Alas! for the red-heeled, red-faced voluptuaries, the patched and powdered beauties, the morris-dancers, the fiddlers! They have all danced or hobbled off, and have been long since ferried over to the other side of Styx. And where they leered and ogled and minced, “protested,” and “stopped their vitals,” in their eighteenth-century way, there are a few inquisitive tourists peering about in corners, and really wondering if all those tales of eld are so much moonshine. The waters of Tunbridge Wells and the Roman Catholic clergy have, according to Mrs. Malaprop, one quality in common: both are “chalybeate.” Perhaps they owed much of their old-time popularity to being described as “salutiferous,” and certainly they were likely to impress people more, and to do more imaginary good, under that title than if merely “health-giving.” But the good wrought by the water is undoubted. It will not mend broken bones, nor set up an altogether shattered constitution; it is not Lethean, and at a draught you do not forget sorrows; but it is an excellent tonic, and—_experto crede_—good for incipient dyspepsia. Modern scepticism looks upon the fine air of Tunbridge Wells, rather than the water, as author of the beneficial effects upon visitors, and so it is less taken than formerly. It is safe to say that the majority of those who taste it are impelled by curiosity, and to all the taste suggests ink. You come past the Church of King Charles, with its sundial inscribed, “You may Waste but cannot Stop me,” to the Pantiles and the spring. The water is, by an old Act of Parliament, free to all, but there are two granite basins: one, with a gigantic utensil like a pantomime soup-ladle, with which, bending down, you scoop up the water, in company with Lazarus and the vulgar herd; another where, in more genteel fashion, you pay a penny and are handed a glassful by one of the two old ladies known as “Dippers.” If you please, you can commute your payments by subscribing 2_s._ a week, 3_s._ 6_d._ for two weeks, or 30_s._ for a year. By that time the three grains of iron contained in every gallon of the water should have strung the participant up to concert-pitch, and have plated his teeth with a coating of iron, unless he adopts the old custom of cleaning them with sage-leaves, after drinking. XXVII No one would dream of describing Tunbridge Wells as a “manufacturing town,” but it has, and has had for considerably over two hundred years, a peculiar industry. Few are those who have not heard of “Tunbridge ware,” a species of delicate inlay work in coloured woods, which may be described as mosaic work, something in the nature of tesselated pavement reduced to terms of wood; the tesseræ in this case being very thin strips, fillets, and roundels applied in patterns to work-boxes, inkstands, backs of brushes, and a large variety of fancy articles.