Sudbury affords nothing to detain us.  The next station is within a mile of Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its beacon-like church spire.  Rich pasture lies around, famous for finishing off bullocks fed in the north.  Harrow school is almost as much one of the institutions of England as Oxford and Cambridge Universities.  It is one of the great public schools, which, if they do not make the ripest scholars, make “men” of our aristocracy.  This school was founded by one John Lyon, a farmer of the parish, who died in 1592.

[Harrow-on-the-hill:  ill2.jpg]

Attached to it there are four exhibitions of 20 pounds each, and two scholarships of 50 pounds each.

The grand celebrity of the school rests upon the education of those who are not on the foundation.  The sons of noblemen and wealthy gentlemen, who in this as in many other instances, have treated those for whose benefit the school was founded, as the young cuckoo treats the hedge sparrow.  Among its illustrious scholars Harrow numbers Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel.

An old saw runs:  “Eton fops, Harrow gentlemen, Winchester scholars, and Westminster blackguards.”

Since the palmy days when Dr. Drury was master and Byron and Peel were pupils, Harrow has declined to insignificance, and been by the abilities of Dr. Wordsworth raised again.  The term of Harrow gentlemen still deservedly survives, Harrow being still the gate through which the rich son of a parvenu family may most safely pass on his way to Oxford, if his father desires, as all fathers do in this country, that his son should amalgamate with the landed aristocracy.

At Pinner, the next station, we pass out of Middlesex into Hertfordshire.

Watford, a principal station, is within a mile of the town of that name, on the river Colne.  Here Henry VI. encamped with his army before the battle of St. Albans.  Cassiobury Park, a favourite spot for picnics, is close to the station.  It was the opposition of the late proprietor, the Earl of Essex, that forced upon the engineer of the line the formidable tunnel, which was once considered an astonishing railway work,—­now nothing is astonishing in engineering.

[Viaduct over the river Colne:  ill3.jpg]

Near King’s Langley we pass the Booksellers’ Provident Retreat, erected on ground given by Mr. Dickenson, the great paper maker, who has seven mills on the neighbouring streams, and reach Boxmoor, only noticeable as the first station opened on the line.

[Looking from the hill above box moor station towards Berkhamsted:  ill4.jpg]