and Paul's Cray, and the small town of Crayford. It takes its rise near Orpington, and runs through Bexley, and the villages above mentioned. Several of these places are interesting to the rambler who loves to visit the abodes of the great departed, or the scenes of history. Orpington, at its source, was honoured with a visit from Queen Elizabeth, who made a progress into the then newly-erected mansion of Sir Percival Hart. On her arrival, says the account in Phillipot, she received the caresses of a nymph who personated the genius of the house. Then the scene shifted, and from several chambers which were so contrived as to represent a ship, there was an imitation of a sea-battle, with which the Queen was highly delighted.

Bexley, a beautiful village, is chiefly remarkable for its manor, which once belonged to that dear name in the literature of England, the venerable Camden, "nourrice of antiquitie," who bequeathed it to the University of Oxford for the endowment of a professorship of history.

Crayford is so named from an ancient ford over the river. Considerable estates here once belonged to the gallant Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovel, who has a monument in Westminster Abbey, and also a monument in the church of

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this place. In the churchyard is a gravestone with the following epitaph-a wretched attempt at wit.

"Here lies the body of Peter Isnell, thirty years clerk of this parish. He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the 31st of March 1811, aged seventy. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a token of his long and faithful services.

The life of this clerk was just three score and ten,
Nearly half of which time he chaunted Amen.
In his youth he was married, like other young men,
But his wife one day died, so he chaunted Amen.
A second he married-she died, well? what then?
He married and buried a third with Amen;

Thus his joys and his sorrows were treble; but then
His voice was deep bass as he sung out Amen.
On the horn he could blow as well as most men,
So his horn was exalted in sounding Amen.

Some may laugh at

How miserable this is. the folly of it, but we pity the levity which could inscribe it on so solemn a place. Tombstone literature is at a very low ebb in England, with some rare exceptions. The continental nations, as we have already remarked, are infinitely before us; and such doggrel as the above, would not be permitted in their cemeteries.

The tomb is too solemn a place to be inscribed with any other words than such as are prompted by regret and love.

After their junction, the two rivers of Cray and Darent offer nothing to stay the step of the traveller. Even the angler avoids the muddy waters known as Dartford Creek, and, jogging on further inward amid the rural villages and green fields of Kent, visits them separately, and finds in the proper season to reward him for his pains, abundant store of,

"Swift trouts diversified with crimson stains."

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CHAPTER IX.

Stone Castle.-Greenhithe.-The Men of Kent at Swanscombe.-Gray's Thurrock.-Northfleet and Southfleet.Gravesend.-Falstaff on Gad's Hill.-Elizabeth at Tilbury Fort. The Hundred of Hoo.-Higham Ferry.-Cowling Castle.-Execution of Sir John Oldcastle.-Hadleigh and Leigh. Southend.-The Isle of Grain.-The Ocean.Conclusion of the Thames.

GAIN arrived, after our ramble inwards, at the junction of the Darent with the Thames, we follow the course of the great

river, and see beyond Dartford

Creek, the remains of the venerable Castle of Stone, rising amid the foliage on the Kentish shore. It is generally believed that Stone Castle was built by King Stephen, and for many ages it belonged to the noble family of Northwood, one of whom distinguished himself under Richard I, at the siege of Acre. The square embattled tower is the only remains of its former grandeur. The church

embounded among the trees is also an ancient edifice. There was formerly a chime of musical bells in its tower, and the tradition is, that Queen Elizabeth, as she passed up and down. Long Reach, as this part of the river is called, took great pleasure in hearing them. Ben Jonson in his Epithalamium for the marriage of his friend, alludes to the musical bells of the churches that overlook the Thames,

Hark! how the bells upon the waters play

Their sister tunes from Thames's either side.

This church and its tower were struck by lightning in 1638, and since that time the chimes have not been replaced.

Greenhithe, situated on the bank of the river, has a ferry into Essex for horses and cattle, which formerly belonged to the nunnery at Dartford, but is now an appurtenance to the manor of Swanscombe, immediately behind it. The hamlet, at one time, was chiefly supported by the profits of its immense chalk pits, several of which are considerably below the level of the Thames. Great quantities of the chalk are consumed in the potteries of Staffordshire; the flints also which abound in the pits, are a profitable article of commerce, being collected and shipped for China, where they are used in