And England was "merry England" again. The maypole reappeared upon the village green, ginger was hot i' the mouth once more, cakes and ale disappeared down hungry and thirsty throats, and none declared eating and drinking to be carnal sins; folks sang songs and danced where had been only the singing of psalms in nasal tones and walking circumspectly; close-cropped polls grew love-locks again, and sad raiment gave place to the revived glories of ancient doublet and hose whose colours mocked the sun for splendour. For ten years had the people gone in a penitential gait that allowed neither gaiety nor enjoyment of any kind to pass unreproved, and now that all England was rejoicing that a pharisaical Puritanism had been overthrown, what wonder that young men and maidens who were too young to recollect the old England that existed before the Commonwealth plunged now into the wildest excesses, aided and abetted by old and middle-aged alike. The pendulum had swung back, and from whining religiosity the people turned to the extreme of licentiousness. And so at last to leave the historic aspect of Blackheath, which I had begun to fear would detain me until a volume had been made of it. Leaving the heath by the Dover Road, which still follows the old Watling Street, the way is bordered by apparently endless rows of villas, and the outskirts of Kidbrook and Charlton village are passed before one comes to where the fields, bordered by hedgerows, first come in sight, and even these are disfigured by great boards, offering land to be let for building-plots. This is, indeed, a neighbourhood where the incautious stranger takes a villa overlooking meadows, for the sake of the view, and finds, on waking up one fine morning, the builders putting in the foundations of a new house which will eventually hide his prospect; or where, having taken a month's holiday, he returns, to find a new street round the corner, with a brand new public-house, and a piano-organ playing the latest comic song, where (_eheu, fugaces!_) meads and orchards gladdened his eyes a few short weeks before. IX [Sidenote: SHOOTER'S HILL]