ents, once or
twice during the day; on a sunny morning before breakfast, perhaps, or
when, perhaps in the rain, the endless traffic of wheels quiets for an
hour. For Farnham stands on the high road from London, and the motor
cars chase the eighteenth century into the side-streets.

[Illustration: _Looking towards Farnham from Thursley Common._]

Farnham is mostly of one period, and searchers for very old architecture
will be disappointed. One of the oldest buildings in the town is a tiny
set of almshouses, whose lowly gables line the road under the castle
hill. They were built by Andrew Windsor, of the parish of Bentley in
Hampshire, in 1619, and were intended, as an inscription on the wall
informs you, "For the Habitation and Relief of eight poor Honest
Impotent Old Persons." Even with four epithets, the almoners seem to
find life supportable.

The greatest and the oldest building is, of course, the castle. It
stands nobly on a hill, towards which the street rises like a carriage
drive, ending in a flight of steps. Once it must have dominated the town
as a fortress, but since Cromwell broke down the keep, Farnham has
looked up at a quieter and more episcopal pile--a fine gateway tower,
built by Bishop Fox early in the sixteenth century. Much of the castle
stands as he rebuilt it after various misfortunes in baronial and other
wars, but the front as it looks down on Farnham is less severe. Two
imposing cedar trees, out of a group of several, break the line of Fox's
massive red brick. Local legend has aged them considerably, for two
hundred years is suggested as a modest estimate of their antiquity. As a
fact, they cannot be much more than one hundred years old. They were
planted by Mrs. North, wife of Bishop North, who held the See from 1781
to 1820, and in an engraving of the castle published in 1792 there is
not a sign of them. The cedar is a very fast-growing tree--one of the
reasons why it is so brittle. The Farnham cedars are as brittle as any
others. I was told that when the present Bishop went abroad early in the
year 1908, he was hesitating over cutting off some of the larger
branches which shaded the castle wall and would not let it dry. The
April snow settled the question for him, and broke the branches he had
thought of lopping.

Farnham Castle has entertained many Kings, from Edward I to Queen
Victoria. One of its earliest bishops was a king's brother, the great
Henry of Blois. Elizabeth was often at the