V.

FROM LONDON TO DOVER.

CALAIS, FRANCE, August 31, 1891.-It

The rain

is early morning in London. has been falling all night, and in the gray of the dawn it continues to fall not now in showers but intermittently and in a cold drizzle. The sky is dark and sullen, and through the humid, misty air the towers and spires of the majestic city loom shadowlike, fantastic, and strange. Pools of water stand here and there in the streaming, slippery streets, which are almost devoid equally of vehicles and pedestrians. The shop-keepers of Kensington have not yet awakened, and as my cab rolls through the solitary highways I see that only in a few places have the shutters been taken from the windows. Victoria is presently reached, where, at this early hour, only a few people are astir, so that the confusion and clamour of British travel have not yet begun. Soon our train rumbles out of the

station and we feel that all personal respon、 sibility has been dropped and that we have yielded to fate at least till we reach Dover. The skies begin to brighten as we cross the Thames, while, gently ruffled by the morning breeze, the broad expanse of the river shows like a sheet of wrinkled steel. At first we speed among long rows of houses, all built alike- the monotonous suburban dwellings of towns such as Wandsworth and Clapham, with their melancholy little gardens, all dripping with recent rain, in which marigolds are beginning to bloom, and great, heavy sunflowers hang their disconsolate heads. Nothing here seems joyous except the grass, but this has profited by the pertinacious rain and is richer and greener than ever. Presently the gardens and dwellings grow more opulent. The wind rises with the advance of day and soon the dense foliage about the hill and vale of Herne stirs and rustles in the gladness of its careless life. Now begins the gentle pageant of English rural scenery - that blending of soft colour and quaint, delicate object, the like of which is nowhere to be found except in England. Every traveller will remember, and will rejoice to remember, the elements of that delicious picture —

the open, far-reaching stretches of pasture, level, green, and fragrant; the beds of many-coloured flowers, flashing on emerald lawns; the fleecy sheep, the sleek horses, and the comely cattle, grouped or scattered in the fields, some feeding, some ruminant, some in motion, and some asleep; the deep, lush grass and clover; the nurseries of fruittrees; the flying glimpses of gray churchtowers and of shining streams; and over all the frequent flights of solemn rooks and frolicsome starlings that seem at times almost to make a darkness in the air.

Soon the opulent, aristocratic façade of ancient Dulwich College - at once the memorial and the sepulchre of Shakespeare's friend Edward Alleyne - smiles upon us across the meadows and witches us with thoughts of a memorable past. Leaving Dulwich we run through a long tunnel and in a few moments, dashing across the plain of Penge, we perceive the lofty tower and Olympian fabric of the Crystal Palace shining on the hills of Sydenham. This is a fertile, rolling country, much diversified with hill and valley. All around us the banks are scarlet with innumerable standards of the gorgeous poppy and golden with flowers of the colt's foot, and many

red-roofed farm-houses are momentarily visible in the green depths of lofty groves. Our way lies through hop fields now, and the air is delicious with the zestful perfume of their blossoms. We traverse beds of wild fern and of many kinds of underwoods, and in fields that are divided by hedges of lovely hawthorn we see many sheaves of the yellow harvest. Quaint little villages are passed, each group of cottages nestled around its gray old church, like children clustered at a parent's knee. The dooryards are gay with marigolds. There are broad patches of clover in copious, fragrant bloom, and on the distant horizon the green hills, crowned with dark groves, loom gloomily under straggling clouds. wind blows chill, the sky takes on a cold, silvery hue, and innumerable starlings, flying low, look like black dots upon the dome of heaven. Our speed is great, and we leave long trails of thick, smoky vapour that melts through the trees and hedges or seems to sink into the ground. At Sole a lovely rural region is opened and the sky begins to smile. Yonder on the hillside a venerable church-tower shows its grim parapet. In the opposite quarter there are hills, thick wooded or capped with sheaves of the har

The

vest sadly marred, this autumn, by the rough weather of as drear an August as England has known. All the same this scene keeps its picturesque beauty — the peace of deep vales in which boughs wave, streams murmur, and stately rooks are seeking their food; the peace of old red or gray farm-houses veiled with ivy and nestled among flowers. The banks of the Medway are near at hand and across the crystal bosom of that beautiful river rises the black ruin of Rochester castle, flecked with lichen and haunted by hosts of doves, and near it the pinnacled tower of Rochester cathedral, romantic in itself but made more romantic by the art of the great genius who loved it so well. Here Dickens laid the scene of his exquisite story of Edwin Drood, and not far away from this spot stands the old, lonely house of Gadshill in which he died. The little town of Rochester is all astir. The wet, red roofs of its cosy dwellings glisten in the welcome though transient sunshine, and on some of those houses great mantles of green ivy sway gently in the rising wind. The river is full of shipping, small craft and steamboats, — and the gaze of the pilgrim dwells delighted on brown sails, and tapering spars, and gay