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the swarms that glance up at it through the trees. One-tree Hill is soon crowned with figures, and patches of scarlet are conspicuous on its summit. Observatory Hill overflows with rolling and tumbling waves of human beings. Up and down the slope, running, slipping, sliding, dancing, swarm young men, maidens, and children, while their steadier elders walk or sit about as it pleases them. Laughter and jests fill the air, and you forget that you are standing three hundred feet above the level of the river, beneath the tower within which is a deep, dry well, whence astronomers make observations on the stars in the daytime, and where a round globe at the summit drops precisely at one o'clock, to give the exact Greenwich time to the shipping in the Thames. You forget that hither have come the scientific of all countries; that Flamstead was the first Astronomer Royal at this observatory; that poets, painters, and dreamers of every age have stood where we now stand, to gaze across the park on a distant view of the finest city in the world. Yes, there is London. We see its towers, spires, bridges, palaces, hovering like a cloud-city over the Thames; we see the tall masts of its wealth of shipping bristling like an array of spears; and we see the broad, farfamed river gleaming in the sun. We look into the fair counties of Kent, Surrey, and Essex, and imagine Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath. In the foreground is Greenwich Palace, lying beneath us with its lawns and walks dotted with people, while up the slope to the Observatory spread everywhere trees and human beings-a scene of beauty and teeming population. Leaving the Observatory and its surrounding cedars, we are again in the park. The crowds thicken; there must surely be a million of

souls. Quietly seated under a tree are two blind men, the one playing a harmonium, and both singing psalms. Hard by is a youth with an enormous green umbrella, thin and clear, which he declares to be 'a very pretty article, fresh from Ashantee.' Following are boys with masks, moustaches, or paper helmets, purchased on the Heath; sailors and soldiers arm-in-arm with smart young women; damsels in costumes so light that summer must have arrived all of a sudden; masqueraders in everyday guise; parents with children in their arms, and individuals of all sorts, sizes, and circumstances. But they are all of the lower billion;' there is no member of the upper ten,' and few of the 'middle million.' When we reach the large gates leading to the Heath, there is neither egress nor ingress. The crowd on either side is so dense that they make a block which not even the policeman can break. There are not many of these public functionaries, and indeed they are not needed. The only symptom of a row was caused just now by a woman who stumbled on her hapless spouse in company with another female, which was, to say the least of it, aggravating.

We are through the gates at last, and upon Blackheath. 'And eastward straight from wild Blackheath the warlike errand went, And roused in many an ancient hall the warlike squires of Kent,'

sang Macaulay of the rousing for the Spanish Armada. What a different scene is this!

Here is a group of donkeys waiting to be hired-poor hard-worked, hard-driven beasts, that stand with drooping heads, half-shut eyes, hanging ears, and rough coats, too depressed even to bray. They are not impatient of the preference given to chosen rivals that trot or gallop past them with

their burdens of screaming children and clinging Johnny Gilpins; they are content to wait. Their surroundings of heath would seem their native soil, and the attendant boys their natural tormentors. They, like many other ill-used creatures, are bearing their cross' and biding their time. Strange that the typical stripe of their race should indeed form a cross!

Strange, also, that other types of another Eastern race should be close at hand. Here we have a group of Gipsies, as assuredly Oriental in origin as the asses, and almost as much altered by time and circumstances. They do not seem quite as much at home as they did twenty years ago, when they told the fortunes of every passer-by, and made fortunes themselves by their cunning. But there is now a mission to the Gipsies, and they are perhaps learning lessons of truth and honesty. Not long since, at a large Gipsy tea-party, two of their own race addressed them energetically, and preached Christ to them.

However, we now get fairly upon the Heath, and are bewildered by multitudes and a charivari of sound. Hundreds of thousands of people swarm about, showing every variety of colour. The sky and air are as blue and clear as April can make them; and there are, literally, miles of enjoy ment. Surely all London must be here. We walk first along the main road. It is bordered by barrows filled with every available comestible, the merits of which seem to be that they may all be had for only a penny,' or 'only a halfpenny.' Sherbet and syrup in tempting glasses; cocoanuts cut into halfpenny slices; 'Glass o' good milk, ma'am, fresh from the cow;' oranges in super*Two hundred thousand people came by train alone from London to Greenwich.

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abundance, four for a penny;' fried fish on a slice of bread; 'Currant cake, ladies, all the way from Yorkshire;' Who'll stand another halfpenny ice-red, white, and yellow? tea and bread and butter,' steaming;' lemonade, ginger-beer; 'Baked potatoes, straight from the oven, opened and salted;' 'Hot muffins to burn your fingers;' mounds of lollipop, or some horrible mixture, heaped together; nuts, gingerbread, and so on and on.

The road is alive with pedestrians and equestrians, the former receding before the latter-and with reason; for horses and donkeys are in wild confusion, pulled here, whipped there, and guided nowhere. Each rider, male or female, is a study, and seems to have mounted for the first time. Bicycles, surmounted by unwary youths, trundle about unadvisedly; children's carriages, drawn by hapless goats, move in and out; and perambulators, according to their custom, are where they should not be. Shouting donkey-boys, stick in hand and floating paper caps on head, run after their 'fares,' and other juvenile tormentors whip them up to the terror and danger of the riders.

On the Heath the scene is still more varied. Here is a steam merry-go-round with an attractive band; there an archery ground. Where Wat Tyler and Jack Straw encamped in good earnest, modern archers and cross-bowmen shoot, high in air, at low targets and a stuffed figure of a man with one arrow piercing his neck. Where, some few centuries back, Yorkists and Lancastrians met, mimic flags now fly, and a cricket tent stands; and where Cornish rebels ran for very life, cricketers run-for very life too, apparently. Where, in the fifteenth century, the Mayor and Aldermen of London town,

clothed in scarlet, with red and white hoods, met a victorious monarch returning from the field of Agincourt-organ-grinders play, and men wield skipping-ropes to energetic girl dancers and skippers. Stranger contrast still: where an Emperor of Constantinople met an English King, and a Roman Cardinal Campeius a Duke of Norfolk-men, with the New Testament in their hands, are uttering the solemn words, 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.'

We are arrested in the midst of the ever-increasing crowd to listen. A bare-headed preacher, with a black man at his side, surrounded by a knot of hearers, is preaching the Gospel; and within a stone'sthrow is another similar evangelist. It is noteworthy that no auditor scoffs. They listen as long as it pleases them, and move on— a promising sign of these our modern days.

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Turn where you will on the farstretching heath, you see a sketch for an artist. Here is a group of Italian organ-grinders encamped by their instruments, discoursing possibly of their native land, scarcely sunnier than this Aprilday England. To a question as to their gains, one, lying prone, says Niente affatto.' There, in a small pond, bare-legged boys are wading, forgetful of this morning's frost; anon, before an electric battery, lads are growing apoplectic under the unaccustomed current. Who shall say that we are not as picturesque as our neighbours? No one, with truth, to-day on Blackheath. Scene and colour change like a kaleidoscope. As a woman has just said, 'If you want hair and 'ealth, you must live in the syllabubs.' (Suburbs, we presume.)

This varied picture continues till sunset. Thanks to kind friends, we secure a watch-tower on the

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top of Blackheath Hill, whence we can see the very last of the dissolving views. From six till eight o'clock there is a ceaseless stream of people and vehicles descending the hill towards Greenwich Station. The exodus gives almost a better notion of the number of visitors than did the nucleus on the Heath, and the scenes are just as diversified and amusing. sun gleams red through the cedars at the foot of the hill, while they disappear by scores past our observatory window; and a happier, merrier, less wearied multitude could scarcely conclude an Easter Monday holiday to return to their labours in vast, over-crowded London. Watching, we make chance allusion to the highway robberies on Blackheath, not so very long ago, and compare the present with the past. We remember that in Mrs. Somerville's delightful 'Memoirs,' lately published, she says that her own father, Sir William Fairfax, was attacked by highwaymen when travelling alone over Blackheath. The anecdote was pathetic. The postilion was ordered to stop, a pistol presented, and Sir William's purse demanded. The Admiral recognised the voice of a shipmate. Greatly shocked, he offered the robber a hundred pounds and a seat in his carriage to London; but he said it was 'Too late too late! He could not leave his associates.' He was afterwards arrested, and eventually suffered; but Admiral Fairfax never disclosed his name, and was deeply affected by the fate of his messmate.

Like that great, learned, and good woman, Mrs. Somerville, we will hope and believe in the progress and improvement of the world, and rejoice in all that gives the innocent amusement of a Bank Holiday to millions of our toiling fellow-creatures.

A. BEALE

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