t wonder which greets you from Mad Tom's corner upon Boughton
Hill is, rightly understood, the work of St Thomas, and we might say
indeed that the great Angel Steeple was the last of his miracles for
it is the last of the Gothic in England, and it rose above his tomb,
while that tomb was still a shrine and a monument in the hearts of
men. For "the church dedicated to St Thomas erects itself," as Erasmus
says, "with such majesty towards Heaven that even from a distance it
strikes religious awe into the beholders."

So I went on my way in the mid-afternoon down hill to what in my heart
I knew to be Bob-up-and-down on the far side of which lies and climbs
Harbledown and the hospital of St Nicholas.

Wite ye nat wher ther stant a litel town
Which that y-cleped is Bop-up-and-down
Under the Blee in Caunterbury weye?

This "littel town" it might seem, has disappeared, unless indeed it be
Harbledown itself, which certainly bears geographically much
resemblance to that descriptive name, as Erasmus describes it in his
strange book. "Know then," says he, "that those who journey to
London, not long after leaving Canterbury, find themselves in a road
at once very hollow and narrow and besides the banks on either side
are so steep and abrupt that you cannot escape; nor can you possibly
make your journey in any other direction. Upon the left hand of this
road is a hospital of a few old men, one of whom runs out as soon as
they perceive any horseman approaching; he sprinkles his holy water
and presently offers the upper part of a shoe bound with an iron hoof
on which is a piece of glass resembling a precious stone. Those that
kiss it give some small coin.... Gratian rode on my left hand, next to
the hospital, he was covered with water; however he endured that. When
the shoe was stretched out, he asked the man what he wanted. He said
that it was the shoe of St Thomas. On that my friend was angered and
turning to me he said, 'What, do these brutes imagine that we must
kiss every good man's shoe? Why, by the same rule, they would offer
his spittle to be kissed or other bodily excrements.' I pitied the old
man, and by the gift of a small coin I comforted his trouble."

It is easy to see that we are there in the modern world on the very
eve of the Reformation. The unmannerly Gratian was John Colet to be
the Dean of St Paul's, hardly defended from the charge of heresy by
old Archbishop Wareham. And like so ma