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THE FARMER^S MAGAZINE. 



dition, when it had its gate on the Southwark side, 

 adorned with the heads and limbs of traitors, or 

 patriots so called ; its narrow pathway, overhnug 

 with a street of shops and houses, which encumbered 

 its parapets. If we have improved in nothing else, 

 we have certainly improved in our heau ideal of a 

 bridge. We cross the splendid bridge M^hich now 

 spans the traffic-crowded Thames. Above it, what 

 a flotilla of boats and barges and steamers, for plea- 

 sure or for business ! below it, what a forest of 

 masts ! Yet, crowded as the Pool is now, it is clear, 

 compared with what it was when the trade of 

 London was less considerable, but the docks were 

 not constructed which receive all the vessels en- 

 gaged in the foreign trade of London, and not a few 

 of those engaged in the coasting trade. The con- 

 struction of the earliest of those docks was one of 

 the wonders of our boyhood which have been 

 eclipsed by the Thames Tunnel, by our railways, 

 and by the Menai and Victoria bridges. 



We catch a view of the dome of St. Paul's, where 

 lie the ashes of Nelson and Wellington. Eurther 

 west arise the pinnacles of the Abbey — the crowning- 

 place of our kings, and the burial-place of the bards, 

 the patriots, the statesmen, and heroes of a thou- 

 sand years — the Westminster Abbey, or Victory of 

 Nelson. Higher than those pinnacles rises the Vic- 

 toria Tower, marking the spot where our laws are 

 made and administered. There all remaining that 

 is ancient is the Hall of Rufus ; and there ancient 

 institutions have been adapted, and will be still 

 further adapted, to modern times. 



_We are approaching the Kentish side of the 

 bridge. Let us not forget St. Saviour's Church, and 

 its Lady Chapel, whence the martyrs of the Re- 

 formation were sent, rejoicing, to the stake. We 

 are leaving behind us "London's lasting shame," 

 the palace-fortress of the semi-barbarous sovereigns 

 of a semi-barbarous age, where they retired for 

 safety till the coronation, and where they consigned 

 their rivals and disgraced favourites to the dungeon 

 and the block. 



We pass Deptford and Sayes Court, where Evelyn 

 loved to plant holly-hedges, and Peter the Great to 

 drive through them, to work in its dockyard, and 

 guzzle beer in its alehouses. There is the oldest of 

 our English dockyards. There was built the Great 

 Harry— as great a wonder of naval architecture, in 

 those days, as the Duke of Wellington, the Great 

 Eastern, and others of our largest screw steamers 

 are of these. There was laid up, as a trophy, 

 the Golden Hind, in which Drake circumnavigated 

 the globe, and which Elizabeth visited in royal 

 pomp, in honour of the achievement. There the 

 Tudor sovereigns had their palace ; there were born 

 the Sixth Edward and Ehzabeth. Thence started 

 that gorgeous procession with which Henry pre- 

 sented Anne Boleyn, as his Queen, to the citizens 

 of London ; and there was held the tournament, 

 whence she was consigned to the dungeon and the 

 block. The revels and intrigues of the Palace of 

 Plaeentia are departed ; and on its site has arisen 

 a prouder palace— the palace-hospital of our naval 

 veterans, the work of Wren, and the suggestion of 

 the amiable Mary, after the battle of La Hogue. 



We pass Woolwich Arsenal, of modern growth— 

 J' Woolwich Warren," as it was called in our boy- 



hood, though for what reason we could never ima- 

 gine, till we lately learned that up to the time of 

 George the Second it was the site of a rabbit-warren. 

 How would its former inhabitants be astonished at all 

 the munitions of war — the shot, and the shells, and the 

 rockets, the Armstrong cannon, the mortars, and the 

 Entield rifles — which now crowd its stores. There, 

 too, is the academy for the training of the officers of 

 the Artillery and Engineers. There the great Arm- 

 strong smithy. What study is required for the 

 destruction of human life ! what an advance in 

 civilization, since the days when they shot one 

 another with bows and arrows, or knocked out each 

 other's brains with clubs and battle-axes ! 



We pass Dartford, whose ruined abbey ws once 

 a royal residence, and where, some say, Elizabeth 

 ate that goose which she pronounced a marvellous 

 good one. 



We cross the Dareut — the "silent Darent" of 

 Pope, " red with Danish blood." The exact site of 

 the battle in which Alfred routed the Danes was 

 probably a little higher up the stream, near Sutton- 

 at-Hone ; for there skeletons have been found, to- 

 gether with a battle-axe of peculiar form, similar to 

 one which we have seen, from another battle-field ori 

 the Brent — not the common of that name, near 

 Dartford, but the river Brent, in Middlesex, where 

 the Danes sustained another defeat from Edmund 

 Ironsides. 



The first paper-mill in England was erected at 

 Dartford, now converted into powder-mills. Printing 

 and gunpowder — what revolutions have they 

 wrought in peace and in war ! The printing press, 

 however, is the most powerful of the two. 



We pass Swanscombe. It would be a pity to in- 

 quire too closely into the story of the treaty made 

 there between the conquering Norman and the un- 

 conquered men of Kent, by which they preserved 

 their gavel-kind and other Saxon privileges, to say 

 nothing of the white horse on their shield, and their 

 motto—-" Invietu." 



We pass Gravescnd. Who does not, from his 

 boyhood, remember Tilbury Eort, on the opposite 

 shore, and the spirit-stirring address of Elizabeth to 

 her troops ! Some of the helmets of the warriors of 

 that epoch adorn the townhall of Gravesend. 



We are approaching Rochester, and the Mcdway, 

 with its bridge and cathedral and castle so pic- 

 turesquely grouped. The bridge by which the Med- 

 way has hitherto been crossed was one of those 

 which, like the old bridge of London, appear to have 

 been constructed as dams across the stream, the 

 passage of the river being a secondary object. There 

 is nothing ancient, however absurd, which has not 

 its advocates; and there were some who gravely 

 contended that the obstruction in the stream caused 

 by the sterlings of the old London-bridge were ne- 

 cessary to the navigation, and proofs of the wisdom 

 of our ancestors. This venerable structure at Ro- 

 chester has bowed to the onward march of utilitarian 

 ideas, and has given place to an iron bridge of three 

 arches, with a swing-bridge to permit the passage of 

 larger craft. We nail the commodiousness of the 

 present structure, while we lament the picturesque 

 effect and time-honoured associations of that which 

 it has superseded. 



We thread the long street of Rochester and Chat- 



