SUCH rich crowds of historical figures throng the long reaches of the Dover Road that one really hardly knows where to make a beginning and where to make an end with them.

Indeed, when I think of the record of this seventy-one miles, one long, confused, grotesque procession of all ages, and all periods of English history, files before me. I see as many sights as Tilburina does in the Critic, and a few more. Kings returning from conquest. One king returning from exile. Many queens on their way to wedding -("unfortunate chiefly, I regret to say," as Mr. Pecksniff might have remarked)-one queen on her way to a wedding, which, fortunately for her, can hardly be said to have completely come off; grave archbishops tremulously proceeding to installation; our earliest dramatic genius on his way to London, glory, and a violent death, his "unbowed, bright, insubmissive head," already full of Faust-not the Lyceum version. I see too another English man of letters as immortal as Marlowe, with keen kindly eyes, overlooking from Gad's Hill the dusty track

along which he, and so many of his creations, travelled. And the latest of the ingenious race of footpads at his adroit business on Blackheath; and one of the last of the old coachmen (with whom I have had the honour of shaking hands), calm, in the emergency of "chain snapped and coach running on wheelers on a frosty morning," descending the Dartford side of Shooter's Hill.

Perhaps it may be thought that it would be well for me, with such material in hand, to begin at the beginning. But the beginning of the history of the Dover Road, I fear, would be the beginning of the history of the Watling Street for the two terms are in a large measure identical-and this would lead me into a long dissertation on chariot wheels suddenly flying off, to the intense discomfiture of centurions; to details concerning the stern tramp of the legions; to the heart-quaking sound of "Consul Romanus," according to De Quincey; and to other classic items, foreign, even in my extended view, to gossip about the great coaching roads of England.

And so I think that (this being an age

in

this road in the golden age of coaching was Chaplin's Tally-ho, which was driven by Clements-the fine old coachman whom I have already mentioned, and whose interesting personal experiences given to myself I shall deal with when I get to Canterbury, where he lives. The Tally-ho used to run from the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street to Sittingbourne-forty miles-every day, including Sunday, and (as Mr. Stanley Harris tells all who will learn how their forefathers travelled, in The Coaching Age) was largely patronized by the Kentish farmers, who could leave their homes at five or six o'clock on Sunday afternoon, get their night's rest -acrobatic, somewhat, I fear-and be on the spot for the early markets in London.

To get along on our way to Rochesterwhere I intend to stop for a month-the Dover Road (which is measured from the Surrey side of London Bridge) after going through New Cross, where in coaching days

with Mr. Matthew Arnold at the prodigal way in which nature plays with the lives of the most gifted of her sons. As the author of Doctor Faustus however had permitted himself the license of certain criticism quite uncalled for and extremely distasteful to the clergy, our view of his premature cutting off was not shared by his contemporaries. Beard, on the contrary, in his Theatre of God's Judg

ments, thus urbanely comments on Marlowe's death from his own dagger. "But see what a hooke the Lord put in the Nostrils of this barking dogge ;" an effort in criticism which makes us hope that there are such things as literary amenities among us after all.

The poet's birth at Canterbury; his education there at the King's School, gives him. to the Dover Road as perhaps its brightest ornament. When we are tired it may be of erecting tablets to third class authors (English and others), adorned with inscriptions which for unintelligibility would not misbecome the tomb of Cheops, it may occur to us that one of the greatest of our poets is unrepresented in our pedantic Pantheon. Till which time comes Mr. Swinburne's fine eulogy will take the place of a bad statue. 66 A poor scholar of humblest parentage, this poet lived to perfect the exquisite metre invented for narrative by Chaucer, giving it (to my ear at least) more of weight and depth, of force and fulness, than its founder had to give; he invented the highest and hardest form of English verse, the only instrument since found possible for our tragic or epic poetry; he created the modern tragic drama; and at the age of thirty he went

"Where Orpheus and where Homer are.'"

To leave Marlowe for a while-and before leaving Deptford-it may not misbecome me to remark for the benefit of those who still read Scott in an age which has turned aside after brazen images with feet of clay-that at Sayes Court-long since pulled downare laid some of the most brilliant scenes in Kenilworth. It is here that Blount and Raleigh first appear in the pages of perhaps the finest historical novel in the world; it is here that Tresilian, milksoppy to the verge of nausea even for one of Scott's heroes, brings Wayland Smith to cure Sussex of Leicester's broth; it is to Sayes Court that Elizabeth herself comes when she is least expected, finds it watched like a beleaguered fort, and makes

which stands on its site; and marvelling at the imperial relaxation of Peter the Great who stayed here in 1698 (at the court, not at the workhouse), and who was wont to unbend a mind wearied with ship-building, by being driven through the world-famous hedges of the garden in a wheelbarrow.

Immediately beyond Deptford we come to Blackheath, seven miles from London Bridge, famous in these days for football matches, and for villas built for credulous people simple enough to believe in fine air as a remedy for that mysterious disease which, to quote the terrific advertisement, is "stealing upon us all." But the villas, I regret to say, in which these deluded persons seek for

a rapid exit," having brought confusion along with her, and leaving doubt and apprehension behind."

I confess that it does me good when in the course of these disjointed rambles along the great roads of England I can find some spot haunted by the, to me, charmed figures which throng the pages of the Waverley novels. Hitherto I have not reaped much of a harvest of joy in this direction it must be confessed; but Deptford has given me my first opportunity; and the Dover Road, a little further on, will give me my second; with which remark I think I may leave Deptford altogether, lamenting that all that can be seen of Sayes Court is now a parish workhouse,

was

that health which passeth understanding, and can only be procured at the vendors of patent medicines, are by no means equal to the aristocratic residences for which Blackheath once famous. The manners of their inhabitants are however much improved. At least I hope so. For Montague House, now pulled down, did not, I apprehend, shine conspicuously in this desirable respect. reverse indeed was the case; Montague House having been, in the days I speak of, the residence of the unfortunate Queen Caroline, and the scene of the delicate investigation-which reminds me that I am on delicate ground. From the same house that delightful combination of the devil and

The