coping, villas to do on Hampstead Heath?
They do not look as if they had been there
long. Their architecture is not even Elizabethan.
We will not say, with the gallery-mob
on a benefit night, " turn them out;"
but we will say, " build no more."

Whether the " Vale of Health " took its
name from the fact of the water in its hollow
being the very dirtiest of all the " Hampstead
Ponds," we cannot say. If it had belonged to
the Corporation of London, we should have
had less hesitation. It is a curious district,
and is more associated with tea-making than
the picturesque. A range of indifferently
white-washed cottages, somewhat resembling
the worst of the old Hyde Park barracks,
with a plentiful collection of rickety tavern
tables, and primitive forms, are relieved by
clothes-props and lines, more or less bending
under the discharge of their great social duty.
Abundance of hot water within, a few elderly
women (who appear to be always in the same
proverbially uncomfortable element) an awful
host of squalling children, and worried
mammas, and a number of urchins, who will
probably take to donkey-driving hereafter,
prepare tea, drink or spill tea, or tout for
customers. If a Frenchman visited Hampstead,
Gravesend, or Kew, he would set
down the English as a tea-drinking nation;
and all the French notions about bottled
porter and grog would be left to the pens of
their correct delineators of English habits
and society. It is worthy of observation, that
economical mammas, who certainly form the
largest part of the company in this direction,
take their tea with them, paying twopence
for the cups, saucers, and hot water, and
wisely thinking that a profit of about five
hundred per cent, must be made at some
slight loss to themselves. This may be called
the " accommodation " system.

We are again upon the Heath, on our way
home; and innovation has been at work. The
evening is getting darker; but it does not
prevent us noticing a number of infantile
trees, cased in with wooden hurdles, like
those of the Park plantations. Who planted
them? Had he any business to do so?
They are an eyesore. Where will they
end? Did not some one say that somebody
—we forget, and do not care who—
tried to enclose Hampstead Heath? If he
does so, may his heirs find a quick road to
their inheritance! Who could he have been?
Surely it was not one of the five Whig noblemen
who wanted to pull down the Crystal
Palace, because it deprived the people of
the dirtiest, most unmeaning, and least
inviting part of Hyde Park? It could not
have been one of the gentlemen who advocate
health, baths, and washhouses? It must have
been some tailor, who had suddenly become a
director of railways, or some half-fledged
baronet, the second of the family, who, having
a half title to his own property, fancied that
no title at all might suffice for appropriating
that of the public. Whoever he was, may his
dreams be redolent of Smithfield, may nightmare
tread with donkey hoofs on his chest,
and may visions of angry laundresses scald his
brain with weak tea!

It is getting late; the sun has left only a
dim, sallow streak behind us; the sky is dark
above us, and stars are looking out in all
directions. Worn-out donkeys are trotting
back to their station at a speed that renders
the stick and boots of their rough rider quite
unnecessary. Straggling parties, in twos and
threes, are walking home, varying their quiet
observations on the beautiful night with one
or two altercations with the dogs in neighbouring
gardens. Sober old gentlemen, and
fast young men who have smoked and drunk
the whole afternoon, are dozing inside omnibuses,
or laughing and smoking on the roof.
Give us the way home across the fields. We
have not so far to go, but we shall see far more
on the way. It is dark enough to make
us forget the few intruding houses; the precincts
of London are lighted up with ten thousand
lights, that seem to dance before our
eyes, and to cast a warm red halo up into the
dark arch above us. We feel healthier, better
in body and mind: we feel, that while such
heaths and fields can be trodden by all, few
will grumble at division of property, and that
Chartism will make few converts. But let
them meddle with Hampstead Heath, and may
all they deserve follow, and follow quickly!

AN AUSTRIAN STATE TRIAL.

A YOUNG American gentleman, whom we
shall designate Mr. Charles Bunce, left New
York early in March last, for a visit to the
Great Exhibition, taking the Continent of
Europe, generally, in his way. His object was
that of most young men who set out with a
roving license. He wished to see men and
manners abroad, and to combine instruction
with amusement. He had, moreover, the
desire to master the details of the political
questions which have lately convulsed the
continental countries. France, Denmark, and
Germany were consequently of great interest
to him; for, with respect to those countries,
he had heard it asserted that the struggle
of 1848 was but the opening scene of more
fierce and deadly contentions; but his curiosity
was chiefly attracted by Hungary. The organs
of the English press, which transmitted the
accounts of the late revolutionary war in that
country to America, had been contradictory
in their statement of facts, as well as in their
reasoning on events. Crowds of exiles had
landed in America with tales of Hungarian
heroism and devotion, and Austrian cruelty
and treason. These ex-parte statements might
be true; but still Mr. Bunce could not help
thinking that they were strongly coloured
with political animosity. The true state of
the case—Mr. Bunce thought—could only be