The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 | Page 5

sake of those merits which were
once thought a sufficient covering for the sins of countless followers.
As the great eastern artery of London, the road which we have thus far
followed begins to distribute its living mass into the successive
provincial avenues which diverge from it, we find ourselves included in
that portion of the throng, whom the pursuit of health or pleasure
conducts toward Tonbridge.[1] The high and level country which under
the name of 'Downs'[2] forms the northern and western boundary of
Kent, sinks by a sudden and steep declivity on its eastern edge; which
edge the geologists tell us was once washed by a primeval ocean, and is
still seamed by the ineffaceable traces of its currents and storms. For
ourselves it forms a vantage-ground from which we seem to look at one
glance over almost the whole of that fair province which stretches
nearly to the continent, and lifts the white cliffs of Albion above the
surges of the British channel. We think of the day when the standard

bearer of the tenth legion bore the eagle of Cæsar to the shore amid the
cries of the opposing Britons; and of the still more signal day when
Augustine displayed the cross before the eyes of the softened and
repentant Saxons. We think too of the beings with whose memories
Shakspeare has peopled this portion of the Isle; of Lear and Cordelia, of
Edgar, Gloster, and Kent; of that night of horrors upon the stormy heath,
and that scene of unutterable tenderness and heart-break on the sands of
Dover. Unbidden, as we gaze over the fair and varied prospect, the
words of the same great dramatist rise to our lips, in his appropriation
of the sentiments and language of the first conqueror of Britain:
'Kent in the commentaries Cæsar writ, Is termed the civil'st place of all
this isle; Sweet is the country because full of riches, The people liberal,
active, valiant, wealthy.'
[1] This route leads, among other villages, through that of Sevenoaks,
famous as the place where Jack Cade and his rabble overthrew the
forces of Stafford, in the very same year, (1450,) when Faust and
Gutenberg set up the first press in Germany, and long, therefore, before
Cade could have justly complained, as Shakspeare has made him do,
that the Lord Say had 'caused printing to be used' in England, and 'built
a paper-mill.' But who taxes the sun for his spots or Shakspeare for
anachronisms? He who was born to exhaust and imagine worlds,
cannot of course be denied some innocent liberties with chronology.
The village in question, however, is more interesting to travellers from
being in the vicinity of Knole, the fine old seat of the dukes of Dorset.
The stranger is led here through long galleries garnished with furniture
of the time of Elizabeth and hung with portraits which at every step
recall names of the deepest historical interest. Who can ever forget that
which hangs or hung over the door of Lady Betty Germaine's chamber?
It is Milton in the bloom of manhood, and the immortal epic seems to
be just dawning on those mild and pensive features. One chamber, of
sumptuous appointments remains, (so runs the legend,) as it was last
tenanted by James I., no head less sapient or august having been since
permitted to press the pillow. In another every thing stands as it was
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 zôousin aêdones, hêsin o pantôn harpaktêr Aidês 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