20 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



point of departure for the coiitiueut, Dover lias 

 seen the arrival and departure of many illustrious 

 travellers on errands of state, or of business— of 

 peace or of war. The only two events, however, 

 which we shall notice are the reception of Henrietta 

 Maria by Charles the First, and the Surprise of the 

 Castle a few years afterwards by the Parliamentary 

 forces. With all their faults, how different might have 

 been the fate of Charles and Henrietta had they lived 

 in times when the boundaries had been as well esta- 

 blished as at present between the prerogatives of 

 the Crown aud the rights of the People ! That 

 patronage of the arts which adorned the early years 

 of the reign of Charles might then have given us 

 something like an English school of art. The de- 

 sign of Inigo Jones might have given London a 

 palace worthy of the name, and the bauquetting 

 house might never have witnessed a royal execution. 

 At Dover we may study the progress of the art of 

 fortification through all its phases, from the tower 

 called Caisar's, aud certainly built in front with 

 Homan bricks, to the subterranean barracks and 

 modern citadel of the western height. At Walmer, 

 where Wellington died, Deal, and Sandown we may 

 study it under the phase it assumed in the time of 

 Henty VIII., when gunpowder was in its boyhood. 

 We may see the celebrated Martello towers with 

 which Pitt lined the Kentish and Sussex coast, as 

 well as the more valuable parts of the shores of Ire- 

 land. With respect to the latter, an English traveller, 

 who inquired their object of a car-driver, received in 

 reply that he did not know, unless it was to bother 

 posterity with, like the round towers of old. The 

 Martello towers of the Kentish coast, constructed at 

 an enormous expense during the early part of the 

 war, were abandoned at its close to the coastguard 

 or to decay. They take their name from the bay of 

 Martello in Sicily, now so full of Garibaldi, where 

 one of them, with its single gun, beat off one 

 of our frigates, hulling her at almost every shot, 

 and drawing from her captain the exclamation that 

 firing at that tower was like firing at a tallow 

 candle, there was nothing to hit. They are now 

 regaining their importance. Steam navigation has 

 deprived us in a great degree of the immunity from 

 invasion afforded by our insular position and naval 

 superiority. It has taught us 'that, though the 

 march of England is still, as Campbell sung, o'er the 

 mountain wave and her home in the deep, she cannot 

 dispense altogether with towers along the steep and 

 other bulwarks than those of her native oaks. Such 

 were the truths which our greatest master of the 

 art of war laboured to inculcate, and for a long time 

 laboured in vain. We are at length awakening to a 

 sense of its importance, and are fortifying our dock- 

 yards and the most valuable parts of our coast, to 

 say nothing of the aid of our volunteers. 



Lying in the track of continental visitors, Kent has 

 lain also in the track of every invader. Cfesar landed 

 somewhere near Deal: Hengist aud Horsa came into 

 Pevensey Bay, and laid the foundation of that 

 Anglo-Saxon dominion which has sprung out of the 

 Heptarchy, colonized North America and Australia, 

 and reigns on the banks of the Indus and Ganges. 

 We say that Caesar landed somewhere near Deal, 

 for while the anti([uaries have much difiiculty in 

 settling the exact spot, the geologist believes the 



coast to have undergone such alterations in the in- 

 terval which has elapsed, that it is probably now 

 either submerged beneath the waves or more inland 

 than the present shore. The Isle of Thanet is no 

 longer an island. The straits through which the 

 Roman fleet sailed is a marsh, while their former 

 existence is testified by the Roman castles of Sil- 

 chester and Reculver, which guarded the entrance. 

 In the walls of the former, blocks of stone are to be 

 seen, which must have been brought from the oppo- 

 site extremity of the strait, and, if there were no 

 other evidence, would go far to establish the exist- 

 ence of a navigable inlet, where there are now rich 

 grazing grounds. Equal changes since Roman 

 times in the estuary of the Yare are attested in like 

 manner by the ju'esent position of the Roman 

 castles which guarded its entrance, by the ancient 

 anchors found in the marshes, and by the Saxou 

 map in the town chest of Yarmouth, which repre- 

 sents the site of that town as a sandbank at a little 

 distance from the land. 



In our journey through North Kent we bestowed 

 a passing notice on spots which have been rendered 

 memorable by some of the most important events in 

 our history. Let us not forget others which the 

 poets have peopled with the creatures of their ima- 

 gination. Who, in passing Gad's Hill, can divest 

 himself of the idea that the adventures of Prince 

 Harry and Eat Jack really occurred there ? Who 

 has not looked out at Dover with intense interest 

 for the first sight of Sliakespeare's Clilf, and has 

 not been disappointed to find it falling so far short 

 of his description, as to render it evident that the 

 poet painted, not the actual cliff of Dover, even the 

 highest, but a lofty cliff as seen by his mind's eye, 

 the prototype of which must be sought elsewhere, 

 amidst the precipitous cliffs of our Alpine districts ? 

 Neither can we cross the INledway without being 

 reminded of Spenser's beautiful lines on her mar- 

 riage with the Thames. 



The line by which we have traversed the country 

 has been from the earlier periods of our history the 

 great line of communication with the continent, and 

 therefore abounds the most with historical reminis- 

 cences. Had we taken the central line, we should 

 have passed through a country equally beautiful, 

 and not without its historical recollections ; but its 

 beauties are of a different character. Our route 

 would have lain through the Weald, or Wild, the 

 remains of a forest which once extended through 

 the counties of Kent, Sussex, aud Surrey. It was 

 one of the seats of our infant iron trade, which has 

 now assumed such gigantic proportions. The strata 

 of the Weald contain ironstone of good quality, but 

 no coal. It was smelted, therefore, with charcoal, 

 for the double purpose of making iron and clearing 

 the forest. The rails round St. Paul's are said to 

 have been made from some of the last iron smelted 

 in the Weald. As the clearing of the woods ad- 

 vanced, charcoal, though the best fuel for the manu- 

 facture of iron, became too expensive ; and the iron 

 trade migrated to the forges of Staffordshire and 

 South Wales, where ironstone abounds, in close 

 connexion with the fuel and the limestone necessary 

 for its reduction. The forest has disappeared : the 

 Weald is no longer celebrated for its gigantic oaks, 

 specimens of which may be seen in the large tables 



