s to keep up the tradition--even if she were to find it a little
difficult to provide the flowers in bloom in high summer. The village
itself has not grown greatly during the past hundred years. Cobbett
describes it as "a beautiful village, chiefly of one street, with a fine
large green before it, and with a pond in the green." There is not much
else to be seen now; the green is as wide and sunny, the geese and
ponies graze as contentedly, and the pond is as bright under the
chestnut trees and limes. If there has been any very noticeable change,
it has been made, perhaps, nearer the church and away towards the
railway station, which lie pretty far apart. From the main road by the
Clayton Arms there runs a gravel path up to the church, which stands on
higher ground, half a mile from the green, and by the path lies a very
fine pond, broad and deep, edged with willows and bulrushes, where wild
duck swim, and on the far side opening into a shallow bay in which you
may watch plovers bathe through the summer afternoons.

The church has not quite the grace and charm of some of its simpler
neighbours; but it is interesting as containing a number of monuments to
the Evelyns. Church mice are proverbial; but Godstone has a church
robin, or had one when I was there in the autumn of 1907. Bread had been
placed conveniently for him in one of the windows, and he flew about
watching me quietly, and eventually sang a loud solo from beside the
organ--_cantoris_, I think. Outside the church are some of Godstone's
newer buildings, the almshouses erected by Mrs. Hunt of Wonham House in
memory of her daughter; like the additions to the church, they are the
work of Sir Gilbert Scott. Nothing could be more admirable than the
repose and solidity of these delightful houses, with their massive oak
beams and sturdy red chimneys. Sir Gilbert himself lived for a time at
Rokesnest, between Tandridge and Godstone.

A mile and a half to the west of Godstone lies Bletchingley, high on the
ridge that runs parallel to the downs, above Merstham, to the north.
When Mr. Jennings walked into Bletchingley, in his _Field Paths and
Green Lanes_, the population seemed to him "at first sight to be made up
of butchers and beagles." That was more than thirty years ago, but
Bletchingley still keeps up its reputation, in regard to the beagles;
indeed, it has added to its just fame, for the odds are that, in the
summer months at all events, the first animal to catch yo