engineers who designed and constructed, and the Government that authorised it.

The origin of the canal is found in the naturally open condition of this coast, and in the old fears of

invasion, not so long since dead; for there are still those who vividly recollect such alarms even in the reign of Napoleon III.

The long range of the south coast between Eastbourne and Folkestone-a stretch of, roughly, fifty miles-is remarkable for the low sandy or shingly shores that offer easy landing for boats. The smugglers, during many centuries, found the beaches of Dymchurch, the marshes of Winchelsea, Rye, and Romney, places exactly fitted to the

needs of their shy midnight business, and it has always been seen that the landing of a foreign foe could most readily be effected by an invading force on these low sand spits and shingly promontories-assuming the simultaneous absence of our fleet and the presence of a dead calm. Lying directly opposite France, whose coast can, under favourable conditions, be seen, now like a grey cloud, and again, when sunshine strikes the distant cliffs, gleaming white, the unprotected state of the Kent and Sussex littoral has always occasioned much uneasiness in times of war or rumours of war. It has never been forgotten that Cæsar landed at Deal, or that William the Norman came ashore at Pevensey, and those hoary historical lessons have served to afflict many statesmen with nightmares, away from the time when Henry VIII., in 1539, built his squat castles and potbellied bastions at Sandown, Deal, Sandgate, and Walmer, in fear of a Continental combination against him, and personally saw that they were well and truly built; down to the years of Napoleon's threatened descent, when the Military Canal was dug and the long line of Martello towers built. What says Ingoldsby of the canal? Why, this:

"When the late Mr. Pitt was determined to keep out Buonaparte and prevent his gaining a settlement in the county of Kent, among other ingenious devices adopted for that purpose he caused to be constructed what was then, and has ever since been conventionally termed, a 'Military Canal.' This is a not very practicable ditch, some thirty feet wide and nearly nine feet deep in the middle, extending from the town and port of

Hythe to within a mile of the town and port of Rye, a distance of about twenty miles, and forming, as it were, the end of a bow, the arc of which constitutes that remote fifth quarter of the globe, Romney Marsh, spoken of by travellers. Trivial objections to the plan were made at the time by cavillers; an old gentleman of the neighbourhood,

THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL, AT WAREHORNE.

who proposed, as a cheap substitute, to put down his own cocked-hat upon a pole, was deservedly pooh-pooh'd down; in fact, the job, though rather an expensive one, was found to answer remarkably well. The French managed, indeed, to scramble over the Rhine and the Rhone, and other insignificant currents; but they never did, or could, pass Mr. Pitt's Military Canal.'

Satire is writ large, in a fine bold Roman hand, over that description of the Military Canal, is it not? and really, the difficulty of outflanking, or even of overpassing, this insignificant waterway would have been small had Napoleon ever set forth from Boulogne. But he never did, and so its defensible properties remain only x. One thing it does do most thoroughly being dug at the foot of the ground falling to the levels, it sets visible limits and bounds to the marshland, and in a striking manner makes you understand that here you are come into another and strange region. From Hythe, under those earthy clifflets it goes by way of Lympne, Hurst, Bonnington, Bilsington, Ruckinge, Warehorne, and Appledore, and thence to within hail of Rye, and is nowadays a most picturesque object. The word "canal" does by no means accord it justice. You picture a straightcut stretch of water, yellow and malodorous, with barges slowly voyaging along, the bargees smoking rank shag and indulging in ranker language; but that is quite unlike this defence of Old England. It is not straight, its waters are clean, there are not any barges; but there are overhanging trees, clusters of bulrushes, strange water-plants, and an abundance of wild life along its solitary way. Before railways were, and when even the few roads of the marsh were almost impassable, the canal was very useful to the inhabitants of the district, when goods came and went along it by packetboats; but they have long since ceased to ply. So long since as 1867 it was proposed to sell this obsolete defence to a projected railway company, but it escaped that fatę,

They are chiefly beech-trees that line the banks, generally on the inner side, where the heavy raised earthworks and the corresponding ditch for defenders are still very prominent.

We are introduced to the Marshland at the beginning of the prose legend, "The Leech of Folkestone." "The world," we are told," according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh. In this last named, and fifth, quarter of the globe, a Witch may still be occasionally discovered in favourable, i.e. stormy, seasons, weathering Dungeness Point in an eggshell, or careering on her broomstick over Dymchurch Wall. A cow may yet be sometimes seen galloping like mad, with tail erect, and an old pair of breeches on her horns, an unerring guide to the door of the crone whose magic arts have drained her udder."

This "recondite region," as he very happily calls it, is still, sixty years after the description was written, a peculiar and eerie tract. Among the most readily defined of districts, Romney Marsh proper extends from Hythe on the east, along the coast to New Romney, in a south-westerly direction, and is bounded by the high-road between that town and Snargate on the north-west; the circuit being completed by the line of the Royal Military Canal. Other marshes, indistinguishable by the eye from that of Romney, extend westward and up to and beyond Rye and the river Rother, across the border from Kent into Sussex. These are, severally, Dunge Marsh, Walling Marsh, and Guildford Level.

Romney Marsh obtains its name from the Anglo