288 LIFE AT DOWN. ^TAT. 33-45. 



resolved to live in the country, which we both preferred and 

 have never repented of." His intention of keeping up with 

 scientific life in London is expressed in a letter to Fox (Dec, 

 1842):— 



" I hope by going up to town for a night every fortnight 

 or three weeks, to keep up my communication with scientific 

 men and my own zeal, and so not to turn into a complete 

 Kentish hog." 



Visits to London of this kind were kept up for some years 

 at the cost of much exertion on his part. I have often heard 

 him speak of the wearisome drives of ten miles to or from 

 Croydon or Sydenham — the nearest stations — with an old 

 gardener acting as coachman, who drove with great caution 

 and slowness up and down the many hills. In later years, 

 all regular scientific intercourse with London became, as be- 

 fore 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 somewhat 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 only means of access to Down ; and 

 even now that railways have crept closer to it, it is singularly 

 out of the world, with nothing to suggest the neighbour- 

 hood of London, unless it be the dull haze of smoke that 

 sometimes clouds the sky. The village stands in an angle 

 between two of the larger high-roads of the country, one 

 leading to Tunbridge and the other to Westerham and Eden- 

 bridge. 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 encroachments 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 have been enabled to preserve its retired character. 



