spacious and substantial, are of walnut-tree, and ornamented with military trophies. On the W. side of the house is a gallery, 92 feet in length, hung with portraits. Ham House contains some fine pictures by the old masters, among which the works of Vandervelde and Wouvermans are the most conspicuous. The principal portraits are, the Duke of Lauderdale and the Earl of Hamilton, C. Janssen; the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, Lely; the Duke in his robes of the Order of the Garter, Ditto; Charles II. who sat for this picture for the Duke; Sir John Maitland, Chancellor of Scotland; Sir Henry Vane; William Murray, first Earl of Dysart; Catharine, his wife, a beautiful picture, in water colours, Hoskins; Sir Lionel Tollemache, first husband to the Duchess of Lauderdale; General Tollemache, who was killed in the expedition against Brest; James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, a very fine picture, by Vandyke; and the late Countess of Dysart, Reynolds. The connoisseur in painting would here find materials for the gratification of his curiosity.

HAM, WEST, a village in Essex, one mile S. of Stratford. Near the Abbey Mills, are the site and remains of a monastery, called the Abbey of Stratford Lanthorne, founded in 1135, the demesne of which in this parish, included 1500 acres; and they had manors in many counties. A gateway of the Abbey is still standing; and, adjoining to the Adam and Eve public house and tea-gardens, is one of the stone arches of the Abbey, where the ground has been much raised. In the kitchen is a carved grave-stone, on which were once some inscriptions cut in brass. In the garden is a stone-coffin, dug up in 1770; and, in 1792, several urns, with three leaden coffins, an antique seal, and some old coins, were dug up in a field adjoining to the Adam and Eve. Mr. Holbrook, the proprietor of the field, after having built walls with some of the stones, sold large quantities of them to great advantage. In the same field is one of the chapels nearly entire, and now a stable. That unfortunate divine, Dr. Dodd, resided for some years at West Ham. Here he preached with considerable acceptance, and wrote some of his best publications. Much, therefore, is to be regretted that he ever quitted this his favourite place of retirement. The valuable living of this parish has been recently given by Lord Sidmouth to Dr. George Gregory, well known by his various publications in the literary world.

HAMMERSMITH, a village in Middlesex, four miles from London, on the great western road, which, with Brook Green, Pallenswick, or Stanbrook Green, and Shepherds' Bush, forms the Hammersmith division, or side as it is termed, of the parish of Fulham. Here is a nunnery, which (according to respectable information communicated to Mr. Lysons, Vol. II. p. 420) took its rise from the following circumstance. In 1669, Mrs. Bedingfield and another lady set up a boarding-school at Hammersmith, for young ladies of the Roman Catholic persuasion. Soon after its institution, the governesses and teachers having voluntarily obliged themselves to the observance of monastic rules, it obtained the name of a nunnery. Its celebrity as a Roman Catholic school has continued during the present century; and most of the fashionable females among the Roman Catholics have received their education there. It has kept up its claim also to the title of a nunnery, many devotees having, from time to time, taken the veil, and doomed themselves to a voluntary seclusion, There is a chapel at the nunnery, and another at Brook Green, where, also, there is a Roman Catholic charity school.

At a house on the water-side, (called the Mall) occupied as an academy by the late Dr. Jones, Queen Catharine, Dowager of Charles II. resided for some years during the summer season.-In Mr. Cotton's house, also on the side of the Thames, are two remarkably fine catalpa trees, each of them five feet in girth.

Hammersmith has a chapel of ease, which is a curacy, in the patronage of the Bishop of London, and here Mr. Dorville has a handsome seat. It was at Hammersmith that the unfortunate business of the Ghost happened, in January, 1803, by which Thomas Millwood was shot. The person shooting him was found guilty of murder, but afterwards was thought a fit object for the exercise of the royal clemency. See Brandenburg House.

HAMPSTEAD, a large and populous village in Middlesex, four miles from London. It lies on the declivity of a hill, on the summit of which is an extensive heath. The fine views of the metropolis, and of the distant country, which are to be seen from the heath, and from most parts of the village, are not the only beauties of the scene: the home landscape, consisting of broken ground, divided into inclosures, and well planted with elms and other trees, is

extremely picturesque. This village now ranks high, for the number and variety of its medicinal waters. Beside the Old Spa of a chalybeate quality, there are two other kinds of mineral waters which have lately been discovered by Mr. Goodwin, a skilful practitioner of this place; the one a Purgative Saline, similar in quality and effects to the Cheltenham, the other is of a Sulphureous nature*.

To the S. W. of Hampstead was an ancient mansionhouse, called Belsyse, the seat of many persons of consequence from the reign of Henry VIII.* In 1720 it was converted into a place of public entertainment; particularly for music, dancing, and play; and it was much frequented on account of its vicinity to London. It continued open till the year 1745, when it experienced the caprice of fashion. The old mansion has been pulled down some years, and on its site is a modern-built house. The estate is held under the dean and chapter of Westminster, by the Earl of Chesterfield, whose under tenant is Mr. Richardson.

A house in Hampstead, now the property of James Pilgram, Esq. is supposed to be that in which the celebrated Sir Henry Vane resided, at the time of the Restoration. It afterward belonged to Dr. Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, Author of the Analogy between Natural and Revealed Religion. That prelate lived here many years, and ornamented the windows with a considerable quantity of stained glass, (principally subjects from Scripture)

which still remains there.

On the side of the hill, is an ancient building called The Chicken House, in a window of which are small portraits in stained glass of James I. and the Duke of Buckingham. Tradition says that it was a hunting seat of James II.

Several of the nobility have beautified villas on this spot, and in its vicinity.

The church was considered as a chapel of ease to Hendon till 1477, when it became a perpetual curacy, and has since

*See an instructive and entertaining little volume lately published, entitled, “An Account of the Neutral Saline Waters recently disco. vered at Hampstead, with Chemical Experiments on their component parts, observations on their medicinal application and effects in certain Diseases, and on the different modes of Bathing, as an auxiliary to the drinking of Mineral Waters, by Thomas Goodwin, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons."