ything bad
enough to deserve his terrific monument." As a matter of fact the dead
man designed his own memorial, after the serenely contemplative fashion
of his time. Is the monument, after all so appalling? It cannot but be
interesting, for it is an index to the taste of a bygone age--an age
when the survivors of the dead found relief in Latin superlatives, and
the living looked into the future with the respectable vanity of an
alderman posing before a mirror. No doubt Sir Robert spent many happy
hours over his monument. Did he, or did the sculptor suggest the plump
cherubs which stand on each side, rolling stony tears from upturned
eyes? Did he decide on the particular direction in which he should throw
a leg? was it he who selected the disjointed texts which are carved
below him? or did the sculptor submit samples? It would be an arresting
spectacle; the finality of the whole thing, the weight of the choosing
would oppress even a Lord Mayor. A specimen angel would be shown him:
no, he could not approve an angel. Had the sculptor no other sizes in
cherubs? What texts were being used this season? Stone tears.... The
sculptor probably thought of those.

The church once had a fine spire. Aubrey mentions it particularly, as
measuring "more than forty feet above the battlements, with five great
bells, the tenour weighing 2000 weight, which were melted with the spire
and all the timber-work destroyed 1606." It was computed that in the
spire were 200 loads of timber. In the tower below the timber is still
magnificent and massive, and there is a new peal of bells, cast in 1780.
Bletchingley has one of the longest records of church bell ringing in
the county. On April 11, 1789, its ringers rang a full peal of 5600
changes--"college exercises"--in three hours thirty-six minutes, as you
may read in a record in the belfry. In the record the ages of the
ringers are carefully given. They range between 19 and 30. Bell ringing
is hard work.

Between Bletchingley and Redhill lies Nutfield, which has not yet been
caught into the town. Perhaps its progress into Redhill will be slow,
for it stands inconveniently high for wheeled traffic in and out of that
huddled basin of bricks, and from its own station a mile to the south
the roads up the hill are some of the steepest in east Surrey. Before
Redhill brings it more money and more bricks, it ought to be worth an
enterprising landlord's while to convert its principal inn to its old
metho