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In my time this central, yet retired, part of Hampstead, which is close to the busiest streets, and yet entirely secluded from them, continued to be a favourite locality with artists and other professional men. There were symptoms of social decadence towards the end of the fifties in a ‘Home for Servants,’ to which No. 28 was then converted; while two or three other public institutions thrust themselves noticeably forward, ‘as ’tis their nature to.’ Its old traditions of privacy and dignified quiet—there was no public traffic through Church Row; Miss Sullivan’s toll-gate stopped the way—was to be sacrificed, and the character it had maintained for so many years for staid gentility and retirement swept away.

Austin Dobson.

No. 9, next door to Mrs. Barbauld’s old home, had become, before I left the neighbourhood, a Reformatory School for Girls, established in 1861 by Miss Christian Nicoll, under whose admirable superintendence it has done, and is doing, good and useful work. The school is the only Government one of the kind in Middlesex. The young inmates have all been convicted of crime, and are undergoing various terms of detention; but advantage is taken of this period to bring them under the influence of religious teaching free from sectarianism, to instruct them in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to train them for domestic service. Account has to be rendered to the Home Secretary of the conduct and progress of the girls for four years after they leave, and the result is that from 70 to 80 per cent. are found to do well.