or and the usual threats. "Captain Rock" and
"Captain Swing" signed the letters which were sent to Dorking farmers;
special constables were sworn, the windows of the Red Lion were broken,
and once, on November 22, 1830, a van drawn by four horses took Dorking
prisoners to the county gaol. Cavalry patrolled the town by night; but
that November saw the end of Dorking's nearest knowledge of modern war.

CHAPTER XXX

WOTTON AND LEITH HILL

Denbies.--Tea veniente die.--A Temple of gloom.--Wotton House.--John
Evelyn.--A child of five.--The Crossways.--Dabchicks in the
Tillingbourne.--Friday Street.--A Swiss tarn.--Leith Hill.--The Day
of Days.--Forty-one spires unseen.--Anstiebury Camp.--The Black
Adder of Leith Hill.

North-west of Dorking, and overlooking the wide greenness of the Weald
away to Leith and Holmbury Hills, is Denbies, now the residence of the
Lord Lieutenant of the County, and once the property of Mr. Jonathan
Tyers. Jonathan Tyers was the Kiralfy of a less aspiring age. He was the
founder of Vauxhall Gardens, where, as Boswell puts it, you had a form
of entertainment "peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation;
there being a mixture of curious show--gay exhibition--music, vocal and
instrumental, not too refined for the general ear, for all which only a
shilling is paid; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking
for those who choose to purchase that regale." The founder of Vauxhall
Gardens was also the father of Tom Tyers, the wit who parodied Virgil
over Dr. Johnson's tea-cups--

"Tea veniente die, tea decedente"

--a phrase which has been of incalculable service to tea-drinking
undergraduates. It was Tom Tyers who summed up Dr. Johnson, to the
Doctor's liking: "Tom Tyers described me the best: 'Sir,' said he, 'you
are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.'"

Jonathan Tyers reserved a private gloom for his own garden at Denbies.
He named one of his plantations _Il Penseroso_ and in it built a small
temple which he bespattered with dismal texts. A clock struck every
minute, to remind the visitor of the constant approach of death, and in
an alcove were two life-size paintings of a Christian and an Unbeliever
in their last moments. At the end of a walk stood a pair of pedestals,
one of which carried a "Gentleman's Scull" and the other a "Lady's
Scull" with appropriate verses; upon all of which melancholy properties
Mr. John Timbs in h