Sarre is picturesque in parts, and in other parts quite distressingly ugly. It is, indeed, a peculiarity of Kent, overrun from the earliest times by Cockneys, that many of its buildings touch the deepest depth of ugliness, vulgarity, and unsuitability. The Cockney has come forth of his Cockaigne, and builded, after his sort, great grey-brick houses in the model of the houses in towns, where of necessity, being in streets and shouldered by neighbours, they run to height and unrelieved squareness. Sarre contains exactly such an example, in one of the two inns--one never can recollect the name of a commonplace inn--that minister not only to the wants of Sarre, but were halting-places for the Margate and Ramsgate coaches in the old days, just as they are "pull-ups" for the brake-parties of the present time. [Illustration: THE "VILLE OF SARRE."] The artist can dodge the hideous inn out of his sketch and can make a pretty view of Sarre, but unless he adopts the tactics of a Turner, and takes a piece here and another there, and so fits them together in a composition of his own, he cannot get into one view the quaint old barn-yards, with their curious barns standing, for fear of the rats, shouldered off the ground on stone staddles; nor can he include the bridge, the stream, and the long, poplar-lined road into the village. In no case could he bring in the time-worn tower of a village church, that sanctifies a sketch, for Sarre is godless and graceless and owns no church, its inhabitants finding their nearest place of worship at St. Nicholas-at-Wade, nearly two miles distant. CHAPTER XVI SARRE AND RECULVER TO CANTERBURY The rows of feathery poplars lining the causeway road out of Sarre towards Canterbury give it, for a little distance, the look of a French road. But they presently cease, and it becomes for some miles a singularly dreary way. All the more excuse, therefore, for adventuring away from it across country to Reculver, celebrated by Ingoldsby in the "Brothers of Birchington." Chislett village, through which the route lies, shows prominently from its ridge--or, rather, its church does. A church it is of singular outline, viewed from a distance, and calculated to entice the inquisitive away from the direct road, only to find that the bizarre appearance is caused by the spire having been almost wholly shorn off at some time not specified, and the stump suffered to remain. For the rest, Chislett is sufficiently interesting in the wheat and swede and mangold way, but not otherwise attractive, unless the stocks, still preserved in the churchyard, may be mentioned.