are treated in this fashion, we don't wonder
at it.

The favourite sarcasm of schoolmasters in
old days to gobbling youth, that there was no
hurry, the coach was not waiting, would
have lost its sting on this occasion; for the
coach was waiting, but there was no hurry.
The proprietors of the Brighton coach are
quite aware that they can enter into no
competition with the rail; the physician, who is
telegraphed for in case of life and death, the
bagman, whose chance of securing a large
order depends on the speed with which he
arrives at his destination, will rattle down
by the express. The coach is for those who
have leisure, and who wish to enjoy the
pleasures of fresh air and lovely scenery, in comfort,
so a liberal half hour is allowed for luncheon,
and then we start afresh, and after three
stages, all admirably horsed, the squire draws
up his chesnuts, his favourite team, before
the Albion Hotel, on the Steyne at Brighton.
And there stands the proprietor, whose talent
for catering we proved in bygone years at
those capital schools, the Ship at Greenwich,
and the Star and Garter at Richmond. So we
place ourselves in Mr. Lawrence's hands, letting
him do as he likes with us for dinner, and
rush off to get rid of the dust in a plunge at
Brill's, and to put the keenest edge on to our
appetites in a turn up the King's-road afterwards.

There can be no doubt that this is a
most sensible and enjoyable airing. To a
London man it is a splendid panacea for
worries and overwork, and city dust and
drouth. The novelty of the position makes him
forget his business cares, the drive invigorates
him, and the pleasant companionship always
to be met with, takes him out of himself, and
consigns stocks, and shares, and briefs, and
leading articles, to temporary oblivion. If he
be pressed for time he can come back to town
by train, reaching home before eleven the
same evening; if he have leisure, he can sleep
in Brighton, pitching pebbles off the beach and
asking the wild waves what they are saying,
during the evening, and renewing his pleasurable
impressions in his return journey on the
coach the next day. And perhaps it is well
for us occasionally to remember the Arabic
proverb, that " Hurry is the Devil's," and that,
like life, a journey has sometimes such pleasures
that we need not fret eagerly to get
to the end of it.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE SOUTH—CHEAM TO EPSOM.

Just outside a village a little off the Brighton
road, a village so leafy and embowered that
twenty years ago the gardens were in summer
twilight so noisy with nightingales, that dying
persons in that retired hamlet have been
known to have had their last trance-like
sleeps painfully broken in upon by the
sweet unceasing jangle, the crow, swooping
down from his "coign of vantage" at St.
Paul's, alights on a grave avenue of old
ancestral elms. Here you see the special tree
of Surrey to perfection. The huge free-grown,
close-grained limbs bear aloft with triumphant
ease their thick, green clouds of foliage, and,
meeting over head, cast a carpet of mottled
shadows beneath. This avenue at Cheam (a
place skirted by all persons who drive to the
Derby) was one of the old approaches to Nonesuch,
one of Queen Elizabeth's palaces. Henry
the Eighth, following the deer from Hampton
Court to the very foot of Banstead Downs,
one day, in 1539, took a fancy to the quiet
spot where he had rested and dined under
the trees after the mort was blown and the
deer broken up by the eager knives. He
bought the manor of Sir Richard de Cuddington,
in exchange for a Norfolk rectory, and.
pulling down the old manor house and parish
church, he began a palace. Leland calls it the
"nulli que parem"—the matchless or
"nonesuch"—but the king dying before it was
finished, Queen Mary gave it to the Earl of
Arundel, "in free socage, to hold of the honour
of Hampton Court;" and the earl, for love
of his old master, completed the palace.

Queen Elizabeth liked well the spot selected
by her father, and often came here when the
Earl of Arundel was its owner, and also when
it passed to the earl's son-in-law, the Lumley.
(" Did ye ever ken that Adam was a Lumley?"
King James once said to a proud lord of this
family who was boasting of his pedigree.)
Eventually she bought the palace, and spent
many of her later summers here. There her
well-guarded maids of honour rambled and
laughed between the close-cut green hedges,
and her pretty pages played at the brim of
the fountains, and Raleigh and his rivals
clattered their rapiers up the flight of eight stops
that led through the clock tower to the inner
court, and grave men like Burleigh and
Walsingham looked from the turret roof over the
downland and the woodland, and keepers slew
fallow deer under the elms, and many wise
and foolish actors fretted their little hour upon
the stage and then were seen no more. Here,
especially, took place an interview that was
the turning point in the fortune of the wrong-
headed, rashly-brave Earl of Essex. This, the
last of her favourites (Gloriana was only sixty-
seven, thin as a herring, painted, and addicted
to fuzzy red wigs, stuck with jewels, and ruffs
as big as cart wheels), had distinguished himself
by tossing his hat on shore at Cadiz, and leading
the way to the capture of Spain's strongest
fortress, where Raleigh captured and destroyed
thirteen men-of-war and immense magazines of
provisions and naval stores. The India fleet,
with twenty millions of dollars, might have
been also captured, but for the jealous opposition
to the impetuosity of Essex. Proud Spain
had never received such a blow in the teeth
before, and threatened a second Armada.
Essex—disdainful of all rivals, and always in a
pet with the queen, who, provoked at his
factious insolence, once struck him in the face
at the council table—was sent by Burleigh,