Time was, in the old Saxon days, when there stood a Mill here, “held in ferm by a Reve,” but _that_ was not a Paper-Mill. Then, came a Nunnery, with kings’ fair daughters in it; then, a Palace; then, Queen Elizabeth, in her sixteenth year, to sojourn at the Palace two days; then, in that reign, a Paper-Mill. In the church yonder, hidden behind the trees, with many rooks discoursing in their lofty houses between me and it, is the tomb of Sir John Spielman, jeweller to the Queen when she had grown to be a dame of a shrewd temper, aged fifty or so: who “built a Paper-Mill for the making of writing-paper,” and to whom his Royal Mistress was pleased to grant a license “for the sole gathering for ten years of all rags, &c., necessary for the making of such paper.” There is a legend that the same Sir John, in coming here from Germany, to build his Mill, did bring with him two young lime-trees—then unknown in England—which he set before his Dartford dwelling-house, and which did flourish exceedingly; so, that they fanned him with their shadows, when he lay asleep in the upper story, an ancient gentleman. Now, God rest the soul of Sir John Spielman, for the love of all the sweet-smelling lime-trees that have ever greeted me in the land, and all the writing-paper I have ever blotted! But, as I turn down by the hawthorn hedge into the valley, a sound comes in my ears—like the murmuring and throbbing of a mighty giant, labouring hard—that would have unbraced all the Saxon bows, and shaken all the heads off Temple Bar and London Bridge, ever lifted to those heights from the always butchering, always craving, never sufficiently-to-be-regretted, brave old English Block. It is the noise of the Steam Engine. And now, before me, white and clean without, and radiant in the sun, with the sweet clear river tumbling merrily down to kiss it, and help in the work it does, is the Paper-Mill I have come to see!