en he was a snappish, starved vagrant; and made a
brave and affectionate dog of: which was the kind of thing she did
for every living creature that came in her way, all her life long."

The Old King's Head and the fashionablest house in Market Street have
gone. So has much else that Ruskin would have recognised. To guess at
what his Croydon was like you may open Steinman's _History_ at a little
engraving of Whitgift's Hospital, from a drawing made at the
cross-roads. The Hospital stands as it is to-day. Opposite it, a square,
two-storied inn stretches over the road a fine carved bracket with a
bunch of grapes in iron, proclaiming that here are post horses to be had
from Nich: Jayne. A tall-hatted rustic pensively wheels a barrow in the
middle of the road opposite the inn; a group of villagers in stout
boots, smocks and stockings stands at the street corner; and, precisely
on the spot where to-day's tram-lines swing north and west, a
lazy-looking person in a straw hat, perhaps a sailor ashore, leans
against a post within a yard or two of an imposing parish pump.

Croydon tradition claims John Gilpin. He is said to have lived in a
farmhouse, which Croydon pulled down in 1897. It was known as Collier's
Water Farm, and stood near what is now Thornton Heath Railway Station.
Undoubtedly a John Gilpin lived there; but the author of the local
guide-book who asserts that he was Cowper's original refers all
inquirers to Dr. Brewer for corroboration; and that admirable sage
informs me that Gilpin was Mr. Beyer, an eminent linendraper of
Paternoster Row.

CHAPTER XXXV

BEDDINGTON AND CARSHALTON

Beddington Hall.--Careful Dissipation.--The Polite Verger.--A
punning epitaph.--Actaeon and Artemis for sale.--Carshalton
pools.--A dry well.--William Quelche's Apology.--The rudeness of a
doctor.--Carshalton's greatest man.--Fighting and spelling.

According to the historians, the springs of the Wandle rose under the
walls of Croydon Palace. Croydon has seemingly decided that they shall
rise further off, and the Wandle suddenly appears, full flowing, perhaps
a quarter of a mile away. You can walk along its bank and watch young
Croydon transfer minnows from muddy water to jampots. A mile from the
town stands Beddington Hall, now an orphan asylum which sends
red-cloaked children out for walks into Croydon, but once the country
mansion of the great family of Carew. Nicholas Carew built a house at
Bedding