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valley of the Medway, with bold hills crowned with windmills, above, and the stream, diminishing in long perspective, below; with jutting promontories where the factory-chimneys of Borstal and Wouldham stand up, clustered like the stalks of monstrous vegetables, and the red-sailed barges that drop down with wind and tide. Before him rise the great keep, the cathedral, and the clustered red roofs of the city, with a glimpse of the High Street, the Town Hall and its great vane-a full-rigged ship-at the other end of the bridge. And all the while to his left is the shrieking and the screaming of the trains, rolling in thunder over the two railway bridges that absolutely shut out and ruin the view down the stream. The bustle, roar, and rattle of the trains, the busy, yet silent, traffic of the river, the smoke rising in wreaths from those distant chimneys of Wouldham and Borstal, all bespeak labour and commerce, and all these rumours of a busy community blend finely with the shattered majesty of that ancient Castle, the solemnity of the Cathedral, and the noisy, yet restful, cawing of the raucous rooks who circle round about those lofty battlements, their outcry mingled with the sobbing, moaning voices of the pigeons, and the shrill piping of querulous sea-birds.

The bridge over which Mr. Pickwick leaned and meditated while waiting for breakfast has gone the way of many another old building referred to in that book which will presently have a quite unique archæological value, so utterly passed away and vanished are the inns, so changed are the varied haunts of the Pickwickians. Necessity, they say,

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the call of progress, demanded the removal of the fine stone bridge of eleven arches that had spanned the Medway so efficiently for five centuries, and it was removed in 1856; but how cruel the necessity, and how heavy a toll we pay for our progression perhaps only those who had stood upon the ancient ways can tell.

Meanwhile, we must clear our minds from a very reasonable prejudice, and acknowledge that, as an example of modern engineering, the new Rochester Bridge is very fine. fine. It is of iron, broad and graceful as its iron construction will allow, and it spans the river in three great arches. It cost over £250,000 to build, and was opened in 1863. Meanwhile, to show what kind of bridge was the old Edwardian building, I have prepared the drawing over-page, showing the battered old piers, festooned with seaweed, and the balustrade that protected, more or less effectually, the lieges from being blown into the water. That this protection was not very greatly to be relied upon, and that Mr. Pickwick, bulky man as he was, ran a considerable risk when he leaned over the parapet, may be gathered when we read that on a night in 1836 a storm demolished a great stretch of it, and that the Princess Victoria, who was coming up the road from Dover, was content to be advised to stay overnight at the "Bull," rather than attempt to cross over to Strood. The riverside wore a somewhat different aspect then. Low and broken cliffs picturesquely shelved down to the water's edge where a neat embankment now runs, and the balustrades of the old bridge serve their old purpose on this new

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river-wall.

The embankment is an improvement from an utilitarian point of view, but its long straight line hurts the artistic sense, and that is one of the reasons why I have chosen to show Rochester Bridge and its surroundings in this illustration rather as they were than as they are now. Other reasons are that pictures of Old Rochester Bridge are extremely rare, and that the low spire which at one time crowned the Cathedral tower shows a good deal more effectively than is the case now that "restoration" has swept it away, and left the feeble work of 1825 standing against the sky in no more distinguished a manner than is the due of an ordinary parish church.

The stranger should come into Rochester preferably on the evening of a summer's day, and, as first impressions must ever remain the most distinct, he should walk in over the bridge. At such times a golden haze spreads over the city and the river, and renders both a dream of beauty. The gilt ship on the Town Hall blazes like molten metal; the "moonfaced clock" of the Corn Exchange is correspondingly calm, and the wide entrance-halls of the older inns begin to glow with light. You should have walked a good fifteen miles or more on the day of your first coming into Rochester, and then you will appreciate aright the mellow comforts of its old inns. But not at once will the connoisseur of antiquity and first impressions who thus enters the old city repair him to his inn. He will turn into the Cathedral precincts underneath the archway of Chertsey's Gate, and I hope he will not already have read Edwin Drood, because an acquaintance with that tale quite spoils

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