Of the many beautiful villages north of London that have of late years been transformed into suburbs of the ever-growing metropolis, few retain any of their original character, or can, strictly speaking, be called picturesque. Tottenham, in spite of its fine situation, with the river Lea forming its eastern and the New River its western boundaries, is to all intents and purposes a town, the restored High Cross, about which there has been so much learned controversy, the ancient parish church, and two or three old houses near the green, alone bearing witness to the good old times when the quaint poem of _The Tournament of Tottenham_ was written. It is much the same with Edmonton, where, in the still standing Bay Cottage, Charles Lamb lived for some time and died, and in the churchyard of which he and his sister are buried, and where John Keats served his apprenticeship to a surgeon and wrote his earliest poems. It bears but a faint resemblance to the village into which John Gilpin of immortal fame dashed on his famous ride after {50} his vain attempt to pull up at the Bell Inn, on the left-hand side of the road from London. The once charming little hamlet of Whetstone, too, a short distance further north, where, according to local tradition, the soldiers halted to sharpen their swords on the way to Barnet Field, is rapidly losing its rural appearance. On the other hand, the scattered settlement of Friern Barnet--beyond the completely modernised Finchley--with its picturesque church that retains a fine Norman doorway, is still quite a country place; whilst Edgware, the two Stanmores, Elstree, High Barnet, East Barnet, and Enfield, though they too are already marked for destruction, are as yet full of the aroma of the past. Edgware, situated on the ancient Watling Street, prides itself on owning the forge in which Handel, having taken refuge from a storm, was inspired by the rhythmic beats of the hammer on the anvil with the famous melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith'; and it also owns several quaint old inns, one of which, the Chandos Arms, preserving the memory of the great mansion--known as The Canons, because it occupied the site of a monastery--that was built for the Duke of Chandos whilst he held the lucrative post of paymaster to the forces, but was pulled down after his death by his successor. Fortunately, however, the richly decorated private chapel of The Canons, in which Handel was organist from 1718 to 1721, and containing the organ on which he played, is still preserved as part of the parish church of Little Stanmore, or Whitchurch, a pretty village about half a mile from Edgware, and in its graveyard Handel and the {51} blacksmith whose name is so closely associated with his are buried not far from each other.