ROCHESTER 105 



upon, and that Mr. Pickwick, bulky man as he was, 

 ran a considerable risk when he leaned over the 

 parapet, may be gathered when we read that on a night 

 in 1836 a storm demolished a great stretch of it, and 

 that the Princess Victoria, who was coming up the road 

 from Dover, was content to be advised to stay over- 

 night at the " Bull," rather than attempt to cross 

 over to Strood. The riverside wore a somewhat 

 different aspect then. Low and broken cliffs 

 picturesquely shelved down to the water's edge where 

 a neat embankment now runs, and the balustrades 

 of the old bridge serve their old purpose on this new 

 river- wall. The embankment is an improvement 

 from an utilitarian point of view, but its long straight 

 line hurts the artistic sense. 



The stranger should come into Rochester preferably 

 on the evening of a summer's day, and, as first 

 impressions must ever remain the most distinct, he 

 should walk in over the bridge. At such times a 

 golden haze spreads over the city and the river, and 

 renders both a dream of beauty. The gilt ship on 

 the Town Hall blazes like molten metal ; the " moon- 

 faced clock " of the Corn Exchange is correspondingly 

 calm, and the wide entrance-halls of the older inns 

 begin to glow with light. You should have walked 

 a good fifteen miles or more on the day of your first 

 coming into Rochester, and then you will appreciate 

 aright the mellow comforts of its old inns. But not 

 at once will the connoisseur of antiquity and first 

 impressions who thus enters the old city repair him 

 to his inn. He will turn into the Cathedral precincts 

 underneath the archway of Chertsey's Gate, and I 

 hope he will not already have read Edwin Drood, 

 because an acquaintance with that tale quite spoils 

 one's Rochester, and leaves an ineffaceable mark of a 

 modern sordid tragedy upon the hoary stones of 

 Cathedral, Castle, and Close. It is as though one had 

 come to the place after reading the unrelieved brutality 

 of a newspaper report. Rochester demands a romance 



