and 'The Fountain,' wherein I am
now lodged as handsomely as I were in the king's palace, the best in
Canterbury." Times have changed since the days of Edward I.!

Canterbury is a very dangerous town to drive through. Its streets are
narrow and badly paved, and there are unexpected turnings which bring
up a lump in one's throat when he is driving at his most careful gait
and is suddenly confronted with a governess's cart full of children,
a perambulator, and a bath-chair, all in the middle of the road,
where, surely, the two latter have no right to be.

The grand old shrine of Thomas a Becket, the choir built by
Lanfranc's monks, and the general _ensemble_ of the cathedral close
are worth all the risk one goes through to get to them. The cathedral
impresses one as the most thoroughly French of all the Gothic
churches of Britain, and because of this its rank is high among the
ecclesiastical architectural treasures of the world. Its history is
known to all who know that of England, of the church, and of
architecture, and the edifice tells the story well.

The distant view from the road, as one approaches the city, is one
that can only be described as grand. The fabric of the great
cathedral, the rooftops of the houses, the sloping hills rising from
the water's edge, and again falling lightly down to the town, form a
grandly imposing view, the equal of which one seldom sees on the main
travelled roads of England.

Between Canterbury and Winchester ran one of the oldest roads in
England, the "Pilgrim's Way." Many parts of it still exist, and it is
believed by many to be the oldest monument of human work in these
islands. About two-thirds of the length of the road is known with
certainty, and to some extent the old itinerary forms the modern
highway. Its earliest route seems to have been from Stonehenge to
Canterbury, but later the part from Stonehenge to Alton was abandoned
in favour of that from Winchester to Alton. Guildford and Dorking
were places that it touched, though it was impossible to say with
certainty where it crossed the Medway.

Margate, Ramsgate, and the Isle of Thanet lay to the left of us, but
we struck boldly across the downs to Dover's Bay, under the shadow of
the Shakespeare Cliff, made famous in the scenic accessories of _The
Tempest_.

Dover, seventy-two miles by road from London, has a good hotel,
almost reaching the Continental standard, though it is not an
automobile hotel and you must house