Ch. VIII.] 1842—1854. 151 



regular sciontifio intercourse with London became, as before 

 mentioned, an impossibility. 



The choice of Down was rather the result of despair than of 

 actual preference : my father and mother were weary of house- 

 hunting, and the attractive points about the place thus seemed 

 to them to counterbalance its somowhat more obvious faults. 

 It had at least one desideratum, namely, quietness. Indeed it 

 would have been difficult to find a more retired place so near 

 to London. In 1842 a coach drive of some twenty miles was 

 the usual means of access to Down ; and even now that railways 

 havo crept closer to it, it is singularly out of the world, with 

 nothing to suggest tho neighbourhood of London, unless it be 

 tlio dull haze of smoke that sometimes clouds the sky. Tho 

 village stands in an angle between two of the larger high-roads 

 of the country, one leading to Tunbridgo and the other to 

 Westerham and Edonbridgo. It is cut off from the Weald by 

 a line of steep chalk hills on the south, and an abrupt hill, 

 now smoothed down by a cutting and embankment, must 

 formerly have been something of a barrier against encroach- 

 ments from the side of London. In such a situation, a village, 

 communicating with the main lines of traffic, only by stony 

 tortuous lanes, may well havo preserved its retired charac- 

 ter. Nor is it hard to believe in the smugglers and their 

 strings of pack-horses making their way up from the law- 

 less old villages of the Weald, of which the memory still 

 existed when my father settled in Down. The village stands 

 on solitary upland country, 500 to 600 feet above the sea — a 

 country with little natural beauty, but possessing a certain 

 charm in the shaws, or straggling strips of wood, capping the 

 chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet ploughed 

 lands of the valleys. The village, of three or four hundred 

 inhabitants, consists of three small streets of cottages meeting 

 in front of the little flint-built church. It is a place where 

 new-comers are seldom seen, and the names occurring far back 

 in the old church registers are still known in the village. 

 The smock-frock is not yet quite extinct, though chiefly used 

 as a ceremonial dress by the " bearers " at funerals ; but as a 

 boy I remember the purple or green smocks of the men at 

 church. 



The house stands a quarter of a mile from the village, and 

 is built, like so many houses of the last century, as near as 

 possible to the road — a narrow lane winding away to tho 

 Westerham high-road. In 1842, it was dull and unattractive 

 enough : a square brick building of three storeys, covered 

 with shabby whitewash, and hanging tiles. The garden had 



