BOUGHTON 173 



tongue, makes off for very shame, while the Yeoman 

 tells the story that brings the party to Harbledown. 



XXXII 



Boughtox-undek-Blean is perhaps the neatest, 

 quietest, longest, and most cheerfully picturesque 

 ^'illage on the Dover Road. It lies near the foot of 

 the hill. Half-way up is the church. 



In the churchyard of Boughton there is a great 

 yew-tree whose girth at three feet from the ground 

 was taken by the vicar in 1894. It was then 9 ft. 9 in. 

 The age of this tree is exactly known, for a seventeenth 

 century vicar, the Reverend John Johnson, recorded, 

 '' the little yew-tree by the south doer was sett in 

 1695." The yew, therefore, expands one foot in 

 sixty-one years. 



One or two country houses with large gardens and 

 trimly cut hedges occupy the crest of the hill ; and 

 just beyond, on the level plateau of Dunkirk, is the 

 church, built in 1840, as some means toward civilizing 

 the untutored savages the villagers of this beautiful 

 county had become under the neglect of that Christian 

 Church Avhose Metropolitan Cathedral rises proudly 

 beyond the hillside village of Harbledown, less than 

 three miles away. God in His goodness has blessed 

 with a boundless fertility the fair land of Kent, so that 

 old Michael Drayton merely exj)ressed facts when he 

 wrote that rapturous eulogy — 



O famous Kent 1 



What county hath this isle that can compare with thee ? 

 That hath within thyself as much as thou canst wish ; 

 Thy rabbits, venison, fruits, thy sorts of fowl and fish ; 

 As what with strength compares, thy hay, thy corn, 

 Xor anything doth want that anywhere is good. 



But, long after the first quarter of the nineteenth 

 century had passed, this part of Kent was peopled 

 with a peasantry compared with whom the Hindoos 



