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We leave Haverstock Terrace (now Belsize Grove), leading to Belsize Gardens, on the left, and a little above it, to the right, the sloping grass-fields—as yet unbuilt on, but marked for speculation—and a pleasant view, between the poplars shading the top of Haverstock Hill, of green Highgate, and the smooth mound of Traitors’ Hill west, with Camden Town crowding up to the new Cattle Market, and tiers of houses covering what were once Copenhagen Fields, an engraving of which, dated 1782, lies before me, and shows these fields with only one habitation in them, Copenhagen House, a tea-drinking place, the popularity of which extended for a considerable time into the present century.
The entrance to the garden is through the ribs of a whale set up archwise, with an inscription across the top. Two individuals are playing at bowls, whilst two others look on. In the foreground are three gentlemen in cocked hats, long-skirted coats, and their hair en queue, one of whom placidly smokes a churchwarden; while at a little distance, watching them, are two sinister-looking men, with thick bludgeons in their hands, and the ugly head of a horse-pistol ominously protruding from the pocket of one of them, suggestive of a state of society to which again I shall presently refer.