d by Inigo Jones. It has a splendid collection of Old
Masters, and a music room which the Prince Regent pronounced to be the
finest room in England. In the terrace flower garden at the back of the
Hall, it may be mentioned again here, is the Swiss chalet from Gadshill
Place, which served Dickens for a study in the summer months. The
circuit of Cobham Park is about seven miles, and it is crossed by the
"Long Avenue", leading to Rochester, and the "Grand Avenue", which,
sloping down from the tenantless Mausoleum, opens into Cobham village.
The inn to which Mr. Tupman retired, in disgust with life, still
retains the title of the "Leather Bottle", but has mounted for its sign
a coloured portrait of Mr. Pickwick addressing the Club in
characteristic attitude. It was in Cobham village that Mr. Pickwick made
his notable discovery of the stone with the mysterious inscription--an
inscription which the envious Blotton maintained was nothing more than
BIL STUMPS HIS MARK. Local tradition suggests that Dickens intended the
episode for a skit upon archaeological theories about the dolmens known
as Kit's Coty House, and that a Strood antiquary keenly resented the
satire. However that may be, Kit's Coty House is not at Cobham, but some
miles away, near Aylesford. In Cobham church there is perhaps the finest
and most complete series of monumental brasses in this country, most of
them commemorating the Lords of Cobham.

[Illustration: COBHAM PARK]

Out of the Cobham woods it is not a long walk to the little village of
Shorne, where Dickens was fond of sitting on a hot summer afternoon in
its pretty, shaded churchyard. This is believed to be the spot which he
has described in _Pickwick_ as "one of the most peaceful and secluded
churchyards in Kent, where wild flowers mingle with the grass, and the
soft landscape around forms the fairest spot in the garden of England".
A picturesque lane leads into the road from Rochester to Gravesend, on
the outskirts of the village of Chalk. Here, in a corner house on the
south side of the road, Dickens spent his honeymoon, and many of the
earlier chapters of _Pickwick_ were written. In February of the
following year--1837--Dickens and his wife returned to the same
lodgings, shortly after the birth of his eldest son. Chalk church is
about a mile from the village. There was formerly above the porch the
figure of an old priest in a stooping attitude, holding an upturned jug.
Dickens took a strange intere