Just such a chalk-pit is that huge scar, beside the hill we have just descended, where who shall say how many tons are excavated weekly? What would Ruskin have said of it? Something superlative, without doubt. I think I hear him: “accursed,” “damnable,” he says, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the spirit-world, discussing the question with him, decides magisterially, after his wont: “The point is, sir, whether you are to use the materials Nature has given us for the improvement of man’s condition in the world, or to neglect them in order to preserve the savage wastes of a desolate country-side, to gratify the diseased fancies of people who call themselves artists. Sir, let us take a walk down the Elysian equivalent of Fleet Street!” [Illustration: AN OLD WAYSIDE COTTAGE, BELOW POLHILL.] Dunton Green, formerly Donington, is a rather Cockneyfied hamlet that is at present halting between expansion and a few regretful reminiscences of a past rural state. It is very populous, and the children live and have their playground in the open road. [Illustration: LONGFORD.] At Longford, to which we come after Dunton Green, the river Darenth is crossed, at an early stage of its career, by a bridge that long ago superseded the ford. It is still a narrow bridge, with a roadway only twenty feet wide, but it has been already once widened and once renewed, as two tablets, built into the wall on either side, declare: This Bridge was renewed by order of the Commissioners of Sevenoakes Turnpike. William Covell, Mason. And This Bridge was Widen’d in March a.d. 1813 by order of the Seven Oaks Turnpike Road. J. Smith, Archt. The Darenth rises at Westerham, only five miles away; but there is already a sufficient head of water in the infant stream to serve the purpose of a large flour-mill standing here. Beyond it, a dusty stretch leads into Riverhead, past a strange little outlying group of houses lying back from the road and fronted with the rows of lime-trees that give it the name of Linden Square. Local gossip declares the place to have once been a coaching inn, but exact information is utterly unprocurable. XV That the village of Riverhead belongs very largely to Lord Amherst is obvious enough, in the highly ornate terra-cotta tablets on the houses, bearing a gigantic A crowned with an earl’s coronet and ensigned with a shield charged with three spears. Also the “Amherst Arms,” with its sign exhibiting two Red Indians and the motto, “Constantia et Virtute,” proclaims the lordship.