terita_, shows you London striding by Herne Hill to
Croydon. Herne Hill should be a hill with a heronry on it, but the name
is new; it was King's Hill when John Speed made his map in the days of
James I. But Herne Hill was in the country when Ruskin knew it. Norwood
was a hill; Dulwich was a valley. "Central in each amphitheatre, the
crowning glory of Herne Hill was accordingly, that, after walking along
its ridge southward from London through a mile of chestnut, lilac, and
apple trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side--suddenly the
trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field
sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley--open field animate with
cow and buttercup, and below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of
Dulwich; and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills; a footpath,
entered by a turnstile, going down to the left, always so warm that
invalids could be sheltered there in March, when to walk elsewhere would
have been death to them; and so quiet, that whenever I had anything
difficult to compose or think of, I used to do it rather there than in
our own garden. The great field was separated from the path and road
only by light wooden open palings, four feet high, needful to keep the
cows in. Since I last composed, or meditated there, various improvements
have taken place; first the neighbourhood wanted a new church, and built
a meagre Gothic one with a useless spire, for the fashion of the thing,
at the side of the field; then they built a parsonage behind it, the two
stopping half the view in that direction. Then the Crystal Palace came,
for ever spoiling the view through all its compass, and bringing every
show-day from London a flood of pedestrians down the footpath who left
it filthy with cigar ashes for the rest of the week: then the railroads
came, and expatiating roughs by every excursion train, who knocked the
palings about, roared at the cows, and tore down what branches of
blossom they could reach over the palings on the enclosed side. Then the
residents on the enclosed side built a brick wall to defend themselves.
Then the path got to be insufferably hot as well as dirty; and was
gradually abandoned to the roughs, with a policeman on watch at the
bottom. Finally, this year, a six foot high close paling has been put
down the other side of it, and the processional excursionist has the
liberty of obtaining what notion of the country air and prospect he may,
betw