arranged for the reception of the second James, who
forfeited, it seems, a luxurious lodging at Knole at the same
time that he forfeited his crown. The name of Lady Betty
Germaine, Swift's friend and correspondent, connects the place
with all the celebrities of the reign of Queen Anne. On
emerging from the building we view the magnificent groves of
the park, fit haunt for nightingales, though Becket is said to
have driven them by an anathema from the neighborhood, because
their songs interrupted his nocturnal meditations. But the
memory of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, (once proprietor
of Knole,) the best poet of his time, and 'the immediate
father-in-verse of Spenser,' sufficiently redresses the stigma
of so churlish a proscription, and the nightingales may well
claim perpetual franchise under sanction of a name to which
the ancient inscription would apply:

[Greek: Li de teai zoousin aedones, hesin o panton
harpakter Aides ouk epi cheira balei.]

Yet live thy nightingales of song: on those
Forgetfulness her hand shall ne'er impose.

[2] DUNUM or Duna, sigifieth a hill or higher ground, whence
_Downs_, which cometh of the old French word _dun_.
COKE LIT. 235.

But the riches of Kent must be spoken of with due limitations. Those
geological changes and formations before alluded to, which have marked the
track of wealth across the British islands by deposits of mineral coal, as
clearly as if it had been traced in sunbeams, have bequeathed no such
sources of sub-terrene affluence to Kent. Nor has nature been more than
parsimonious (to say the least) with respect to the superficial qualities
of its soil. We have only, however, to cast our eyes on a topographical
chart of Kent, to see how beneficently these disadvantages are balanced by
considerations of a different sort. Washed along a vast line of coast by
the ocean, and bordered to an equal or greater extent by the Thames;
penetrated by the navigable Medway, and watered by such fertilizing
streams as the Eden and the Ton; traversed through its whole length by
that ancient highway of Dover, which figured in the itineraries of the
Romans, and which still conveys much of the ceaseless intercourse between
England and the Continent; its coast studded with towers and harbors; its
interior spr