th resort, but the waters no longer
constitute a part of the hygienic routine. Their companion element, air,
is the new recuperative. Not that the spring at the foot of the Pantiles
is wholly deserted: on the contrary, the presiding old lady does quite a
business in filling and cleaning the little glasses; but those visitors
that descend her steps are impelled rather by curiosity than ritual, and
many never try again. Nor is the trade in Tunbridge ware, inlaid work in
coloured woods, what it was. A hundred years ago there was hardly a girl
of any pretensions to good form but kept her pins in a Tunbridge box.

The Pantiles are still the resort of the idle, but of the anonymous
rather than famous variety. Our men of mark and great Chams of
Literature, who once flourished here in the season, go elsewhere for
their recreation and renovation--abroad for choice. Tunbridge Wells now
draws them no more than Bath. But in the eighteenth century a large
print was popular containing the portraits of all the illustrious
intellectuals as they lounged on the Pantiles, with Dr. Johnson and Mr.
Samuel Richardson among the chief lions.

[Sidenote: THE DUVIDNEY LADIES]

The residential districts of Tunbridge Wells--its Mounts, Pleasant, Zion
and Ephraim, with their discreet and prosperous villas--suggest to me
only Mr. Meredith's irreproachable Duvidney ladies. In one of these
well-ordered houses must they have lived and sighed over Victor's
tangled life--surrounded by laurels and laburnum; the lawn either cut
yesterday or to be cut to-day; the semicircular drive a miracle of
gravel unalloyed; a pan of water for Tasso beside the dazzling step.
Receding a hundred years, the same author peoples Tunbridge Wells again,
for it was here, in its heyday, that Chloe suffered.

[Sidenote: ROCKS]

On Rusthall Common is the famous Toad Rock, which is to Tunbridge Wells
what Thorwaldsen's lion is to Lucerne, and the Leaning Tower to Pisa.
Lucerne's lion emerged from the stone under the sculptor's mallet and
chisel, but the Rusthall monster was evolved by natural processes, and
it is a toad only by courtesy. An inland rock is, however, to most
English people so rare an object that Rusthall has almost as many
pilgrims as Stonehenge. The Toad is free; the High Rocks, however, which
are a mile distant, cannot be inspected by the curious for less than
sixpence. One must pass through a turnstile before these wonders are
accessible. Rocks in themselves