The present Whittington Stone is the degenerate and highly unornamental descendant of quite a number of vanished memorials to the great Lord Mayor which have occupied this spot since his day. It is not by any means a romantic spot to the sight nowadays, but for those who can bring romance with them in their own minds, it matters little that the heights just here are crowned with suburban villa roads, that a public-house—the “Whittington Stone Tavern”—stands by, or that the whole neighbourhood reeks vulgarity. The present stone is dated 1821, and succeeded one which had disappeared shortly before, itself the successor in 1795 of a cross. The existing inscription was recut, and railings enclosing the stone put up in 1869; a public-house gas-lamp now crowning and desecrating the whole. IX IT is a far cry from the London County Council, the present highway authority at Highgate, to the first roadmaker here, in 1364. A hermit, William Phelippe by name, at that time lived in a little cell on the lower slope of Highgate Hill, looking down upon London. From that remote eyrie, had he been a man of imagination, he might have beheld prophetic visions of London’s future sprawling greatness, when the tide of life should rise to the crest of his hill and bring with it bricks and mortar, wood-pavements, cable-tramways, and other things of equal use and beauty. He foresaw none of these things, possibly because he did not sufficiently mortify the flesh. Certainly he was a hermit not without wealth, and perhaps therefore not one of your sad-eyed ascetics. He had a goodly balance in some old earthenware crock under the floor, or at the bank—the road bank of the Hollow Way, very old-established—and he had ample leisure, unencroached upon by toilette requirements, for which hermits had no use. Lazing in his cell commanding the road—it stood near where the Whittington Stone stands now—he had often noticed how wet, miry, and full of sloughs was the Hollow Way, and with what difficulty travellers ascended by it. Accordingly he devised a scheme by which he conferred benefits alike upon the travellers along the road and the farmers of Highgate. He directed and paid for the digging of gravel and the laying of it along the road, and in the work presently expended all his money. But in so doing he had made an excellent investment; much better than leaving it on deposit at the bank mentioned above, where, in the nature of things, it accrued no interest; for he procured a decree from Edward the Third, authorising “our well-beloved William Phelippe, the hermit,” to set up a toll-bar, and licensing him to levy tolls and keep the road in repair for “our people passing between Heghgate and Smethfelde.” Thus were the first toll-bar and the first turnpike-keeper established, and we may judge that the undertaking was profitable from the records that show how very largely the roadside hermits throughout the country went into