inkled with hamlets, parks, cities, and baronial residences;
claiming, finally, to be the episcopal head and fountain of ecclesiastical
dignity for the whole British empire; we can readily see how Kent may
vindicate to itself the praise conveyed in the lines of Shakspeare as the
abode of a liberal, active, valiant, and even wealthy people.

Nor is this flattering ascription of personal qualities unsupported by the
facts of its local history. To the great Roman conqueror the inhabitants
of this part of Britain opposed a resistance, which taught him, as he
indirectly confesses, to look back with many a wistful glance toward the
coast where he had left his transports, but ill-assured against the ocean
or the enemy. Against the Norman conqueror, likewise, when all the rest of
the island had yielded implicitly to his sway and to the substitution of
feudal for native usages, the people of Kent still made good their old
hereditary law of _Gavelkind_. More than once in after times, stung by
oppression or inflamed by zeal, they have drawn together in a spirit of
tumultuous resistance, and borne their remonstrances to the very gates of
the national capital. Connecting this history and character with their
maritime position, we are led to apply a remark which our American
historian Prescott has generalized from the circumstances of a people not
dissimilarly situated. 'The sea-board,' says that admirable writer, 'would
seem to be the natural seat of liberty. There is something in the very
presence, in the atmosphere of the ocean, which invigorates not only the
physical but the moral energies of man.' Or as Wordsworth has expressed
the same idea, with an extension of it, no less just than poetical, to
another class of natural objects:

'Two voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!'

It has already been said that our route lay toward Tonbridge. True, those
celebrated wells lie somewhat beyond Penshurst, yet few pilgrims will fail
to visit them; and it may be permitted to glance aside from our immediate
object to glean a very few observations from the customs of this
fashionable watering-place. But the American visitor must not expect to
meet at a watering-place in England precisely that aggregate of
circumstances which goes to form his idea of the pleasures and privileges
of one in his own country. There a