.'

'While, on the other hand, Mrs. B. gave us such a dismal account of the
precipices, mountains, and deserts she encountered, that you would have
thought she had been on the wildest part of the Alps.'

The old Hampstead highroad, starting from the plain, winds its way
resolutely up the steep, and brings you past red-brick houses and
walled-in gardens to this noble outlook; to the heath, with its fresh,
inspiriting breezes, its lovely distances of far-off waters and gorsy
hollows. At whatever season, at whatever hour you come, you are pretty
sure to find one or two votaries--poets like Mrs. Barbauld, or commonplace
people such as her friends--watching before this great altar of nature;
whether by early morning rays, or in the blazing sunset, or when the
evening veils and mists with stars come falling, while the lights of
London shine far away in the valley. Years after Mrs. Barbauld wrote,
one man, pre-eminent amongst poets, used to stand upon this hill-top,
and lo! as Turner gazed, a whole generation gazed with him. For him
Italy gleamed from behind the crimson stems of the fir-trees; the spirit
of loveliest mythology floated upon the clouds, upon the many changing
tints of the plains; and, as the painter watched the lights upon the
distant hills, they sank into his soul, and he painted them down for us,
and poured his dreams into our awakening hearts.

He was one of that race of giants, mighty men of humble heart, who have
looked from Hampstead and Highgate Hills. Here Wordsworth trod; here
sang Keats's nightingale; here mused Coleridge; and here came Carlyle,
only yesterday, tramping wearily, in search of some sign of his old
companions. Here, too, stood kind Walter Scott, under the elms of the
Judges' Walk, and perhaps Joanna Baillie was by his side, coming out
from her pretty old house beyond the trees. Besides all these, were a
whole company of lesser stars following and surrounding the brighter
planets--muses, memoirs, critics, poets, nymphs, authoresses--coming to
drink tea and to admire the pleasant suburban beauties of this modern
Parnassus. A record of many of their names is still to be found,
appropriately enough, in the catalogue of the little Hampstead library
which still exists, which was founded at a time when the very hands
that wrote the books may have placed the old volumes upon the shelves.
Present readers can study them at their leisure, to the clanking of the
horses' feet in the courtyard outsid