76 A KENTISH PARISH 



embowered in orchards, and unpleasantly buried among 

 venerable trees, if the tenants are at all susceptible to 

 damp. Wherever you can struggle out into the open 

 anywhere on the surrounding heights, you get a glimpse 

 of tall, angular stacks of chimneys of Elizabethan 

 character. Ten to one, it is not till you are turning 

 the corner of the nearest lane that you catch the 

 curving lines of the eccentric gables. The steep-pitched 

 roof is yielding under the weight of years, and possibly 

 of great masses of the ivy that clutches at the tiles with 

 its knotted fingers, and forces its tendrils through the 

 interstices to twine them round the rafters of the attics. 

 Where roof and walls are free from the parasite, they 

 are covered with a growth of mosses and lichens in 

 the most mellow tints of yellow and orange. The 

 upper half of the walls is in weather-tiling, the lower 

 is blackened brick that begins to shows signs of crumb- 

 ling. The glass in the lozenged casements dates from 

 days when the art of the manufacture was in its 

 infancy. You ascend to the entrance-door by a flight 

 of much-worn steps, to find yourself landed in a 

 spacious passage that very frequently is groined 

 and arched. To the right is the capacious kitchen, 

 with its whitewashed walls and vast cupboards, and 

 great smoked beams overhead. There is plenty of 

 room for an easy chair on either side of the dais in the 

 chimney-place ; you might roast a sheep, if not an ox, 

 at the logs that might be piled upon the old-fashioned 

 dogs ; and looking up past the flitches suspended in 

 the funnel-shaped opening, you may get a glimpse of 



