The Old Dover Boad. 183 



valley of the Stoiir from Harbledown, and of Dover Castle 

 and the French coast from Lyddon Hill, and the Maidstone 

 valley from Boxley or Blue Bell Hill, are as beautiful as 

 anything of the kind in England, mostly within fifty, and 

 all within seventy miles of London. Few people ever go 

 and see Rochester Castle, and the west gate of the 

 cathedral, and the dockyard, and fortifications, and Cobham 

 Hall (Lord Darnley's seat), and the Medway, though they 

 are all worth a visit, with plenty of reminiscences of Gad's 

 Hill and Falstaff and other old memories historical and 

 Pickwickian, and young men with good thighs and sinews 

 who have no carriages, would find a walk from London to 

 Dover a very pleasant change. 



So there is a long yarn about nothing but happy 

 memories, which so much infatuated me that I made a 

 pilgrimage last week to scenes of my boyhood which I left 

 behind me nearly forty years ago. The lads of the village 

 little thought that the stranger who had some refreshment 

 was peopling the old village inn — the Lion Hotel, once the 

 " Green Lion " — which used to be painted standing on one 

 claw and sparring with the whole world — with ghosts of 

 those who have long since joined the majority, and was 

 chuckling with inward delight to see that the same old 

 clock, of unknown age, was ticking away in its own corner. 

 I was in dreamland, and, in fancy, saw the coach draw np 

 to take me back, as a little boy, to the hardships of a public 

 school, and I was fighting hard to " die game " on leaving 

 home. If I saw with a sigh that houses and brick-fields 

 and cement works had supplanted orchards and cornfields 

 here and there, and that the old cricket field was built over, 

 it was a comfort to think that heaven is not built with 

 hands, and that no builder or contractor can desecrate it 

 with staring cottages with green doois and brass knockers, 

 and a violent red-brick Ebenezer. 



