On the left is the great park of Bedgebury, the seat until 1887, when he died, of A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, once prominent in the House of Commons. He was the descendant of one John Hope, a Hollander, of Amsterdam, whose son settled in England about 1800. That origin was the subject of a curious allusion in Parliament, during the debate of April 12th, 1867, on the Representation of the People Bill: a measure vehemently opposed by Beresford-Hope, whose clumsy, burly form and grotesque mannerisms in speaking were often commented upon. He spoke with emphasis of voice and gesture against that proposal of Disraeli’s, and declared, rather offensively, that he “would vote with whole heart and conscience against the Asian mystery.” To this the “Asian mystery” himself rejoined that “all the honourable member’s exhibitions in the House are distinguished by a prudery which charms me, and when he talks of Asian mysteries, I may, perhaps, by way of reply, remark that there is a Batavian grace about his exhibition which takes the sting out of what he has said.” He might even have said batrachian grace, for Beresford-Hope on his legs in the House was something froglike. The house at Bedgebury, originally built in 1688 by Sir James Hayes, from sources romantically drawn out of treasure recovered from a sunken Spanish galleon, has been twice remodelled, lastly in the ’60’s, and is typical of the taste then prevailing for French architecture of what we may term the Alexandra Palace, Grosvenor Place, and Buckingham Palace Hotel type: which is to a Londoner an easier method of comparison than by naming it the “Louis the Fourteenth style.” It is a type distinguished by scaly Mansard roofs and spiky crestings, and has long been outmoded. Beresford-Hope was a connoisseur of sorts, with a ready purse for church-restoration, conducted sometimes with that “zeal not according to knowledge” St. Paul laments, and exemplified in the little church of Kilndown, outside Bedgebury Park. At Flimwell, which is merely a hamlet at the cross-roads, formed into a parish in 1839 by annexing portions of the neighbouring parishes of Etchingham, Ticehurst, and Hawkhurst, the road finally enters Sussex. “Flimwell Vent” is the style by which the place is known to old Turnpike Acts. The name sounds mysterious, but is only a strangely perverted version of “went,” the old rustic word for a cross-road. This, where roads go in four different directions, would be a “four-went way.” The draughtsmen who drew up those acts simply did not understand the term, and spelled it, as Mr. Tony Weller did his name, with a “we.”