habitual walks and drives from his residence at Gadshill. It does not
enter into the scope of this brief essay to describe topographically
other parts of Kent. But it will be excusable to glance very slightly at
Dickens's associations with Canterbury--though this is the subject of a
separate monograph in this series--Broadstairs, Deal, Dover, and the
famous London-to-Dover road through Rochester, Chatham, and Canterbury.

[Illustration: JASPER'S GATEWAY]

No one, perhaps, who has ever read _Little Dorrit_, whatever else in the
novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of
Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the
opening of _A Tale of Two Cities_ the colour and atmosphere of the time
in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given
at once by the alarm of the passengers of the Dover coach as they walk
up Shooter's Hill to ease the horses, when the furious galloping of a
horseman is heard behind them--the supposed highwayman proving to be,
however, Jerry Cruncher, messenger at Tellson's Bank by day, and at
night an "agricooltural character" of ghoulish avocations. David
Copperfield trudged the Dover road, footsore and hungry, when he left
Murdstone and Grinby's blacking warehouse to throw himself on the
compassion of Betsy Trotwood, "and got through twenty-three miles on the
straight road" to Rochester and Chatham on a certain Sunday. Afterwards,
when he had found a home and a protecting providence with his aunt, he
met with his "first fall in life" on the Canterbury coach, being asked
by the coachman to resign the box seat to a seedy gentleman, who
proclaimed that "'Orses and dogs is some men's fancy. They're wittles
and drink to me."

"I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life.
When I booked my place at the coach office, I had had 'Box Seat'
written against the entry, and had given the bookkeeper half a
crown. I was got up in a special greatcoat and shawl, expressly to
do honour to that distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon
it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And
here, in the very first stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man
with a squint, who had no other merit than smelling like a livery
stables, and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a
human being, while the horses were at a canter."

Pip, in _Great Expectations_, make