The view from Richborough is comprehensive and varied. Away to the right is Sandwich, a mass of clustered roofs and spars and rigging, dominated, of course, by that Dutch-like cupola of St. Peter's, resembling some gigantic onion of fairy-lore; and away again to the left goes the curving shore, to Pegwell Bay and Ramsgate, with the white cliffs standing out to sea, as bolt upright as though they had been sliced out. The houses and some of the more prominent public buildings of Ramsgate peer over the edge of the down.
The railway that, taking advantage of the levels, runs between Sandwich and Ramsgate under these walls of the aged Roman castle is not an unromantic feature. Its living commercialism serves to contrast eloquently the methods of to-day and those of an Empire dead these fifteen hundred years. He must be a soulless signalman who does not, in his cabin placed under the shadow of that wall, sometimes let his imagination loose and, conjuring up the past, people those ramparts again with the helmeted sentries of old Rome.
More than 140,000 coins, Roman and Saxon, are said to have been, at one time and another, picked up within and around Richborough. That is why the visitor to Sandwich hastens at the earliest opportunity along those two miles that separate the ruins from the town, and is explanatory of his exploring zeal in turning over the clods with his foot and probing the light earth with his walking-stick. Alack! the statement that so great a number of coins have been found means perhaps that the last are gone, rather than that a hundred thousand or so remain. If the ploughman still finds anything, he keeps the fact to himself; but certainly, if any personal efforts of the present historian may count for testimony, there is a plentiful lack of anything but heavy clay in these fields. No precious fibula, no golden coin, nay, not even a humble copper denarius rewarded his anxious efforts, and the ware of Samos was equally to seek.
RICHBOROUGH, AND THE KENTISH COASTLINE TOWARDS RAMSGATE.
Here we are well within the Isle of Thanet, whose name, as generally is the case, is of uncertain origin. "Thanatos," the "Isle of Death," suggested some commentator in the bygone years, but he did not bolster up his derivation by telling us in what way it was so deadly. Perhaps in the wrecks of its coast. In other respects, Thanet is the Isle of Good Health, of rude, hungry, boisterous health; and in summer the Isle of Cockneys. Does it not contain Ramsgate—"rollicking Ramsgate",—and Margate the merry, whose name—I am sorry—always reminds me of margarine? It was at Margate, upon Jarvis's Jetty, that "Mr. Simpkinson" met the "little vulgar boy" who did him so very brown, but I am not going to Margate to see the Jetty; which has been greatly altered since Jarvis caused it to rise out of the vasty deep. Margate is mentioned only that once in the Ingoldsby Legends and Ramsgate not at all, and so I shall cut them out of my journey, and make across inland, over the high ridge at Acol, to Reculver.
The road is flat, the surface good, and from Sandwich to Ebbsfleet is an enjoyable run. At Ebbsfleet there has been lately erected a tall granite cross to mark where St. Augustine landed and reintroduced Christianity in A.D. 597. Perhaps not everyone knows that he was sent against his will on this mission by the Pope, and that it was only grumbling he came. Not altogether so saintly as we might, not inquiring closely, suppose—a morose and masterful man.
Through Minster lies our way—Minster-in-Thanet—reached by lanes of the charmingest, with overarching trees; very beautiful, and filled in summer with other things not so lovely: with such eye-sorrows and ear-torments as dusty brake-parties clamant with the latest comic songs and energetically performing upon cornets and concertinas; little vulgar boys, descendants, possibly, of Mr. Simpkinson's young friend, turning cart-wheels in the dust for casual pence. The brake-proprietors of Margate and Ramsgate, conscious that such tree-shaded spots are rare in Thanet, have taken these under their protection, and advertise "Twelve miles drives through the pretty lanes, 1/-." Minster is therefore a paradise of beanfeasters and the inferno of pilgrims, literary or other.