on, to break his bounds and emerge into the breathing fields of Surry
and Kent. The father of English poetry, and poet of English pilgrims,
Chaucer himself, stands ready to accompany us for at least a small portion
of our route: it was along the road on which we enter, that he conducted,
ages ago, those pilgrims to the shrine of Canterbury who still live in his
verses; and we may glance at the Tabard Inn whence they set forth, and
indulge our fancy with the thought of their quaint equipments, while we
betake ourselves to the modern 'hostelrie' of the Elephant and Castle, and
commit our persons to the modern comforts of an English coach. Alas! for
the fickleness of a world which changes its idols almost as often and as
easily as its fashions. Time was when we should have found this great
highway strewn with devotees hurrying to the shrine of St. Thomas a
Becket. But now, though we might detect, no doubt, in the throng around
us, the counterpart of each individual whom Chaucer committed to his
living canvass; of the knight who 'loved chevalrie' and the Frankelein
'who loved wine;' of the young squire 'with his locks in presse,' and the
fair lady who

----'of her smiling was ful simple and coy,
Her gretest oathe n'as but by Seint Eloy;'

all as intent as of old upon objects not less fleeting, and changed in
little but the fashion of their attire; now there is none so poor as to do
reverence to the martyr-prelate for the sake of those merits which were
once thought a sufficient covering for the sins of countless followers.

As the great eastern artery of London, the road which we have thus far
followed begins to distribute its living mass into the successive
provincial avenues which diverge from it, we find ourselves included in
that portion of the throng, whom the pursuit of health or pleasure
conducts toward Tonbridge.[1] The high and level country which under the
name of 'Downs'[2] forms the northern and western boundary of Kent, sinks
by a sudden and steep declivity on its eastern edge; which edge the
geologists tell us was once washed by a primeval ocean, and is still
seamed by the ineffaceable traces of its currents and storms. For
ourselves it forms a vantage-ground from which we seem to look at one
glance over almost the whole of that fair province which stretches nearly
to the continent, and lifts the white cliffs of Albion above the surges of
the British channel. We think of the day when the standard bearer o