Here, on the sanded floor of King Ethelbert’s hostelry, do village antiquarians often congregate. Here, at times, are stories told—stories not all unworthy of the type of Antiquarian _Transactions_—of _fibulæ_, talked of as buckles, and other tangible bits of Roman history. Here, we have heard, how a certain woman—living at this blessed hour, and the mother of a family—went out at very low tide, and found the branch of a filbert-tree with clustering filberts on it, all stone, at least a thousand years old—and more. Here, too, have we heard of a wonderful horse-shoe, picked up by Joe Squellins; a shoe, as the finder averred, as old as the world. Poor Joe! What was his reward?—it may be, a pint of ale for that inestimable bit of iron! And yet was he a working antiquarian. Joe Squellins had within him the unchristened elements of F.S.A. The sea has spared something of the old churchyard; although it has torn open the sad sanctity of the grave, and reveals to the day, corpse upon corpse—layers of the dead, thickly, closely packed, body upon body. A lateral view of rows of skeletons, entombed in Christian earth centuries since, for a moment staggers the mind, with this inward peep of the grave. We at once see the close, dark prison of the churchyard, and our breath comes heavily, and we shudder. It is only for a moment. There is a lark singing, singing over our head—a mile upwards in the blue heaven—singing like a freed soul: we look again, and smile serenely at the bones of what was man. Many of our gentle countrymen—fellow-metropolitans—who once a year wriggle out their souls from the slit of their tills to give the immortal essence sea air, make a pilgrimage to Reculvers. This Golgotha, we have noted it, has to them especial attractions. Many are the mortal relics borne away to decorate a London chimney-piece. Many a skeleton gives up its rib, its _ulna_, two or three odd _vertebræ_, or some such gimcrack to the London visitor, for a London ornament. Present the same man with a bone from a London hospital, and he would hold the act abominable, irreligiously presumptuous. But time has “silvered o’er” the bone from Reculvers; has cleansed it from the taint of mortality; has merged the loathsomeness in the curiosity; for time turns even the worst of horrors to the broadest of jests. We have now Guy Fawkes about to blow Lords and Commons into eternity—and now Guy Fawkes masked for a pantomime. One day, wandering near this open graveyard, we met a boy, carrying away, with exulting looks, a skull in very perfect preservation. He was a London boy, and looked rich indeed with his treasure. “What have you there?” we asked. “A man’s head—a skull,” was the answer. “And what can you possibly do with a skull?” “Take it to London.” “And when you have it in London, what then will you do with it?” “I know.” “No doubt. But what will you do with it?” And to this thrice-repeated question the boy three times answered, “I know.”