his matter? What thinke ye to be the cause of these shelves
and flattes that stop up Sandwiche haven?' 'Forsooth syr,' quod he, 'I
am an olde man. I think Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin
Sandes. For I am an old man syr' quod he, 'and I may remember the
building of Tenterden Steeple and I may remember when there was no
steeple at all there. And before that Tenterden Steeple was in
building there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands that
stopped the haven; and therefore I thinke that Tenterden steeple is
the cause of the destroying and decaying of Sandwich haven."

Post hoc, propter hoc and this silly old man has been held up to all
ensuing ages as an absurdly simple old fellow. But what after all if
he should be right in part at least?

Tenterden church, we are told, belonged to the Abbey of St Augustine
in Canterbury, which also owned the Goodwin Sands, part, it is said,
of the immense domain of Earl Godwin. Now it was in their hands that
the money collected throughout Kent for the building and fencing of
the coast against the sea had always been placed. We learn that "when
the sea had been very quiet for many years without any encroachings,"
the abbot commuted that money to the building of a steeple and
endowing of the church in Tenterden, so that the sea walls were
neglected. If this be so, that oldest inhabitant was not such a fool
as he seems to look.

I slept under the shadow of Tenterden steeple and very early in the
morning set out for Appledore, where I crossed the canal and came into
the Marsh. I cannot hope to express my enthusiasm for this strange and
mysterious country so full of the music of running water, with its
winding roads, its immense pastures, its cattle and sheep and flowers,
its far away great hills and at the end, though it has no end, the
sea. It mixes with the sea indeed as the sky does, so that no man far
off can say this is land or this is water.

It is famous as a fifth part of the world different from its fellows.
And indeed, if it resembles anything I know it is not with the wide
moors of Somerset, Sedgemoor, or the valley of the Brue, nor with the
great windy Fenland in the midst of which Ely rises like a shrine or
a sanctuary, I would compare it, but with the Campagna of Rome, whose
tragic mystery it seems to have borrowed, at least in part, whose
beauty it seems to wear, a little provincially, it is true, and whose
majesty it apes, but cannot quite command. It i