CHAPTER XI.

"THE FINEST SEVEN MILES IN ENGLAND."

A Hint from Cobbett.-Maidstone Town.-The Travelling Agent.Maidstone Church. - The Hoppers. - Allington Castle.-A Chapter of Accidents.—Boxley Abbey.-Pennenden Heath.— The Painted Waggon.-A Loan of a "Tanner."-The "Dumb Borsholder."-Manners and Customs of Hoppers.- Mereworth and Peckham.-Cobbett not a good Guide.

In turning over the pages of Cobbett's Rural Rides one evening, I chanced to light upon the following passage:"From Maidstone to Merryworth is about seven miles, and these are the finest seven miles that I have ever seen in England or anywhere else" (page 258). This quickly decided me to make a slight diversion from Sussex into Kent, for surely no truly patriotic man could ever rest contented till he had seen the finest seven miles which his country had to show.

At the old "Bell Inn" at Maidstone, where Mr. Pepys tells us that in the year 1669 he had "a good dinner," I found fair lodging and entertainment, and soon went out to see the town. Pepys, it appears, did the same, for he relates that he "walked all round the town, and found it very pretty, as most towns I ever

saw, though not very big, and people of good fashion in it." This would apply quite well to the Maidstone of the present day, for though by no means "big," it is a cheerful and bright-looking town, with no lack of people of "good fashion" in it, to say nothing of good looks. Seldom have I seen a fairer show of fresh and comely girls in any English town than in Maidstone. There are public gardens, very well laid out, and a Museum in an ancient house in St. Faith's Street, well worth a visit. Many curious objects are gathered together here, among them some fine oak chests and divers relics of the Maidstone of former days. There is also a copy of the Maidstone journal of 1737, with a leading article on Love, beginning "Love is the spring of almost all the good that happens to men." This seems a little enthusiastic, but how could any able editor who lived in Maidstone, and constantly saw crowds of pretty girls about the streets, possibly come to any other conclusion? In a stationer's shop where I went to get a photograph, I saw a man giving out some bills or programmes, and after looking at him attentively for a minute or two, I said,

"Why, here you are once more, distributing your bills as if nothing had happened."

"Yes, sir," said the man, rather puzzled.

"And how is business?

"That's well. Are you going to perform here to

night?"

"We are, sir, and I expect we shall have a full house. We shall be at the Corn Exchange."

"All right-I hope you will do as well here as you did where I last saw you."

"And where was that, at Tunbridge?"

"Far enough from there," said I; "it was at Robertson Hall in Sixteenth Street."

"Why, that must have been over in America, sir? Dear me, how strange you should know me again. We did very well there-in fact, we did very well all through the States. Might have made more if Mr. M.'s health had allowed him to continue his tour. Great country for the profession, sir, better than this."

"It is when you are lucky."

"And have a good thing, sir. No use going to the Yankees unless you have a good thing to offer them. Of course you will drop in and see us to-night at the Corn Exchange?"

The wiry looking little man hurried off with his bills -he was the agent of a popular performer whose "impersonations" have moved audiences to mirth in all parts of the world.

There is an immense church in Maidstone, but big as it is the whitewasher's brush has proved more than a match for it. A whole river of whitewash seems to have been turned into it. The chancel is fine, the altar screen very old, and there are some interesting monuments to a family named Astley, dating back to 1623. "If you will believe me, sir," said the sexton's wife, "the church on Sundays is generally crowded to the

very doors, and we are obliged to put seats down the aisles." Close by the church are the remains of a college or hospital, dating back five hundred years or more, and a mile beyond is the village of Tovil, to which I walked for the purpose of getting a general view of Maidstone. The road was crowded with "hoppers who had just been brought from London, and who were going along shouting, cursing, and yelling. The faces of many of the men were marked with deep cuts and scars, relics of many a drunken orgie. It was vice, and not poverty, which had planted its indelible stamp upon their countenances. The oaths and obscenities which were discharged, like a foul sewer, from the mouths of these semi-savages, men and women, made one's blood run cold, and seemed to poison the air of heaven itself.

To get beyond sight and sound of these persons, I turned back to the old bridge, and pursued my way along the towing path towards Allington, past an old wayside inn called the "Gibraltar." There were many couples walking along by the river, evidently of opinion with the old Maidstone editor that "love is the spring of almost every good." Let us hope they will continue to be of the same mind. A little way beyond the inn, a boy rowed me across the river to see the castle in which Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet was born in 1503. It is now little but a wild disordered ruin, ragged and ill kept, with an untidy woman and some surly dogs to check any enthusiasm, poetical or antiquarian, which the visitor may happen to bring with him. A church stands a little way back from the castle, and near it is

the vicarage, and almost in front of that there runs a path through a wood, which leads to Allington lock. Having crossed the locks, turn to the right, then take the first turning to the left, and go over a stile to the right up the lane. Follow the path through the meadow, and go over another stile to the road. This road goes left and right, but there is a short lane running through it, and winding round by a mill. This is the way to Boxley, and if the directions to it are rambling and confused, so is the road, and I have at least not made the way seem harder than it really is.

At the turning of the lane near the mill I overtook a poor man carrying a bundle tied up in a blue check handkerchief, and asked him the way, for it was almost impossible to make it out. I noticed that his left hand was all doubled up and distorted.

"It is the rheumatiz," said he, seeing me looking at it, I have had rheumatic fever, and my left side is set. I have been hopping-it's about all I can do now."

I now noticed that his right hand was in a still worse plight than his left-the thumb was entirely gone, and the fingers and knuckles seemed all in lumps, like the bosses on the trunk of an old tree.

"You have been in the wars, I see."

"Ay, sir, that was done up here," and he pointed back towards Allington Castle, which, however, was out of sight. "It happened nigh upon six and thirty year ago. I was working there, and one day the young master told me to take his powder horn and put it away. You see, there was a farmhouse in the castle. Well,