The Mole justifies its name in seeming shyer than the Wey, keeping clearer of towns, and being not made familiar to wayfarers by a tow-path. Much of its stealthy course, indeed, is imprisoned in private grounds, whose owners may be jealous of angling rights; the Mole has even been chained and brought into law courts. In following it upwards, we must often be content to keep near its bed, sometimes only to be stuck to by ordeals upon muddy banks, in thorny gaps, over barbed wire fences, or in face of threatening notices to trespassers; and even the footpaths that lead from church to church, or cut off angles of high-roads, are seldom so far left to themselves as to follow the windings of this vagrant river. If, like the author of "The Farmer's Boy," he would spend-- One dear delicious day On thy wild banks, romantic Mole-- I do not advise my reader to track the river from its mouth through East Molesey, though the police station here stands near such an Arcadian feature as a ford across the eastern branch. But behind the Hurst Park racecourse, opposite Hampton, he may take a road by West Molesey Church, that, straggling off southwards, soon ends in a fairly straight footpath, a mile on touching the left bank of the Mole at its old paper-mills. So far the path may seem not very attractive unless to lovers or philosophers; but beyond the railway it is enlivened by a prospect of the grounds of Esher Place on the farther bank. The gateway of ivied brick, so conspicuous here, is known as "Wolsey's Tower," a sturdy remnant of the Episcopal residence to which that proud Cardinal retreated after his disgrace, but found himself so unwell, perhaps from the dampness of an abode near the river, where "he wanted even the most ordinary parts of household stuff," that he got leave to remove to Richmond for a time before being sent northward by the unrelenting king. The modern mansion has been built higher up, out of the way of floods and footpath starers. Behind Esher Place is Sandown racecourse, which also has memories of ecclesiastical state and of the transitoriness of worldly things that might serve as a text to its pleasure-seeking frequenters, if they cared for texts "worth following." This was once the seat of a Priory and Hospital, whose brethren were all swept away by the Black Death, and every trace of its buildings has long disappeared. By its enclosure ascends the high-road, passing near Esher station, almost a mile away from Esher; but that seems close proximity in this part of the county, where some places lie twice as far from the stations deceivingly named after them for want of a nearer title.