Jonathan Tyers reserved a private gloom for his own garden at Denbies. He named one of his plantations _Il Penseroso_ and in it built a small temple which he bespattered with dismal texts. A clock struck every minute, to remind the visitor of the constant approach of death, and in an alcove were two life-size paintings of a Christian and an Unbeliever in their last moments. At the end of a walk stood a pair of pedestals, one of which carried a "Gentleman's Scull" and the other a "Lady's Scull" with appropriate verses; upon all of which melancholy properties Mr. John Timbs in his _Picturesque Promenade Round Dorking_, printed in 1823, meditates thus:-- "Such eccentric imageries, making irrefragable appeals to the feelings of the dissolute debauchee, might form a persuasive penitentiary, and urge the necessity of amendment with better effect than all the farcical frenzies of mere formalists and fanatics." A later owner removed temple and all. Denbies of to-day offers the traveller a kindlier welcome by allowing access to more than one private roadway, from which the outlook over the country to the south is more than worth the steady climb from Dorking. The road runs on to Ranmer Common, where Mr. John Timbs was able to look north to the dome and pinnacles of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, but I was not lucky enough with the weather. Ranmer has a church more finely placed, I think, than any in the county, except perhaps St. Martha's; but St. Martha's has no spire like Ranmer. Ranmer spire is a landmark: you take your bearings from that graceful needle for many miles in central Surrey, as you may from Crooksbury Hill in the west. East Surrey has no landmark quite so friendly.