DORKING AND ITS SCENERY.* LOCAL histories have a special and
limited value. To students, they are sometimes of great service, and residents in a neigh- bourhood like to know all that can be told about it. Works of this class involve no common labour, and it is a labour for which the compilers are likely to gain small pay and little credit. What reader ever thanked the writer of a Guide-book 9 and the local historian, however able, however accurate, ranks for the most part with the guide-writer. Undeterred by these drawbacks, Mr. Bright has undertaken to tell the history of a town in which he has spent, we believe, a largo portion of his life. He has done the work well, and, in addition to personal knowledge, appears to have mastered all accessible information on the subject. In such a volume we do not look for originality, but for the judicious use of materials. It is not given to many local historians to write of the towns they celebrate, as Gilbert White wrote of Selborne. Enough if they satisfy intelligent curiosity, and that Mr. Bright has done this amply will be discovered by all readers of his volume. The main interest of Dorking and of the neighbouring parishes is not historical nor antiquarian. Dorking has, no doubt, many attractive associa- tions—what town in this old country has not 9—but its fame rests principally on the great beauty of the scenery of which it forms the centre.
Surrey, one of the smallest of English counties, is also one of the most beautiful; and there is no portion of it which can compete for loveliness with the district round Dorking. The Cockney excursionist who spends a day on Boxhill or Leith Hill may gain some notion of this beauty, but it will be a faint notion. Nature will not suffer us to take her by storm in this way. She must be wooed patiently and waited on day by day if we wish to appreciate the treasures she has in store for us. The one fine feature missing in the Dorking scenery is water. The Mole is a river blessed by at least six poets, but it can be scarcely said to deserve its fame. As one of the six justly says, it is "the sullen Mole," and it " runneth underneath." It is an eccentric river, and hides itself where its presence is most needed ; it is a dull river, and moves in its sluggish way as if irresolute whether to go forward or to remain still. No doubt, however, the Mole bears occasionally a look of beauty, due less to the water itself than to the trees which overhang it. It is Walter Scott alone who can describe scenery without tempting readers to "skip ;" and we do not intend to bore our readers with a wordy account of spots which, to use the language of the auction-room, "must be seen to be appreciated." To point out a few characteristic aspects of Nature round Dorking is all that we shall venture to attempt.
Variety, which gives a charm to life, is also a characteristic feature of this scenery. There is no monotony here, and there is no flatness. In one direction Boxhill rises to the height of 600 feet ; in another, Leith Hill, 966 feet in height, and Holmbnry 837, stand out nobly in the land- scape. Conspicuous, too, is Ranmore Common, with its beautiful church "set upon a hill," and visible from far distances ; so, too, is Ewhurst Mill ; so is St. Martha's Hill, with the chapel on its summit ; and so, also, in the opposite direction, is Norbury Park, the scene of famous memories. There are parks in the Dorking neighbourhood most noticeable for beauty, and each of them boasts some special attraction. Betch- worth takes the traveller captive by its woodland loveliness, and is famous for a noble lime avenue, and still more for its majestic Spanish chestnuts,—ancient veterans, with gnarled barks and contorted branches, which look as though they had been tortured by some woodland deity. Norbury, to say nothing of its cora-
• A History of Dorking and ths Neighbouring Parishes, with Chapters on the Literary Ass9ciationa. Flora, Fauna, Geology, &c., of the District. By J. B. Bright. Doiking : Clark. manding position, has its "Druid's Grove" of yew-trees men- tioned in Doomesday Book, several of which are more than twenty feet in girth ; and Bury Hill Park, not large in extent, but rich in beauty, has its Nower, a headland not readily to be forgotten by those who have made acquaintance with it. One of the most charming of summer retreats near Dorking (it must be damp and unhealthy in winter) is the Rookery, once the home of "population Malthus ;" another of greater celebrity is Wootton House, the home, in the second Charles's day, of Sylva ' Evelyn, and the home in ours of a gentleman who bears his name. Through the glorious woods surrounding these houses there are bridle paths and foot-paths ; and if the tourist will but live as if there were no clock in the forest, if he have but leisure to be happy, he will discover in these woods, and in the valleys hidden among the hills beyond, some bits of scenery that of their kind are not to be surpassed in the county. Let him, for instance, find his way through the woods to Friday Street, with its delicious lakelet —a spot to dream in through a summer day—or to Felday, a green valley with fir-crowned hills ; or let him loiter on Abinger Common after lunching at the "Hatch," close to which stand the church—on higher ground, it is said, than any other in the county—and the stocks, which harmonise well with the old-world look of the neighbourhood. The Common ascends towards Leith Hill, and every step of the way yields a new delight. So close does the beauty lie to us that we may be said to handle it ; while on the summit of the hill we see it as in a vision afar off. Leith Hill may, as Dr. Whewell said, command a view of not less than two hundred miles in circumference, and, as Mr. Bright says, the sight of about forty-one parish churches; but the spectator may ascend again and again without having the good-fortune to command it also. There is nothing more delusive than distant views, as the mountain-climber too often discovers to his cost. In every guide-book to the neighbourhood, John Dennis—known in these days less for his own merit than for his antagonistic relation to Addison and Pope—is called upon to give his impressions of the "vision beatific" which he gazed on from Leith Hill, "a more transporting sight," he says, "than ever the country had shown me before in Eng- land or Italy." He must have mounted the hill on a fortunate day, and probably in a happy mood, and now every visitor is expected to feel as he felt. Well, if beauty is dependent upon distance, Leith Hill has assuredly no rival for beauty in Surrey ; but there are views from lower ground contiguous to the hill which give, we think, more lasting delight to the lover of Nature. Possibly, however, Leith Hill suffers in our estimation from the fact that it is a show-place, and receives on that account a taint of vulgarity. The tourist, by the way, having reached the hill by the Abinger route, should return to Dorking, if that be his camping-ground, by the road through Coldharbonr.
We, of course, with pen in hand, are privileged to flit in what- ever direction fancy may lead us, and we will, therefore, alight for a moment at Albury, a little village not more than five miles from Guildford, which is surrounded on all sides with sweet rural scenery that is especially satisfying in the hot days of summer. There are " lions " at Albury, one of them being the cathedral-like church, built by the late Henry Drummond for the Irvingites, and another the house of many gables, belonging to the author of Proverbial Philosophy.
"The wheat three thousand years interred, Shall yet its harvest bear ;" and we read in the "History " that the first well-authenticated instance of the resuscitation of mummy-wheat occurred in Mr. Tupper's garden in 1840. That garden is a pleasant one, fitted for "retired leisure ;" but the tourist must find his pleasure elsewhere, and is advised to ask for the "Silent Pool," "a still, clear lakelet buried in a thick jungle of box, hollies, and other evergreens overshadowed by old beeches." He should also ascend St. Martha's Hill, and must not fail to visit Newland's Corner, and a wood of aged yew-trees, not mentioned by Mr. Bright, called "Fairy Land." And here it may be observed that the map given as a companion to the " History " is in- adequate and does not cover all the ground. For the places just noticed the reader will search that map in vain.
The literary associations of the Dorking neighbourhood are by no means without interest. We have as yet said nothing about the Deepdene, certainly one of the most remarkable seats in the county for charm of position and for the rare value of its works of art. As the property of Thomas Hope, the once famous
author of Anastasius—a story unknown, it is to be feared, to the modern reader of fiction—and as the spot where a man more cele- brated wrote a far more popular novel—for Coningsby was partly composed in the lovely grounds of the Deepdene—the place has an interest apart from the well-nigh unrivalled felicity with which art has aided nature on a site which, according to the judgment of Aubery, contains pleasures so ravishing that "I can never expect any enjoyment beyond it but the Kingdom of Heaven."
At Burford Bridge, a spot dear to lovers and picnic-makers, Keats finished his Endyntion, and almost within sight of it resides one of the most masterly, though by no means most popular, of living novelists. At the Castle, no longer standing, in Betchworth Park, lived and died Abraham Tucker, the author of the Light of Nature, of whom Sir Henry Taylor writes in a passage Mr. Bright would have done well to quote :—" An intel- lect more exact and more discursive was never exercised in theology ; and his fancy, if not as abundant as Jeremy Taylor's, is not less aptly and happily illustrative." Is it quite as certain as Mr. Bright supposes, that William Browne, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, lived once at the Castle P We bad thought that all our knowledge of his having resided in Dorking was derived from a letter dated from that place in 1640, in which he alludes to his "poor cell and sequestration from all business." He is supposed, indeed, although a Devonshire man by birth, to have been in some way related to the Brownes of Betchworth Castle, but we have no cer- tain knowledge that he was ever more than a temporary resident at Dorking ; and if he lived at the Castle, the term "poor cell" is singularly inappropriate. Mr. Bright's estimate of Browne as a poet is a mean one. He sometimes speaks, indeed, with more praise of men who are mere versifiers. Browne was full of conceits, and his defects are on the sur- face; but he looked at Nature and life with a poet's eyes and a poet's sense of beauty, and to his Pastorals both Milton and Keats are indebted.
Passing through Betchworth Park to the charming village of Brockham, we are reminded of a smaller poet or song- writer, Captain Morris, who lived to be ninety-three, and sang of love and wine to the last. "It is said," writes the author, "that coming one day into the bookseller's shop in Dorking, there chanced to be deposited a pianoforte, and the old bard, having looked round to see there were no strangers present, sat down to the instrument and sang with much spirit The Girl I Left Behind Me ;' yet he was past his eightieth year. `Do what you will,' said Curran, you will die in your youth.'"
On the road, five miles in length, between Dorking and Letherhead, the tourist passes near "Camilla Lacey," where Madame D'Arblay lived in later life, but where she did not add to her literary reputation. She met her future husband at Norbury, and was married in Mickleham Church, not far from which stands Juniper Hall, "where she listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Steel." Something- we should like to say of Richard Sharp, better known as "Conversation Sharp," who lived at Fredley Farm, and won the praise of Macaulay ; something of William Lock of Nor- bury, whom Johnson termed an "ingenious critic," and with whose "elegance of manners" Boswell "felt himself much im- pressed ;" something of Walter Thornbury, who wrote so much and might, had fortune favoured him, have written so much better ; and something of the indefatigable John Timbs, who lived for some years in Dorking, and compiled a guide to the locality—the first, we believe, ever published. The History of Dorking suggests many topics and recalls many associations ; but we mast close the volume, not, however, without thanking Mr. Bright for a book which merits no mean place among local histories.
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