ns, and brought to
Guildford, where Mr. John Martyr kept it at Number 25, safe in its
original lead case. A hundred years later the heart disappeared. No one
knows how it vanished, or where it lies.

One building has altered very little. That is the old town hall, whose
clock swings out over the road, and has been sketched more often,
perhaps, than any clock in Surrey. The original town hall belongs to the
time of Elizabeth, and was probably built into the present structure,
which dates from 1683. It is in some ways the chief feature of the High
Street, with its heavy balcony, supported by monstrous black oak
brackets, and its cupola and bell-turret. The clock has a separate
history. In the year when the town hall was built, one John Aylward, a
clockmaker, came to Guildford and asked leave to set up in business. He
was a "foreigner," that is, he came from another part of England, and
the Gild-merchant refused permission. Undaunted, he retired and set up
his shop outside the borough, made a great clock, presented it to the
governing body, and so obtained the freedom of the town.

CHAPTER VII

GUILDFORD'S ENVIRONS

The prettiest town Cobbett ever saw.--Semaphores and the THING.--The
Road on the Ridge.--Newlands Corner.--The Father of the
Forest.--Pilgrims to St. Martha's.--A quiet churchyard.--Mr.
Allnutt's poem.--St. Catherine's and the
Hammer.--Worplesdon.--Sutton Place.--The Weston Rebus.--Lady Susan,
the Tame Wild Sow.--The earliest mention of Cricket.

Cobbett's is the most attractive description of Guildford and its
environs. "The town of Guildford," he writes in _Rural Rides_, "taken
with its environs I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the
prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most
happy-looking that I ever saw in my life. Here are hill and dale in
endless variety. Here are the chalk and the sand, vieing with each other
in making beautiful scenes. Here is a navigable river and fine meadows.
Here are woods and downs. Here is something of everything but _fat
marshes_ and their skeleton-making _agues_. The vale all the way down to
Chilworth from Reigate is very delightful." He has as many praises for
the neighbourhood on the other side. "Everybody that has been from
Godalming to Guildford knows that there is hardly another such a pretty
four miles in all England. The road is good; the soil is good; the
houses are neat; the people are neat; the hills,