Much of the old town has vanished, but it will never be like an ordinary suburb that grew potatoes last year, and has within six months grown streets of houses “fitted with electric light, hot and cold water-supply, and drained in accordance with the latest improvements,” thus to quote advertisements. The town, in common with other places, has all those modern features, but it has also a surviving proportion of ancient houses, and even when they are gone it will still have its history. By virtue of that past it keeps to-day a larger air and a greater disunity than it could command merely as the dormitory of City men who leave early in the morning and return at night, and pay rent, rates, and taxes, but can have little of the sense of belonging to the place. Bromley, precisely like an assertive person who has “got on” in the world, signalised its recent expansion by acquiring a coat-of-arms; but not the most magnificent parvenu would dare sport a display so elaborate and comprehensive as that which alone would serve Bromley. In the recondite terminology affected by heralds it is “quarterly, gules and azure; on a fesse wavy argent three ravens volant proper between, in the first quarter, two branches slipped of the third: in the second a sun in splendour; in the third an escallop shell or; and in the fourth a horse forcené, also argent: and for the crest, on a wreath of the colours, upon two bars wavy azure and argent, an escallop shell, as in the arms, between two branches of broom proper.” It sounds like the description by a maniac of the contents of a shop-window, set up by a compositor who had misplaced the punctuation; but it is clear and pellucid reading to a herald. At any rate, there is no difficulty in discovering what it all means, for the device is proudly and abundantly displayed in Bromley itself. These many charges are not without their significance. The escallop shell is in allusion to the time when the palace of the Bishops of Rochester was situated here; the broom refers to the _planta genista_, the broom that gave, in the long ago, its name to Bromley, and still flourishes in the district; the sun in splendour indicates Sundridge, whose name itself by no means alludes to the sun; and the white horse is, of course, the familiar unconquered horse of Kent. The ravens recall the legendary history of the Ravensbourne. Beneath all this display is a Latin motto, to the effect that “While I grow I hope.” Gravely aloof from all these things, the old parish church of Bromley stands indeed in the centre of the town, but in a quiet lane leading to a pretty little public garden on the edge of a height overlooking all South London and its sea of roof-tops. It need scarcely be said that the long body and the apocalyptic towers of the Crystal Palace are prominent in the view. They brood like an obsession over all the southern suburbs.