ascends, from a flower-garden to a wild and tangled 'pleasaunce.' The park has now within its limits the terrace, with its fine beech avenue, which was formerly a part of Chart Park, and which commands extensive views over the weald. A noble avenue of chestnuts and limes, upwards of a thousand feet long, stretches away into the sylvan scenery of Betchworth, which has also become absorbed in the Deepdene. The plane trees, Scotch pines, and cedars surrounding the house are magnificent specimens of their kind, and a tulip-tree on the lawn, ten feet round, is a picture in itself.

The mansion contains a fine gallery of sculpture, to which Canova, Flaxman, and Thorwaldsen have all contributed; and there is a good collection of paintings, collected by the father of the present owner. A few chef d'œuvres of the ancient masters are also to be seen in Lord Monson's house at Gatton, the hall of which is a copy from the Corsini chapel at Rome.

The haunts of several notorieties of the Great Rebellion centre around St. Anne's Hill. It was to a house which is still pointed out in the little town of Chertsey that Cowley retired to spend the last two years of his life. His study looked upon St. Anne's Hill, and, until lately, there was a porch towards the street, above which was a tablet, with an inscription penned by his own hand. His friend and contemporary, Sir John Denham, after having lived the roystering life of a true Cavalier, and gambled away his fine estate in Surrey, survived the Restoration, only to be tormented by his faithless spouse, and to write Cowley's elegy. George Wither, Denham's successor in command at Farnham Castle, fell into disgrace, and was fined 5007. for a libel on his brother in arms, Sir Richard Onslow. Bradshawe, the regicide, had a house at Walton, and near there also lived Lilly, the astrologer.'

Streatham Park, the residence of the Thrales, and the scene of so many of the incidents daguerreotyped by Boswell, no longer contains the Johnson Gallery,' but the house is the same which so often received the great moralist. Boswell's own editor, Wilson Croker, sleeps in the churchyard adjoining Moulsey Grove, which was so long his residence. Of other literary celebrities, Horne Tooke wrote his "Enε птÉÇоeνтα, or Diversions of Purley,' at the little village of that name, though he died and is buried at Wimbledon. Thomson, the author of the Seasons,' if not born in Surrey, lived and died at Richmond in a house in Kew Foot Lane, now the residence of Lady Shaftesbury, and many of his most pleasing passages recall the unrivalled scenery of the Frascati of England.' Here, too, was the retreat of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at a villa built for him by his friend Sir William

Chambers. Shelley's Alastor' was written at Bishopsgate on the outskirts of Windsor Forest, and Coningsby' first saw the light amidst the woodland recesses of the Deepdene. Farnham was the native place of William Cobbett, who died at Normandy Farm in its neighbourhood.

Surrey, although it boasts two packs of hounds, could never have been a hunting country.' The extensive tracts of woodland prove fatal to good sport; and the great proprietors have turned their attention more to the preservation of game than to the encouragement of a staunch breed of foxes. The open character of the county, however, occasionally secures a good run, and the Surrey Union' still hold a prominent place in the long list of 'meets' which are duly chronicled in the daily

papers.

The same freedom from enclosures caused the selection of the 'Chobham ridges,' as the scene of the grand military picnic' of 1853, when upwards of eight thousand troops were encamped for six months, on the site of the ancient entrenchments which betokened an earlier military occupation of these upland moors. The success of the experiment gave rise in the following year to the more permanent camp at Aldershot. During the summer twenty thousand troops are now regularly stationed upon the slopes of the steep heights known by the name of Cæsar's Camp.' Originally intended as a temporary encampment alone, it has, by degrees, grown up into a species of military town, permanent barracks having been erected, and a pavilion for Her Majesty's reception at reviews. Its position within thirty miles of London, and close to that network of railways which have Guildford as a common centre, places it in immediate communication with the three practicable routes for an army advancing upon London from the south coast. It thus virtually commands the valleys of the Wey, the Mole, and Reigate; while the completion of the direct line from Godalming to Portsmouth will insure a speedy access to our principal naval station and dockyard.

Midway between Chobham and Aldershot lies the extensive tract of heath, which has been appropriated for the last six years as a cemetery for the metropolis. Each parish has its own division, and starting from a station near Westminster Bridge, a daily funeral train conveys hither the mourners and their melancholy charges. Upwards of two thousand acres have been enclosed, and are being gradually planted and laid out for this purpose.

It is curious enough that a county which has thus been fixed upon as a receptacle for the last relics of the metropolitan popu

lation should have been from time immemorial the scene of those places of amusement which lay claim to the especial patronage of the million.' Lambeth has always teemed with public gardens. The Temple of Flora,' Cuper's Gardens,' 'Lambeth Wells,' The Asparagus Garden,' and 'The Pimlico Path,' have been replaced as resorts for the million in the present day by the Victoria Theatre and the Surrey Zoological Gardens. Vauxhall remained until this year, although it must have been opened so long ago as 1661, being mentioned by Evelyn as 'the New Spring Garden in Lambeth,' under which name it is still licensed. It was then a very pretty plantation,' although, even at that early period of its existence, it had been denounced as 'grown scandalous and intolerable;' it has since been under royal patronage, and principally famous for its balloon ascents. In Southwark was the Bear or Paris Garden, carried on in the reign of Elizabeth under the licence of the chief master and overseer of the Queen's games of bulls and bears and mastive dogs and mastive bitches,' and from whence, in the following reign, emanated a complaint that it was no longer allowable 'to bayte the game on Sondays,' which, it seems, had been permitted in the quene's time, in the afternone after divine service,' and the prohibition of which was, no doubt, regarded as a dangerous token of the Puritan spirit of the times. It was to the profits originally made here by Alleyne, in partnership with Henslowe, his wife's father, that we owe the magnificent foundation of 'The College of God's Gift,' at Dulwich, that last act of his life' which, in Lord Bacon's words, he played so well,' and which was afterwards, by the generosity of Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois, enriched with the collection of pictures which had belonged to Mr. Desenfans. In the same parish formerly stood the 'Globe Playhouse,' where some of Beaumont and Fletcher's earliest plays were acted, and which, when finally closed, left no successor, unless that title can be supposed to attach to Astley's Amphitheatre, first commenced in an open field near Glover's 'Halfpenny Hatch.'

The Surrey side of the water was long the 'Suburra' of London. The 'Liberty of the Clink,' and Suffolk House, afterwards still more notorious as the Mint,' swarmed with lawless ruffians, who claimed the privilege of being exempt from all process, civil or criminal, and maintained their rights with such vigour, that, early in the eighteenth century, the king's writ, even when backed by upwards of twenty stout constables, met with an opposition which would have done credit to Connemara in the days of the late Mr. Martin. The district always abounded also in a certain description of houses which, being then the pro

perty of Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, were sacked with the rest of Southwark by Wat Tyler, but which we should hardly have expected to have been regulated by Act of Parliament, and still less to find, in the reign of Henry II., 'under the direction of the Bishop of Winchester.'

The once-famed Tradescant's Museum, formed about 1650 by a Fleming, who became gardener to Charles I., was in South Lambeth. It was destined to become the nucleus of the Ashmolean Museum, now belonging to the University of Oxford. That learned body owes a heavy debt to the county of Surrey. Evelyn procured for them, in 1667, from Mr. Henry Howard, afterwards Earl of Norfolk, the valuable collection of sculptures and inscriptions, since known as the Arundel Marbles, as he did also the Arundel Library for the Royal Society. They have to thank Doctor Radcliffe, of Carshalton, the eccentric physician of William III. and Queen Anne, for the magnificent library and observatory which still bear his name. Walter de Merton, Lord Chancellor of England, must ever live in the memory of the members of that body, which, ten years after the original foundation of the college, he transferred from Maldon to the banks of the Isis; while Exeter College is indebted to the liberality of a Surrey lady for its valuable estates at Great Bookham.

Kennington Common, until they were put down by the strong arm of the law, was a frequent scene of prize-fights; and the Oval is still one of the best suburban cricket-grounds; but Moulsey Hurst was the favourite resort for members of the Fancy,' and at times attracted an enormous concourse to witness a fight for the championship.' Unfortunately, these were not the only encounters for which Surrey has been remarkable. Wimbledon Common and its vicinity were long the cockpit of aristocratic duellists. Beginning with the battle royal at Barn Elms, in 1668, the cause of which was the profligate Countess of Shrewsbury, who, in the dress of a page, held the horse of her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham, on the outskirts of that field, where her husband received what proved to be his deathwound, and another of the six combatants was killed upon the spot, a long list of hostile meetings' is before us. Lord Chandos and Colonel Henry Compton; Mr. Pitt and William Tierney, the Member for Southwark (on a Sunday afternoon); Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning, selected Putney Heath as the scene of their encounters; the Duke of Wellington, in accordance with more than one precedent, chose Battersea Fields as his champ de bataille' with the late Earl of Winchilsea; while Wimbledon Common was witness, within half a century, to no less than six

remarkable duels:-those of the Duke of York and Colonel Lenox, in 1789; of Sir Francis Burdett and John Paull, in 1807; of Mr. Payne and Mr. Clark (the former of whom was mortally wounded there), in 1810; of Captain Eliot and Mr. Flower Mirfin, who was killed on the spot, in 1838; of Lord Londonderry and Mr. Henry Grattan, in 1839; and, last, but not least,' of that between Lord Cardigan and Captain Tuckett, in the month of September, 1840; with which closed, it may be hoped for ever, this page of the history of Surrey.

The Reform Bill, although it added two members to the county, and constituted a new metropolitan borough, docked Reigate of half its representative privileges, and proved fatal to the three Surrey boroughs of Haslemere, Gatton, and Blechingley. Haslemere must have been a most attractive seat, if its unanimity in opinion on political matters bore any proportion to that which obtained in Aubrey's time upon religious questions, there being no Dissenter of any kind, but all the inhabitants are members of the Established Church of England, on whose service they all attend.' At the Reform Bill it belonged to the Earl of Lonsdale; but for many years previously both this borough and Guildford vied with the county in the goodly list of old Surrey names which swelled the ranks of their representatives. Blechingley belonged to the Claytons, and was long a stronghold of the Whigs. Since the beginning of the present century the names of Leveson Gower, William Lamb, afterwards Premier, Sir William Horne, Ponsonby, Villiers, and, finally, of Henry John Viscount Palmerston, who represented it at the time of its extinction, are among its members.

6

Gatton, which in 1541 could boast a burgess, and only inhabitant,' eventually became the property of Sir Mark Wood, who united in himself the functions of member of Parliament, magistrate, churchwarden, overseer, surveyor of highways, and collector of taxes.' This borough, and Blechingley, had each but eight or ten voters in 1832, and were probably, with the exception of Old Sarum and Castle Rising, the smallest in Schedule A. It was to the preponderating influence of the De Warrennes that the presence of three boroughs within so small a circle as those of Gatton, Reigate, and Blechingley must doubtless be attributed. Kingston at one time sent members to Parliament, but ceased to do so at a very early period. At present, Surrey returns altogether eleven members, two for each division, and for the boroughs of Guildford, Lambeth, and Southwark, and one for Reigate.

The villages of Surrey, each with its own patch of heathery common, sprinkled with old oak trees or junipers, have charac