question, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Brougham, or Scarlett. KENTISH JOURNAL: FROM KENSINGTON TO DARTFORD, ROCHESTER, CHATHAM, AND FAVERSHAM. _Tuesday, December 4, 1821, Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Kent._ This is the first time, since I went to France, in 1792, that I have been on this side of _Shooters' Hill_. The land, generally speaking, from Deptford to Dartford is poor, and the surface ugly by nature, to which ugliness there has been made, just before we came to the latter place, a considerable addition by the enclosure of a common, and by the sticking up of some shabby-genteel houses, surrounded with dead fences and things called gardens, in all manner of ridiculous forms, making, all together, the bricks, hurdle-rods and earth say, as plainly as they can speak, "Here dwell _vanity_ and _poverty_." This is a little excrescence that has grown out of the immense sums which have been drawn from other parts of the kingdom to be expended on Barracks, Magazines, Martello-Towers, Catamarans, and all the excuses for lavish expenditure which the war for the Bourbons gave rise to. All things will return; these rubbishy flimsy things, on this common, will first be deserted, then crumble down, then be swept away, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and geese will once more graze upon the common, which will again furnish heath, furze and turf for the labourers on the neighbouring lands.--After you leave Dartford the land becomes excellent. You come to a bottom of chalk, many feet from the surface, and when that is the case the land is sure to be good; no _wet_ at bottom, no deep ditches, no water furrows necessary; sufficiently moist in dry weather, and no water lying about upon it in wet weather for any length of time. The chalk acts as a filtering-stone, not as a sieve, like gravel, and not as a dish, like clay. The chalk acts as the soft stone in Herefordshire does; but it is not so congenial to trees that have tap-roots.--Along through Gravesend towards Rochester the country presents a sort of gardening scene. Rochester (the Bishop of which is, or lately was, _tax Collector for London and Middlesex_) is a small but crowded place, lying on the south bank of the beautiful Medway, with a rising ground on the other side of the city. _Stroud_, which you pass through before you come to the bridge, over which you go to enter Rochester; _Rochester_ itself, and _Chatham_, form, in fact, one main street of about two miles and a half in length.--Here I was got into the scenes of my cap-and-feather days! Here, at between sixteen and seventeen, I enlisted for a soldier. Upon looking up towards the fortifications and the barracks, how many recollections crowded into my mind! The girls in these towns do not seem to be _so pretty_ as they were thirty-eight years ago; or, am I not so quick in discovering beauties as I was then? Have thirty-eight years corrected my taste, or made me a hypercritic in these matters? Is it