mong the pines; but each
fails compared with Shere. Friday Street shows the reason plain. Without
the water Friday Street would pass unnoticed; it is the water which
decides for Shere. The village groups itself with the little brook
running through the middle: a low bridge crosses the stream, villagers
sit on the bridge, white ducks paddle about the current and stand upside
down among the weeds: beyond the brook are the tiny village green and
the shade of elms; on one side of the village green is the old inn, the
White Horse; and on the other the grey tower and the quiet of the
churchyard. But it is the sparkle and the chatter of the Tillingbourne
which are the first charm of all.

The White Horse is a pattern of an old village inn, with panelled rooms
and dark beams over its ceilings, and a parlour hung with oil paintings,
with the air of the Surrey countryside blowing through them. Your host
is the artist, and fellow artists come to the White Horse to sketch with
him. It is the only inn in Surrey I know which also sells a guide to the
neighbourhood, and a good guide too, so far as directions for finding
walks among the hills and woods can make a guide-book. Mr. Marriott
Watson has written an introduction to it, of which the sum is that all
walks start from the White Horse, and all walkers come back to it.

[Illustration: _Shere Church._]

Shere church is a medley of alterations; perhaps its most interesting
connection is its link with the old Surrey family of Bray. The Brays
have lived at Shere for more than four hundred years. The first Sir
Robert Bray was a knight of Richard I, and one of his descendants, Sir
Reginald, was granted the manor of Shere, in 1497. Sir Reginald was one
of the most distinguished of all the long line; he was a Knight of the
Garter, and the Bray Chapel in St. George's, Windsor, is his work; his
emblem the bray, or seed-crusher, is on the ceiling. But the member of
the family who had most to do with the country was William Bray, the
second of the two classical writers of the county history. William Bray
was born in 1736, and was a scholar whose learning was only equalled by
his astonishing vitality. He began his main work at an age when most
men's work is done. When the Rev. Owen Manning, after years of labour
at the history of Surrey, went blind and had to give up the hope of a
lifetime, William Bray finished the book. He was untiring. The first
volume appeared in 1804, when he was sixty-e