st in this quaint carving, and it is said
that, whenever he passed it, he took off his hat or gave it a nod, as to
an old acquaintance.

Very different to the soft and genial landscapes about Cobham is the
grey and desolate aspect of another haunt which Dickens loved to
frequent. This was the "meshes" around Cooling. In winter, when it was
possible to make a short cut across the stubble fields, he would visit
Cooling churchyard not less seldom than in summer he would go to sit in
the churchyard of Shorne. First, however, he would have to pass through
the village of Higham, where, too, was his nearest railway station,
though he often preferred to walk over and entrain at Gravesend or
Greenhithe. But the pleasant tinkle of harness bells was a familiar
sound in the night to the Higham villagers, as the carriage was sent
down from Gadshill Place to meet the master or his friends returning
from London by the ten o'clock train. Dickens took a kindly and active
interest in the affairs of the village, and the last cheque which he
ever drew was for his subscription to the Higham Cricket Club.

The flat levels that stretch away from beyond Higham towards the estuary
of the Thames are more akin to the characteristics of Essex than of
Kent. The hop gardens are dwarfed and stunted, and presently hops, corn,
and pasture give place to fields of turnips, which show up like masses
of jade on the chocolate-coloured soil. The bleak churchyard of Cooling,
overgrown with nettles, lies amongst these desolate reaches, which
resound at evening with the shrill, unearthly notes of sea-gulls,
plovers, and herons. Beyond the churchyard are the marshes, "a dark,
flat wilderness", as Dickens has described it in _Great Expectations_,
"intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle
feeding on it"; still farther away is the "low, leaden line" of the
river, and the "distant, savage lair", from which the wind comes
rushing, is the sea. It was in this churchyard that the conception of
the story sprang into life, and there are actually not five but ten
little stone lozenges in one row, with three more at the back of them,
which suggested to Dickens the five little prematurely cut off brothers
of Pip. The grey ruins of Cooling Castle attracted him no less than the
grey and weather-beaten churchyard. Besides some crumbling and broken
walls there is a gate tower, with an inscription on fourteen copper
plates, the writing in black, the gro