Maidstone, the county and assize town of Kent, appears to be a thriving and solid-looking place, as there are several paper-mills, saw-mills, stone quarries, and other indications of prosperity. There are but few historical associations connected with it, as Maidstone "has lived a quiet life." Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, and the attack on the town by Fairfax in 1648, are among the principal incidents. Dickens frequently walked or drove over to this town from Gad's Hill. Many of the names which we notice over the shops in the principal street are very suggestive of, if not actually used for, some of the characters in his novels, _e.g._ Pell, Boozer, Hibling, Fowle, Stuffins, Bunyard, Edmed, Gregsbey, Dunmill, and Pobgee. It has been said that Maidstone possesses a gaol; it also has large barracks, and, what is better still, a Museum, Free Library, and Public Gardens. Chillington Manor House,--a highly picturesque and well-preserved Elizabethan structure, formerly the residence of the Cobhams,--contains the Museum and Library. Standing in a quiet nook in the Brenchley Gardens, the lines of George Macdonald, quoted in the local _Guide Book_, well describe its beauties:-- "Its windows were aerial and latticed, Lovely and wide and fair, And its chimneys like clustered pillars Stood up in the thin blue air." The Museum--the new wing of which was built as a memorial of his brother, by Mr. Samuel Bentlif--is the property of the Corporation, and owes much of its contents to the liberality of Mr. Pretty, the first curator, and to the naturalist and traveller, Mr. J. L. Brenchley. It contains excellent fine art, archaeological, ethnological, natural history, and geological collections. Among the last-named, in addition to other interesting local specimens, are some fossil remains of the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_) from the drift at Aylesford, obtained by its present able curator, Mr. Edward Bartlett, to whom we are indebted for a most pleasant ramble through the various rooms. We notice an original "Dickens-item" in the shape of a very good carved head of the novelist, forming the right top panel of an oak fire-place, the opposite side being one of Tennyson, by a local carver named W. Hughes, who was formerly employed at Gad's Hill Place. No pilgrim in "Dickens-Land" should omit visiting Maidstone and its treasures in Chillington Manor House; nor of seeing the splendid view of the Medway from the churchyard, looking towards Tovil. [Illustration: Chillingham Manor House Maidstone]