The view from River Hill is delightful, ranging across the wooded valley of the Medway to the heights where Tunbridge Wells is situated. So wooded is it that even Tonbridge itself, near at hand, is invisible, and the little village of Hildenborough—with scarcely more houses to it than there are letters in its name—might be non-existent.
A green, smiling woodland vale: just that. Not a profound, romantic depth, but a widespread, all-embracing view of meadows, corn-fields, parks, and hop-gardens: suave, well-ordered, appealing even more to the farmer than to the landscape-painter. Such is the Weald of Kent. Remote from the vulgar herd, who—
“Gawblimee!”
“What was that? Hark! there it is again.”
“’Strewth! ’Fyaint leff me blooming pipe beyine.”
“Leavyer bloomined beyine nex’ time, fatted.”
“Garn, fatted yer bloomin’ self.”
Hop-pickers, tramping and quarrelling their way down to the Kentish hop-gardens. And not always quarrelling, for their moods are even as those of an April day, wherein sunshine and clouds are for ever alternating. Listen to them as they go “piping down the valley wild, singing songs of pleasant glee”:
Skoylork, skoylork, upin ther skoy so oi,
If ermong ther aingils muvver you should see,