s pansies.

That would be the Surrey side I should choose, with the magic of the
tide water about it and somewhere, however faint, the scent of the
Surrey gardens. But the old, the oldest Surrey side? That belongs to the
river-shore south of London Bridge, where once, too, Londoners could
cross from crowded wood and brick to walk among Surrey hawthorn and
Surrey daisies. The roar and the soot of the Borough have set that strip
of country deep in London, hardly divided by the water. But it was
there, when Chaucer's nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay at the Tabard inn,
that Surrey began for Londoners and for all who had come to the 'dere
and sweete citye' of which Chaucer sings to journey south from the
Thames on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Tabard inn is no more; the
fire that swept over Southwark ten years after the fire of London
destroyed the building Chaucer knew. The piety of a later day raised
another Tabard, perhaps like the old Tabard with the same galleries and
balustrades to look down from upon pilgrims and minstrels and monks and
fools. But that Tabard inn became the Talbot in a careless age, and as
the Talbot it was razed to the ground forty years ago, when nobody
minded what became of the old inns and churches and the things best
worth keeping in old Surrey. The Tabard has gone, but the ancient road
remains. Smoke and stone are about it, where once it stretched out bare
among green fields; but the fields are there, for those who can see
them, behind the veil of smoke, and through them a wayfarer may still
travel with the Knight who loved freedom and courtesy, the Monk shaking
his belled bridle, the Ploughman on his mare, and the dainty fingered
Prioress with her eyes as grey as glass, riding to join other pilgrims
travelling east to Canterbury by the old road.

INDEX

A

Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 72, 74-6, 80, 317, 360

Abbot, Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, 80

Abbot's Hospital, 65, 72-4, 83

Abbot, Sir Maurice, 80

A Becket, 2, 3

Abinger, 101, 165, 320-2

Abinger Hatch, 320-2

_Adam Bede_, 214

Addington, 357, 368, 378

Addison, 138

Addlestone, 180, 206, 208

Ady, Mrs. Henry, 58

_Airly Beacon_, 150

Akehurst, Alexander, 285

Alastor, 202

Albany, Duchess of, 275

Albury, 10, 59, 69, 87, 91, 100-2, 105-7
Park, 10, 106-7, 321, 330

Aldersey, John, 419

Aldershot, 14, 16,