At

the three graces, my Lord Chesterfield, wrote some of those amazing letters to his son. Blackheath also lived, at intervals, the conqueror of Quebec, and from his villa here his remains were carried to Greenwich for burial.

Besides a queen devoted to junketings, a letter-writing father, bent on directing his son to the deuce, and a great warrior, rebellion has in the good old days (when people who wanted a purse simply took one on the nearest common, without starting a subscription in newspapers)--rebellion has raised its head on this celebrated spot; and it raised

Here we have found history enough in seven short miles from London-and yet not half the history yet which can be directly associated with Blackheath. For this celebrated spot occupied in the annals of England much the same sort of position apparently as Rotten Row occupies in the annals of contemporary fashion. It was the place where kings and ministers met casually on their way to or from London, and babbled of the weather, the price of corn, the latest hanging, the odds on the next bear-fight, the state of the unemployed, or any other

its head in the person of Wat Tyler, who was here in 1381 at the head of one hundred thousand other heads (which was wise of him, seeing that he had previously cracked a poll-tax collector's head at Dartford, after drinking too much ale, I suppose, at the celebrated Bull Inn). Another rebel was here, at Blackheath, in 1497. Lord Audley to wit, who went through the somewhat aimless exercise of bringing troops all the way from Cornwall, pitching their tents, and immediately afterwards suffering defeat at the hands of Henry the Seventh.

kindred subject which might suggest itself to medieval brains, in an open space where it was not too windy. Here then, to notice a few of such meetings, in 1400 Henry the Fourth met Manuel, Emperor of Constantinople, who came to ask for aid against the Sultan Bajazet; and sixteen years later the Emperor Sigismund was received here and conducted in state to Lambeth. Henry the Fifth, after one long triumphal procession the whole way from Dover, was met here on Blackheath by the mayor and five hundred citizens of London, and hailed Victor of

Agincourt. The mayor and aldermen had "got them all on " on this occasion, (I refer to their scarlet robes and red and white hoods), and were doubtless prepared, with the help of conduits running wine, pursuivants-at-arms, cloth of gold, and emblazoned trappings, to give the conquering hero the reception he deserved. But Henry on this occasion seems to have borne his honours with exemplary modesty; and whether he was surfeited by the sweets of a triumph which had already lasted sixty-four miles, or

that were to be seene in the same; neither would he suffer any ditties to be made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victorie, for that he would have the praise and thanks altogether given to God." A pious decision, but one which must have been extremely unsatisfactory to town councillors who had launched forth in the way of dress and decorations, and to the thousands of Londoners who had flocked out to Blackheath to see the show.

The next royalty I find on Blackheath is

whether he was bilious from the Channel passage and a long ride on horseback, he nipped all the worthy mayor's preparations in the bud. In point of fact, according to Holinshed, "the king, like a grave and sober personage, and as one remembering from Whom all victories are sent, seemed little to regard such vaine pompe and shewes as were in triumphant sort devised for his welcoming home from so prosperous a journie; insomuch that he would not suffer his helmet to be carried before him, whereby might have appeared to the people the blowes and dints

Henry the Eighth, whose name is constantly cropping up in Kent and Sussex, and curiously enough, generally in connection with the one of his six wives, whose appearance he from the first particularly abhorred. I refer to Anne of Cleves, whose sad fate should be a lasting warning to young ladies about to marry, of the danger of flattering portraits. It was here on Blackheath that the already muchly married king publicly received his fourth wife, with all due decency and decorum, having already made up his royal mind to put her away privately. For Henry on this

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It was not there long after. The matchmaker expiated his unfortunate choice on Tower Hill; and Anne of Cleves was content to forego the dubious joys of married life for the possession of the several manors in Kent and Sussex that her grateful late lord bestowed upon her. The number of these manors exceeds belief, and at the same time gracefully gauges Henry's conception of the magnitude of the matrimonial peril past. Indeed, it seems to me that the king's brain must have been quite turned with delight at the retiring attitude of the Flanders lady; and that whenever he had nothing villainous on hand, and was disinclined for tennis, he gave Anne of Cleves a manor or two simply to while away the time.

But though on either of these great occasions that I have named, Blackheath must have been a sight worth seeing, it was in 1660 no doubt that the grandest of its historical pageants was to be seen: when the long reaction against Puritanism had suddenly triumphed, and all England went mad on a May morning at the Restoration of her exiled king; when through sixty-one miles as it were of conduits running wine, triumphal arches, gabled streets hung with tapestry-through battalions of citizens in various bands, some arrayed in coats of black velvet with gold chains, some in military suits of cloth of gold or silver-Charles, who had slept at Rochester the night before, rode on to Blackheath between his brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester.

And on Blackheath he saw on one side the stern array of the great army which he had seen last (and seen too much of) at Worcester; and on the other, according to Walter Scott, a very favourite family group, well known to readers of the Waverley novels. In point of fact, Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, arrived at the uttermost limits of a noble old age, "having a complacent smile on his face and a tear swelling to his eye, as he saw the banners wave on in interminable succession, and heard the multitude shouting the longsilenced acclamation, "God save King Charles!" And round the old man's chair stood a delightful group it will be remembered of all the pleasant characters of Woodstock-Colonel Everard and Alice, now his wife; Joceline Joliffe, of quarter-staff renown, and Mrs. Joceline Joliffe, née Phœbe; then Wildrake too, the incomparable of Squattlesea-mere, in the moist county of Lincoln, much given to singing "Rub-a-dub," and requesting the moon and stars to catch his hat. This morning he blazes in splendid apparel, but his eyes on this morning I regret

to say have been washed with only a single cup of canary. And last, but not least, Beavis, the wolf-hound, dim as to his eyes, stiff as to his joints, a ruin of his former self, but having lost none of his instinctive fondness for his master.

It will be remembered that when Charles from the midst of a maze of pursuivants and trumpeters, and plumes and cloth of gold, and waving standards and swords gleaming in the sunlight, saw this group, he had tact enough to remember it, and the urbanity to dismount, prevent Sir Henry Lee from rising, and ask for his blessing. Having duly received which, the king went on to London, and his very faithful servant, having seen the desire of his eyes, was gathered to his fathers.

After Blackheath and Scott (so literary is this part of the Dover Road), comes Shooter's Hill and Dickens. And Dickens is the veritable genius of the road. His memory burns by the way-as all but the wicked man who has not read Pickwick and David Copperfield will remember-and indeed A Tale of Two Cities. For in the second chapter of that wonderful book the very spirit of the Dover Road in George the Third's time is caught as if by magic. Who (having eyes) cannot see "the Dover Road on a Friday night late in November in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five-the Dover Road, lying beyond the Dover Mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill"? The coachman (whose name was Tom) towelling the tired horsesespecially the near leader, much given it will be remembered to shaking its head and everything upon it, as it were denying that the coach could be got up the hill at all. The passengers wrapped up in rugs and in a mortal distrust of each other, trudge through the slush by the coach's side-Mr. Jarvis Lorry, of Telson's bank, among them. steaming mist rises out of all the hollows; the hour is "ten minutes, good, past Eleven". learning which the coachman remarks, “My blood!" and then, "Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The last burst carries the Mail to the top of the Hill. Then comes some dialogue often heard on the old coaching roads when George the Third was king. The passengers are in the act of re-entering the coach.

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