harity which should furnish "six poor travelers, not
rogues or proctors," one night's lodging and entertainment gratis and
four pence in the morning to go on their way withal, and that in memory
of his "munificence" the stone has lately been renewed. The inn at
Rochester was poor, and I felt strongly tempted to knock at the door of
Mr. Watts's asylum, under plea of being neither a rogue nor a proctor.
The poor traveler who avails himself of the testamentary four pence may
easily resume his journey as far as Chatham without breaking his
treasure. Is not this the place where little Davy Copperfield slept
under a cannon on his journey from London to Dover, to join his aunt,
Miss Trotwood? The two towns are really but one, which forms an
interminable crooked thoroughfare, crowded, in the dusk, as I measured
it up and down, with specimens of the British soldier from the large
garrison at Chatham; those trim and firmly-pacing red-coats who seem, to
eyes accustomed to the promiscuous continental levies, so picked and
disciplined, polished and pomatumed, such ornamental and yet after all,
such capable warriors.

The cathedral at Rochester is small and plain, hidden away in rather an
awkward corner, without a verdant close to set it off. It is dwarfed and
effaced by the great square Norman keep of the adjacent castle. But
within it is very charming, especially beyond the detestable wall, the
vice of almost all the English cathedrals, which shuts in the choir and
breaks that long vista so properly of the very essence of a great
church. Here, as at Canterbury, you ascend a high range of steps to pass
through the small door in this wall. When I speak slightingly, by the
way, of the outside of Rochester cathedral, I intend my faint praise in
a relative sense. If we were so happy as to possess this inferior
edifice in America, we should go barefoot to see it; but here it stands
in the great shadow of Canterbury, and that makes it humble. I remember,
however, an old priory gateway which leads you to the church, out of the
main street; I remember something in the way of a quiet, weird deanery
or canonry, at the base of the eastern walls; I remember a fluted tower
that took the afternoon light and let the rooks and the swallows come
circling and clamoring around it. Better than these things, however, I
remember the ivy-draped mass of the castle--a most noble and imposing
ruin. The old walled precinct has been converted into a little publ