land before
leaving on the expedition that closed with his greatest victory and
death at Trafalgar.

Upon the hill on the western side of the gap is the Denbies, from which
there is a view all the way to London. At the back of this high hill is
Ranmore Common. The Denbies are the scene of the "Battle of Dorking,"
having been held by the English defensive army in that imaginary and
disastrous conflict wherein German invaders land upon the southern
coasts, destroy the British fleets by torpedoes, triumphantly march to
the base of the chalk-ranges, fight a terrific battle, force their way
through the gaps in the hills, capture London, and dethrone England from
her high place among the great powers of Europe. This was a summer-time
magazine article, written to call English attention to the necessity of
looking after the national defences; and it had a powerful effect.
Westward of Dorking there is fine scenery, amid which is the little
house known as the "Rookery," where Malthus the political economist was
born in 1766. Wotton Church stands alongside the road near by, almost
hid by aged trees--a building of various dates, with a porch and stunted
tower. Here John Evelyn was taught when a child, and the graves of his
family are in a chapel opening from the north aisle. Wotton House, where
Evelyn lived, is in the adjacent valley and at the foot of the famous
Leith Hill. His favorite pastime was climbing up the hill to see over
the dozen counties the view discloses, with the sea far away to the
southward on the Sussex coast. The house is an irregular brick building
of various dates, the earliest parts built in Elizabethan days, and it
contains many interesting relics of Evelyn, whose diary has contributed
so much to English history from the reign of Charles I. to Queen Anne.
He was a great botanist, and has left a prominent and valuable work in
_Sylva_, his treatise on trees. It was to the north-west of Wotton, on
a tract of common known as Evershed Rough, that Bishop Samuel
Wilberforce, while riding with Earl Granville in 1873, was thrown from
the saddle by his stumbling horse, and striking the ground with his head
was almost immediately killed. A cross marks the sad and lonely spot.

EPSOM AND REIGATE.

[Illustration: PIERREPONT, SURREY.]

On the northern verge of the chalk-downs, and about fifteen miles south
of London, is the famous race-course at Epsom, whither much of London
goes for a holiday on the "Derby Day." Ep