Here are three hills close together: Herne Hill, Denmark Hill, and Champion Hill. On Denmark Hill Ruskin once lived; but in the 'fifties I was not conscious of that fact or of his greatness. It must be saddening to a great man to reflect that the schoolboys have no respect for him. The road up the hill was somewhat gloomy on account of the trees: the houses, with their gardens and lawns, and carriage drives, and smoothness and snugness, betokened in those years the institution of evening prayers. I fear I may be misunderstood. At that time great was the power and the authority of seriousness. To be serious was fashionable, if one may say so, in City circles. Respectability was nearly always serious: it was divided into two classes: that which had morning prayers only, and that which had evening prayers as well. With the young, the latter institution was unpopular--no one of the present younger generation can understand how unpopular it was: a house which had evening prayers made a deliberate profession of a seriousness which was something out of the common, which the young people disliked, as a rule; and it insisted on the sons getting home in time for prayers. This profession of seriousness generally belonged to a large house, beautiful gardens, rich conservatories, a large income, and a carriage and pair. Denmark Hill used to appear to outward view as more especially a suburb belonging to the serious rich, who could afford a profession of more than common earnestness.
Herne Hill was remarkable for consisting of three houses only, each with its parklike grounds and gardens and its noble trees. Champion Hill I remember as a green and grassy slope: there were no houses at all upon it: but there was a road, and at the bottom of the road a green called Goose Green--you may still find this tract of grass, but I believe it is now pinched and attenuated. On Goose Green they kept ponies for hire: the boys used to ride them up the hill and gallop them down the hill. Beyond this green there was a much larger expanse called Peckham Rye: so far as I can remember it was a most uninviting place formerly; not a wild heath like Putney or Hampstead, not a waste place covered with fern and gorse and bramble and wild trees; but a barren, dreary expanse of uncertain grass. Boys would perhaps have played cricket upon it in summer, but there were then no boys at Peckham Rye. Now, all this country is covered with houses, and Peckham is like Bloomsbury itself for streets and terraces and squares.