drowsy villages and picturesque roadside inns, the busy windmills and droning water-wheels, the grey old bridges and rustic cottage homes, are seen by few, though so charming to the eye of the town dweller. A gallery of Nature's pictures, free to all, and yet hardly seen by any; gems of home-like scenery, abounding in tranquil loveliness, and scarcely a soul to behold them. We had a kind of a feeling that it was selfish of us to have all these good things and enjoyment to ourselves. When will Englishmen learn what Linnæus calls the art of travelling in one's own land'? An English county is a little world in itself, well worth exploring if we did but know it no Briton should travel abroad before he has seen at least his native shire, and to do this he must take to the highways and byways, on foot or driving, as may best please or suit him.

Road Travelling-An Old-time Hostel-Great Chart-Curious Ancient Brasses-An Old Beau-Our Ancestors and their Wives-Ashford-The Picturesque Past versus the Prosaic Present-The Railway a thing of Beauty!-English Scenery: its Special Charms-The Cheap Tripper-A Road Monster-Willesborough-An English Farmstead Farming Occupations The Love of Nature a Recent Growth Cottage Homes - A Lonely Inn-A Discovery-Westenhanger Ready-made Histories-Sic transit gloria mundi.

A MAN must be hard to please indeed who, having fine weather and a lovely country like the heart of Kent to drive through, and having the opportunity and inclination to do so, could not be supremely happy and content with his lot; and so we felt that day. Surely, we thought to ourselves -as we had often thought during the course of our journey surely it is impossible to imagine a more delightful method of travel than a driving tour: the pace is so pleasant, not too fast to miss anything of interest en route, nor yet too slow to be tedious; then a day's drive is full of pleasant surprises, varying incidents, and ever-changing scenes; above all, there is the simple enjoyment of driving for driving's

sake. Then one is master of one's own conveyance : he who drives by road can stop where he will and for as long as he pleases. Then the agreeable motion, the easy swing of a well-built carriage, is restful rather than fatiguing.

A phaeton is par excellence the carriage for road work the seat is sufficiently high to afford an uninterrupted view all round, there is nothing in front of you to obstruct your prospect, and, the driver and his companion being placed well forward, there is a minimum of movement; indeed, the seat is as comfortable as that of an armchair-more so than many. Even the much-envied front place of a four-in-hand is in no way superior; it is slightly more elevated, truly, but what you gain in one way you lose in others. In a In a phaeton, whilst you are sufficiently raised to see over the hedges, you do not even miss a single wayside wild flower and you can easily converse with a passing native or chance wayfarer without dismounting; and, besides, there are many who can afford the more humble conveyance who could never reasonably hope to be master of a coach --that must be left for the wealthy few. And one great charm about a driving tour is to be master of your conveyance, and with a sympathetic companion this is assured: two may be of one mind, but with a coaching party things may easily be on another footing; and, still again, a single or a pair of horses and a couple of travellers may be accommodated where the more luxurious four-in-hand and its increased number of travellers could not. As it was, we had often during our outing to plan and contrive

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to get our horses quarters-more than once have we had to call a cowshed into requisition. Sometimes, indeed, we had to rough it as well as our animals; but we enjoyed the little roughing (if it was worthy of the name) we had-it is the salt that adds zest to such an excursion.

How often we pulled up that day to admire a view, explore a footpath, inspect an old house, visit a wayside church, or, it might be, to sketch some weather-worn bridge or roadside cottage, or to do whatever else took our fancy; again we halted by a stretch of inviting sward, and under the grateful shelter of overhanging trees indulged in a little picnic, so we were by no means confined to the phaeton the whole day long.

The special charm of this kind of touring is the real freedom it affords a do-just-as-you-like sort of feeling; and, as I have before remarked, so little now are our rural roads traversed or frequented that there were few to observe our doings, even had we minded being observed. We might almost have been driving through a vast private park, so unmolested were we. In truth, this portion of Kent, with its undulating meadows of smooth greenery dotted with wide-branching elms, is one grand natural park, made beautiful by the careful husbandry of centuries. Go the wide world over, out of Britain, you cannot find the like. It is essentially an English landscape, seen under the most favourable conditions, for the skies of Kent are clear and pure, and the sun shines upon it through an unpolluted atmosphere.

Passing in a hollow a rambling farmstead, sur

mounted by a quaint bell-turret-an ancient edifice that had probably been a manor house in its earlier and better days, its time-dimmed walls contrasting strangely with a windmill opposite that had been recently coated a glaring white-we came to the little hamlet of High Halden. Here we discovered a bit of pleasing old-time architecture, in the shape of a roadside inn, the happy work of builders long ago dead and forgotten. A humble unpretentious hostel it was, yet, for all, a veritable picture in brick and mortar, with a mighty gable roof, high pitched, extending the whole length of the structure, as high in itself as the walls thereof. There is always something, to me, very charming in these grand old roofs. They are mightily built, for there is an art in constructing these as well as the mere raising up of walls; and one cannot but admire the men who would build a remote country inn with such care and consideration.

We unpacked our camera in order to take a photograph of this uncommon bit of wayside architecture, and, as usually is the case under similar circumstances, some people whom we presumed belonged to the inn would come out and pose them selves right in front of the place, so that they might be included in the photograph. Of course they looked exactly as if they were standing to be taken, and utterly ruined the picture. However, we secured the old building, though with the unwelcome addition of two figures standing stiffly and seemingly ill at case, looking straight forward, staring vacantly at nothing. I can never understand the intense desire