180 JACOB RAVER. [Jwie, 



were so far as Lydd iti that direction, and indeed it is not easy 

 to imagine what anybody should go to Lydd for, or to New 

 Romney either, Lydd is the ultima Thule, the John O' Groat's 

 of England] and when the traveller must needs come back again, 

 he very naturally asks the sensible question why he should go 

 there at all, for he cannot go much further in this direction. 



But the writer must in compassion to his readers desist, or he 

 may give them cause to wish that he had never gone there or 

 that he had never come back, which would have had much the 

 same efl'ect on this long article ; for in the latter case it would 

 have existed only in intention. He has not the most remote 

 hope that what he has written will induce anybody, however 

 fond he may be of locomotion, to pay a visit to this singular 

 place. Yet it is perfectly unique ; it has no parallel in England. 

 We have traversed the Eastern Lowlands — that is, the Fens of 

 Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northampton, Norfolk, and Lincoln — 

 over and over, by coach and by the marrow-bone stage ; but 

 they are not like Romney Marsh. They are "flat and dulP' 

 like it, but not unprofitable even to the passenger or sight-seer, 

 for they lead to Peterborough, Ely, and Lincoln, all famed for 

 their cathedrals, and to other places of less note. Romney 

 Marsh leads to nothing but to the lighthouse at Dungeness. 

 But there is a beauty in Romney Marsh or in its environs : there 

 is the sea on one side, and there is on the other something like a 

 girdle of chalk ; an elevation called the Downs — not the Mari- 

 ners' Downs — crowned with Avoods and groves, and feathered 

 with trees to the depression of the weald and marsh. AH these 

 beauties are absent from the Eastern Lowlands. The sea itself is 

 one of the most interesting sights to a genuine Briton ; he loves 

 it with an intensity of admiration, equalled only by the love of 

 - a true Celt for his native mountains and his beautiful glens. 

 •^f^y^ The Downs, which bound the Marsh on the east and on the 

 y^ 'West and on the north, are beautiful at a distance, but in close 

 '"' J)roximity they aiford charming bits of scenery. Here also is the 

 ''■'>vale of Ashford, a part of the site of the ancient British forest of 

 ^'■^lAndredsweld, which extended more than a hundred miles to the 

 north and to the west, and which is celebrated in the masculine 

 strains of Drayton, England's great chorographical poet. 



There is na room 'for sketches of the scanty population; this 

 mav IjB forthcoming when we set out again on our travels to 



