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And ended is that we begun;

Now is this song both sung and past:

My lute, be still, for I am done.’

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‘But if the busy town

Attract thee still to toil for power or gold,

Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess

In Hampstead, courted by the western wind.’

Dr. Armstrong.

To the inhabitants of London and its suburbs a history of Hampstead and the Heath may seem wholly unnecessary. What London lad who has not fished in and skated on its ponds, played truant in its subrural fields and lanes, gone bird-nesting in its woods, or spent delightful, orthodox half-holidays upon the heath?

As for the free brotherhood of the lanes and alleys before the plague of Board schools afflicted them, or the Board of Works stood sponsor for the preservation of the Heath, what hand’s breadth (of its mile-wide waste) of its hundreds of acres was there that they did not know and continue to renew acquaintance with on every recurrence of the high festivals of Easter and Whitsuntide?