"N.B. Colman is the eminent Itinerary Surgeon, who constantly resides at St. Pancras.
"As we went near Woolwich we saw at a distance the artillery officers on a common, a firing away with their bombs in mortars like any thing.
"At Dartford they make gunpowder; here we changed horses, at the inn we saw a most beautiful Rhoderick Random in a pot, covered with flowers, it is the finest I ever saw, except those at Dropmore. [Note (Rhododendron).]
"When we got to Rochester we went to the Crown Inn and had a cold collection: the charge was absorbent—I had often heard my poor dear husband talk of the influence of the Crown, and a Bill of Wrights, but I had no idea what it really meant till we had to pay one.
"As we passed near Chatham I saw several Pitts, and Mr. Fulmer showed me a great many buildings—I believe he said they were fortyfications, but I think there must have been near fifty of them—he also shewed us the Lines at Chatham, which I saw quite distinctly, with the clothes drying on them. Rochester was remarkable in King Charles's time, for being a very witty and dissolute place, as I have read in books.
"At Canterbury we stopped ten minutes to visit all the remarkable buildings and curiosities in it, and about its neighbourhood; the church is beautiful: when Oliver Cromwell conquered William the Third, he perverted it into a stable—the stalls are still standing—the old Virgin who shewed us the church, wore buckskin breeches and powder—he said it was an archypiscopal sea, but I saw no sea, nor do I think it possible he could see it either, for it is at least seventeen miles off—we saw Mr. Thomas à Beckett's tomb—my poor husband was extremely intimate with the old gentleman, and one of his nephews, a very nice man, who lives near Golden-square, dined with us twice, I think, in London—in Trinity Chapel is the monument of Eau de Cologne, just as it is now exhibiting at the Diarrea in the Regent's Park.
"It was late when we got to Dover: we walked about while our dinner was preparing, looking forward to our snug tête-à-tête of three—we went to look at the sea, so called, perhaps, from the uninterrupted view one has, when upon it—it was very curious to see the locks to keep in the water here, and the keys which are on each side of them, all ready, I suppose, to open them if they were wanted.
"Mr. Fulmer looked at a high place, and talked of Shakspeare, and said out of his own head, these beautiful lines.—
"Half way down