"At this place lived another ancient gentleman and his son, of a very good family, Augustine Bellson, Esq.; the father measured seven feet and a half, and allowing that he might have sunk for his age, being seventy-one years old; and the son measured two inches taller than his father." From the Parish Register, 1738, May 16: "Richard Madderson, aged 29 years, and was not above three feet and three inches high; but in thickness grown as much as any other person. He was all his life troubled with an inward griping distemper, of which he at last died very suddenly." Thus the quiet life of Dorking in the quiet centuries. The days before the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the introduction of machinery for hand labour, saw the usual terror and the usual threats. "Captain Rock" and "Captain Swing" signed the letters which were sent to Dorking farmers; special constables were sworn, the windows of the Red Lion were broken, and once, on November 22, 1830, a van drawn by four horses took Dorking prisoners to the county gaol. Cavalry patrolled the town by night; but that November saw the end of Dorking's nearest knowledge of modern war. CHAPTER XXX WOTTON AND LEITH HILL Denbies.--Tea veniente die.--A Temple of gloom.--Wotton House.--John Evelyn.--A child of five.--The Crossways.--Dabchicks in the Tillingbourne.--Friday Street.--A Swiss tarn.--Leith Hill.--The Day of Days.--Forty-one spires unseen.--Anstiebury Camp.--The Black Adder of Leith Hill. North-west of Dorking, and overlooking the wide greenness of the Weald away to Leith and Holmbury Hills, is Denbies, now the residence of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, and once the property of Mr. Jonathan Tyers. Jonathan Tyers was the Kiralfy of a less aspiring age. He was the founder of Vauxhall Gardens, where, as Boswell puts it, you had a form of entertainment "peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show--gay exhibition--music, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear, for all which only a shilling is paid; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale." The founder of Vauxhall Gardens was also the father of Tom Tyers, the wit who parodied Virgil over Dr. Johnson's tea-cups-- "Tea veniente die, tea decedente" --a phrase which has been of incalculable service to tea-drinking undergraduates. It was Tom Tyers who summed up Dr. Johnson, to the Doctor's liking: "Tom Tyers described me the best: 'Sir,' said he, 'you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.'"