n estate to Westminster Abbey to found a chantry for himself, Edmund,
Earl of Lancaster, and Blanche his wife. After many changes it was
occupied by Lord Wotton, who had been created a Baron by Charles II. His
half-brother, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, succeeded him, and the
family held the Belsize estate until 1807. The house was afterwards
turned into a popular place of amusement.

Hampstead as a whole has grown very rapidly. In a map of the beginning
of the nineteenth century there are comparatively few houses; these
nestle in the shape of a spear-head and haft about the High Street. At
West End and Fortune Green are a few more, a few straggle up the
southern end of the Kilburn Road, and Rosslyn House and Belsize House
are detached, out in the open country.

Seymour, writing in 1735, gives a quaint description of Hampstead as
follows: "This Village ... is much more frequented by good company than
can well be expected considering its vicinity to London, but such care
has been taken to discourage the meaner sort from making it a place of
residence that it is now become, after Scarborough and Bath and
Tunbridge, one of the Politest Public Places in England, and to add to
the Entertainment of the Company there is, besides the long room in
which the Company meet publicly on a Monday evening to play at cards,
etc., a new Dancing Room built this year."

Hampstead itself, now a town of 80,000 people, is almost entirely
modern; the old village has been gradually destroyed until there is next
to nothing left. But the Heath remains, the only wild piece of ground
within easy reach of the Londoner. It remains to be seen whether the
authorities will continue to observe the difference between a park and a
heath.

No suburb of London can point to so many distinguished residents as
this, the most favoured and the most favourite. Among them may be
mentioned Sir Henry Vane, Dr. Butler (author of the "Analogy"), Lord
Alvanley, Lord Chatham, Lord Erskine, Crabbe, Dr. Johnson, Joanna
Baillie, Mrs. Barbauld, Constable, Romney, Sir James Mackintosh, Steele,
Gay, Arbuthnot, Akenside, Thomas Day, Leigh Hunt, Keats, William Blake,
John Linnell, Wilkie, Stanfield, Du Maurier, and many others.

Directly you get within the boundaries of Hampstead you are aware that
the borough has an atmosphere of its own--an atmosphere in two senses,
for the great height of part of the borough and its distance from London
combine to give it as wholesome an