y name
Your digging does disdaine, and persons all defame.
Stand up now, stand up now.

Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town,
But the gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

With spades and hoes and plows, stand up now, stand up now,
With spades and hoes and plows, stand up now,
Your freedom to withhold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could, and rights from you to hold.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

Although not one of the highest of Surrey hills, St. George's Hill
provides a series of delightful glimpses of distant scenery through the
trees. Windsor Castle stands up like a battleship on the horizon to the
north-west, twelve miles away: west lie the rolling open spaces of
Chobham Common and Bagshot Heath; south-west Guildford and Godalming
stand over the shining valley of the Wey; Ranmer Church spire marks
Dorking to the south: Leatherhead, Epsom, and the Crystal Palace almost
complete the ring. I have never seen St. Paul's. But the abiding charm
of St. George's Hill is not the view, which is surpassed by a dozen
others. It is the deep quiet of the place; the sound of the wind in the
trees, even on windless days, like the sound of the sea in a shell; the
scented pine-needle carpet, crinkling in the sun; the bracken and
bluebells of May, and the crimsons and purples of June's profuse
rhododendrons.

CHAPTER XVIII

NORTH TO RUNEMEDE

Virginia Water.--Ruined Temples.--Grebes and Pheasants.--Bishop's
Gate.--Shelley's "Alastor."--"Perdita" at Englefield Green.--Mrs.
Oliphant's Neighbours.--Runemede rolled.--Egham's Almshouses.--Sir
John Denham.--Frightful Monuments.--King Charles and the grateful
stag.--The quiet of Thorpe.--The Crouch Oak.--Love Philtres.

[Illustration: _Ruins at Virginia Water._]

There is no better way of roaming through north-west Surrey than to take
the train to Virginia Water station, which is as near as you can get to
the county boundary by the railway, and then to set out almost along the
boundary northwards till the Thames turns the road south again at
Runemede. Virginia Water itself lies more than a mile from the station,
and is not at its best on Saturdays and Sundays. On quieter week days
there is no lovelier