birthplace of Huxley and the burial-place of John Horne Tooke. A noted private school here had in its day such pupils, destined to varied fame, as Charles Knight, Thackeray, Newman, and the Lawrence brothers. Bulwer Lytton also was pupil of a clergyman, with whom he seems to have got on less ill than with most of his instructors. In the upper part of Ealing, near its conspicuous water-tower, stands the Princess Helena College, which has made its mark in the new education of girls; and there are other flourishing schools that now may be rearing the philosophers, novelists, and statesmen of the next generation.
We need not ask too closely where Hanwell begins, this suburb being a little shy of its name, shadowed by a huge County Lunatic Asylum, which really belongs to the more idyllic parish of Norwood, to the south. Perhaps the cemeteries on either side of the high-road may be taken as the junction-point, and we are certainly in Hanwell when the tram-road makes an abrupt drop to cross the valley of the Brent. A little way below, the river becomes merged with the Grand Junction Canal, descending at the back of the Asylum by a chain of locks which recall those of Trollhatta or Banavie on a small scale, beside what seems a miniature edition of the Great Wall of China. Walking to Brentford on the tow-path for a couple of miles, one might fancy oneself in the heart of a rather common-place country, where straggling curls of the tamed river show scum almost as green as its banks; but the solitude is disturbed by a tram-line close at hand.
If that by-way is not very attractive, up the Brent one can turn through one of the prettiest bits of Izaac Waltondom so near London. The ground on this side is laid out as a park below the tall viaduct of the Great Western Railway, whose passengers have such a good view of the isolated Church. Behind the church starts a path making a chord to the vagrant bends of the Brent, till the stream turns eastwards beside a road towards Perivale. Across this road the path holds on to the old Church of Greenford, that has some notable relics under its shingled spire and tiled roof, showing through a clump of trees which help the green meadows to bear out the name of the village. The road through Greenford goes on to Harrow by Greenford Green, whose name does not so well answer to its promise of rusticity. But over the fields beside Greenford Church one may take a mile of footpath leading across the canal to Northholt, alias Northall, another of those real, quaint, roomy villages that surprise one in out-of-the-way nooks about London, saved from the builder, perhaps, by a heavy clay soil that makes bricks to deface less secluded parishes. As unspoiled as the village seems its weather-worn little Church, standing on a knoll beside the broad sward of roads knotting themselves together here. Northwards one finds a charming path that, ending as a green lane, leads almost into the south suburbs of Harrow. In the other direction the canal bank would bring us back to the road at Southall.
There was a Southholt once, which, corrupted by the evil communications of the high-road, has changed its name as well as its nature. I can remember Southall when it could still be called a pleasant country nook, half village, half distant suburb; but in one generation it has waxed to what it is now, a somewhat commonplace outgrowth of London, which for a time was the tram terminus. It has a weekly cattle market as its most bucolic feature; and there are still some pleasant fields to be found on either side. And that is all to be said about Southall, unless that beside it unite the two branches of the Grand Junction Canal, hence running on straight to West Drayton, where it turns north up the valley of the Colne.
Across the Paddington arm of the canal the highroad comes upon veritable turnip-fields, as it goes on to Uxbridge, passing the hamlets of Hayes, a scattered village whose manor-house made one of the Archbishops of Canterbury’s many seats, the dignity of which seems to survive in the spacious parsonage. The fine restored Church contains some old monuments, notably, beside the altar, Sir Edward Fenner’s tomb with coloured effigy; it has also a much-faded wall painting of St. Christopher in the north aisle, and a discarded altar-piece representing the “Adoration of the Magi.”
Hayes Town, as the church precinct styles itself, lies to the left of the way, down a turning opposite the “Adam and Eve.” On the right the Yeading brook waters a stretch where itself seems the pleasantest feature. Here comes another of those odd blanks in the map of Middlesex, a flat of sodden green, looking at home when wrapped in a November mist, through which loom snug farmhouses, but it is else so unpopulated that only one road runs across it, by Yeading to Ruislip and Ickenham. Bold explorers, perhaps, might here find a touch of adventure in trespassing against notices which block approach to that devious brook, over a country of such agricultural note that it is not to be sneezed at unless by sufferers from hay fever. The Yeading Brook, further down promoted to the title of the Crane River, should have observance as the largest stream belonging entirely to Middlesex. It rises in two forks on the slopes about Harrow, and after flowing right across the county, has two mouths into the Thames, one of them with the by-name of the Isleworth River.
As the tram approaches Uxbridge, the scenery on the right improves in the swelling parks of Hillingdon, through which leafy lanes and paths wind over to Swakeleys and Ickenham. This, indeed, is one of the pleasantest square miles in Middlesex, filled up with the grounds and gardens of goodly mansions; and the golfers, upon whom one of its slopes seems wasted, have a better chance of attending to their game on less comely enclosures passed further back. Should any pedestrian doubt my word for it, let him turn up to the right opposite Hillingdon Church, by the “Vine,” following this by-way as far as the lodge gate of Hillingdon House on the left, just beyond which he may take a path through the park, to be brought back to the highroad as it enters Uxbridge, with little deviation