journey may be called a London common. For our present purpose, however, we shall adopt a very narrow definition. The Metropolis, the district within which the Metropolitan Board does its work, is the nucleus of London, and the commons within this area or immediately adjoining it are, par excellence, London commons. Epping Forest, though in one sense the first of metropolitan open spaces, is not within the Metropolis. Putting the Forest on one side, then, Wimbledon is without a rival amongst London commons. thousand acres in extent, it presents a combination of the most delightful features of open land. From the broad level plateau, across which the best rifle-shooting in England takes place every year, the ground falls away to the south and west, southwards, towards Putney, gradually and regularly, but west

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wards in sudden dips and valleys, separated from one another by projecting shoulders of sand. The hollows and slopes thus formed are covered with thick copse-wood of oak and birch, where the birds build and sing, and bluebells tint the ground in spring. At the foot of the hill is a wild bit of open ground covered with coarse grass and bracken, and dotted with bushes and trees, stretching to the Beverley Brook, a rushey, winding stream, half concealed by thickets of thorn and birch and hazel. The birch flourishes like a weed all over the common. Along the high road from Putney to Wimbledon, groups of white stems bear aloft their light feathery foliage. Many of the trunks have been pushed and bent aside by cattle or sheep, and it is rare to find a perfectly straight stem. But the unfailing grace

of the branching and foliage and the silver gleam of the bark compensate for the loss of more stately beauties, and make a drive along the common in the first fresh burst of the leaf a pleasure of no mean order. On Putney Heath, again, young birch shoot up in every direction, and in the more retired copses specimens of somewhat older growth stand side by side with the sturdier oak. There can be no doubt that Wimbledon Common must have been a great storehouse of wood in old days, supplying the fuel and the fences of the neighbourhood. But the fact that the wood was so useful has prevented the growth

and exuberance of its young life. Within a stone's throw of the flag-staff or the windmill one may plunge into the heart of genuine woodland, where saplings rise from the midst of thickly-springing shoots of young underwood, or a dense clump of bush contrasts with an open grove of young oak and birch. Through such spots green rides wind in every direction, opening up charming vistas of rustling leaves and walls of woven boughs. An hour or two may very easily be spent in wandering through thicket and glade, and when the green of spring is fresh and tender, it is almost impossible to believe that London

of fine timber, and the only trees of any size are to be found in the neighbourhood of the large old houses on Putney Heath, where they have obviously been planted for ornament. Opposite Ashburnham Cottage, for instance, is one of those rectangular ponds of which the gardeners of William and Mary were so fond, flanked by a row of elms on each side, while groups of the same trees with a few poplars diversify the common for some distance around. With a few such unimportant exceptions, all the wood on the common is young and small; but its deficiencies in size and antiquity are compensated by the vigour

is so near. Of a different character is the walk along the ridge of the common past the old mill and amongst the Butts of the National Rifle Association. Here the ground is covered with good turf, dotted thickly with furze-bushes, mostly cropped round and close by the sheep. We skirt the edge of the depressions which commence as the ground falls away to the west, and get extensive views over Richmond Park and Coombe Wood and away to the south towards Leith Hill and Holmwood. A few cottages-old encroachments which may well be pardoned-are dotted about, with small.

gardens and a fruit-tree or two, and near the Wimbledon edge of the common we come upon the deep, clear spring, which, like the old earthwork hard by, is associated by tradition with the Romans, and goes by the name of Cæsar's Well. Lately the well has been carefully made up with granite, and furnished with a pump by Sir Henry Peek, and to get a draught of its cold pure water is by no means a bad excuse for a walk across the common. A few years ago it would have been a still better object to visit Cæsar's Camp, to examine its ditch and double rampart, and admire the rows of quaint oaks which encircled it. But unfortunately the camp was not part of the common, and its owner, the well-known Mr. Drax, recently saw fit to cut down the trees, and to obliterate as far as possible the lines of the old works. Cæsar's Camp is now declared by Parliament to be an Ancient Monument, but legislation did not come in time to save it from the barbarous treatment which has almost entirely destroyed both its beauty and its antiquarian interest.

Wimbledon Common runs into three parishes. More than half lies in Wimbledon, and of the remainder the greater part is in Putney. But a large triangle of the common, the point of which is the windmill, and the base the high-road from Putney to Wimbledon, is in Wandsworth parish. Wimbledon and Putney are both parts of the huge manor of Wimbledon, which stretches also over the parish of Mortlake, and claims a lordship over the manor and parish of Barnes. Wandsworth parish is in another manor, that of Battersea and Wandsworth. It is significant of the large extent of land which was formerly in the hands of the Church, to find that these extensive manors, together covering six parishes, were, till the time of the Reformation, in ecclesiastical ownership. Wimbledon belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had a palace at Mortlake and a grange or farm at Wimbledon. Barnes was at an early date granted by the archbishop to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's (who still hold it), and Battersea and Wandsworth belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St. Peter's, Westminster. Archbishop Cranmer sold Wimbledon manor to the king, and it subsequently passed through many hands. At one time Henry's prime minister, Thomas Cromwell, whose father is said to have been a butcher of Putney, had the manor; at another, Queen Henrietta Maria, imported trees and flowers from France for the gardens of the manor-house. The Roundhead General Lambert, was subse

quently lord, and retired to the comparative seclusion of Wimbledon when he conceived himself slighted by the Protector. At a later date the manor was the property of Sir Theodore Janssen, the chairman of the South Sea Company, and soon after his fall passed to the Duchess of Marlborough, from whose family it came by marriage to its modern owners, the Spencers, also lords of Battersea and Wandsworth. But more interesting than the names connected with the manor are those associated with the common as a place of residence. Up to 1838, when the railway to Southampton was made, Wimbledon was a retired village, lying off any high-road, and served by a coach running in and out of London over Putney Bridge once a day. Putney was more accessible, but even within the last ten years the handsome houses, old trees, and quaint shops which lined the High Street, gave the place the air of a country village rather than that of a London suburb. It is not surprising then that statesmen and authors should a century ago have found rest and change in driving from London to a villa on the great common. The late Mr. Fawcett was very fond of the walk from Putney across the upper part of the common to Cæsar's Well. There are few more lovely prospects than that to be seen from the high ground near the windmill on a fine spring morning. To the west the wooded hills of Richmond are bathed in the soft early light, while in the foreground copseclad dells suggest a boundless field for sylvan rambles. The flat plateau to the east and north looks large in the slight haze, and the houses and gardens which mark its limits are deprived of all harshness of outline. The air is not yet thickened with the smoke of London, and a pleasant cool breeze steals across from the distant Surrey downs. One can imagine from such a scene the pleasure summed up in the brief entry in Wilberforce's Diary on the 4th April, 1782— "Delicious day; lounged morning at Wimbledon with friends." Wilberforce in his early days had a villa on the south side of the common, at which Pitt and other statesmen of the time were constant visitors. Subsequently Pitt himself took Bowlinggreen House, in the midst of Putney Heatha house which had been notorious nearly a century before as a place of public entertainment. Here he was no doubt residing when on the 27th May, 1798, he fought a duel on the common with William Tierney, member for Southwark, in consequence of angry words used by the Minister in the House of Commons-an encounter in which, fortu

nately, no one was hurt. To Bowling-green House Pitt travelled from Bath less than eight years afterwards, shattered in health and depressed in spirits by the successes of Napoleon at Ulm and Austerlitz. He still hoped to resume his place in the House of Commons on the approaching opening of Parliament. But it was not to be; his strength was spent. Becoming gradually weaker, he took to his bed within a few days of his arrival, and died on the 23rd of January, in his forty-seventh year, having passed nearly twenty years of his short life as Prime Minister of his country. At the time of Pitt's death there was living at the Wimbledon end of the common a champion of the extreme left of the opposite party, Sir Francis Burdett. In the following year he also fought a duel on the common with his close friend, Mr. Paul. On this occasion both parties were wounded, but not seriously, and peace seems to have been restored by the letting of blood, as they drove up to London in the same carriage. Near Bowling-green House Mrs. Siddons once lived; Horne Tooke, again, resided for a time on Wimbledon Green; while two houses, Sir Henry Peek's near the corner of the village, and Gothic House near the "Crooked Billet," contend for the honour due to the birthplace of Midshipman Easy and Peter Simple. The Putney side of the common, however, can boast the greatest name in literature; for Gibbon was born at Putney on the 27th April, 1747, on his father's estate, which occupied the whole of the left side of the hill between the site of the present railway station and the corner of the heath. Over the heath the future historian was driven, when only eight years old "in a lucid interval of comparative health," to his first school at Kingston-upon-Thames; and a certain spot upon the common was, he tells us, ever after associated in his mind with his mother's warning, that he was about to enter the world, and must think and act for himself.

Twenty years ago Wimbledon Common had a narrow escape. The substitution of villa residences and gardens for farms and large estates threatened to be more fatal to commons near towns than the older conversion of open fields into inclosed farms; and Wimbledon was made the battle-field of conflicting views. At one and the same time commons became of little value for agricultural purposes, and of very high importance as places of recreation. The old manorial management of waste land had reference to the practice of agriculture, and cared nothing

for a common as affording means of taking air and exercise. Abuses consequently began to multiply in the case of commons near towns. The orderly town-bred inhabitants of Putney and Wimbledon were scandalised by the irregularities and petty depredations of gipsies and tramps. They demanded a much more stringent guardianship of the common than the lord of the manor was disposed to give, while at the same time they resented the mode in which the lord's agents disfigured the waste by taking gravel and wood for the profit of their master. Lord Spencer hit upon a plan for solving the difficulty. He proposed to turn about two-thirds of the common into a park, and to defray the expenses of fencing and draining by selling for building much, if not all, of the remainder. This plan seemed to the residents to be exchanging bad for worse. As soon as they realised the full effect of the proposal, they united under the leadership of Sir Henry Peek in energetic opposition. The fight was waged in Parliament and in the law courts for six years, till at length in 1870 Lord Spencer came to the wise determination to wash his hands of the matter, and transfer the management of the common to those who were most interested in its wellbeing the residents in the neighbourhood. In the following year an Act was passed, which made over the common to a body of conservators mainly elected by the neighbourhood, but leavened by an official element representing the general public. At the same time the Act secured to his lordship an annuity equal to the revenue which he was at the time deriving from the common by way of gravel-digging, wood-cutting, and similar acts. This annuity and the expenses of managing the open space were alike charged upon rates to be levied upon those living near, and therefore especially enjoying the common. The system has worked well. Since the Metropolitan District Railway was extended to Fulham the numbers visiting the common on Sundays and holidays have very largely increased, and during the meeting of the National Rifle Association large crowds come down from London. But order is effectively maintained, while year by year the common becomes a more delightful resort under the fostering care of Conservators who, living on the spot, themselves enjoy the growing beauty of wood and copse, and can judge from personal experience whether a path or ride is wanted to open up a view or lead through some picturesque patch of brake and bush, whether a particular piece of woodland should be