Surrey, went, of course, with the house. Eighty years before it
fell Johnson had parted from it with a prayer. "Help me," he prayed,
"that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, remember the comforts
and conveniences which I have enjoyed at this place; and that I may
resign them with holy submission, equally trusting in Thy protection
when Thou givest, and when Thou takest away." That was the library which
was destroyed only forty-five years ago. But Streatham, when it knocked
down the Thrales' house, had very good authority for parting with all it
had of Dr. Johnson. Mrs. Thrale would not have minded. She sold all the
letters Dr. Johnson wrote her for a matter of five hundred pounds.

Between Streatham and Wimbledon London strides out in patches. It has
not yet taken in Mitcham, which has a fine green with memories of great
Surrey cricket, and which grows all manner of scented flowers, lavender
and mint and rosemary and everything old-fashioned for herbalists and
perfumers and ladies' sachets and linen-chests. But Merton, north-west
towards Wimbledon, has been caught fast. Merton church, in which Nelson
used to worship, and which has his hatchment on the wall, above fine
cross beams of oak, stands among brand-new roofs and roads. Opposite the
church is the forlornest thing; a house which once was Sheridan's, and
which is now the warehouse of a shop, and hangs in its hall and rooms
printed calico. The windows are broken and cobwebby, the garden is a
ruin, but the calico, which you may buy at a shop in the town, is fresh
and very brightly printed. Francis Nixon, the founder of Merton's
calico-printing, which is quite an industry, lies in the churchyard.

And so, by a ring from east to west, where London joins the Surrey
countryside, we come to Wimbledon; Wimbledon old and new, as old as a
camp which may have been Saxon, as young as yesterday's new villa. The
camp, it is true, exists no longer. It has had more learned essays
written over it than any in Surrey; it has been claimed as belonging to
Cassivelaunus, it has been argued to be a Roman camp, and it has been
urged that it marks the site of a battle between Saxon and Saxon for the
possession of Surrey. It was a war camp, pretty certainly, from its
shape, which was almost exactly circular. But you can see the shape no
longer. Wimbledon was unfortunate enough to see its famous camp fall
into the hands of a Mr. Sawbridge Erle Drax, and he, in 1875, dared to
level