553 BOTANICAL SKETCHES. [^September, 



station^ four or five miles, to meet the up-train from Maidstone 

 to London by four o'clock, we thought it prudent to direct our 

 steps homewards. In returning, we took Boxley Abbey in our 

 way. When we visited this celebrated place in the hopping sea- 

 son last year, 1857, there were seen on the abbey wall, whether 

 on the outer or on the inner is not remembered, one of our mural 

 Pinks at least, perhaps both, viz. Dianthus plumarius and D. 

 Caryophyllus. On passing along the base of it on the last day 

 of May, 1858, we saw neither. 



But we saw neat specimens of Linaria Cymbalaria covering 

 the coping, and forming a mural crown neater far than the Wall 

 Pinks. With this and Sedum reflexum, the seven-angled variety, 

 we consoled ourselves for the lack of the former. 



The place, and our tired condition, induced us to moralize on 

 the transitory state of all worldly possessions, and to cogitate 

 on the condition of things here, at Boxley Abbey, only four 

 centuries ago, not a very long space in the world's history or 

 in the history of mankind. The latter is but like an age of the 

 present short-lived human race when compared with the great 

 geologic periods which reckon their epochs by myriads, not by 

 centuries. Only four hundred years ago — and it would be as near 

 the mark to say that only about three hundred years ago — this 

 pleasant and fertile domain was inhabited by a numerous body 

 of religious and secular persons, whose lives were, ostensibly at 

 least, spent in the service of God and in ministering to the 

 necessities of their fellow-creatures, or in preparing them for 

 another state. It is a ruin. The land which supplied food for 

 men is now pastured by bullocks or sheep. The orchards have 

 disappeared ; so have all the monastic buildings. The residence 

 of the owner of this once populous place is a plain, unpretending 

 edifice, noticeable because it is the only habitable erection here. 



We are not laudatores temporis acti, and therefore do not wish 

 for past times to return, when the mailed knight trod the hall 

 and the cowled monk the cloister and chancel. We know that 

 these are numbered with the past, and we believe that they will 

 never again be present. They did their work in their day, and 

 we had a good portion of our day's work to do, and had there- 

 fore no longer time for moralizing and sentimentalism. From 

 Boxley Abbey to the station the distance is three good English 

 miles, and we had barely an hour for accomplishing it. 



