and of the founder of the old church, and the heart of a knight who was killed in the wars.  On the Fane tomb is a pedigree of brass in relief, and a genealogy of virtues to answer it.  There is an entire window of painted-glass arms, chiefly modern, in the chapel, and another over the high altar.  The hospitality of the house was truly Gothic; for they made our postilion drunk, and he overturned us close to a water and the bank did but just save us from being in the middle of it.  Pray, whenever you travel in Kentish roads, take care of keeping your driver sober.

Rochester, Sunday.

We have finished our progress sadly!  Yesterday after twenty mishaps we got to Sissinghurst to dinner.  There is a park in ruins, and a house in ten times greater ruins, built by Sir John Balier, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Mary.  You go through an arch of the stables to the house, the court of which is perfect and very beautiful.  The Duke of Bedford has a house at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been very like it, but is more ruined.  This has a good apartment, and a fine gallery, a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which takes up one side:  the wainscot is pretty and entire:  the ceiling vaulted, and painted in a light genteel grotesque.  The whole is built for show:  for the back of the house is nothing but lath and plaster.  From thence we Went to Bocton-Malherbe, where are remains of a house of the Wottons, and their tombs in the church; but the roads were so exceedingly bad that it was dark before we got thither, and still darker before we got to Maidstone:  from thence we passed this morning to Leeds Castle.(347) Never was such disappointment!  There are small remains:  the moat is the only handsome object, and is quite a lake, supplied by a cascade which tumbles through a bit of a romantic grove.  The Fairfaxes have fitted up a pert, bad apartment in the fore-part of the castle, and have left the only tolerable rooms for offices.  They had a gleam of Gothic in their eyes, but it soon passed off into some modern windows, and some that never were ancient.  The only thing that at all recompensed the fatigues we have undergone was the picture of the Duchess of Buckingham,(348) la Ragotte, who is mentioned in Grammont—­I say us, for I trust that Mr. Chute is as true a bigot to Grammont as I am.  Adieu?  I hope you will be as weary with reading our history as we have been in travelling it.  Yours ever.

(329) Only son of Dr. Richard Bentley, the celebrated Divine and classical scholar.  He was educated at Trinity College, under his father.  Cumberland, who was his nephew, describes him as a man of various and considerable accomplishments; possessing a fine genius, great wit, and a brilliant imagination; “but there was,” he adds, “a certain eccentricity and want of prudence in his character, that involved him in distresses, and reduced him to situations uncongenial with his feelings, and unpropitious to the cultivation and encouragement of his talents."-E.