Surrey

verse in a day; but perhaps no other in England can be found so close packed with scenes o

the refreshment of a total change of scene within a few miles of your own house." Its over-the-way neighbour Middlesex, which Cobbett, in his slap-dash style, puts down as all ugly,

on stretching its grimy tentacles over the green fields turned into "eligible building sites." How far its process of urbanification will reach, seems to depend on the stability of Britain's commercial greatness, which again depends, we are told, on the Fiscal question, if not on circumstances quite beyond our control, such as the stock still on hand in the national coal-cellar. When that New Zealand tourist comes to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, will he find Southwark, like ancient Croton, fallen to a squalid fever-stricken townlet, or an American syndicate at work digging up the ruins of Kingston, as Nippur is now excavated after being forgotten for

h joy!" William Black, indeed, found beauty at the doors of Camberwell; and the heights of Norwood deserve a better fate than to be covered with villas. But this mass of bold contours is exceptional so near South London. More often we must be content to get over a green rim of our scenic nosegay. From the undulating streets and suburban rows we usually pass on to a plain, presenting market-gardens and dairy-farms, where the open ground is not

es before London or Babylon had a name. Here we reach the second zone, that of the North Downs, a chalk ridge running roughly straight across the county from Farnham to Tatsfield, near the eastern border reaching a highest point of about 880 feet. This central line, broadened to several miles at Croydon, narr

me tastes, certainly the wildest, though many corners have been tamed by grounds and gardens among stretches of bristling common and straggling pine wood. These heights stand usually lower than the Downs; but at more than one point, as Lei

sex fadin

grey glim

clear hour, that through a gap the sea comes in view of Surrey hills, since their prospect southwards

rsts and woods hint how the clay soil bore a prim?val forest, notably of oaks, patches of it still preserved in the parks dappling an expanse of farm land long ago cleared to feed the furnaces that cast cannon and other iron work, specimens of which may be found in churches and homes about this district. Less picturesque, on the whole, than the zones to the north, the Surrey Weald is more remote from metropolitan

smaller streams less widely known. Ruskin, to deaf ears, lamented the defilement of the Wandle, its source, its curving course, and its mouth all now within the limits of Greater London. Do Putney boys trace to its head the Beverley Brook, as Charles Lamb's companions tried to play explorer up the New River? How many of the most schooled Londoners could tell through what parishes and by what suburban settlements flows the Hogsmill Rive

gs and branchings of the Wey and Mole go often unsuspected till one come close upon them. Below Surrey's bare, bony prominences, its veins will lie lost in the plumpness of the valleys. Both chalk and sand hil

A BIT OF T

ly found dotted with ponds, often beautifully hidden behind a curtain of foliage, as the "Silent Pool" of Albury, invisible to the cyclist spinning by within a hundred yards. The modest titles of some of these Surrey lakes may well deceive a stranger who has not ope

Postal District being a little more restricted. But still, beyond these bounds, we come upon settlements of citizens making their homes an hour's journey from the smoke and din of their work-place. Favourite sites for such colonies are the edges of commons so frequent on the south side of London, in Surrey to be counted by hundreds, open woodlands, stretches of copse and heath, well-worn playgrounds, down to the patches of green that seldom fail to grace the smallest hamlet. Several of these public pleasure-grounds run into London, where the south-w

libi House" was at Camberwell, and Mr. Tagrag's "Satin Lodge" at Clapham; yet surely they are aware of the miniature Walworth Castle, in which Mr. Wemmick kept an aged parent. "Lovell the Widower's" home at Putney, and the palatial Roehampton villas of Thackeray's city magnates may still stand high in house agents' books. But in ex-suburbs, as a rule, such pleasure-houses of a former generation are in no demand now, their sites often covered by shabby streets, shops, or blocks of flats; while leagues farther out, at Purley, Tadworth, or Claygate, spring up a fresh crop of smartly painted villas, in lines or knots, with white walls, red roofs, green water-butts and "modern conveniences," to tempt Londoners who can afford fresh air for living in. Every year some ne

he weapons of the jerry-builder. The whole county betrays its metropolitan dependence in the many trim enclosures around modern mansions and villas, among which holds up its head here and there some lordly old hall like Sutton or Loseley, some once strong castle like those of Guildford or Farnham. There are not a few ivied manor-houses still standing; some fallen to the estate of farm-houses, some restored or enlarged to be choice residences for new owners. A weather-beaten cottage of gentility will c

, summer

rded with the

arcel ivy-cl

breathings of

ower of vine a

rose-tree, an

be of jasmine

rosy sea of

is, a milky

the Northern d

e climbing t

o the martin-

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ts own

t seems an ominous sign of the times that as often as one sees a new pile rising on Surrey heights, it is apt to turn out a lunatic asylum, for which the flats about Hanwell surely offer a fitter site. The most showy of such structures are the far seen Holloway College above Egham, and the Sanatorium for the insane in the valley below, which cost over a million, made out of the profits of notorious patent medicines, to be given back thus to the p

ir scenes of Surrey with loathsome placards of this and that mischievous or worthless nostrum, to sicken the considerate passer-by at the thought of popular ignorance and credulity so easily preyed upon. Some day this mean offence may be repressed by law. Might we not begin by restricting the pill-and potion-mongers to Hackney Marsh or Barking Level as a sink for their shameless besliming? There is no spot in Surrey, not even the New Cut, Lambeth, nor the Se

honest wayfarer on Surrey's countless roads, alive with all kinds of travel, from farm-waggons

'S CHAPEL, NE

d, like the uncanny monstrosities of Mr. Wells' stories. It is all very well to remember how railways, too, were banned by prejudice, so that some half-century ago a liberal-minded John Bull, like the chronicler of Jorrocks and Soapey Sponge, still undertakes to apologise for those novelties on the score of their useful service to country life. But trains do not drive people off the roads and out of snug homes that lie too near the dusty triumph of Goth and Vandal chariots, "rigged with curses dark." Far more terrible are such swift Juggernauts than the insidious speed of the cyclist, who has lived down his reproach as a "cad on

n. Did they never cast an eye on the miles of useless tunnels at Welbeck, which their present owner might be glad to have turned to some good purpose? There they could pant and fizz up and down at their own pace all day and night lo

grow, too

hings we w

y sight

ough o'er e

to scale t

. pile

five thousand shekels of brass. And Surrey abounds in byways, some still twisting through the outer streets of London, their original character to be guessed only by such titles as Coldharbour Lane, Cut-throat Lane

eed contempt for what strikes a stranger as one of the pleasantest traits in an English landscape. Nat

ely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idylls and eclogues. These by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him; for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the aboriginal

for miles, every kind of them, straight field-cuts, blooming hedgerow paths, hard-beaten tow-paths, green ridges, leafy archways, trim woodland avenues "for whispering lovers made," free passages over lordly demesnes, straggling tracks across rough heaths, half-choked smugglers' lanes, and old historic roads, here i