After sunset we wander about the old streets, where even the more modern buildings conform to the all-pervading air of antiquity. It is the close of the Saturday holiday and the main street is packed with a cheerful crowd of people of all degrees. Shop-keepers improve the opportunity to sell their wares and a lively trade is carried on at the open booths along the walks. One butcher is especially active in booming business, having a fellow in front of his place, a "barker," we would style him in the States, who bellows in a voice like a foghorn, "Lovely meat! the same that the king and nobility heats--lovely meat." Surely a recommendation that would shake the resolution of a confirmed vegetarian. But we soon weary of the glare and noise of the crowded street. We wander into the crooked lanes that lead to the nooks and corners about the cathedral. We catch the towers from different viewpoints; as they stand, boldly outlined against an opalescent sky flecked with red-toned clouds, they form a fit study for the artist--and one of which the artist has often availed himself. The college court is full of shadows; how easy it would be to imagine a cowled figure stealing along in the dusk and passing from sight in the Norman entrance yonder--than which there is no choicer bit of medieval architecture in the Kingdom. We have the whole of the following day to reach London; and what a superb day it is, the very essence of the beauty of English midsummer! We have been over the Rochester and Maidstone road before, so we take the narrow and hilly but marvelously picturesque highway that drops some fourteen miles straight southward. The country through which it passes is distinctly rural, with here and there a grove or a farmhouse. A little to one side is Petham, a quiet hamlet under gigantic trees, with a half-timbered inn seemingly out of all proportion to the possible needs of the place. The main road running from Hythe, near the coast, through Ashford to Tunbridge Wells, a distance of about fifty miles, is one of the finest in the Kingdom. It runs in broad, sweeping curves through a gently undulating country, and the grades are seldom enough to check the motor's flight. It had lately been re-surfaced and much of the way oiled or asphalted, quite eliminating dust. We pass much charming country, wooded hills, stretches of meadowland, fields of yellowing grains, and many sleepy villages, all shimmering in the lucent air of a perfect summer day. The sky is as blue as one ever sees it in England, and a few silvery-white clouds drift lazily across it. It is what the natives call a very warm day, but it seems only balmy to us. [Illustration: ON THE DOWNS. From Original Painting by Alfred Elias.]