Surrey

ects of English scenery, was only a little

ghlands: "Long tracts of mountainous country, covered with dark heath, and often obscured by misty weather; narrow valleys thinly inhabited and bounded by precipices resounding with the fall of torrents, a soil so rugged, and a clima

DEPTHS,

with our long-skirted and nig

orbears, who had reason to look on half-savage "heathers" as undesirable neighbourhood. In old days the "forest" moors as well as the good greenwood harboured a sort of outlaws, good for nothing but to be pressed as soldiers, when the sheriff could set on foot a strong rounding up of the retreats where they lurked, like the Doones on Exmoor. Almost up to our own day, out-of-the-way parts of the county were inhabited by rough crews, apt to take a "heave-half-a-brick-at-him" attit

ing a sharp look-out for Bedouins in breeches. But the Sahara itself turns out to be not everywhere so black as it has been painted; and this Surrey wilderness has many an oasis of park and farm, gardened villages like Chobham and Windlesham, pine-crested knolls and tangled dingles, all the greener in contrast with their environment of dry slopes

ves a chequer'd

t, and part e

mph her lover'

lges, nor can

s'd in lawns an

e that shun eac

ight the russe

clouds the blui

eath displays h

desert fruitf

h tufted trees an

isles the sab

ugitive of Worcester return in triumph; Hounslow Heath, on which the Roman soldiery were drilled in their day; and Finchley Common, where the Guards would now find scanty space for a bivouac. It seems to have been the Prince Consort who started or at least fostered the idea of camps of training and exercise on Surrey heaths. The first of these was at Chobham, in the summer before the Crimean War, after which was formed the more permanent camp at Aldershot. What a delightful novelty to Londoners was that military picnic may be seen in

, half-way on the road between Chertsey and Windlesham. The nearest station then was Chertsey, from which cabmen fixed a sovereign as their fare on field-days. Prominent points were Flutters Hill, a swell of park-land, and Staple Hill, which to Lord Seaton, the commanding officer, recalled the ridge of Busaco by its crest of thin firs, like his regiment's battle-blown ranks on that bygone day. Farther west, a cross on Ship Hill marks the knoll from which Queen Victoria reviewed her troops bound for the East. This ca

oting huge projectiles across space, to hit the earth with such force that the heaths and pine-woods of Surrey take fire from the glowing impact. The first of these giant missiles half-buries itself in the Horsell sand-pits between Woking and Chobham, the second falls among the woods of Byfleet, and others follow in the same vicinity. What strikes one as an improbability is that the Martian gun

ile all the artillery that can be hurried up for the defence of London has little more effect on them than pop-guns. Nervous readers may cry out at the gruesome incidents of page after page; but no one can deny the cleverness with which scientific imagination has been infused through the realistic details of this grim story. Its most marvellously simple device is that by which the triumphant giants are got off the stage. When London has been left empty to the flames, when the Thames is choked up by the monstrous and prolific red vegetation of Mars, when the whole population of Britain are in mad flight, and civilised humanity is trembling all over our earth at what seems its inevitable fate, the most

wn on the Woking railway line, which might be taken as an eastern boundary for the district now

RM, NEAR

singularity among Surrey pine-woods, a Mohammedan mosque at the south end of a row of brick buildings beside the down line of the railway as it approaches Woking station. This exotic institution was planted by the late Dr. Leitner as a colleg

sandy tracks and among ragged thickets, making what our fathers called a dreary waste; then come the wooded ridges and peopled hollows of Windlesham, one of Surrey's most pleasant nooks, that, fortunately for its peacefulness, is not too near a railway station. There is one at Bagshot, to which a path leads over the valley of the Windle, striking into the high-road from Egham beside Bagshot

rne a crop of military and other institutions, which people the new town of Camberley in the fork of the roads, its villas also sought as a retreat for "captains and colonels and knights at arms." The extensive woods on the Berkshire side are pierced by a Roman road, and by a fan of long, straight ridges that look like War Office wo

ieve oneself in the Highlands but for the open prospects on either hand. The sides of late years have been cut up by the building of various institutions; and towards the farther end of the four-mile road it is frowned on by War Office notices that trespassers are within range of stray bullets from the Pirbright and Bisley ranges lying below the east side. While firing goes on, there will be a red flag on the bold edge of Windmill Hill, which at the south end of

hips, made not too uncomfortable, the worst of it being usually a thunderstorm or two that put whiskered Pandours of Fleet Street to their shifts. The nucleus of permanent buildings appears on a low height north-west of Brookwood station, then, beyond, the ranges run up against the Chobham ridge, where barren banks display the "Hundred

ative turf and heather, has been planted with flower-beds, clumps of wood, banks of rhododendrons and other shrubs, that go to disguise the gloomy shadows of the grave. Apart from the division between those who have and have not the right to sleep in consecrated earth, certain areas are allotted to London parishes, or to communities such as the London Bakers, the Foresters' Society, etc., so that the associations of life are not lost in death; there is an "Actors' Acre," as well as an "Oddfellows Acre," also a las

was not so rich in rupees as in culture and enlightenment, confessed to me that he looked forward with horror to the vulture burial of his creed, but that he would not indulge his own preference for cremation on account of paining his wife's feelings. After all, she died a few weeks before his useful life ended, in Europe, and, as it chanced, he came to be buried at Brookwood. Some of the more enlightened of his community, I hear, are considering the question of substituting cremation for their repulsive form of sepulture. Devout Parsees have looked on fire as too sacred for such an office; but th

yard; physicians like Sir Benjamin Richardson and Sir Spencer Wells; authors like George Macdonald and W. E. Henley, Eliza Lynn Linton and "Edna Lyall"; artists like Watts and Burne-Jones; philanthropists like Sir Isaac Pitman and Dr. Barnardo; clergymen like H. R. Haweis and Brooke Lambert, all concerned in their last dispositions to set such a good example. Two dukes have been cremated here, with a due proporti

T POND,

al. The cost of cremation has now been reduced to a few pounds, becoming lowered as the apparatus was more often used. The Golder's Green Crematorium has almost extinguished the Society's, which stands below the Knap Hill Barracks, and above the canal bank, a mile or two out of Woking, just beyond the church of St. John's Hill. The building includes a chapel, where any religious service desired may be held, this and the final disposal of the remains being left to the friends of the deceased. The body, shrivelled up by a blast o

his ashes

r of his n

ast end of the churchyard, Henry Stanley lies at rest beneath a huge block of rough stone, an appropriate monument for him whom the natives styled "stone-breaker," in admiration of his masterful dealing with difficulties. At Frimley, on the Surrey border, is buried Bret Harte. A little to the south of this, beside Farnborough station, on a wooded hill rises a far-seen dome, miniature of that which covers the great Napoleon at Pa

rom Farnborough station to Farnham, the North and South Camps being divided by the transverse line of the Canal. The bulk of the Camp is on Hampshire ground, but its ranges shoot into Surrey, where, on the Fox Hills or the Romping Downs, peaceably-minded strangers may be challenged by Roderick D

if one may judge from military novels like Lockhart's Doubles and Quits; I have heard subalterns wofully grumbling that they had nothing to do here but work, while their seniors profess to be reminded of Aden rather than of Eden. Of Aldershot as it was in earlier days, we get lively sketches in Mrs. Ewing's Story of a Short Life, this auth

dder that clasps the heather, let them perish and the face of Dame Nature be utterly blackened! Then: shave the heath as bare as the back of your hand, and if you have felled every tree, and left not so much as a tussock of grass or a scarlet toadstool to break the force of the winds; then shall the winds come, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and shall raise on your shaven heath clouds of sand that would not discredit a desert in the heart of Africa. By some such recipe the ground was prepared for that Camp of Instruction.... Bare and dusty are

es of military fame mark the Lines stretching over the canal to the North Camp, which has a station and "bazaar" quarter of its own. On very hot days, indeed, one might mistake parts of the camp for an Indian cantonment, till the eye catches ragged firs bordering this dusty maidan. The Cavalry lie to the west, beside the Winchester high-road, which is a boundary of the permanent barracks, while beyond it summer brings out mushroom-beds of tents for the volunteers and militia temporarily under training. On this side, to the south, opens the Long Valley, haunted by shadows of dust, where the Royal Pavilion makes a station for the Sovereign reviewing the troops in that "awful Campus

d as not to force itself on the notice of unspectacled eyes. This is exceptional, for elsewhere in Surrey nature lays her record open, plain to read, leaf after leaf, only h