side, the banks of the Medway, covered with
corn-fields and pastures, with here and there a
windmill, or a distant church, stretched away as
far as the eye could see, presenting a rich and
varied landscape, rendered more beautiful by the
changing shadows which passed swiftly across it,
as the thin and half-formed clouds skimmed away in
the light of the morning sun. The river,
reflecting the clear blue of the sky, glistened
and sparkled as it flowed noiselessly on; and the
oars of the fishermen dipped into the water with a
clear and liquid sound, as their heavy but
picturesque boats glided slowly down the stream."

It was over the same old bridge that poor Pip was pursued by that
"unlimited miscreant" Trabb's boy in the days of his "great
expectations." He says:--

"Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and
injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when,
passing abreast of me, he pulled up his
shirt-collar, twined his side hair, stuck an arm
akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling
his elbows and body, and drawling to his
attendants: 'Don't know yah; don't know yah, 'pon
my soul, don't know yah!' The disgrace [continues
Pip] attendant on his immediately afterwards
taking to crowing and pursuing me across the
bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected
fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith,
culminated the disgrace with which I left the
town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the
open country."

There is generally a stiff breeze blowing on the bridge, and the fact
may probably have suggested to the artist the positions of the
characters in the river scene, one of the plates of _Edwin Drood_, where
Mr. Crisparkle is holding his hat on with much tenacity. One other
reference to the bridge occurs in the _Seven Poor Travellers_, where
Richard Doubledick, in the year 1799, "limped over the bridge here with
half a shoe to his dusty foot on his way to Chatham."

After a Pickwickian breakfast in the coffee-room of "broiled ham, eggs,
tea, coffee, and sundries," we take a stroll up the High Street. We do
not know what the feelings of other pilgrims in "Dickens-Land" may have
been on the occasion of a first visit, but we a