And another set in his father's chair, And talked, o'er his liquor, of laws, Of the tyranny here and the knavery there, 'Till the old bit of oak And the drunkard broke, But the times were not the cause. But I have redeemed the old ricketty chair, And trod in my father's ways; Have turned the furrow with humble prayer To profit my neighbours, And prosper my labours; And find my sheaves with praise. Cruikshank draws the scape-thrift roystering over punch and churchwardens' pipes. The careful and thrifty farmer is in another picture. He has no pipe, and he talks kindly to his wife, and dandles his son on his knee. There is a large ale-jug on the table, and he has had a capital dinner. Titsey, a mile and a half away under the downs, is not a village at all; just a modern church outside Titsey Park, and a cottage opposite the church which was once an inn, and could swing a sign now if it wished; the frame is there. Once the church stood inside the park. That was when Titsey Place belonged to the Greshams, the ancestors of its later owners, the Leveson-Gowers. Sir John Gresham, looking one day in 1776 at the old church, decided that it was too near his house: it was only thirty-five feet distant. With the insolence of the day, he knocked it down, and the modern church stands obediently outside the gates. But Titsey Park has made amends. When the late Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower was at Titsey he brought to light, and described in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, the foundations of a Roman villa discovered in the Park, almost touching the old road used by the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. The foundations were interestingly complete, and from the ground near were dug coins, pottery, and a bronze mask. To-day the villa may be visited, but it is overgrown by weeds and elder bushes, and the visible remains are of scanty walls and tumbled pillars; rabbits, I think, see most of it. From Titsey you may climb a steep road and find Tatsfield church, separated from its scattered village, clean on the edge of the steep hill. Tatsfield church, which is old and small, stands nearly eight hundred feet above the weald, and its little churchyard, with a path in it leading to no gate, but only to a hedge, lends a curious sense of a garden. The stretch of Sussex and Kent to the south is freer and wider than any other Surrey church sees; but Tatsfield, like other places with a fine view, suffers continual loss in cloudy weather. When I was last there the church stood alone on the brow, over unguessable depths of grey mist. CHAPTER XLI DULWICH TO WIMBLEDON