskine, ‘an inconsiderable-looking home for the great Lord Chancellor, but in which, with his domestic tastes and love of Nature, he probably spent some of the happiest years of his life.’ Originally neither house nor garden appears to have been of much importance, but both were capable of improvement, and Lord Erskine delighted in improving them. The ground comprised several acres lying in natural undulations, and lent itself to ornamental planting; while the eye was not confined to the enclosure, but ‘ranged over views diversified and beautiful.’ The garden in his day, be it remembered, lay on the opposite side of the road, and was connected with the house by a subway, but this has long since been taken by Lord Mansfield. Erskine himself is said to have planted the famous holly-hedge. Here, with his old gardener, his lordship worked by way of refreshment after his professional toils, and at last the place became noted for the number and beauty of the trees and shrubs about it, and took the name of the Evergreens, or Evergreen Hill, which it retained till his lordship’s death, since when it is properly distinguished as Erskine House. For the story of Lord Erskine’s life—a grand one, though with the last pages of it a little blurred—I must refer my readers to Campbell’s ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’ It is not often that the army proves the vestibule to the Bar, but the training was of use there, and we read that the effect of his eloquence was not a little heightened by the dignity of his fine person and stately bearing. Crabb Robinson tells us he could never forget the figure and voice of Erskine. There was a charm in his voice, he says, ‘a fascination in his eye.’ His eloquence was at once powerful and persuasive. We only remember it was used on the side of truth and right. He was best known in connection with Hampstead as a humane and amiable man, with a great love of gardening and flowers. Apropos of this, there is a story told of an anxious client calling on him in Serjeants’ Inn, and finding the table of his consulting-room occupied by thirty or forty small vials, in each of which was a slip of geranium, and when the great man came in, instead of talking of the case, he began to tell him of the many kinds of geraniums there were.[136] He made no secret that he attached little or no importance to consultations, but chose rather to rely upon himself.