arrow pavement;
beyond a huddled roof or two rises the tower of St. Nicholas' Church,
umber and solid; nearly all else is tumbled down ugliness, broken
brickwork, mud and shaggy grass. A clear space, a level green, a bed of
flowers--what an introduction that might be to Guildford. But,
doubtless, the rubbish heap is, or some day will be, too valuable as
building land.

Beyond the turn of the road is the most delightful street in the south
of England. It rises from the bridge crossing the Wey steep into blue
air over the hill. Each side of it is a stairway of roofs up the slope,
a medley of facades, a jumble of architecture astonishing in sheer
extravagance and variety. Gabled houses, red-tiled and gay with
rough-cast and fresh paint; dull, sad-faced houses with sleepy windows
like half-shut eyes; square, solid Georgian houses for doctors with
white chokers and snuff-boxes, and prim old ladies with mittened wrists;
low, little dolls'-houses, red brick neatly pointed; tall, slim houses
graceful with slender casements and light shafts of wood; casements
nobly elaborate in wood-carving and heavy with leaded panes; bay windows
which should belong to nurseries and high, square-latticed windows which
should light a library, delicately fastened with wrought iron; painted
pillars supporting window seats for cats and demure young ladies;
broad-stepped entrances to hotel halls, and archways under which barrels
roll to bursting cellars; Guildford High Street is a model of what the
High Street of an English town should be. Has it a single dominating
feature, or is its air of distinction merely compact of the grace and
old-worldliness of its shops and houses? Perhaps the single extreme
impression left by the High Street is its clock, swung far out over the
road. Massive, black and gilt, and fastened to the face of the old Town
Hall with an ingenious structure of steel stays, it has told Guildford
the time for two centuries and a quarter.

Guildford High Street has its landmarks of history in its Hospital, its
School, and its Town Hall, but its oldest standing record is in one of
its churches. The tower of St. Mary's church, indeed, contains the most
ancient piece of building in the town, perhaps in the county.
Archaeologists are to be found who will argue that part of it, at least,
belongs to the reign of Alfred, though there is little evidence to show
that stone was used for building in Surrey before the eleventh century.
Alfred,