y and Weybridge, though not in a direct line, and
was the home for years of two octogenarian authors, each of whom had a
pension from the State, and who between them wrote or edited over five
hundred books--Samuel Carter Hall and his wife Anna Maria Fielding. Both
are buried at Addlestone; so is Fanny Kemble's mother, Mrs. Charles
Kemble, who as Mademoiselle Decamp had delighted French theatres. But
Addlestone's great possession is still living, the huge Crouch Oak which
spreads vast branches over ground where Wycliff is said to have
preached, and Queen Elizabeth to have dined. Once the Crouch Oak stood
to mark the bounds of Windsor Forest; and up to years not long gone by
love-lorn young women gathered its bark to boil down into philtres to
ensnare the hearts of unwilling swains.

[Illustration: _The Crouch Oak, Addlestone._]

At Anningsley Park, two miles away, lived Thomas Day, author of
_Sandford and Merton_; Thomas Day, who took a foundling child of
thirteen and named her Sabrina, and educated her to be his wife--a
position which she, at an age to marry, refused. His fate was perverse
to the end. He taught himself to dance, wooing another lady who spurned
him; and, teaching himself to ride, he was thrown and killed.

CHAPTER XIX

CHOBHAM AND BISLEY

Euclid in Surrey.--Chobham.--Bagshot Rhododendrons.--Vultures of the
Road.--The Golden Farmer.--Catching the Small-pox.--A contented
Family.--The Queen's Bon-graces.--A Gentle Hermit.--Prize
fights.--Bisley.--Donkeytown.--A wilful brook.

Half of north-west Surrey belongs to the soldiers. Chobham Common,
Bagshot Heath, Chobham Ridges, Bisley, Pirbright, York Town, and
Camberley contain among them pretty nearly all the camps, colleges,
training grounds, and rifle-ranges that do not belong to Aldershot over
the Hampshire border. The whole aspect of the country is military; rural
outlandishness has been drilled into rigidity and pattern. The roads run
as straight as if the Romans had driven them--and, indeed, some of them
in the neighbourhood are Roman roads; the face of the hills and heather
commons is scored with roads like figures of Euclid, triangles, oblongs,
radii, rhomboids, every kind of road which enables you to go from one
place to another in the shortest space of time possible; which, for that
matter, is a thing you frequently wish to do. Nobody wants to linger on
a road as straight as a gunshot.

Camberley, perhaps, is as good a ce