than once I
think, we still see. All these things and more than these the great
yew in the churchyard has seen as its shadow grew over the graves.

From Great Chart I went on through the spring sunshine across the
Weald to Bethersden, whose quarries have supplied so much of the grey
marble one finds in Kentish churches, in the monuments and effigies
and in the old manor houses in the carved chimney-pieces fair to see.
These quarries are now all but deserted, but of old they were the most
famous in Kent, which is poor in such things. Most of the stone for
the cathedrals and greater religious houses in the county came from
Caen, whence it was easily transported by water; but this stone not
only weathered badly, but was too friable for monumental effigies or
sculpture. For these harder stone was needed, resembling marble, and
this Bethersden supplied, as we may see, in the Cathedrals of
Canterbury and Rochester and especially at Hythe where the chancel
arcade is entirely built of it.

Something too we may learn at Bethersden of the true nature of the
Weald. I shall have something to say of this later, but here at any
rate the curiously difficult character of this country in regard to
the going may be understood, though of course less easily now than of
old. It is said that before, at the end of the eighteenth century,
the excellent system of roads we still use was built up, the ways
hereabouts were so bad--they are still far from good--that when spring
came it was customary to plough them up in order that they might dry
off. We hear of great ladies going to church in carriages drawn by
teams of oxen. Hardly passable after rain, the roads, says Hasted,
were "so miry that the traveller's horse frequently plunged through
them up to the girths of the saddle; and the waggons sank so deep in
the ruts as to slide along on the nave of the wheels and axle of
them. In some few of the principal roads, as from Tenterden hither,
there was a stone causeway, about three feet wide, for the
accommodation of horse and foot passengers; but there was none further
on till near Bethersden, to the great distress of travellers. When
these roads became tolerably dry in summer, they were ploughed up, and
laid in a half circle to dry, the only amendment they ever had. In
extreme dry weather in summer, they became exceedingly hard, and, by
traffic, so smooth as to seem glazed, like a potter's vessel, though a
single hour's rain rendered them so sl