to be confirmed by the astronomical observations of Halley, that Deal was the place at which Cæsar landed; but the bare downs which stretch thence inland bear no resemblance to the description of the country through which the Roman commander marched. Leland, in the time of Henry VIII. describes Deal as "half a myle fro the shore of the se, a fisscher village, iii. myles or more above Sandwic, apon a flat shore, and very open to the se, wher is a fosse or great bank artificial betwixt the towne and se, and beginneth above Deale, and renneth a great way up toward S. Margaret's clyfe, yn so much that sum suppose that this is the place where Cæsar landed in aperto litore. Surely the fosse was made to kepe owte ennemyes there, or to defend the rage of the se, or I think rather the castinge up beche or pible." The latter supposition may be the correct one; but it must be remarked that Roman coins and other remains have been found under the sand-banks in the neighbourhood of Deal.

Deal, though still not a large town, is much more important than it was in the time of Leland. Its position, in face of the Downs, has naturally caused it to increase with the increase of our navy. As Leland describes it, the town is situated on a flat coast, backed by the chalk downs which cover the country in barren undulations inwards to the neighbourhood of Canterbury, and they are many of them covered with AngloSaxon barrows. At Walmer the hills approach the coast, which from thence to Dover consists of high cliffs, covered on the face with samphire. The line of the coast makes a bend at the South Foreland, while the road from Deal to Dover runs nearly straight over the barren downs behind. At Dover the chalk hills are loftier, and they run inwards in a high ridge towards Canterbury. Immediately to the west of Dover another ridge commences, and, forming still more elevated cliffs along the coast, turns off a little before we arrive at Folkestone, running inwards almost parallel with the former. The country between these two ridges is formed by chalk hills and downs, more broken than those behind Deal, and much more picturesque, as they are diversified with wood and water. The

angle formed by the cliffs coming from Deal, and the first ridge running inward, is crowned by Dover Castle ; and the town of Dover occupies the hollow between it and the new range of cliffs running towards Folkestone.

The bold position of Dover Custle as a place of strength must strike every visitor, yet under the Romans its importance seems to have consisted more in its lighthouse than in its fortress, of which there are no other traces than earthern entrenchments. The grand port of entry into Britain at this time was Rutupia (Richborough), and it continued so under the Saxons, until, on account of the clogging up of the harbour, the port was transferred to Sandwich. The Saxons had a town at Dover, and they seem to have had a castle also; but this was entirely eclipsed by the Norman fortress of which there are still such imposing remains. These now form but a part of the complicated system of defensive works, above ground and underground, which render the castle of Dover one of the strongest fortresses known. The principal Roman work consists of a very deep circular intrenchment on the highest part of the hill, within which stands the celebrated pharos, or Roman lighthouse. It is a large and lofty tower, octagonal without and, I understand, square within, tapering slightly towards the top. The wall, which is ten feet thick at the bottom, is composed, after the usual manner of Roman masonry, of a casing of flints, with bonding courses of large Roman tiles, and filled up in the interior with smaller materials mixed with mortar; and the whole has become so hard that it seems like one immense piece of flint, a stern memorial of ages which the mind endeavours to trace back through almost impenetrable obscurity. Adjoining to it is a little church, the history of which is more obscure even than that of the pharos. Its bare walls (for it has long been desecrated) are of very early masonry, filled with Roman bricks, with which the arches of the windows are turned in the Roman manner, although a slight examination will show that it is not Roman work. I believe that antiquaries are generally of opinion that this is a Saxon church, and it certainly deserves very careful

study. Unfortunately, for some reason or other, the authorities have caused the building to be shut up, and entrance is obtained with difficulty; and, as the only entrance to the pharos was through the church, neither building can now be readily visited in the inside.

The Roman town of Dubræ seems to have stood in the low amphitheatre between the hills now occupied by its modern representative. In digging near the west end of St. Mary's church, in the last century, the workmen came upon the foundations of a Roman house, and uncovered the hypocaust, which, according to the imperfect notions then held by English antiquaries, was supposed to be the remains of baths. I am told that Roman coins and other articles have been frequently picked up on the beach, which would seem to show that the sea had gained upon the land here. Roman tiles found at Dover, like those found at Lymne, are impressed with the letters CL. BR, which have been explained, and I think correctly, classiarii Britannici, "the soldiers of the British fleet," or, in other words, the Roman mariners. They show that under the Romans both these towns were stations of the fleet.

Dover is in itself an interesting old town; it has some medieval remains that are worthy of examination, and a few good examples of old street architecture. In the neighbourhood are

several picturesque rides; and the lover of medieval architecture may visit the celebrated Norman church of Barfrestone, or the noble cathedral of Canterbury. The coast to the westward of Dover is formed by bold and lofty steeps, the most conspicuous of which is that known as Shakspere's Cliff, which limits the view westwardly from Dover Castle. The line of the railway from Dover to Folkestone threads these advancing cliffs in the most extraordinary manner. At one moment the traveller is immerged in darkness as he passes through the heart of the chalk hill, and in another he as suddenly merges to find himself carried along the foot of the cliff, with the sea expanding to his left. The whole route is a succession of tunnels, until the traveller comes out into opener country about a mile to the eastward of Folkestone. Here, as I have before stated, the chalk ridge turns inland, and it presents a series of conical hills which must have been formed by some primeval movement in the crust of the earth that is not easily understood. The above sketch represents some of the more remarkable of these hills, taken from the east. They are almost all crowned either with ancient tumuli or with intrenchments. The one in front of my sketch is popularly called the Sugar-loaf. It has at the top a large, low barrow, which has probably been flattened by the action

Camp" on the hill I am describing, that I am inclined to believe that this latter also was the site of a Roman pharos, that served as a guide to the sailors approaching the coast. When I lately visited this monument with some friends, we dug out fragments of Roman tile and pottery with the end of a walking stick, within the intrenchments, and there are many inequalities in the ground which seem to indicate the sites of former buildings. The surface of the hill, northward of the intrenchments, is so even that we can hardly help concluding that it had been levelled artificially, and it is bounded eastwardly by a long, low earthen vallum running inland over the hill.

In the fields below, between the hill of Cæsar's Camp and the Sugar-loaf hill, Roman burial-urns have been found, which mark the site of a Roman cemetery, and which show that there was a Roman settlement at or near the modern town of Folkestone. These remains are now in the possession of my friend Mr. S. J. Mackie, of Folkestone, from whom I hope we shall shortly have a work which will make us better acquainted with the geological peculiarities of this coast. Mr.

Mackie has also obtained a considerable quantity of fragments of pottery from the clay behind Folkestone, just beneath the railway viaduct; and, from some fragments of imperfect Roman tiles found among them, I am inclined to think this was the position of the Roman brick-yards which furnished the tiles for building at Lymne and Dover. The Roman station at Folkestone, if there was one, probably stood further out towards the sea, which is known to have made great encroachments here. Among Mr. Mackie's collections are fragments of Saxon arms and pottery, dug up at the top of the Folkestone cliff, which mark the site of a Saxon cemetery, and may perhaps be taken in evidence that the station of the Romans had been occupied at

an early period by the Saxons. It appears, however, subsequently to have been deserted; at least it seems to have been a solitary spot in the time of Ethelbert, the first Christian king of Kent. His son Eadbald, who succeeded him on the throne in 616, was a backslider from the faith, but he was recovered by a pious fraud of the Christian bishops, and among other signs of atonement was the erection of a church at Folkestone dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle. The Christian piety of his daughter Eanswith was so conspicuous that she was afterwards reverenced as a saint. Having resolved to retire from the world, she collected a number of other religious females, and chose Folkestone for the site of a nunnery, because, as it is stated in her life, it was one of the most solitary spots she could find. Perhaps we might add another and a more weighty reason, that, as a deserted Roman settlement, its ruined buildings furnished ready materials for the mason. With a Saxon saint, and that a princess of the royal blood of Kent, we are not surprised that Folkestone soon rose in reputation, and that it became a town of some consequence. We learn from Domesday Book that in the time of William the Conqueror it possessed five churches; yet when the Lives of the English Saints were collected by John of Tynemouth, in the thirteenth century (as we learn from his abbreviator Capgrave), we are told that the encroachments of the sea had swept away Eanswith's nunnery, both church and churchyard.* Perhaps the nunnery was rebuilt a little further from the sea, for in the time of Henry VIII. there were ruins of conventual buildings, which were proved to have been built from ancient materials by the fact that they were partly composed of Roman tiles or bricks. "Hard upon the shore," says Leland, "ys a place cawled the castel yarde, the which on the one side ys

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dyked, and theryn be great ruynes of a solemne old nunnery, yn the walles wherof yn dyvers places apere great and long Briton brikes; and on the right hond of the quier a grave trunce of squared stone." What Leland calls the castle yard is probably the place on the top of the cliff now called the bayle (ballium), behind which there is said to have been an abbey, and stone coffins have been found. The church still stands there. Within the bayle, which has been in a great measure carried away by the breaking off of the cliff, the early Saxon interments were found; one of many proofs that the Christian missionaries established their churches not unfrequently near the places of burial of the unconverted Saxons. Coins and other Roman remains have been found at Folkestone in former times, as well as on the coast towards Hythe, where in the time of Leland a store of Roman coins was dug up by a rabbit.*

The town of Folkestone is rapidly improving since the establishment of the present communication by steamers with Boulogne, and it is becoming a fashionable watering-place. Few bathing-towns on the English coast can shew an establishment of the same extent so well conducted as the Pavillion Hotel under Mr. Breach; and Folkestone is certainly the best position for a visitor who would wish to choose

a central station from which he might wander over this interesting district. A short walk westward will bring him to the quiet village of Sandgate, which also has become a fashionable wateringplace. The sea from this place makes a deep sweep inland, forming an extensive bay, the other extremity of which is at Dengeness. A ridge of green sandstone hills commences at Sandgate, not so high as the more easterly ranges, and more broken. A little beyond Sandgate the military canal begins, which follows for a while the line of the coast, and then crosses the Dymchurch and Romney marshes. We proceed along the bank of this canal to the ancient town of Hythe, built at the foot and on the side of the hill. It was formerly a port town, but the

sea is now a mile from it, and the rough shingly beach renders it unfavourable for sea bathing. The most interesting object in this town is its church, a mixture of late Norman and early-English architecture. Some of the ornamentation of the later is extremely beautiful, but it has undergone that noxious process of indiscriminate restoration under which our ancient architectural monuments have of late years suffered so much. The object shewn more especially to the general visitor is a vault or charnelhouse under the chancel, in which there is a great number of human skulls, now arranged on shelves, with a quantity of bones thrown in a loose heap. A local tradition, not deserving of much credit, states that they are the skulls of the slain in a great battle with the Danes, and topographers have been so far led by this story as to assert that a great number of them have the marks of sword-wounds. This, however, is only partially the case, and they are perhaps the mere remains of a mediæval charnel-house.

A pleasant walk over the hill from Hythe brings us to the extensive ruins of Saltwood Castle, an Edwardian fortress, picturesquely placed on the side of a beautiful little valley which opens down to the sea. The fine gateway tower, almost perfect, and now fitted up as a farm-house, appears by the armorial bearings over the door to have been built by Archbishop Courtenay, who held the see of Canterbury from 1381 to 1396.

Immediately beyond Hythe is a break in the chalk hills, through which the carriage road leads to the station at Westenhanger. Proceeding at first along this road, immediately after passing the turnpike, we turn to the left up a little rural lane, ascending a new range of hills. The ascent is at first rather steep, but the labour of the walk is repaid by the beauties of the road. Bushy hedges on each side are filled with wild flowers, especially with different kinds of creepers, among which white convolvuluses, with flowers almost as large as the palm of the hand,