The inquirer fails to discover why that hotel, the "Pavilion," of which Dickens was so enamoured, and from whose style and title he named the newly-arising town "Pavilionstone," was given that sign. Napoleon declared, in the course of his great naval works at Cherbourg, that he was resolved to rival the marvels of Egypt; was Cubitt, in his building and contracting way, eager to emulate the plasterous glories of George IV.'s marine palace, the "Pavilion" at Brighton, or, at any rate, to snatch a glamour from its name? The "Pavilion " has been once, certainly-perhaps twice-rebuilt since Dickens wrote, and is now, they say, palatial, and with every circumstance of comfort; but when Pavilionstone was in the making, it seems to have been a sorry sort of a hostelry, in which voyagers for Boulogne had sharp foretastes of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which awaited those who resigned themselves to the cross-Channel passage at that period. This, says Dickens, is how you came here for that discomfortable enterprise: "Dropped upon the platform of the main line Pavilionstone Station at eleven o'clock on a dark winter's night, in a roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness outside the station was a short omnibus which brought you up by the forehead the instant you got in at the door; and nobody cared about you, and you were alone in the world. You bumped over infinite chalk until you were turned out at a strange building which had just left off being a barn without having quite begun to be a house, where nobody expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you were come, and where you were usually blown about until you happened to be blown against the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in the morning you were blown out of bed, and after a dreary breakfast, with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were hustled on board a steamboat, and lay wretched on deck until you saw France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over the bowsprit." The miseries of crossing between Folkestone and Boulogne are very greatly assuaged in these times, but still the summer visitants who have exhausted a round of pleasures find a perennial and cruel joy in repairing to the pier, where they can gloat over the miserables who, yellow and green-visaged, step uncertainly ashore after a bad passage. CHAPTER X FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD FROM Hythe, where many roads meet, there goes a very picturesque way along the high ground overlooking Romney Marsh-a route intimately associated with "The Leech of Folkestone." It is uphill out of Hythe, of course: indeed, among all the roads out of the town, only the coast routes are flat. Lympne is the first place on the way-that "Lymme Hill, or Lyme " which Leland says "was sumtyme a famose haven, and good for shyppes that myght cum to the foote of the hille. The place ys yet cawled Shypway and Old Haven." That it is not now "good for ships" is quite evident to anyone who takes his stand on the clifftop and views that fifth quarter of the globe, Romney Marsh, from this most eloquent of all view-points. Full three miles away, as the crow flies, the summer wavelets whisper on the beach, and between the margin of the sea and this crumbling cliff-edge, whose foot once dabbled in the waters of the haven, are pastures that have been the anchorage of ships. Grey buildings of high antiquity rise from the cliff-top and command the mapped-out marshland. The stern tower of Lympne church, forming a beacon for mariners, is next door neighbour to Lympne Castle, once a residence of the Archdeacons of Canterbury. That "castelet embatayled," in the words of Leland is now a farmhouse. Like the church, it was largely built from the stone of the Roman castle down below the cliff; that ancient Portus Lemanis whose feet rested in the waters of the haven and to whose walls the crowding vessels ranged in the grand colonial days of Imperial Rome. Stutsfall Castle the countryfolk call those shattered walls that tell of Roman dominion, rendered "Studfall" on the map. It is from these crumbling, earthy cliffs of Lympne that one obtains the best and most comprehensive view of Romney Marsh, spread out like an isometric drawing, below. From here the eye ranges over the grey-green levels, until lost in the dim haze of Dungeness, ten miles away. There curves the bay, like the arc of a bended bow, going in a magnificent semicircular sweep into the distance, its margin dotted at regular intervals with those pepper-boxes, the Martello towers, which it was hoped would have made it so hot for Napoleon had he ever descended upon these shores. Nearer at hand—almost, indeed, at our feet-goes the Royal Military Canal, its waters hid from this view-point, but its course defined by the double row of luxuriant trees that clothe its banks. Between foreground and far distance, in a welter of foreshortened fields and hedgerows, lie hid the many hamlets and villages of the marsh. From here it can be seen and felt how open this district is to every breeze that blows, but it needs for the traveller to descend into those levels for him to discover how fiercely the winds lurk behind the |